Author: Gina @ Oaxacaborn

Oh, this little person.

She’s very much a two-year-old. Perfectly quirky. She loves pirates and hates greens. She’d rather eat kefir than a donut, or almost anything else, except “mac and roni” which trumps all. She yells “Hi, baby!” to every non-adult she sees, no matter their age. And she has her own way of talking. “Fat put-tee”, of course, means “splash puddles”. And “kay yay-yi-yo” is her own little riff on “thank you, Aveline”. She sleeps every night surrounded by dozens of stuffed animals, but among them all, only Mr. Fox, Baby Fox, and Football Dog need to be kissed goodnight.

She loves to have her hair and teeth brushed. She always is sneaking into the bathroom to dab at her cheeks with mama’s makeup brushes. And destroying one of papa’s paintbrushes in a muddle of dull brown mixed watercolors, well, that’s a delight all its own.

She sings about the itsy-bitsy spider every chance she gets, “Fider, up. Fider, wain, down, ‘way. Fider, up sun, Fider, ‘gain!” When she hears dogs or neighborhood kids outside, she yells “Some babies! Some barks! Some dogs!” and runs to the window.

She’s a perpetual motion machine, my wild child.

And I’ve never done this before, this wild-child-raising.

I don’t know how.

Every day, I’m faced with situations that don’t make sense. (Toddlers don’t make sense. Anyone who tells you otherwise is lying.)

I don’t have all the answers. And in my very short experience so far, I’ve seen that parenting is simultaneously humbling and exhilarating and terrifying and rewarding. I don’t have it all figured out. And I don’t imagine I ever will.

And that’s why this isn’t, and never will be, a parenting advice blog. First of all, I don’t have any to give. And second, my goal isn’t to figure it all out. I’m not chasing the answers. I’m not chasing perfection (thank goodness!) I’m chasing joy. I’m chasing hope. I’m chasing Jesus.

So you won’t find answers or advice here, because don’t have any. But what I do have, I can share; glimpses into our lives, beauty in the everyday, and the reason for our hope.

And I can tell you this — there’s not a day in which I don’t ask beg God for wisdom!