What a busy few weeks it's been.

Micah learned to walk last week. He'll be 14 months old tomorrow. :) I still can't believe it. Amazing.

I've heard now he'll start working on talking. That makes me really happy. One of our greatest frustrations has been not being able to communicate with Micah. He acts up sometimes, so we have to discipline him, but it's not easy when he can't understand what we're saying. All he understands is our tones of voice, that we're unhappy.

Other than that, life with Micah is really beautiful right now. He's still a completely sweet, happy little guy. Since he's started walking, I feel like life just started moving 3x faster. He'll be school-age before I know it. I was better at enjoying the moment before; now it's harder, and it will just keep getting harder as he enters the difficult toddler years, where he learns to say "No." I keep wondering how I'm going to deal with that. It stresses me out enough right now that he acts up. And somewhere in those toddler years, we'll probably bring another baby onto the scene. (Really?!! Can't believe we're actually thinking about that for real now.) So yeah... I'm trying not to think about it, but at the same time I don't want to be blindsided by it.

Anyway... I've started going on short walks with Micah in the mornings, which has made both of us quite a bit happier. He has also started doing 1 nap instead of 2, although I think today will be a 2-nap day. His afternoon naps are only about 2 hours long--shorter than average toddlers' naps. And he is doing 1 nap earlier than most toddlers, too. But if there's one thing I can say about my son, it's that his sleeping habits have NEVER matched up with other babies' sleeping habits!

Other than Micah, my thoughts have been preoccupied with the wildfires around us, with my walk with God, and my social life.

Wildfires: The entire west coast is on fire. Some of them are finally getting under control now, but this is the worst fire season in years. We haven't had rain since April or May. It's just insane. The fires have stayed away from my hometown and my current city. But they're all around! The smoke is bad, especially in my hometown. I worry about my grandparents. They keep insisting they're fine, but Grandpa isn't always very good at taking care of his health. We may get some rain this weekend. So many people have been praying for it; I hope God answers our prayers.

Social life: Our small group is taking a break for the summer (our leaders just had their 2nd baby), and I've felt the impact in my social life. I haven't met up with friends during the week for a long time. Somehow things just started going a mile a minute and I've just been trying to keep up. I think it's because Micah changed a lot in his habits lately--sleeping through the night, transitioning to one nap, acting up, and now walking. I am going to try really hard to get back into the swing of play dates and such.

Walk with God: In the rush of life, I've also been slacking in reading my Bible. I haven't started meeting with my "discipler" yet either. She's currently in the midwest visiting her family. I did finally get the book we're going to start on, though. I think meeting with her will really help me get back on track with deepening my relationship with God. And it's hard not meeting with our small group, too, or with Will and Savannah like we used to. I would desperately love to meet with W. and S. again. They are our most like-minded friends and having their support makes a lot of difference as we still butt heads with people in our church.

Speaking of butting heads with people at church.

Charis and Andrew have similar views on kids in church as Stephen and I. For a while they kept James (their older boy) in church with them. Then they put him in the nursery for a while, and Charis would be there with him. They've come back to going out into the foyer with James, just like Stephen always does with Micah. Yesterday, the CMD approached Andrew and asked about him keeping James out of the nursery. Andrew told her that they believe in keeping kids with their parents in church to "build community."

Which is hysterical, because that's the exact argument the CMD tried to use against us back in February or whenever it was. Charis and Andrew must have encountered the same arguments from her another time.

What a mess. In the meantime... How is it possible to have all these dissatisfactions with your church and still not leave? I guess some things are stronger than personal satisfaction with a church. Like loyalty and relationships.

-Stephanie

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