happiness is Seeing your daughter smile to a picture of shinkansen on the wall

(picture taken from http://digitalcitizen.ca/ with thanks)

When my son was a baby, he loved to look at a pooh plush toy sitting beside his changing table every time he was being changed. I remembered that lesson to heart. Before Emma was born I looked for a vivid picture, maybe in black and white, that might be her company beside her cot or changing table.

At the last minute, I found an old place mat of Shinkansen from my dining room. I almost threw it away a year ago, we've had it for so long.

I'm glad I didn't.

I knew the stark blue on white and the cute smiley face would attract a baby, hopefully would make her feel better during changing time.

I involved the big brother to paste it on the wall beside her changing table. He is now happy that she likes it.

Indeed, it works like a charm !

Emma always looks at the picture automatically since she was a newborn, and now even coos and smiles to it. Countless times we have thanked God for it, because it stops her from crying.

Little shinkansen has really been a comfort to Emma during those dirty diaper times. And a big help to us.

Choo choo!

Waiting God's Time- Ecclesiastes 3:11

We attended a beautiful wedding of our best friends' today.
The beauty is not in the decorations or in the banquets. It's in their history.
Theirs is an illustration of the profits of waiting God's time.

Both are in their early 30s.
Both have never dated anyone else before. Simply because they chose to wait for the right person to marry, hence to date. They did not believe in dating someone just for the sake of dating.
Both were very prayerful about this dating game.

Both are really a rare specimen in this time and age, where youngsters freely change partners like changing clothes.

God honours those who honours Him.
Indeed they have put God first in their lives, and in the end, God rewards them by answering their prayer for a perfect mate.

Nothing is impossible with God. I pray they will be an encouragement to people who are still praying for the right spouse to come along.

Praise be to the Lord in heaven, who delights in the men and women He created.

Psalm 103:14 and Matthew 28:20

"And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.”
The Holy Bible : New International Version. Grand Rapids : Zondervan, 1996, c1984, S. Mt 28:20

When I look at my newborn, so small and fragile, yet so beautiful and precious. I am reminded at how small I also must have been, once.
I am trying to take it all in, to always remember her this way. I feel like I could never be angry at her. Discipline her, being ever so slightly harsh on her? I know I must do that some day (like her big brother surely can testify). But I just cannot picture it right now.

Whatever she will become, however naughty, she will always be my baby.
She will always be this precious. If only I could always remember her this way.

Then I realized that this must be the way God remembers us.
HE, the Almighty, never forgets.
He must have remembered how fragile we are, how small, how precious.
Is it any wonder that He loves us to pieces?
Is it any wonder that He even redeemed us by death upon a cross?

11 For as high as the heavens are above the earth,
so great is his love for those who fear him;
12 as far as the east is from the west,
so far has he removed our transgressions from us.
13 As a father has compassion on his children,
so the Lord has compassion on those who fear him;
14 for he knows how we are formed,
he remembers that we are dust.
The Holy Bible : New International Version. Grand Rapids : Zondervan, 1996, c1984, S. Ps 103:11-14