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This has been an exciting weekend…two people have been added to our family. The first by marriage, and the second by birth. In a surprise early delivery, Aleesia Juliette Spethman arrived this morning at 1:52 am, weighing in at 7 pounds 4.3 ounces, and 19.5 inches. She is the daughter of my niece, Jenny and her husband, Steve. What a wonderful weekend this has been.
Jenny and Steve have long waited for a baby girl to raise, and as many of you know, their first baby daughter, Laila Elizabeth Spethman was born November 4, 2010 and passed away November 22, 2010, leaving them with broken hearts and empty arms. While Laila can never be replaced, and will always live in their hearts, this new little life brings with her great joy and much celebrating!!
Aleesia is a beautiful baby girl with lots of dark hair…just like her mommy, and seems to look a lot like her older brother Zackery, who looks a lot like his mommy, so my guess is that Miss Aleesia is going to be Jenny’s mini me, which is so cool for her!!
It is also my guess that this little baby girl has her daddy wrapped around her baby finger already. As you can see from the picture, she has her baby finger out there getting started right now, and this picture was taken less than 30 minutes after she arrived. She is wasting no time getting daddy right where she wants him…but then, I don’t think Steve will mind that much.
Jenny and Steve have been through so much over the past two years, and I am just so pleased and excited for them now. A new day has begun. Their home will now have a new look. Pinks will be the new fashion. Their house will no longer be dominated by toy cars, Spiderman, swords, and dinosaurs, but will now add a mix of baby dolls, cradles, makeup kits, and of course, lots of girly shoes, because we all know that Jenny will raise her daughter to have plenty of shoes. A girl can’t possibly get by with just a couple of pairs!!
Yes, the future in the Spethman home is bright again. The empty arms are gone, and the new daughter is here. Aleesia Juliette with fill their days with sunshine and smiles, hair ribbons and little girl giggles, pink dresses and lots of shoes, and most of all joy!! Happy Being Born Day Aleesia Juliette!! We love you very much!! And congratulations to Jenny, Steve, Xander, Zackery, and Issac on the new little girl in your lives!!
My sister, Alena was a child who has always loved hair styling, and I have often wondered why she didn’t become a cosmetologist, but she didn’t. She still cuts our mom’s hair and that of some of the rest of the family, but that is not where her true calling lies. She was pretty funny as a child however, because her main practice head of hair was her own. If Alena was in the area…hide the scissors. I will never forget some of the comical hair styles she sported from time to time. Nor will I forget our mom’s difficult attempts at repairing the damage Alena had done. I remember the little pixie cut that came from a time when she cut one chunk very close to her head. And then there was the bangs that she suddenly had..and that were usually very short. The rest of us girls had long hair, but Alena’s hair depended on the cut of the day, and if Mom could keep the scissors out of her hands, which was next to impossible…because she would search them out.
When Alena wasn’t practicing her hair styling techniques, she was contemplating becoming a scientist…or more specifically, a chemist. Alena liked improving on the cleaning formulas we had in the house. I don’t really think that she ever perfected her own brand of cleaning formula by mixing Comet and shampoo, but our toilet, which was usually her mixing bowl, always seemed to be pretty clean. Of course, Mom could have wrung her neck a few times, and I have wondered how she mixed all that stuff, and never came up with a combination that would blow up the toilet. So much for really being a chemist, I guess. No, this wasn’t to be Alena’s true calling either.
While Alena never mentioned that school was anything that she particularly liked, it would be in a school setting that she would find her true calling. Alena began working in the school system when her children were still in school, and I’m sure that the hours were a factor in her decision, since she would have the same time off as her kids. She began working as a playground teacher, and was very well liked by all, including the children that she sometimes had to convince that they would be better off to control their behavior. It’s funny that often it is the strictest person in a child’s life that is the most respected. When her superiors saw how good she was at making kids behave…without killing any…they promoted her to positions like the “in school suspension” monitor, and eventually the 
classes for the children who were either troubled, or struggling. Of course, she had to take the necessary training for these positions, but in the end, she would find that she was well suited for this type of work, and believe it or not, these troubled children didn’t look at her as a warden, but as a friend, who understood them and wanted to help. Not a bad true calling, if you ask me.
Today is Alena’s birthday, and since she doesn’t have to work in the summer, I’m quite sure that she would be sleeping in, even if it weren’t a Saturday. And can you blame really her? Happy birthday Alena!! I hope you have a great day and a lovely summer!! We love you!!
When I look at my granddaughter, I see a beautiful girl, who is bubbly and very cool. She has changed through the years, but she has always been beautiful. Many people have told me that she looks like me, and maybe she does, but she is far prettier than I am. Still, I see some things about her that do look like me. Sometimes, you have to look back on things to really see them. Recently Shai took a picture of her and me, and pointed out that we have the same eyes. I hadn’t seen that before. They aren’t exactly the same, but they are close…except when she smiles, her eyes take a little upward turn on the outsides, that is so pretty.
I had been told that my daughter Amy, Shai’s mom looks a lot like me and looking back on her pictures, I can see that too. Amy looks very much like me in the face, but with her blond hair, it is a little harder to see, for some reason. I had thought that my daughter, Corrie looked like me, but in reality, she looks much like my mother-in-law, and the only reason I thought she looked like me was her hair color. Perhaps, that is why I thought people saw similarities between Shai and me. Shai’s hair is brown like mine, and our coloring is the same, so looking at the pictures, it’s easier to see the similarities. Still, I did not see them until, I looked at the picture Shai took. Then, as with Amy, I could see that we do look a lot alike.
When you have kids, and even with your grandkids, you always want them to look a little bit like you. I guess it is just human nature…the desire to reproduce another person who looks a lot like you. Maybe it is a way of connecting with our children and grandchildren forever. Or maybe I have had this on my mind because I have been researching our family tree. In doing so, I have seen many faces. Some that look like people I know, and some 
who don’t. The similarities can be in sisters, brothers, parents, grandparents, children, aunts, uncles, and even cousins. It is quite interesting to see. So often, it takes someone who never knew the people involved to really pick out those similarities.
Still, sometimes when I look back on those old pictures, I am very surprised. I was going through my old pictures from when my grandchildren were real little, I found this one of Shai and me when she was just a little girl. It is one of my favorite pictures of the two of us, but as I looked at it, it occurred to me that Shai has a smile like mine…just like mine, in fact. I find that simply amazing.
As my granddaughter gets older, if find myself thinking back on the years since she arrived. As the mother of daughters, my grandsons were a culture shock for me. Boys are very different from girls. They are rough and tumble, and don’t care about the personal things like girls do. Girls worry about how they look and their clothes, and as in the case of my granddaughter, how her nails look. She used to tell me that my nails were a mess if they were chipped at all. Then she informed me that I needed to fix them. Boys just roll their eyes at those things and head outside to get in the mud. When she was young, we shared girl time together, just her and me. It was a special time for us.
Now that little girl is gone, and she has been replaced with a beautiful and capable young lady. Yes, she still cares about how she looks, although she really doesn’t need to worry about that, because she is stunning. She probably wouldn’t agree, and might not like it that I have singled her out today. Like any other teenaged girl she thinks she has had a bad hair day or bad makeup day, and this, that, or something else isn’t exactly right, but she couldn’t look bad if she tried.
And, she has the ability to be such a beautiful spirit. She is kind and loving, especially to children…a trait she gets from her mom, and children love her…something that she gets from her grandpa. She can be funny or serious, happy or sad, quiet or loud, but to me she is always a beautiful person, inside and out. She lives up to her name, Shai…Hebrew for gift…and that she definitely is…a precious gift, 
that I am so blessed to have…a granddaughter, and the only one I’ll ever have.
Sometimes, as with every teenager, her feelings get hurt, because someone doesn’t see what a wonderful person she is and they step on her feelings, and that makes me sad. I would love to be able to protect her from all the little hurts that life always brings, but I can’t, so all I can do at that point is to let her know that I love her and always will, and anyone who doesn’t see the super special girl that she is, is losing out, because with each passing day, she becomes more and more amazing, and I see more and more how greatly God has blessed me with this precious gift.
