Josiah and I had some fun while Steph and Kharis played with the camera:

3….

2…

1…

Here are a few of the photos:

Did I just write that?

TWO YEARS OLD?!?!?!?

Is my son really turning TWO years old today!?!?

Someone please explain to me exactly when my son went from this little 7 1/2 pound cuddler:

To this curious, running, jumping, talking, ball-throwing, counting, movie-watching, hide-n-seek playing, water painting, sports worshiping little boy who recognizes U2 and John Mayer songs when they come on the radio, bargains with me about how many more bites he has to eat before he can watch a “DD”, and runs at least one naked lap around the house right after we get him out of the bath tub every night:

I set out to write a “Here’s To You On Your Birthday” post for Josiah, but I was immediately overwhelmed.

I just couldn’t possibly imagine having a more amazing son, and I think it would take at least a book for me to explain all the details of why.

So, instead, I think I’ll just try to capture a little bit of his essence at this age, and maybe this time next year, I’ll look back at this and laugh.

For starters, here’s 2 minutes of video from last week that captures him at this age pretty well. This was a couple of days before Halloween. Josiah was ‘helping’ me rake the leaves:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=I6zrvIAsnTY

Here are a few of his favorite things to say as he turns the corner to becoming an official 2-year-old:

Ooh too! (U2, his favorite band)

Hit it!

Play baseball!

Play basketball!

Throw ball daddy!

Daddy, hit ball!

Daddy, sit! (So I can play catch with him. He’ll only play catch with you if you’re sitting.)

K.S. (Kharis. He also calls her ‘baby’)

Hiding! (He loves hiding)

P’h! P’h! (Pops his lips like a fish. This indicates he wants goldfish.)

Aaaaaple juice!!! (ALL juice is ‘apple juice’, regardless of which fruit it was actually made from, and he never just says ‘apple juice’, he announces it: “Aaaaaple juice!“)

Mean shark! (A reference to Finding Nemo)

Mean doggy! (A reference to Sandlot)

Vwoooody! (A reference to Toy Story)

Jumping!!! (A reference to what happens to the crowd during ‘Where The Streets Have No Name’ on his U2 DVD)

Grab hat. At the plate. Swing bat! Hit ball! Pow! Running now. Past first. Past second. Past third. Wow! (A paraphrase of the first SIX pages of his favorite book. He can ‘read’ them to you.)

Chill out, DUDE! (Another Finding Nemo reference)

D-D! (“DVD”)

Da da da! (This is kind of like “yeah yeah yeah!” It’s an emphatic yes in Josiah’s dialect)

Diddy Bot It (“Forget about it”. Josiah pretty much repeats everything he hears you say. If he gets a laugh, he continues to repeat it. That’s what happened with this. He repeated it one day and we cracked up, so now he says it from time to time.)

Preeeeeety good! (His grandma taught him to say this when you ask him how he’s doing)

I lub daddy! (This is how he says ‘I love you’. If I say ‘I love you Josiah’ he responds in the third person, ‘I lub daddy!’ or ‘I lub momma!’)

Bad kiss! (At some point, Josiah saw me lay a serious smooch on his momma, so then he decided to try it. She taught him that that’s a “bad kiss”. So now at bedtime, he gets a devilish look in his eye and tells his momma “Bad kiss!”)

Jacket off! (When I’m heading out to the garage my ‘office’, I usually get pretty bundled up, because it’s chilly out there. And Josiah knows that if daddy has to work, then daddy can’t play. So, whenever he sees me with any kind of jacket on, he points and says “Jacket off”, which means “No more working or going anywhere for you today. Stay here and play with me.”)

Basketball! (This is what Josiah says whenever he figures out that we’re at church. 90% of what he does at church right now is play basketball. But trust me: for him, it’s worship.)

F#@! (Can’t forget this one. If Josiah is talking about “fork”, “truck” or “work”, then he’s bound to drop an innocent little F-bomb. This is especially funny if something get’s stuck under the couch and he wants his big wooden fork to dig it out and rounds around the house yelling “Fork it! Fork it!”)

Well, that’s all big daddy has time for today.

Happy birthday Josiah.

You bring us more joy than you’ll ever know.

Josiah was a champ in the hot sun and had a blast, even though he didn’t really understand most of what happened.

Kharis…

Well, I guess she had fun too…

I snagged the camera last night while Kharis was sleeping.

It’s the only time she is still enough to take pictures without the flash.

Sometimes I wonder if she’s an angel…

By the way: if you’re reading this on facebook, you should come check out our blog! (There’s a lot that doesn’t make it over to facebook)

Go ahead, do it: www.TheRieslands.com

Well, I guess it wasn’t new. Let’s say I was reminded of a good lesson recently.

Since it involves a moment of personal vulnerability in someone else’s life, I’m going to leave out lots of details that would probably make it a better story and just cut to the chase. If we ever get the chance to sit down and chat, you can ask me for the long version :0)

Here goes:

A couple of weeks ago I sat with a handful of brothers in a friend’s dining room.

We were sharing prayer requests and praying for each other, and a new friend of mine shared a short story.

You probably can’t fully appreciate his story without knowing him a lot better than it’s my place to help you here, but we’re talking about a guy who seems to really have it together. At a glance, he appears to fit nicely into lots of stereotypes, several of which us hypocrites love to judge.

You also need to know that he has been jobless for quite a while, although, pulling up in his driveway, you would never guess that the man who owns the house hasn’t had a consistent paycheck in over a year.

OK. So with that tiny snapshot, here’s what he shared:

He said that the previous week, his wife had been out of town visiting family for the holidays, so, with nobody in need of his attention, he decided to seize the opportunity to catch up on a couple of movies he had been wanting to see.

One of the movies was the Russell Crowe film “Cinderella Man“, which is based on the true story of Jim Braddock.

He said it was strange that he decided to watch it, because he had already seen it in the past, and he never watches a movie twice.

Nevertheless, he put it in late one night after staying busy all day.

If you haven’t seen the film or read the story of Braddock, the crux is that he couldn’t find work during the great depression, so he became a boxer in a desperate effort to keep food on his family’s table. The movie is very deep – the cinematography is kind of gray, representative of the period in American history that it represents. And you get a glimpse into this guy’s daily grind of getting up early and doing whatever it takes to keep his wife and kid warm and fed, even when this means literally taking a beating in the boxing ring.

My friend vulnerably shared that while watching that movie, he cried for the first time in ten years.

He said that he looked at a man who was desperate to provide for his family — desperate to be able to look into his wife’s eyes and see respect and admiration.

He said that after a year of spending all day, every day looking for full-time work, he knows exactly how that feels.

He said that what has been especially hard for the last year is that when you have a full-time job, there is a clear calendar of when to work and when to rest. There are weekends and vacations and holidays. But when you don’t have a job, and your job is to look for a job, there are no weekends, no holidays, no vacations. You are always scrambling to try and figure out how you’re going to land a salary — and with it, some sort of stability.

He said that though he hasn’t been boxing, he knows the feeling of emotional and mental exhaustion of the character in the movie.

This wasn’t some sort of tear-filled, heart-wrenching, lay-hands-and-pray-for-me moment. It lasted for 2 minutes and he wash just sharing the way that he would like for us to be praying for him.

But it was a wealth of an education for me.

So far, by God’s grace, I haven’t had to experience what it feels like to be unemployed while being responsible for a family.

And I never in a million years would have guessed that this friend was wrestling with the weight he carries on his shoulders.

Never.

You could fit my house in his living room. He seems to be playing a different ball game.

But at the end of the day, a man is a man. Whether he’s hunting in a field, or boxing in a ring, or filling out endless job applications and networking with everyone he’s ever known, he’s really just trying to be a provider.

In the end, my jump to conclusions where a great hindrance to my ability to effectively love this brother.

Who are you doing that to in your life right now?