I just noticed that I have biceps.  I’ve never had biceps before… at least not flex-able ones.

When I was a little girl, my “Poppy” used to say, “The muscles on your arms stand out like sparrow’s knees!”  Really funny in retrospect, but at the time I wasn’t certain what a sparrow was, but I was certain that they had huge knees.

In honour of Poppy I have passed something of him on to my kids.  Sitting at the dinner table the other night, our 5 year-old announced proudly, with “muscles” flexed, “Yook, Daddy!  Sparrow’s knees!!”

I have developed my own sparrow’s knees from lifting 40+ pound weights for the past 2 years.  It’s my belief that children should feel significant (a blog for a bit later), and one of the ways that we do that is by looking at them at eye level.  I like to pick mine up (except for the 10-year old (’cause that would just be another on her list of aaw-kwerrrd things her mother does).

Aside from bicep development, I believe that my children have made me stronger in many ways.

• I now have a better sense of smell.  Biological mothers talk about having a better sense of smell post-pregnancy.  I believe it’s just a mother thing.  I can sniff out nasty socks hidden behind a couch from all the way across the room and know who the offending party is, not to mention the colour of the socks too.
• I have better hearing (although I like to make my husband think that it is getting worse with age, especially at 2 a.m. when someone is knocking at our bedroom door).  From all the way down the hall and through 2 closed doors I can hear someone whispering a diabolical plan to rig something to whatever and swing from this thing to that thing and jump from something to something else and shut down the plan.
• I have better vocal volume.  I can raise my voice louder than Toby Mac’s “Boomin'” song at top level and screech, “TURN IT DOOOWWWNNN!!”
• I have ESP.  Well, that’s probably not accurate, but my kids think I have it.  They have no idea how I know the things I know.  Most of the time it’s me manipulating the info out of them, or me having gotten a text from Daddy or the babysitter ratting them out.
• I have the ability to carry 10 times my body weight in a combination of groceries and child and stuff that is “just not staying in the van any longer” because darned if I’m going out to that van for a second load.

Elisabeth Stone said, “Making the decision to have a child is momentous.  It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.”  My children have made me more conscientious, more loving, more hopeful, more observant of beauty, more selfless, more faithful and more funny.   As I’ve watched them move about in their big world, I have watched my heart walk outside my body, and my heart is constantly growing.

…and so are my sparrow’s knees.