Jeremiah, what a gift to be able to watch you become a father! You have put on the mantle of fatherhood, just like you have all the other honors our heavenly Father has bestowed–with humility, integrity, and love. The way you love our girls, has seeped into my heart and let me love you even more. I can’t imagine a man making a better father than one who has a heart that demands integrity while overflowing with compassion. I thank God that He gave me you to raise our children and set an example of godliness. I love you so bad, and so do Pace and Mary Aplin 🙂
Dr. Maddox, I don’t understand the title “daughter-in-law” because you have always made me feel like no less than your daughter. I know that if I told you I needed you to jump off a bridge for me, you’d do it without hesitation–and even have an unbelievably good attitude about it :). Watching Popon bring the joy and spontaneity to the girls’ lives, like only you could do, has been beautiful to experience. How many girls get to have TWO fathers that they love and respect so deeply? I love you.
Oh Dad…What a privilege to grow up in a home with a father who truly lived everything he preached. A father who showed me by example how NOT to be a hypocrite. I believe that there are very, very few homes with role models like you. You can’t hide from your family–we see it all, and I can say from the depths of my heart that I would trust you with the world. I am just so thankful for your example, and cried out to God in thankfulness this morning. You’ve always managed to strike the perfect balance between being my father–my rock–my disciplinarian–my teacher–my protector–my friend. Thank you, thank you. I love you, Abby. 
I hate gardening. I love flowers and color and the thought of fresh vegetables and herbs BUT I still hate gardening. My friends love it, the books I read act like gardening makes you one step closer to God, BUT I still hate gardening. I can understand, figuratively, the joy of “sinking your hands into the earth,” “being a part of creation starting,” “nurturing a fragile little plant,” “creating something beautiful.” I’VE TRIED! but to me it just feels hot, full of bugs, a tedious everyday need to go take care of SOMETHING ELSE, and even if I do follow all the right steps, everything I do tends to look like this anyway:
That is what greets you on my porch if you drop by our house. It serves as a constant reminder of last spring, just like every spring before, when I’ve gone to Home Depot, listened to Jeremiah make fun of me as I spent hundreds of dollars on plants vowing that THIS year would be different. Well, that was my gigantic prize fern from last year…you can see how well I took care of her.
I don’t know where she heard it, but I couldn’t bear to squelch her anymore. Maybe the child is going to have a green thumb. Heck, maybe I can let her plant my flower beds every year :)? She certainly couldn’t do any worse than I have.So, I made the dreaded trip to Home Depot, but instead of spending hundreds of dollars, I only spent about five. I let Pace pick our seeds and this is what she chose:
We took down my hanging baskets (that weren’t being used anyway), rounded up a few other planters from various past projects.
And planted to our hearts content. (Mary Aplin nearly gave me a concussion with that rake before the day was over)
Now, a good solid excuse I have for not enjoying gardening is that my yard gets next to no sunshine. There are no fun colorful plants that grow in shade…or at least very few (maybe to get the good ones you have to go spend some real money at a nursery and not Home Depot). To give Pace’s plants a chance at life, I’ve left all these planters in the only spot in our yard that does get sun–THE FRONT YARD. We are lookin’ oh so classy with our half clover/half grass yard and our planters strewn about.
They actually grew!! (I honestly had zero faith that it would work) And Pace asks to go outside and check on them about twenty times a day. Bless her heart…it looks nothing like her mother’s in this gardening area.
We have had such a sweet Sunday. I haven’t griped anymore (on the blog, don’t think I haven’t griped in real life) about Jeremiah’s trauma schedule, since the “Obama on Trauma” blog, but it’s been bad. Jeremiah is forever and always optimistic that next week is going to be better…it has to be…but so far his optimism has been dead off. HOWEVER, I promised myself I wouldn’t gripe on this blog either…
Today has been a marvellous day. One of those days that has gotten me wondering…”Is this what normal peoples’ lives look like?” Jeremiah had to go in and round for a few hours this morning, but he actually managed to squeeze in the pew beside me halfway through the singing in church. It was such a nice surprise! Then we went out to eat at Irondale Cafe, and I bellied up to the meat and three…fried chicken, squash, green beans, macaroni and cheese (but that was for Mary Aplin, not me :)), and a big ol piece of corn bread. On our “Residency Budget,” I am afraid these traditional Sunday lunches have been replaced with turkey sandwiches and soup at our house most Sundays, but today I knew my extended family was down in Dothan celebrating my grandparent’s 60th wedding anniversary with a meal that could make me melt. I passed a note to Jeremiah in church saying that I might cry if I had to eat a sandwich for lunch again today :), and he was more than happy to give in.
On the way home, post feast, Pace started begging Jeremiah to take her down to the basement (where the sound equipment is) and let her play the guitar and sing with the microphone. She has been missing her Daddy so bad these past couple of months, and I think this was her way of asking to be all alone with him. The weird thing is that both she and Mary Aplin start to be mean to him when he is gone a lot. He comes home from work and (if they are still awake), they run and hide. Then when he finds them, they act pouty. However, as soon as they get more than 10 minutes of his undivided attention, you would think they had sprouted wings. His love brings an animation and spirit to them that my attention can’t touch…but when they don’t get it, they punish him for his absence. It is scary how innate manipulation seems to be inside little girls 🙂
We stayed in the study, so that Jeremiah could look up guitar chords on the computer for all of Pace’s song requests, but we had the best time playing and singing this afternoon. For me, seeing the delight Pace and Jeremiah were taking from each other was priceless. 
After singing, we put the girls down for naps and Jeremiah crashed in our bed while I sat beside him…stitching away. I was so excited that he was getting to nap, that I couldn’t have fallen asleep myself. Man did he need it! Finally, Pace and Jeremiah both got out of bed (notice I say “got out of bed” and not “woke up” because Pace is now refusing to nap most days) at about the same time and she asked if they could have a tea party. I wasn’t invited, so I got to cook dinner ALL BY MYSELF IN THE KITCHEN (without anybody asking to help or pulling out all of the spoons and Tupperware or fighting at my feet).
After the tea party broke up in the next room, they announced to me that they were going to run sprints on the football field. I waved goodbye to the duo who were so obviously in need of some one-on-one time and like a happy housewife whose casserole is already in the oven, I cuddled with Napoleon in the big girl bed and then took her outside to see where the wind would take us. It was just all so normal, simple, and wonderful. I am sad that I missed my grandparent’s anniversary this weekend. I spent a lot of time contemplating whether or not to pack up the girls and head down to Dothan for the day… But I know we needed today, in all its normalcy, we needed it.