The Kohlmans

As one would expect, I've been thinking about thankfulness a lot this month. Sometimes, the frequent November posts on what a person is thankful for drive me crazy. After all, aren't we thankful for those things every day, every week, every month? I truly want to cultivate a spirit of thankfulness in myself and in my family. And so, in that spirit, I am starting a goal of posting every Thursday what I am thankful for. I want to name and explain my thankfulnesses (which is definitely not a word). I don't know how this will turn out, but here goes... I am thankful for my healthy child. I know that no one says this flippantly or without thought, but for me the thanks for good health is a little different. I am thankful for this as one who has buckled a limp, feverish baby in for the ride to the ER. I am thankful for this as one who has prayed, "Please, God, don't take my son."  I am thankful for this as one who has cried through a chest x-ray...

Lincoln, 8 months old! You have an amazingly long attention span (at least it's amazing to us) and will entertain yourself for 20-30 minutes at a time with the right toy. Your fine motor skills have really taken off. You feed yourself (unless it's something like yogurt or applesauce). You also love to open books and turn the pages, especially paperbacks. You rarely try to eat the books anymore. When you have a book you want, you are completely oblivious to the world around you - kind of like your mommy. Your tear duct still isn't completely open, but it seems to be getting more clear the last couple of weeks. You tolerate the massages much better than you used to. We will decide at your nine-month appointment whether we need to consult with the ophthalmologist or not.   To say you are an eater would be an understatement! You eat just about anything we do (even buffalo wings and pineapple!), and you almost always clean your tray. You'll still take y...

About a week or so ago, a co-worker of mine took family photos for us. As it goes with little ones, Lincoln chose to hardly nap that afternoon, so he wasn't his normal "overflowing with joy" self. Instead, he was quite stoic when he was being held and wanted nothing to do with pictures on his own. I was a little disappointed about that, but then I remembered that I have - literally - hundreds of pictures of him on his own. And, despite his moodiness, Audra got some great pictures of the three of us. {all photos c. 2013, Audra Shelite}

Does anyone else have a dream or two that they know is a never-gonna-happen thing?  I hope I'm not the only one. I want to be a writer. I have wanted to be a writer for as long as I can remember. But writing, it takes discipline and time and commitment and ideas and vulnerability. I get tripped up with the vulnerability part. Every. Single. Time. So I indulge that here, with my little space online that my grandma reads, my little space that feels safe no matter how real I get (like tonight).  My other dream is to be a photographer. A real one. Not just a mommy one. In case you haven't noticed, I love to capture moments. The good and bad and ugly, the cries and the smiles all with the runny nose and the goopy eye right there for the world to see and the messy home in the background. But there is quite a lot of pressure in the act of capturing moments for others. What if they don't like it? What if I don't get it just r...