Firsts

With Grace's first birthday quickly approaching (Saturday), she continues to experience a multitude of "firsts."  This weekend, she ate (and loved every bit of) her first donut.

She's also been trying out cow's milk for the past week.  So far, she much prefers water, but we're still working on it.

Another first this weekend was her first dip in a public pool.  Just guess from the pictures how she felt about that...

Yeah, she wasn't the biggest fan of the pool.  We'll keep trying, though!

Nathaniel is putting in another french drain in our backyard, which means we all spend a lot more time outside.  For the first time this week, Grace enjoyed being in the grass.

As the photos illustrate, we are a great help to Nathaniel as he slaves away to put in the drain!  :-)

Today she aimed to feed herself lunch with the spoon...but somehow the bowl still ended up on her face.

Grace has also been working on her walking skills a lot lately.  For about the past month she's been able to take a couple steps, but in the past week she's gotten a lot better.  Now she walks without being coaxed or prodded by us (surely we wouldn't sit around trying to get her to walk back and forth between us?!).  I haven't been able to get any good pictures of video of this yet, but I'm working on it.  

Speaking of "firsts," I've felt challenged in the past week to think about putting myself first versus being selfless and caring for the needs of others before my own.  This morning in church I was reminded of these verses (although it had nothing to do with the sermon, but it was what God wanted me to hear, I think.):

"Do nothing out of selfish ambition or vain conceit, but in humility consider others better than yourselves. Each of you should look not only to your own interests, but also to the interests of others.  Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himselfand became obedient to death- even death on a cross!"     Philippians 2:3-8

So that's what I'm going to work on this week.  I'm also praying for my littlest sister, Abigail- who's not really all that little as a junior in college- as she travels to Cambodia for two weeks.  She'll be working with an organization called Rapha House to help young women who are victims of sex slavery in that country.  She's an amazing example to me of putting others first.