Thursday, December 10, 2009

On the Brain...

I've got baby on the brain. I can't help it. The ultrasound on Monday really kicked it in gear. I've done really well so far as nesting goes. Ya'll know how I am. Remember Julie? Yeah. I had her room ready 6 months before she came. Considering that I'm half way through my pregnancy and haven't done any nesting is considerable progress...I think.

And then yesterday hit. Big blizzard, we were all snuggled in at home with nothing to do, even Ben...and I began looking online at baby stuff. And looking and looking and looking. Etsy may have ate up hours of my life last night...seriously they have THE CUTEST stuff ever. Ever.

And then I started the lists. Stuff I need for baby, stuff I want for baby, stuff I don't have anymore because I got rid of it during my "we are so done having babies" stage.

I also made a "where we're gonna put everything" list. Baby will arrive in April, Julie will leave us in early June. We've only got three bedrooms. I'll paint you a picture:

Bedroom one: 3 "brudders" as Jake calls them
Bedroom two: Julie
Bedroom three: Ben, me, baby and all the baby's stuff.

I'm good with small spaces. I just need a plan.

PS - Did I mention we know the sex of the baby?!? We do. Well Ben and I and the ultrasound tech do. For everyone else, it's a secret. Mean, aren't we?!?





Tuesday, December 8, 2009

Where I Mash it All Together...


We've been enjoying the season around here.

Putting up the tree is always entertaining. Ben and I sat back and let the boys do all the work. You'll notice how they paid close attention to spacing everything out just so...or not. Since the initial decorating, they've rearranged the ornaments approximately 23 times. By my guesstimate, there are currently 3 ornaments remaining that have not been broken. Ah well. Their lucky I'm not sentimental.



We also spent some time making the following:
Kind of. The picture on the box is a dirty lie. It came out looking like this...

Which was perfectly ok, because we all knew the train didn't stand a chance of surviving more than a few hours before we picked all the candy off, leaving behind the pre-made brick like so-called gingerbread. Also, who knew that smearing green frosting in our teeth would be so entertaining?!?

Odie however, was not amused.




In other news:

Ultrasound yesterday. Amazing.

3-D version


And last but not least, we are expecting our first blizzard of the winter, which means our first snow day is likely tomorrow. The first one is all fun and games, but by the 12th one in March, weeping and gnashing of teeth follows...by me, not them.

Happy Tuesday to you!







Thursday, December 3, 2009

Baby Bump


I decided to be weird and document my decreasing lap as my belly grows. It entertains me...I can't help it.

At 15 1/2 weeks it looked like this.

And at 18 1/2 weeks:


Ultrasound on Monday *smile*




Recap...Sorta.


Days seem to be getting away from me. Do you have those weeks that are so full of stuff that you just go into survival mode?
I am there.

Part of the reason I blog is so that I can keep a record (that I can find and not lose in a pile somewhere) of our everyday life. All I have to do is click on my sidebar of my blog, pull up the month I'm looking for and say, Oh yeah...that's what we were doing last year! I love that part of blogging.

Let's recap.


Thanksgiving in Wisconsin...


Preggo sisters.




Julie sticking her stomach out...

Actually, I think that's enough recapping for today :)


Monday, November 30, 2009

Just Between Us...

Just between you and me, I have get something off my chest....

The other day I heard some one say (about someone else's character) What's in the past, is in the past. It's a familiar saying, one which most of us like to believe is true...but the more life experience I gain, the more I realize that most of the time, what's in the past is most definitely not actually in the past, but very much in the present.

I've often heard Dr. Phil say something to the effect that the best indicator of future behavior is past behavior. I think he's right. Time alone does not fix our personality/character flaws. Time alone does not change us. Without genuine repentance and effort to be different, we are exactly who we were in the past. I don't think we do ourselves or anyone else any favors by leading them to believe otherwise.

I've often felt that changing myself was impossible. I've even more often thought that other people changing is impossible. And in ministry, you soon realize that many who say they've changed, have in fact not. And those who say they want to change are often telling the truth...however the hidden truth is that they don't want to do the work needed to change. Sounds depressing, no? Sometimes...it is. But there are those, those people who you see the change. They don't have to convince me, or anyone else because it radiates from them. It's visible. It's undeniable. They can say, I once was this and now I'm this. And no one disputes it.

That's when the past is truly in the past.



Tuesday, November 24, 2009

It Gets Me Every Time...

It's Tuesday.

My house is a mess.

The laundry is overflowing.

Tomorrow night we leave for Thanksgiving in Wisconsin.

I haven't packed.

Even my van is a mess. I'm gonna have to empty that thing before we can load up all 6 of us and our stuff.

And once again, I've waited till the last minute. Always. I always put off stuff like this till the last minute. And *big surprise* it always makes me a little crabby...and slightly annoyed with my family that all they have to do it look forward to the trip.

Poor, poor pitiful me.

What a fantastic Thanksgiving attitude ;) On Sunday, Ben spoke on how anxiety robs us of the ability to be thankful. I hadn't ever thought of it like that before. During his sermon I thought, yeah...that's true. And then this week God took that lesson one step further...by nailing it to my heart. (Pastor's love when He does that ;)

Every other year we travel to WI to spend the night at my Aunt and Uncle's for Thanksgiving. The whole crew is there and I love it. And without even being aware of it, I've let my anxiety over the messy house, my distaste for packing, and the fact that I hate all of my maternity jeans (don't even get me started) to rob me of the joy and thanksgiving that I should be enjoying.

Sounds ridiculous, no? It is. My ability to wallow in self pity is enormous. Got. To. STOP.

So here's my Thankful list. I know, a bajillion other bloggers are saying what they're thankful for, and you've read it all before...but this list, it's for me.

Time to remember that I'm thankful...

  • That we have family to "go home" to. Wonderful people.
  • that my neighbors are willing to come over and let Odie out so that we can even go to WI.
  • that I have a family I adore. All the laundry and all the packing means I have people whom I love, to do that for.
  • It's Thanksgiving and I'm eating for two. Hip hip hooray!
  • The only thing I'm required to bring to Thanksgiving dinner is three 2-liters of pop. Score.
  • That God loves me enough to not ignore me.
  • for my new bathtub/shower that a guy from church has spent a lot of time installing.
  • for all the wonderful groceries that our church family gave us on Saturday night...especially the Captain Crunch.
Okay...now I should really go get some stuff done while my attitude is still good. :)

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!!!!

Thursday, November 19, 2009

Let's Get Personal Part 2

If you haven't read yesterday's post, you should go there and do it, because otherwise this is just gonna seem weird.

I enjoyed reading your comments yesterday. I had no idea so many others were going through similar situations. I should warn you this is my longest post ever. Get some coffee and sugary nourishment before you settle in. It's a journey I'm glad to share, and one I need to record for my own sake as well...I'm likely to find myself back here some day.

I think the details are important because, as I've said before...God is in the details. He doesn't show me the details up-front. Just a small, teeny-tiny glimpse of the very next step. He knows I spook easily, and to keep me on course I can't know very much about His plans. My mind is just too small to be able to wrap around them. But once those plans are played out, He turns me around and throws the doors wide open for me to see...and each time, I just stand there in awe, uttering now I get it...sorta.

Early on in our marriage Ben and I both agreed that four sounded like a good number. The pregnancy with our first born, Noah, came as a bit of a surprise. A little sooner than we'd planned, but not shocking. When Noah was 7 months old I discovered I was pregnant with Eli. That was a shocker. I cried for a good week or two just from the sheer shock of it. But God proved faithful, and the girl who never wanted kids really close together got them anyway. And I wouldn't change it for anything.

By the time Eli turned two years old I was ready to try for another. Along came Jake, three months before Eli turned 3. Because my first two were only 16 months apart, I thought that the gap of almost 3 years between Eli and Jake was HUGE and would certainly make it easier.

I am and idiot.

Three rocked my world. I had a 4 year old, 3 year old and baby. Jake was a couple months old when the opportunity arose for Ben to pastor in tiny town. At the time, it didn't seem like difficult transition at all, but as I look back I see things I was oblivious to at the time. Over the course of Jake's first year of life I became more and more convinced that three was good. Three was plenty! Three was all I could handle by myself in the church pew every Sunday morning and Sunday night while my husband preached.

And to further convince myself I convinced everyone around me as well. Whenever the topic of more kids came up I gave a hearty no way and a lengthy list of reasons as to why this pastor's wife was busy enough.

And then the boys got older...and physically less exhausting for me. And that feeling that I talked about yesterday...or wondering, settled in. And I began to question what the desires of my heart really were, and it brought me to my knees before the One who knows what those desires are.

I mentioned yesterday that in my head I had sorted out all of the possible options. Ben and I talked at length about each one, but it always boiled down to the same thing...

  1. Doing something permanent, at this point in our lives, just didn't settle well with us. I couldn't shake the nagging feeling that I might later regret it. That someday I might think...did God want us to have one more and we missed out on that life because I wanted a decision made right. now?
  2. The idea of purposely trying didn't settle well either because I was very content with our three wonderful little guys. Our family didn't feel like it was lacking, in fact, it felt quite full. I didn't know if I wanted to be pregnant again...and all that entailed, losing all the weight afterwards in particular. Maybe three boys was exactly what God had planned for our family.
Ben suggested we just do nothing. I may have had a panic attack...at first. But the more I thought and prayed about it, the more I felt like maybe that might work. If God wanted to move during that time, He would. And if He didn't, then we would know that three was exactly the number planned. We made this decision last October.

So for October, November and December I was completely paranoid. I bought pregnancy tests from The Dollar Tree (oh you know the store, where EVERYTHING is a dollar...my paranoia made me buy in bulk ;) I freaked the few days before my period was due...because I really, REALLY wasn't ready to get pregnant. Ben, and my running partner Billie deserve a lot of credit...they were the only ones privy to my paranoia. :)

By January I began to calm down some. It's also when we needed to decide if we were going to go through with having a foreign exchange student for the following school year. I knew that either an exchange student or a baby would be ok...but not both. Again, we weighed the options. What if I got pregnant before she arrived? Would we have to back out? Should we not go ahead with it because of the possibility of getting pregnant? We didn't have a lot of time to dwell on it...we needed to pick a student soon in order to get first dibs. We had such a peace about Julie, that we knew we were to go ahead with it...certainly God wouldn't give me both. Certainly.

Then, in February or March He planted the idea of the 1/2 marathon. Billie used to tease me that I might get pregnant and be able to quit...to which I replied that I was quite certain I wouldn't get pregnant now, after all God had inspired this race for me...I knew He was behind it, and He'd definitely make me finish it. He certainly wouldn't call me to it and THEN have me get pregnant. So, it became a non-issue for awhile and I focused on my family and the running.

And that's when I felt a huge weight lifted from me. For so long I had been carrying the burden of what to do about the whole family planning issue. When I finally handed it over, and stopped freaking out, I found the freedom that He desired for me. I learned to be content in the uncertainty. I gradually learned not to freak out every month because I didn't know what was in store. I just lived life. Plus, with the boys we had gotten pregnant pretty quickly. The fact that we hadn't yet made me quite certain that it was God's way of telling me our family was complete.

Along comes August. Julie is here and We're three weeks out from the race. It's a Wednesday and we're due to have a 9 miler that Saturday. And for some reason it suddenly dawns on me that my period should have probably started already. I make a quick phone call to Billie (because your running partner keeps track of these sorta things) in hopes that she can convince me that I'm totally off on my days. She convinces me...but not that I'm off ;)

Two test later, I was certain. And amazed. And completely and utterly confused about the timing. After talking with the Dr. she gave the go-ahead to finish the half marathon as long as I could stay hydrated, and I thought wow...God's doing both.

The 9 miles that Saturday went great. The 10 miles the next Saturday went slower, but I felt good about it. I knew I'd be able to finish the half.

Thursday before the race the barfing began. No stopping in sight. By Friday night I had Billie pick up my registration packet, but I knew I would not be able to run it. Saturday morning I went and cheered Billie on...fighting back tears. We'd trained together, we were supposed to run together. I couldn't figure out why God would call me to train and then not let me run.

Later I realized that I'd only assumed the race was part of the deal...what He had called me to was the training, the discipline and the obedience. His timing wasn't off...it was perfect. Without those lessons, learned literally through sweat and tears, I wouldn't be ready for this baby. I wouldn't have been ready for 16 weeks of nausea and barfing. I wouldn't have been ready for both a baby and an exchange student. What seemed like terrible timing was actually His perfect timing. But I am not exaggerating when I say His way of doing things is never how I think it's going to be.

The story is never finished. I have no idea what tomorrow holds...or the next minute for that matter. For now, I know that in April, Lord willing, we will bring home baby #4. And boy or girl...God has planned it. And most likely, over time, we will find ourselves back to the familiar question....are we done yet? Because really, like my mother in law says...what's one more?!? :)


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