There is a little girl sleeping with a smile on her face (gas.. or tender affection for her mother?) on my lap. If I put one arm under her head and the other over her feet, and if I rest my laptop on my knees, I can manage to hold my lap top and even type a little. I am still rocking her side to side because she isn't REALLY asleep yet. She fakes me out all the time with these little cat naps that she takes. Parenthood is really something else. I was just thinking (as she is waking up and making grunting noises and wriggling around here) about my walks to the store with the boys. We have to cross this one major intersection. There is a cross walk (2 in fact) and we navigate them pretty good now. Not so a year ago. I would have dreams about the boys getting hit while we walked across. It was terrible. They didn't understand to stay between the 2 white lines.. and once Noah saw a pop can and abandoned his bike and ran to pick that old pop can up in the name of recycling.. Oh did ...
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At first I couldn't believe I was pregnant. Sure the test said "yes", but those things aren't fail proof you know. Then I experienced "morning sickness" and my body started to grow and eventually I began feeling little kicks and movements inside.. It became obvious... but really..I could be be pregnant, but could I really be having a baby? Nah... ever since I was a little baby, I wanted to be a mom. When I could barely walk and talk I would stumble over to my big brother, hold on to him and say "baby!!" and because he was so gentle, he'd refuse to push me away, but would just look at my mom helplessly and we'd both tumble over. I just wanted to be a mom. When I turned 12, I had a "Celebrate your babysitting eligibility" Birthday party. I invited 4 friends and 5 babies and we played games while holding babies, fed babies, changed babies.. etc... Then I babysat every chance I got, held babies at church... I couldn't get enough...
Less than a month before the calendar and all human calculations say that our baby will make an entrance into our 4 person family and make us a big 5 family. Exciting. Mysterious. What will life be like? How will this little person change us? How will this little person change the big brothers? What will sleep deprivation do to me? Or will this be the miraculous sleeping and quietly cooing baby? All we can do is wait..... in the meantime life is pretty normal (besides the fact that I have a multitude of doctor's appointments, go pee every 5 minutes day and night, lumber around in my beautiful rotundness, wear clothes that don't fit me, and get constantly distracted when little waves show up on my belly because someone is doing the "wax on, wax off" from the inside). The kids are hilarious, the budget is a challenge, my husband is ... well there isn't one word, but if I say "I absolutely love my life" would that help bridge the gap on the understanding? I...
It's late. I write. I wait. Pause pause pause (because it's late). Funny how time and thoughts don't always align. Because here I sit with it, but the words are wafting through the windows away from here.. So many directions I could follow those little wondering thoughts.. I wonder if God (and whoever else can see our lives) laughs at us. We pray and sometimes we get the answer we prayed and prayed and prayed for. But then, when the answer comes, it takes work to receive it and ... WHAT?!? is this how my God treats me? I thought answers to prayer were supposed to be like winning the lottery. .. free and easy.. But it's not. My mom printed this verse out for us a while back: "The blessing of the Lord, it makes truly rich, and He adds no sorrow with it, neither does toiling increase it." God is not normal. I sure don't understand much about life. I've been semi-meditating on it (let's be honest - it has been crossing my mind more than the average q...
Heidi, Heidi, how does your garden grow.... Here is some proof that it does. I think these are beans. The other day I found what I think are pumpkins. I thought we'd lost them all, but nope. Perhaps three. Perhaps two. I can't really tell the difference between some weeds and some plants. Rookie gardener. I have huge huge peas growing like wildcats, that is if wildcats grow exuberantly and efficiently. Interestingly, I also have one tomato plant. This makes me most happy because I have one of those tomato supporter things that real gardeners are supposed to have. I'm super legit. Also interesting, the beans reached over a whole row and attached their little growing stems to the tomato supporter thing. How did the beans know? Do they have eyes? Did they sense the shadow cast from the skinny little wire thin tower or.. how did that work? Strange. Neat. Here are some strawberries. Transplanted from a different part of the garden, but plants nonetheless. Poor guys though, they ...
Some nights sleep just doesn't come. It's been a long time, but this is one of those nights. Of course, the culprit is the brain. I have things ...people, ideas, questions, possibilities. . . on the brain. So up I get to try to exorcise some of these things out. I've been wondering (not about this particularly tonight, but the things I'm thinking about tonight are much too fresh to publicly reflect on so you will not be privy to those things.. heh heh) "where" we are supposed to live. I say "where" because it's the ideological "where" not the locality "where." Some people go to tons of Christian meetings. Church, prayer, outreach, special worship time, Bible study, small group, mom's group, worship practice, conference, special speaker, etc, etc, etc. I'm sort of a meeting-a-phobe. Let's say someone is a worship leader type. They could go from cool meeting to cool meeting leading worship, declaring powerful words, ...
And the belly grows. We saw the wee little one through a technological window for the first time last week.. Priceless. It made me almost crazy with excitement. After my husband had dropped me back off at home, I stared at the picture of our little person. I wanted to call everyone. I almost did. I sang to the baby, I cried to the baby.. The boys can't wait to teach the baby all sorts of things. I can't wait to watch our new little eyes on the world take everything in, and then look at me and be absolutely convinced (with no capacity for any other thought because experience has taught nothing other than this) that no matter what he or she sees, that this little soul is safe and secure and everything is going to be fine. A while back we went swimming. It's a little freeing and conspicuous feeling at the same time. Belly all sticking out. Two little kids in tow already ("wow that lady sure is gonna have her hands full....") Funny how I drop things, funny how I fo...
I planted a garden. Again. This year. As in, same garden. Same place. Same dirt...just a few months after we planted the other one. Yeah, the other one didn’t so much grow. Well, the sweet peas, bless them, they grew. But the corn, pumpkins, and whatever else we tried, didn’t grow. I didn’t water them a single time – it was quite rainy so I figured.. Well, I figured wrong. Plus, there was frost a few times. Poor little fragile lifelings. They didn’t make it. So we tried again. One thing is for sure, I can grow weeds. Those things are the happiest, healthiest, most plentiful bunch of living creatures I’ve seen. Surprisingly, however, I like weeding. It’s tough to find time.. the weeds to stink or cry or promise me money, they just proliferate. And I try to keep up. This time I got advice as to how to plant my seeds. How deep. Where. When. What. It’s funny, the directions are the same on the back of all the seed packages. It said to plant them pretty deep, which I did. Who knows. Could h...
I was wondering if God is spontaneous. I personally don't think He is, but I think that if you talked to Him, He would say "I am." I don't know if I am comforted by the possibility that God might be spontaneous, or if the idea of God planning on doing one thing, and then suddenly changing his mind and doing something that comes out of nowhere.. I guess the fact that He is good takes care of everything... spontaneous or not.
"I admire Jesus so much" said the elderly tall man with the small bald head with wild hair on the sides, enlarged stomach, bright yellow sweater and deep accented voice. Did he have glasses? I can't recall. It's not often that I hear someone talk about God in a way that gets my attention. But this guy had it. "I don't think (pause) you should (pause) fight to be like Jesus (giggle. pause) fighting just makes you tired (pause) you become like the ones you admire. you just spend time with them (pause) I just love to look at Jesus. I'm in love with him (giggle) I admire him so much..." and on he went. It might sound like he was a flake, but he wasn't. He commanded my attention. Sometimes people talk about ideas, other people talk about a reality. What do you do? What do I do? Sometimes I fight bitterness because Jesus doesn't show up in my life like I want him to. I WANT to look at him, but I can't see past the back of my eyelids.. I can...
"Stop being so helpless!" This is what I had to say to myself while on my hands and knees in the garden weeding. I was thinking, "This is my first garden. I don't know what I'm doing. I need someone. I am not good at this. I have no experience. I've never done this. I need someone to tell me what to plant. I need someone to take me to the store and help me buy seeds. Maybe someone should just give me seeds. What if I buy the wrong ones? I need someone to tell me where to plant them. I can't do this. I need someone. Who can help me? Who can tell me what to do? Who can come do this for me.. ??" I know. You wouldn't think it, but that's what was in the head that day. And it's in there a lot of days. Every time I come up against something I've never done, I want my hand held. .. which is fine, sort of. Unless it stops me from moving forward. And it does. I expect my kids to be willing to potty train and poop and pee in their pants for a ...
Capacity. It's a word I've been thinking about lately. A couple of years ago a friend and I were training for a triathlon. Neither of us were strong swimmers so we decided to take lessons. One of the exercises we had to do was see how long we could swim along the bottom of the pool before surfacing.. to expand our breathing capacity. At first we barely made it half way across the pool. We panicked, thrashed, and emerged spitting water ungloriously and feeling like failures... as if we could ever make it all the way across the dumb pool. We hated practicing it because it was scary. When you run out of oxygen, or THINK you have, you panic. But then we learned a few tricks, practiced a few more things and eventually could complete a whole length. It was amazing. Nothing changed on the outside, but something inside grew - physical lung capacity as well as mental capacity to stay calm and remain under the water while pushing to the end:). My capacity for being a mom has increased. I...
I am the magic. Yes, that's me. I didn't used to be the magic but I am now. I have to be. It's either sink or swim. I must admit, my magic isn't very strong however. My mom, her magic? Wow. Now there's something to talk about. Or not. .. because it's magic. No one knew how it happened, or when, but the toilet paper was always there. It magically appeared in the cupboard or on the spool. Food on the table? Every day. Snacks in the cupboard? There. Clean clothes? Check the basket. Ride home from school? Just look out the window. There she was. No one noticed or said thanks, just there she was, there it was, there we were, well cared for without a thought about how all these special things were pre-ordained for our comfort and enjoyment. And now I need to be the magic. I feel sorry for the members of my family who resorted to kleenex that was on the other side of the house when I failed to buy more toilet paper to replenish our supply on time, or the ones who had ...
However you spell "diss" in the past tense.. I don't know.. I know they say you don't know what you're talking about when you're not walking in someone else's shoes, but I tell you, it all makes sense to me now. I can't believe how much time my friends with husbands and kids made for me. I can't believe how I am not in charge of so many parts of my life anymore. I mean, all I did was get married and have kids... Of course.... there are days.. Today we were a family of superstars - bathed and out there in mother nature all jacketed and the house cleaned by 10 am. Some days it's 11 and I still have my pajama's on and have no idea what we've done, why it's taken so long and what I can do to bolster the day with some energy and productivity. As if productivity is the mother of all important things. I've started doing one load of laundry every day - completely... start to finish. It's changing my life. HAH! Thanks Victoria. Yest...