Eight and a half months!

He makes me laugh so hard sometimes. I can hardly fathom where the time has gone. People are already starting to ask me when the next one is coming!!!! Um, I just barely unpacked my suitcase from bringing the first one home. It'll be a bit, folks!

He just started fully crawling this week. And trying to get up the stairs. Tackling the dog's food and water dishes. He has shout-offs with Daddy. Pulls himself up on furniture, window sills, whatever he can pull up on. He feeds himself sometimes (it's a messy enterprise, but I'm pretty impressed with how much he actually gets in his mouth). It's nice to just steam some food, mash it with a fork, put it in one of his suction cup bowls (thank you Kimber!!!! Best invention ever!!), and watch him gorge himself. If I do something, like bang a block on another toy, and hand it to him and say, "You do it!" he'll copy me. Just this morning he started putting his hands together in a sort of clap, but it also looked a whole lot like the sign for "more" that I've been trying to teach him. He was very enthusiastic about it, so like I said, no idea if it was attempting to clap or the sign, and I sure don't know what he wanted more of if it WAS the sign!! He understands "No-no" quite well...not that he doesn't go right back to whatever he was told not to do, but there are times when he'll go after the forbidden thing (read: dog dishes), get a firm "no-no, Levi Matthew," sit back and reconsider, and turn around and do something else instead. The first of many, many, manymanymanymanymany things to sow into this little person!!! He opens and shuts doors (using the door jam, if the door's not shut all the way), and will slam the fridge shut if I open it and he's nearby.

He makes me laugh so hard sometimes. Like when he's attacking his fuzzy picnic food.


Or when he just starts roaring at me like I totally understand what he has to say. Or when he fusses and fusses at nap time (because WHY on EARTH would anyone want to sleep when they can pull themselves UP?), and then just gives up and collapses over his own lap and uses his giraffe as a pillow.


Or when I play peek-a-boo with him from below his crib bumpers, and I see chubby little fingers peel back the bumper followed by a chubby little face peering over it, followed by his distinct little chortle/squeak of laughter.

I love him I love him I love him!!!!!

Yesterday we blew up his little kiddie pool. He felt like a very radical dude.


That's about all for now!!!!

Waiting for Euphoria

When Matt and I were first married, we wanted to punch people in the face who were like, "Sooooooo....how's married life? Are you loving the honeymoon phase??"

Okay, maybe "punch people in the face" is a bit strong, but I think you quickly can conclude that our first year of marriage was not the state of amazing bliss that everyone said it would be. It was GOOD but it was a lot of work. Sometimes more work than we bargained for at the time. It wasn't him, it wasn't me, it was both of us, and God was doing a lot of work in us and using our marriage to do it. He still is. Safe to say, though, it's gotten better every year. :) But what frustrated us was that after we revealed to people that yeah, we had arguments and rough times and stuff like that, they were like, "Oh yeah, our first year was probably one of our toughest too."

Well, why didn't you SAY SO in the first place? Can we please be real??

I've been to a lot of deliveries in the past however many years that I've dealt with the sub-ten-pound set (unless you're that woman in Texas who had the honker kid, oh my word). I know a lot of people cry and shout for joy when their baby is born.

I know I was really happy he was out, but I didn't cry, nor do I remember shouting for joy.

I was just like, Oh. Sweet.

I was very happy he was healthy and crying and normal. But I had always imagined I'd be sobbing with joy, ecstatic, etc etc. In some ways though, I felt like I was at work. Because in a way, I was. I just happened to be the one in the gown rather than in the scrubs, and my coworkers were weighing and wiping off and banding my baby.

My baby?

So this is an honest post about how I felt after having Levi. Because not everyone experiences the euphoria they think they're supposed to feel. Some plunge into a very dark depression. I didn't. Not at all. But there's, I think, a very common in-between mix of feelings that I guess I didn't really expect. One dear friend, right off the bat, seemed to read my mind and told me that how I felt was normal. And I think that just hearing that, the day after Levi was born, was all I needed to know. My spirit sighed with relief.

First, I have to admit that Matt and I really, really thought we were having a girl. Everyone seemed to think we were having a girl. So in my mind, I was totally geared up for having a girl. Save for the fact that every time I prayed for the baby, I automatically said he and him. So when Levi came out a Levi, I have to admit that I was a little disappointed. And it took probably a couple days to wrap my mind around the fact that I had a little boy and not a little girl.

I knew I loved him. I knew it. But I didn't feel ooey-gooey for him. I knew I wanted to take care of him and protect him and meet his needs, and I really enjoyed doing those things. But sometimes, yeah, I felt like I was going through the motions, or maybe it was just that I felt like I was at work.

Taking home a newborn is like taking home a grenade. Or a fat, bald, short little boss who is well-versed in negative feedback techniques and is more than happy to let you know that you just ripped a hole in the universe. I felt like we had a very ill-tempered guest with terrible manners and sleeping habits in the house - except he would never leave or give us a break.

I felt like I had sat on an atomic bomb and my legs and feet were so swollen they would have made a troll shudder.

And doesn't it just beat all that you barely sleep through your third trimester...either you have insomnia, an teaspoon-sized bladder, or raging heartburn - or all three! - and then you go through the most exhausting workout of your life to have this baby, and congratulations!!! You get to now enter the most exhausting time of your life. No break, no nap, just hit the ground running...well, after your epidural wears off anyway. Please don't hit the ground before that. It gives your nurse way more paperwork than she already has.

The first week home, I was horrified. Matt had taken the week off and helped. me. SO. MUCH. that the very hormone-filled thought of him going back to work in several days dissolved me to tears. I had no concept how I was going to do this alone. I could barely figure out how to make time to go to the bathroom, let alone pick up all the stuff I normally did around the house AND take care of this...this...negative-feedback grenade.

There were moments that were fun, but there were times that were very frustrating and discouraging. How on earth could you not want to sleep, little one?? Do you have any idea how much I covet sleep? It's hard to bond in a way with someone who doesn't look you in the eye, can't smile, and works you to the bone. I felt guilty about everything too. Was I holding him enough? Talking to him enough? Often I'd find myself staring off into space during his feedings, and then thinking OH MY WORD!!!!! I'm going to have a linguistically challenged kid because I'm not TALKING to him!!!! How is he going to MAKE it with ME as a mother?!

But eventually, you do make it. Ish. I'm still figuring out how to balance playing with Levi, with looking well to the ways of my household, with putting my relationship with God first and then my marriage, with keeping up with the laundry, with maintaining my friendships, with making it to Meijer at *just* the right time of his day. As soon as I get it all sort of figured out, he changes the routine up again and I'm back to square one. Sometimes I feel like such an idiot. The kind of mom and wife I want to be are so far removed from reality, I guess.

And falling in love with him was a gradual thing. I guess for me it was like getting to know anyone else. I knew in my heart he was my baby, my family, and I loved him. But I also knew he was his own person, one that God created uniquely, and I had to get to, well, become acquainted with him. He had gone from being this faceless stranger to an actual person with preferences and needs, and figuring him out was a roller coaster!

It took time to love being a mom and the identity shift that came along with it. I could no longer be the friend I wanted to be. My time was most certainly not my own. Matt and I couldn't just do whatever we wanted, we couldn't be spontaneous with our time, and we rarely had uninterrupted minutes alone to talk about...anything. I grieved that a little bit.

And poor Molly has been in an 8-month-long pout. But she's dealing okay. ;)

Anyway, anyone who knows me even a little bit knows that I am ca-RAZY about my little boy. I love him to absolute pieces and like I've said before, now I want a house FULL of little boys. I said to Matt the other day, "I wish I had known how fun Levi would be and how much we would love him, because it would've made going through labor that much easier." But those feelings took time to grow, and if you're going through that process right now, it's okay. There is a land between the total euphoria that many parents feel...and the lonely, desolate road of postpartum depression that some people have to walk. I suspect that many of us end up in that betweeny place. Don't beat yourself up over it if you miss the time you had with your husband alone, the life that you were able to live even just weeks ago, and sleep! Matt reminded me over and over again (and still does!) that this is just a phase. Eventually they do smile at you and the world feels right again. Eventually they do sleep through the night. Eventually you do break down and get a sitter and go to your favorite restaurant.

Eventually you do realize that you love them with that indescribable love, and it was worth the wait.

Heavy

My house smells like cookies. The sun is out. My baby is sleeping. My couch is full of clean and folded laundry (a rare sight, believe me...the dryer and clotheslines all serve as rudimentary dresser drawers at our house).

But my heart is so, so heavy. So full of burdens for people I dearly love who are in circumstances in which they never dreamed they'd find themselves. Marriages that are crumbling. Among other things, the men they love are in the throes of addiction and they are exchanging truth for a lie, reality for an idol. An idol that has eyes but does not see, ears but does not hear, a mouth that does not speak...and they are becoming like that idol. Numb. They worship something that is created, contrived, and false.

It is an idol that our society celebrates, accepts, and defends. Evidently it's "free speech." Consenting adults. Ha. We'd love to think that it's tied up in a neat package like that, but it ain't.

Think again. That which is free comes with a price, and the price of it is staggering. It is chipping away at our families, our relationships, our ability to see people as people, souls as souls.

I've been wanting to write about this for a long, long time. Fear of man has prevented me from doing it. It's part of the reason this blog sits dormant for weeks at a time. What I really want to pour out of my heart is dangerous. I'm afraid people will call me judgmental. A prude. A sensationalist. Not with-it. Over-the-edge.

Too bad. I've sat on my couch enough times now crying and praying with yet another friend whose dreams are threatening to be crushed by this entity. If it quacks like a duck, let's call it a duck.

Pornography is evil. Our culture is saturated and obsessed with sex. What God intended to be beautiful and in the context of a covenant relationship has been made a farce.

And I'm gonna write about it.

Proverbs 7 Prayer

My son, I pray you will keep God's word and commandments treasured within you

-keep His teachings as the apple of your eye-

-bind them on your fingers-

-write them on the tablet of your heart-

I pray you will call wisdom your sister...and insight an intimate friend.

...to keep you from what is forbidden -

-from the adultress

-from the pornography industry

-from our sex-saturated culture

Father I pray that Levi will not be simple, a young man lacking sense. There are so many, many things to numb his mind. Even when he's little. Keep me mindful of what goes into it. Show me how to teach him discretion. How to guard his heart.

I pray he will delight in Your Word...that he will be like a tree planted by streams of water...that he will set his mind on things that are above, not on things that are on earth.

The culture will meet him. Dressed as a prostitute, wily, loud, brash. Help me be on my guard. To teach him to be on his guard.

It will try to seize him, entice him. Oh, it will be so easy. So easy.

A glance at a lingerie ad.
A commercial on TV.
An errant click of the mouse.

I pray he will not be persuaded or compelled. I pray he will be equipped to discern truth from a lie, lest he be as a bird rushing into a snare....not knowing that it will cost him his life...

........his career......
........his relationships........
.........his marriage.........


My son, I pray you will desire wisdom. Truth. That your passion will be for the God who created you, who is crazy about you, who sent His Son that you may have life and have it abundantly.

Guard your heart, for it is the wellspring of life.

Simple isn't easy

I've been rolling a word around in my head since yesterday afternoon.

Simple.

I don't think I'm the only one who has it on my mind. There are talk shows, magazines, countless articles...all dedicated to this notion of simplicity.

It started after a conversation with my neighbor about desiring to simplify things in our lives.

It's a buzzword. A trend. A fad?? But it reflects a desire, I think, but is anyone really certain what that desire is for??

Does it mean...being more organized? Because my Real Simple magazine has all kinds of ideas for how to organize my stuff. And I really like their ideas. They're cute, kitchsy, "use this for that!" little ideas...but when I organize my stuff, I still step back and have a lot of.....stuff. And I don't feel very simplified at all.

Does it mean....being "green?" Because yeah, it does do us a world of good to "greenify," but in doing so, you actually can create more work for yourself (organic gardening, making your own cleaning products, whatever). That doesn't feel all that simple.

Does it mean....being less involved? Less busy? Because that requires me to step down, say no, back out, whatever it takes to scrape stuff off my plate. And yeah, sometimes that goes over like a fart in church, depending on who you have to tell 'no.'

So what is this, this simple life of which we speak?? I'm really posing the question, not in a provocative, buy-my-book-and-I'll-tell-you-the-answer kind of way, but I really want to know: what do we mean when we say we want to live more simply?

Seems to me that anything simple requires at least some degree of sacrifice, and are we people who are willing to make those sacrifices? To let go of what owns us, whether it's our *stuff* or our habits or our need to be busy and feel fulfilled? The more I think about it, the more (to me, at least) I realize that a great deal of purging needs to occur - in my home, in my heart, maybe even in some of my relationships. But there's stuff I want to hang on to. Things, memories, bad habits, patterns...well then, simplifying doesn't sound so chic when you put it that way. Never mind. And have you noticed, in order to be so fashionably simple, you have to buy a lot of expensive stuff to look the part???

And simple should never be equated with easy, yet I wonder how often it is. Ask any Amish person. They work like we don't even know how to spell work, yet their lives are so....unfettered, at least not by the things that burden us. There's so much STUFF that is supposed to simplify our lives but we're slaves to them. Cell phones and laptops and texting and all these weird little things that are supposed to make things quick and easy and carefree....but I don't feel free when I have them. I feel stuffed. Like at Thanksgiving and you've gone over the edge. Just stuffed, the kind of stuffed that really makes me want to reverse the process and get. it. out. so I don't feel so weighed DOWN.

Simple. Simple?

I think our world is starting to realize we've gone overboard on a whole lot of stuff and it's not doing us a whole lot of good. The simple solution is to close Pandora's Box but you'll find it's not so easy.

Ask the rich man who asked what he needed to do to inherit eternal life. Jesus' answer was simple: get rid of everything you have, give it to those who need it, and follow me. Watch the slump of the man's shoulders as he walks away. The price was too great to pay. He treasured his stuff more than he treasured his soul.

I treasure my ______ more than I treasure my soul. More than I treasure my Savior. It's not. Easy.

So if you're in a pondering mood, let your mind marinate in this. What is required of me, of you, of anyone, to simplify? To strip out the buzzy-buzzword-ness of it, and actually ask, what needs to go? What's mastering me? What habits, thought patterns, whatever need to be severed at the root and pulled OUT in order to bring true freedom, simplicity, and perhaps even ease??

It's more complicated than it sounds, isn't it?? ;)

I love to hate you

I love Facebook.

I hate Facebook!!

I love to hate Facebook.

Tell me that Facebook is not a love-hate relationship for you too. Seriously. It is the coolest and stupidest thing our culture has right now. It's like you can't help looking at all these mundane status updates, and at the same time I'd rather have a bear gnaw my face off because it's so...so... banal.

But rather than get all huffy about it, I decided that this blog will be a list of pros and cons. It would fun to analyze every aspect of FB (because I really think it's such a fascinating and discouraging summation of our culture all at once) that I love and hate, but that would be time-consuming and ranty. So I'll just make a fun little list. Sometimes what's NOT said speaks volumes. Feel free to add what you would like to it.

Why I love Facebook
by Jenny Gouveia

I think Facebook is pretty neat for the following reasons...

1. Getting back in touch with people with whom you'd never otherwise be in touch.
2. Seeing pictures of other people's kids (though this can slide over to the 'con' list too if ya know what I mean)
3. Finding out someone's pregnant, when you wouldn't otherwise find out (see #1)
4. A quick way to find a babysitter, recommendation, tips and advice, etc.
5. Not having to memorize or otherwise cache everyone's email address
6. Networking
7. Families who live far from each other can kinda feel like they're a part of everyday life.

Well then. That was quite excellent.

And now for....

Why I Hate Facebook
by Jenny Gouveia

Facebook makes me want to chew broken glass for the following reasons...

1. Bragbooking.
2. Vaguebooking.
3. Lacking discretion (WTMI about....everything....)
4. Still lacking discretion (husbands, brothers, pastors, etc are friends with you too...think hard before you post your teeny bikini shots)
5. Bragbooking
6. Updates on the very, very mundane
7. The drama
8. Our new cultural definition of "friends"
9. Bragbooking
10. Toeing confidentiality lines
11. Posting song lyrics that make zero sense to anyone but you

Let me tell you, this isn't *nearly* as fun as saying exactly what I think about each thing. This is an exercise in restraint.

I think FB dismays me more than anything. It's a sad testimony to what our world is becoming. The saddest status update a couple of weeks ago (I won't even share what it was, it's just too sick and sad) confirmed it: we're zoning out on how to appropriately relate to people. You have 400, 600, 1200 "friends" but when one person drops off for good, it doesn't even flash a blip on your radar. We want the world to know we finished three loads of laundry before 8am and already have a roast in the oven for dinner, but are blunted at our ability to just have a good and honest and open and real conversation with each other. We walk around fashionably aloof with iPod buds in our ears, but are screaming for attention on social media. Please see me! Hear me! I'm cool and witty and important! Do you ever have days where you think in terms of potential status updates? I do. Ugh.

Now's the part where I'm supposed to declare a Facebook fast or I'm closing my account. But I'm not. Facebook (Twitter, blogs, all of it) is a part of world that we need to learn to live with. It's something that can become just as tempting of an addiction as anything else that's addictive, and I continually have to practice taming the desires of the flesh and bring them under Christ's authority. And there are some really fun people whose status updates never fail to make my day. Whose kids' pictures I gobble up. That I want to keep track of because FB is a good finger on the pulse of their life at the moment and I want to know they're not spinning out of control. I want to know when my friend in California has her baby, want to see wedding pictures, scroll thru vacation pictures and laugh about how much someone's kids look JUST like they did in high school. I like the connection, don't get me wrong. But anything can be sooooo good one second and soooooo volatile the next. A "quick" check can become an abysmal waste of half a day.

There are households to manage, relationships to tend, and hedges of protection that have to be guarded. Facebook can make a fool of anyone.

So my love/hate relationship will continue, and I'm sure this isn't the last time I'll talk about it. And I feel stupid now because I'll link this blog post on FB!! but again, that's a whole lot easier than someone trying to remember what the web address is. *sigh*

I want to be a part of the culture...but I don't want it to be a part of me. Does that make sense? I want to influence but not be wholly influenced. In the world but not of it. Such a fine line to walk.

Is FB a struggle for you? Am I the only one who wants to throw my computer at the same time I want to look at it???

*Crickets*

Why the silence???

I know, I haven't blogged in over a month and that's just disastrous. I love to blog. And it just hasn't happened.

Because for one thing, the weather warms up and things get busy. A lame excuse, but it's not really an excuse...it's just the truth.

But even bigger than that, blogging is a little bit of a tightrope for me. You see, there are a lot of blogs out there: "mommy" blogs, sarcastic and snarky blogs, boring and uneventful blogs, opinionated blogs...and, I'm just like, I dunno...I don't want to have a blog that's overly mommy. (BTW - there are some great mommy blogs out there, I'm not knocking them!) I could have a heyday being sarcastic and snarky, but I really try to avoid that (sometimes I let it slip out for laughs, but I do try to avoid it and err on the uplifting side instead). I try to tone down on being overly opinionated or soap-boxy. Sometimes I'd love to share something I'm fired up about spiritually but I don't want to be...what's the right word...ummm...like this blog is a flannel board and my little flannel Jesus is stuck there just nice and so and I'm all perfect. Does that make any sense?? Sometimes I don't want to write something that might be misinterpreted or offend someone, even though that is never my intention. Never, ever do I wish to use this blog as a passive-aggressive outlet to try to drive out a message to someone I have in mind, hoping that they'll see it and get the point.

I don't want to come across as attention-seeking. Lord knows I'm not a fan of that.

So sometimes I just choose to keep my keyboard mouth shut. Some of it is insecurity (does anyone really care what I have to say anyway?). Some of it IS good old fear of man (I don't want to offend anyone...). Much of it is that I DO have a busy baby in the house. :) And sometimes there's something I'm struggling with and either it's not something I want to share with many people at the moment, or sadly enough, if I do share it, then I actually have to uphold my end of it and be accountable to, um, everyone.

****************************************************************

Anyway...I do have things tumbling around in my head that I'd really like to write about...because really, this blog is my journal. It's what's going on in my life, my heart. And at the end of the day, no one has to read it. I choose to make it a public forum rather than password protect it, because who knows who might need to read what God has put on my heart to say, even one time. He works in mysterious ways, even in the blogosphere.

Some of the things on my mind lately:

Mommy guilt...
Pornography....
Modesty........
Being counter-cultural....
Marriage.....
Facebook.........
Being real......
Being frugal!!!........
My identity.......

.....and at some point (hopefully soon!) I'll process all of the above (and many more!) enough to put pen to paper. So don't give up!!! I shall write more soon. So stay tuned.

BTW - this is totally unrelated to anything having to do with...anything, really, but it made me laugh:

Picture me, sitting on the kitchen floor eating a bowl of popcorn, with this audience:

To my left

And to my right

Seriously, the look on Levi's face!!!! hahahahahaha!!!!