My Body

Cicily was asked to give a part in the upcoming children's program in our church.  The prompt she was given is: "A blessing I have from Heavenly Father is______".  I read it to her and she immediately wanted to fill in the blank with "body".  I tried to mention other possibilities - Jesus, family, chickens even, but she was emphatic about her body.  To give some perspective, she had spent that same morning coughing up blood because her body caught a virus and is fighting off another case of pneumonia.
However, with the amazing wisdom and perspective she has, Cicily really feels that, 

"A blessing I have from Heavenly Father is my body."

Being Cicily's Mom has taught me - it's ok to paint a doll's toenails

Things keep popping into my head lately that I've learned from being Cicily's Mom.  So, I've decided to start a regular posting topic of "Being Cicily's Mom has taught me..." 

I already mentioned in the last post that Cicily wanted to paint her doll's toenails.  It was a little too dangerous for me at first.  Defacing a doll permanently by painting her toes.  Dolls toes shouldn't be painted, they're dolls, you take care of them.  You don't write on walls, you don't color a doll's face, you don't paint her toes.  So after all that went through my head in a quick second, I realized - who cares?  It's Cicily's doll.  She'd like her toes to be painted just like hers are painted.  It's not going to hurt anyone.  So we painted those dolls cute toes.  Cicily was so proud! 
Then Maya came in the bathroom and Cicily showed her the doll's toes.  Maya's face registered all of my first thoughts (she's a practical, planner - kinda gal like her Mom).  Maya looked semi-horrified.  But then her face softened and she said, "oh, you're going to take the paint off though huh."  I said, "no, we're going to leave it, isn't it cute."  I explained my rational to Maya and eventually she was mostly ok with it too. 
It's a good lesson for a practical girl like me to learn.  I try to remember it doesn't hurt anyone to have a doll's toenails painted.  It doesn't hurt anyone to use up a sheet of new stickers all in one day.  It doesn't hurt a kid when they get dirty playing outside. 

Cicily's dirty painted toes.
 Maya took this lovely picture of Cicily's dirty feet after Cicily got to screen for artifacts on a recent archaeology dig. 

Thanks to you Cis, your younger siblings will have a much more dirty, destructive, playful childhood, I think they'll thank you.  :)