About Gratitude

Grace took a big tumble down the stairs today, and came out with nothing worse than a little bump under her left eye.

Jacob is the poster child for all the child safety warnings you see on just about everything.  He wraps cords around his neck, he falls headfirst into nearly everything with an opening big enough to fall in to, and he eats and drinks things that to most people would be poisonous.  Not to mention running with sharp objects.  You would think we haven't baby-proofed at all with all the things he does to get into trouble.

Joseph climbed up on to the roof the other day, and was amusing himself by running up and down the slope of it on the North side.  I bribed him with chewing gum to come down, because if you try to go after him, he runs away and thinks it's funny.  In case you're wondering, no, we do not leave ladders leaned up against the house, but the deck railing out back is just level with the garage roof, so he climbed up that way.  Joel took a box of screws and stuck them all along the railing so that it would be too painful to climb.  If that doesn't work, then, yes, we will get barbed wire.:)

Emily just goes to school.  That's danger in and of itself, what with all the lockdown drills, bullies, and bad words that she reads on the bathroom wall.

I have to say, though, that even with all the near misses (that happen daily, no joke), we are a healthy, happy family.  We live in an exceptional neighborhood, in our chosen State (for now), in the US of A.

I look at Google Earth from time to time, just to see what there is out there, and I often wonder how I got to be so lucky.  To be where I am, with all my needs met is really humbling, because it seems that circumstances like mine are the exception rather than the rule.

So even when I have to save my children's lives every day, or see the negative headlines, or hear the latest conspiracy theory that Joel has heard on Coast to Coast, I'm grateful that my part of the Earth is still right-side up.