The Snyder Familia: August 2008

First there were freezy pops....... THEN......it got interesting!

Here is a bunch of pics from an ordinary evening when you get four kids four and younger together. So for you future parents don't be scared just embrace the madness. Life is never dull.

This is what happens to well behaved girls after sugar and Ezra's encouragement.

I put so many pics up cause I felt you needed the full effect of what was really going on.

They were having a praise jam session. They were very into it. "Blessed be the name of the Lord!"

Jaida was keep'n up and loving every second!

Model shoot with Ezra and Elizabeth. Hilarious!

Hope these made you smile and laugh like Kay, Winfield, Noah and I did.

If you don't already know this about me I have to tell you... I love having a daughter.

I have never been a girls, girl. I have always felt and still do at times feel nervous when I am with girls. I always seem to say the wrong or raunchy thing that other girls do not say and many times do not appreciate. I experienced more rejection from girls than boys growing up. In my adult life, I have been greatly blessed with fabulous female friends and mentors. So much, in fact, that my cup "overfloweth" with girls. All this being said, having Jaida has been such a unexpected wonderful gift. When the sonogram reveled I was having a girl I was so happy, but a stab of fear went through me. "What if this little girl doesn't like me?"

Being uncomfortable with girls as a kid made me uncomfortable with my own femininity. As if some how being female or feminine made me weak or something negative. I immediately began to think and worry about how it would be raising a girl. Telling people not to buy too much pink for my baby. As if to somehow down play the fact that she would be a girl. I have no idea exactly what my problem was, as it was unconscious at the time.

Fast forward Jaida is here, and 15 months old. Since her arrival I have been so humbled by the wonderful gift of femininity. She responds to me and Noah and the world around her with so much gentle, tender, beautiful sensitivity. I am truly in awe of how having a girl ,come from me, could heal so much of my own insecurity. Insecurity with the God given femaleness in me. And insecurity of how other women might perceive me.

Me and my dad side by side with Jaida around the same age.

She looks sooo much like my baby pictures, which is so fun. But the most powerful thing about that is I love everything about her. All that she is and will be. Her heart, mind, spirit, AND physically. I would never want anyone to tell her the negative things that I have been told. Especially the negative things I have told myself. So my point is if I love all that she is I have to love all that I am because she came from me and in many ways will inherit my looks, mind, and spirit...who I am. I pray she is kinder to herself than I have been to me. Lo-ng thought short. I love being a women, and I love the women in my life. I am going to try to teach Jaida to love God, family, and herself... and her femininity, and to treat other women with grace instead of fear and criticism. If I can accomplish that, I will have raised the strongest women.