“I have a surprise for you, Mom!” my four-year-old son says, and I know it will be a sweet surprise. I can see it in his eyes.

Yesterday he found out my birthday was coming up. “What do you want for your birthday, Mom?” my little buddy asked me. “What do you like?”

“Most of all?  I love Daddy and you and Mara and Rissy and David!” I told him.

“I know. But what do you like? I know you like your phone.–Do you need a new phone?”

“No,” I laughed, “I don’t need a new phone. But you are so kind to think of Mommy!–I like books. I like music–sometimes CDs or piano music I can play. . .”

And some of the best “gifts” of all are the persistent questions a four-year-old asks, revealing the love in his heart.

Yesterday’s conversation was on my mind as I watched him, hands clasped behind his back.

He shows me my “surprise.”

A single violet.

And at that moment, my heart couldn’t love anything more.

Sometimes the best bouquets are made of violets and dandelions.

This was my moment of sanity yesterday. I want to remember it. 😉

After breakfast this morning Carissa sat on her tricycle in the middle of the living room, looked up at the ceiling and gasped. “[GASP!] I saw God’s head!”

To my amusement, they sit in the window, their battleships grids side-by-side, since Mara doesn’t trust Micah to get his pegs in the right holes.

I overhear her saying, “Your board here has to look exactly like my board here.“

Many–if not most–mornings Mara and Micah put together a new train track even before they make their beds and put on “day” clothes. Mara was particularly pleased with this one: Three levels of train track there in the middle with the coal or water tower on the top level. Definitely a unique twist.

We put the train tracks away before breakfast, so if it’s a track they’re especially proud of, we have to take a picture!

Almost overnight, Carissa took up “art.” The week of her third birthday, drawing, coloring, and painting became almost obsessions. The same was true for Mara once she turned three, and I found it interesting that the change happened so close to their birthdays!

Of course, objectively Carissa’s drawings are a long way from “art.” But I’m a mom! So the first time my precious little girl brings me her drawing and says, “Look, Mommy! I drew you and me!” my heart melts a little. Never mind that in her drawing, I resemble a mammoth egg with stubby legs and she looks like a pixie on toothpick stilts. My heart still melts.

And I love that she calls her big sister her “best friend.” This is the first time she drew a picture of the two sisters.

“It’s me and Mara,” she told me.

Now Carissa is the one who is daily decorating our refrigerator with a new picture or worksheet from school!