My son Teddy is bright-eyed and full of wiggles when I change his diaper. “Mmmm-ah,” he says, his small mouth closed tight for the mmmm and open for the ah. “Mmmm-ah.”

He is trying to imitate the exaggerated kisses I give him, with a long, drawn-out mmmmm– and an extra loud smack, –muah! The sound has become a game between us. We pass it back and forth, his smile big enough to split his face. 

For him I thank God. 

We’ve had a difficult 12 months, Teddy and I. Acid reflux, gas pains, weary nights. I regret the discomfort he’s had to endure. But perhaps it will develop strength and endurance in him, an ability to roll with the punches. 

I’m glad we’ve passed the year mark, because the older he gets, the easier he is to care for. From the gas pains and reflux of babyhood emerges a sweet, engaging personality. I wonder where it came from — this sweetness from those tears. 

When I skinned my knee the other week, Annalise, my 3-year-old, patted it gently and kissed it. “It’s OK,” she said in a soft voice.  

At times like that, I realize, startled, how I must sound. Playing with her baby doll once, she shook her head and spoke in a weary, frustrated voice: “What am I going to do with you?” And I remembered ruefully that yes, I often say exactly those words in that tone of voice to Teddy when he is fussy. 

Her imagination balloons sky high. Breakfast toast is a house, the climbing wall at the playground an elephant. Her doll carries on conversations in a squeaky, not-Annalise kind of voice. Once when she was still a tiny thing, eating a snack while I read her a story, she fed a pretzel to the paper puppy dog in the book. 

For her I thank God. 

Today in the store when I told her to give me the bag of chips she’d grabbed from the shelf — told her several times in tones of ascending order — she threw the bag at me. It smacked against the floor, and I ended up buying it, concerned the chips inside had been crushed. 

Willing obedience remains a goal we work toward. But I am thankful for her still-sweet child spirit when I punish her. I am thankful for her thirst for relationship, the way she seeks me, soaks me, does not want us broken. 

Surely her desire for relationship is also what God wants to see from me as his child.

Ivan. For you I am also thankful. Your body firm against mine, the becoming one of us. You treasure me, hold my sexuality like a valuable pearl. 

We wonder sometimes what oneness of spirit looks like. Jokingly, we call each other frenemies because so often we sit on opposite sides of an opinion. I asked a friend what it means for two people who are so different to be one. She thought it meant that together they create a new thing that would not be otherwise. 

He and I. Once I thought we could not be. And then we were. And every year, we learn better how to communicate. Little things matter, he said once. And I have found that, yes, they do. A little thing in my mind and heart I do not mention, and intimacy dissipates. Every tiny thing that separates must be discussed and loved into nonexistence. 

For this richness of life I thank God. 

Before I was a wife and mommy, I did Bible studies with women at our local jail. Those ladies taught me a lot about the value of life. They were separated from their loved ones, had lost choices and privileges we take for granted. Sometimes it seemed the only thing they had to wrap their gratitude around was life itself. And somehow, in that simplicity, they loved it more. 

I remember after one lady went out for a doctor’s appointment, she told us how she’d gone into the bathroom and flicked the light on and off, on and off, reveling in the freedom. There are no private light switches in a jail. 

Like the bridle of a bucking bronco, we hold in our hands a connection to this wild untamable thing we call life. We feel its muscles bunch and ripple beneath us and cannot control it, though we desperately try. Maybe we sit tight and hunched, scared we’ll be hurt. Or maybe, finally, we realize the futility of such a position. We will be hurt. Everyone is. 

So we throw off our hats and raise an arm to the sky — yee-haw! We move with our bronco, knowing, for the few wild moments given us, an immensity of joy. 

We see our son crawl on new legs, and we weep.