mama bear

we celebrated christmas with my family in hilton head, sc last week. we had a fun and busy time playing together, shopping, scrapbooking and of course eating!! this trip is a tradition of ours but as the kids get older we look for new and fun things to do with them. one such attraction was "island playground," an indoor inflatable bouncing facility. very cool (& dry & warm)!! we walk in and the eyes of the kids are saucers, accurately describing their excitement and awe of this huge, colorful place. they ask parents to monitor their own kids. common sense, right?!

ava fell in love quickly.

until the "boy in the blue shirt" aggressively pushes her down. she dissolved into a puddle of hurt tears - the surprised and confused kind, not the physical pain kind....which to me is worse. grampy, preston and i all saw it happen. instinct told me to climb up into that boy's bouncy world and give him a hard shove in return. stunned, we looked at each other and then looked around for "boy in the blue shirt's" parents. not so much to pull out the claws (i almost hyperventilate in situations of conflict), but to see how another parent will handle the situation. nothing happened.

ava's delighted saucer-eyes turned from unimaginable glee to awkward awareness and she stayed close to us the rest of the trip.

i know these sorts of things are bound to happen and we won't always be right there to comfort our kids when others hurt their feelings, but this was the first blatant example of having little power to erase the incident and recreate the innocent fun that ava was having.

later that day i was chatting with madeline and connor as we created this awesome train track...
i learned that "boy in the blue shirt" also pushed madeline as well as got her wet from the water fountain. (he was having a stellar day, it seems.) i asked if she did anything about it (silently hoping she pushed him back to get revenge) and she said she just went somewhere else to play. then both she and connor talked about how it's not nice to be mean to others even when they are mean to us. i love those kids and i appreciated the simple reminder of turning the other cheek.

i'm so thankful for my family. i love seeing the older kids taking care of the younger ones, watching out for them, reading to them or just being silly with them. their giggles make my heart ache with happiness.
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then, just this morning i was dropping ava off at school and let her put on some (clear) chapstick. she loves the minty, hot sensation on her lips, i think. she puts it on and then says, "mommy, look at how pretty i am now." i almost cried, but kept it together enough to give her a small sermon on how pretty she is even without chapstick...both inside and out. i'm sure she thought i was loony in my passionate diatribe, but this is just another example of how i can only protect and guide my children to a certain point and have to trust in God to protect them when i can't.