A View of Our Blessed Life

We have taken so many pictures lately that I'm not even going to bother writing anything right now. I'm just going to show you the GRACE that God has given us in a happy, healthy, beautiful girl. I am humbled by His goodness and mercy to our little family.
Oh, and for any of you who knew me as a baby, the resemblance in some of these pictures is almost terrifying...but still cute!

August is Flyin' By

Wow. I am having difficulty comprehending that we have already experienced 16 days of August, but not for lack of activity in the Riezebos house.
We started the month off with my birthday and our anniversary and a cousin's wedding all within the first six days of the month. We traveled up to Minnesota briefly to drop Anika off with Grandpa and Grandma so that we could have a night away on our anniversary to Sioux Falls. We saw a movie, Captain America (which was awesome by the way), and ate at the restaurant where we had our first meal as man and wife FIVE years ago, and stayed in the very nice Holiday Inn Express. I took my camera along to document our date night...but I forgot to take pictures. Fail.
But here is a picture of us the next day at my cousin's wedding! Congrats Erin and Michael!

After the wedding, my family came to Omaha to visit us for a couple days. We enjoyed swimming at the parent's hotel pool and going to the zoo on Monday. Gotta love the zoo!







In fact, we love the zoo so much that we just had to go back later with our friends who came to visit us and the zoo. Saturdays are much busier than Mondays. We didn't even get to see the desert dome because it was extremely packed, and since we had two strollers to maneuver around instead of just one, we decided to pass. There was still plenty to see!
Anika absolutely loves the zoo. The yearly pass was an awesome investment.









In other Anika news, she has two more teeth poking through, so that brings our grand total up to SIX TEETH!
She has been fighting a cold, which has made her appetite decrease, which has made her weight decrease a little too. I'm hoping she gets better soon and starts eating normally again.
She can now stand by herself for a few seconds at a time. She looks strange when she stands, probably just to me though, because her standing means I am one step closer to not having a baby Anika anymore, but a toddler Anika. Sigh.
Anika is also a professional waver, waving whenever anyone says goodbye or goodnight.
One of her favorite things to do is find noses on people or on pictures and on our cats. She even poked Mimi's nose and said "nose"!
We love her more and more every day.

Oh and on a side note, I used the Force to create some pretty awesome pancakes.


Okay, okay. They were pancake molds, but still amazingly awesome. I think pancakes taste better in Star Wars form.

Visual Evidence

So here are a couple pictures to show how much Anika has grown in the last few months.


January 22, 2011
Anika at four months







July 22, 2011
Anika at 10 months


My little pianist!

Empathy

"Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn." Romans 12:15

Empathy is a strange thing, the physical sharing of feeling with another person's circumstance. Our pastor challenged us to have more empathy this past Sunday. His challenge was specific to Jesus' sacrifice on the cross, how to just say "Jesus died on the cross" is as commonplace among Christians as "i am having a pb & j sandwich". It is hard to feel the reality of what happened on Good Friday without stopping and considering with all of our senses what the crucifixion would have been like. I appreciated this message and would love to embrace this fully. Also, I know that it is incredibly important as a Christian to pause and empathize with our fellow brothers and sisters who suffer here in this world..but...
But...
Empathy Hurts. When you do it properly, it is extremely unpleasant. But...
But...
the empathy that I can summon up will only take a few minutes of my time, while others with whom I am attempting to empathize are struggling with their reality for the rest of their lives.
Example.
I have heard of many people going through the valley of the shadow of death lately, and my heart has been unsure how to respond to the news. Specifically, I recently had a wonderful sister in Christ go through the loss of a baby boy. The part of me that doesn't want to experience pain and suffering, the part that wants to stay calm and collected all the time, did not want to empathize. I resisted pausing to think about what that would feel like with all of my senses and emotions because I KNEW that if I did, I would fall apart. But then I realized that a few moments of my time to attempt to feel the grief and pain and give in to it out of empathy is nothing compared to actually going through that valley. I did give in to my empathy, and cast myself into prayer during those moments of struggling with what those feelings might possibly be. Again, I will NEVER fully know unless I encounter a similar difficulty in my life; but to use my imagination helps me be more sincere in my plea to God for his grace and peace to come to those who so desperately need it.

I need to remember that there is nothing wrong with an emotional, empathizing response to the news of someone's heartache. It is even good for me to cry out to God with them from my own heart, not just responding with a "oh, that's too bad" or the "how sad." But in the quiet of the time I should spend before my Father, I can feel free to let go of the calm collected prayer, and attempt to empathize with my spiritual family.

And in the Tenth Month...

I decided that having a child makes time accelerate at least 23% faster than if you do not have a child. My professional observation comes through the facts that the last 10 months do not feel like that amount of time has elapsed; rather, it only feels like a little over seven months ago that Anika was born. Ergo, time has accelerated in my life because my attentions are so involved in another person that I do not notice how quickly time is passing.

My baby is getting closer to NOT being a baby anymore, which I cannot consider for too long at one moment or I become depressed. On the other hand, my little girl is growing and learning at such an exciting rate that I cannot wait until we can communicate better and play together even more than we do now.

Anika's milestones at TEN MONTHS:
* has gained 12 ounces since last month! Hooray! Now she weighs a whopping 17 pounds!
* has added a couple words to her vocabulary like banana or "nanana" and Jake or "dake"; the grand list of words is "mama" "dada" "all done" "kitty" "mih-mih" (milk)
* can drink out of a sippy cup all by herself
* understands questions like "where's ____?" and will look at the person; also knows how to respond to "can you splash?" "can you bang on that?" "can you dance?"
* has been able to hover-stand for a couple seconds without holding on to anything
* loves loves loves to dance
* loves to play the piano. she is tall enough now to reach the keys when she stands up so she likes to play the bottom notes to make louder sounds
* has fully embraced her nightly routine and rarely fusses to go to bed and sleeps a solid 10-12 hours every night. Bath time, play a little, nurse, brush teeth, read books, sing songs, pray and goodnight!
* has mastered going up AND down the little stairs
* continues to keep her gracious, sweet and mellow demeanor which I pray will stay with her above anything else.



We went on a recent trip to the zoo with Tante Rachelle (Garry's sister) who is visiting from California. Afterwards we went to Jones Bros. Cupcakes (yum) and Anika tasted some cake to start practicing for her first birthday in only two months.

Blessed Summer Travels

The beginning of July we were blessed to be able to visit my Grandma Sparks and my Uncle John, Aunt Beth, and cousins John and Christina and their spouses in Tampa, Florida. Anika had been able to visit all of her great-grandmas so far except for Grandma Sparks, so this was a great time to go to Florida.
We left July 2nd and flew through Atlanta to Tampa where our carseat failed to arrive with us. Thankfully there was one more flight coming in, so we just had to wait another 45 minutes. They at least included some meal vouchers, so we did a 9:30 PM Starbucks visit since it was the only store in the terminal still serving...but we indulged in $18 worth of pastries and decaffeinated drinks.
Sunday we worshiped with the family and then enjoyed time visiting. We went to see Grandma's little assisted living apartment and Anika had a great time playing with Great Grandma.
Grandma will turn 90 years old in August. What an amazing gift from our Lord!





On the Fourth of July we went to a local parade with Uncle John and I decked out Anika in her new patriotic shirt. We also walked down to the pier over the ocean and I got to see one of my favorite creatures: a manatee! Hooray!
It was extremely extremely hot, so we found some shade and Anika found a friend, Emily, who was only a week younger than her!






The rest of the visit was spent taking a trip to Busch Gardens sans Anika (my first full day away from my baby), a trip to Clearwater Beach, and playing oodles of Dominion. Awesome.