{"id":2326,"date":"2010-11-18T18:48:02","date_gmt":"2010-11-19T00:48:02","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/?p=2326"},"modified":"2010-11-18T18:48:02","modified_gmt":"2010-11-19T00:48:02","slug":"joy-in-the-journey","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/?p=2326","title":{"rendered":"Joy in the Journey"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve had these thoughts rolling around in my brain for a month or so now&#8230; just hardly been on the computer (my phone instead&#8230; not conducive to a blog post!).\u00a0 But the kids are happily &#8211; and peacefully! &#8211; playing in the tub, and I was just overwhelmed with the moment and thought to come here so I might remember it later.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s taken 6 years of mothering, but I think I&#8217;m finally to a real place of joy in the journey.\u00a0 Maybe it&#8217;s because we&#8217;re getting good sleep, we&#8217;re not potty training, the tantrums are scarce, and maybe its that my kids are enjoyable little people instead of a lot of work. Maybe it&#8217;s because they&#8217;re in school and I have a bit more time to myself. Or maybe it&#8217;s that I&#8217;ve grown a bit.\u00a0 But either way, I&#8217;m so thankful for where we&#8217;re at.\u00a0 I have always, always loved my kids with an overwhelming love, but it was sometimes (more often than I want to admit!) a battle to find the joy in the mundane and the exhausting task of being needed.\u00a0 For whatever reason, we&#8217;re there.\u00a0 Been here fora\u00a0 few months, and I&#8217;m so overwhelmed with gratitude.<\/p>\n<p>Analise is a lovely young lady, Josiah is a fun-loving sweet little boy, and thank-you-dear-Lord-for-hearing-my-prayers they even consider themselves friends.\u00a0 They play together far more often peacefully than not.\u00a0 Our travels recently have been so fun, full of questions and answers, observations and laughter.\u00a0 I&#8217;m trying hard to imprint the soft little boy hand that still willingly reaches for me onto my heart, and burn Analise&#8217;s soft sleeping little girl face into my memory (especially when her bottom bunk is divided by a curtain and Josiah&#8217;s on the other end).<\/p>\n<p>Thank you, Lord.\u00a0 Such gracious gifts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;ve had these thoughts rolling around in my brain for a month or so now&#8230; just hardly been on the computer (my phone instead&#8230; not conducive to a blog post!).\u00a0 But the kids are happily &#8211; and peacefully! &#8211; playing in the tub, and I was just overwhelmed with the moment and thought to come [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2326","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-parenting"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/pkzLf-Bw","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2326","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2326"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2326\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2327,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2326\/revisions\/2327"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2326"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2326"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.toonesalive.com\/blog\/family\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2326"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}