I am really excited to have the time to work on a blog post or two today. First of all, a few unrelated note to start. I am very close to being "all better". My sores are mostly healed now. I am very grateful for the help, which included all of my children and my ever beautiful wife. I am also grateful for the medical care and aids who have also cared so kindly for me. Early on, I received a blessing from my home teachers. I have acquired a great faith in their blessing. Should they ever must me to head into my next journey, I will be gone within 24 hours. I'm not telling them that yet, but that day is approaching :-) as miscellaneous pieces, I have a few congratulations to go to my children. I understand that they are not the focus of my blog and I ask you to patiently wade through this for a moment and then I will get back to being Gimpa. I tip of my Fedora and speak with my heart when I say how happy and how proud I am of our children. Seth finished his next to last semester in law school with flying colors. There will be a perfect job for him where he will bring great value to his employers. Brianna got herself well known within the Eyre, well-known for their Joy School curriculum and many other parenting teachings. Even though she's such a great mother, she extends herself to be the very best she can. Jackie has had her hands full lately with babysitting, not just me but other children, mothering, being pregnant, entertaining her mother, and now she is tutoring school children who need a little extra help in either understanding their homework or getting it done. Eric has found his career shifting a bit as he has been quite successful in acquiring, remodeling, and selling homes in Phoenix. He is serving faithfully in his bishopric calling and is dropping weight like a pirate with scurvy. Curtis is well on his way to completing his semester with perfection. He has been interviewing at potential graduate schools and, as you might imagine, he is so well liked by all that they would love to pay him to start graduate school immediately, as in, "don't get back on the plane home and will send someone for your stuff." Hannah writes the most exciting and fun to translate e-mails from her mission. She is teaching and baptizing each and every week as a trainer. She is certainly doing what Heavenly Father wants her to do and she is definitely serving his children with the Hannah Flare. Saren letter late cannot wait for her 16th birthday and makes us count the days down. Of course, she is excited to have her driver's license, but of more excitement to her I believe, is that there is A Preference Dance the weekend that she turns 16 and she can definitely make a date out of that! She is progressing so well in our young women's goals and her spirituality has been growing tremendously. Now, as for Mimi, she is incredible and beautiful as always. She loves being a grandmother and does so many things for each of her grandchildren and they love her dearly. She has gone to full-time work at the place that she loves and she is perfect for them there. Her shifts are currently graveyard shifts, so sometimes during the week she looks a bit tired. It seems to me that she will go to day shifts within the next few months. Thanks for listening to me as I explained those things outside of my Gimpa life that added to my complete joy.
Not ever having the enjoyable experience of nursing a child, I can't say that I'm very much of an expert when it comes to "feeding time". I've witnessed many "feeding times" in my days, respectfully of course, and I have noticed that they bring great joy to both the person offering the food and the person receiving the food. And, as far as being the person receiving the food, I can say I'm a bit of an expert at that. I've certainly had many years of receiving food since my accident and many experiences that have caused me to laugh, such as the time that they passed off plastic grapes on my plate as real grapes and I really tried to eat them. But one day recently, when Taylor and Ellie were here to visit, I received a feeding that touched my heart and gives me joy.
There is something that you need to know, if you don't already, about Ellie. Ellie is not afraid of anything. She loves to get down with Taylor and Maxine and mix it up. She loves to interact with people and animals. She is very social. But I would say that Ellie has the quality of meekness in her personality. She definitely is not shy, but she generally is quiet and observing the train around her. She likes to see how things work out, particularly in the social realm. Independently, she will choose a toy to play with, and he invariably Taylor will decide that Ellie made a good choice only that that good choice was a toy for Taylor. Scene continues with Taylor snatching that toy from Ellie. Ellie will just look at her with her wide and beautiful eyes as if to say, "okay, Taylor I understand that you're not very mature and that you're upset that I took your spot as the baby of the family, no problem. I will just head over there and play with a toy that I really don't like so that you will come and take that toy and then you will be sufficiently distracted." And, that's exactly what she does. Usually, she doesn't get angry at Taylor or anyone else easily, but when she does get angry, there is a good reason. She is also kind and very generous in her sharing. That's the part were feeding, mandarins, and I come into the story.
One morning, Ellie had eaten her fill of little mandarins. She was sitting on a stool at our kitchen island and I was sitting at the corner enjoyably watching her. She had a few mandarins left and it almost looked as if she didn't know what to do with them. Then she looked at me with her huge beautiful is and I could almost see what she was thinking. Oh, I don't believe you've had anything to eat yet Gimpa. I sort of remember that you can't feed yourself. I've watched how my mom has sent you before and I think I can do that if you promise not to bite me! Then she looked down at the leftover mandarins in her bowl and a connected in her head. She picked up a Mandarin in her small fist. It looked rather like she had grabbed a hold of a slippery fish. She thrust her fist out at me and said, "Ugghh". I understood that perfectly as, "here Gimpa, would you like a bite of mandarins?" I leaned over the counter and opened my mouth and was the recipient of perhaps the most tasty Mandarin ever in my life. My eyes moistened. She continued to feed me the rest and without asking if I was done or not, she insisted that her mother opened another can of mandarins so she could continue feeding me. We laughed together as the occasional floppy Mandarin would squirt out and missed my mouth. She loved it when I would not only take the Mandarin, but pretend to swallow her fist. During the rest of their stay, she insisted on sharing with me, but she would not let anyone else do the feeding. Even now, that scene makes my heart swell up with joy. A Gimpa developmental breakthrough for sure!
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