Teach my song to rise to you

All of the sudden I feel this tremendous weight when thinking about what it means to parent.

Up until recently, my main concerns in the parenting of our son included the following sorts of things: deciding on what sleep method to use. What to feed our son and at what age we should introduce these foods? Should I say “no”, redirect him or do something in between? How do we transition to one nap? Or even things I’m less proud of, such as, did I emotionally damage my son today when I yelled out the window, “Why don’t you just pass me dumb ass”? ...  not a proud mommy moment.

There seems to be endless things to think about when parenting and if that’s not bad enough, everyone seems to have a different method that seems to have research that proves they are right. It could truly drive you crazy. But more than this, something else has been weighing heavily.

I’m noticing that my son watches us. He learned how to put the laundry in the machine without us teaching him. He began “watering” our potted plants one by one after he watched me do so. When his dad was cutting down a massive tree/weed in the backyard, he picked up the branches one at a time to bring them over to the wood pile which he just saw his dad do. He’s watching us. He’s learning how to interact with his world based on the way we are interacting with ours. 

Yikes.

I can’t help but think about what kind of person my boy will become. Not just if he’ll become a musician, or a lawyer, or if he’ll be a photographer like his dad. But what kind of life he will lead. What kind of person he will be. Will he really love and search to know his maker? Will he show compassion to those around him? Will he make peace with those who are hard to love?

I think I have all too often forgotten the day to day impact we have on the people around us, particularly our children. What a huge and awesome burden.

Teach my song to rise to you. And when I cannot stand, I’ll fall on you. Jesus you’re my hope and stay – Matt Maher

Documentation. You are ONE years old.

I don't really know how it happened, but somehow you became a little boy right in front of our eyes.

I was letting you watch Sesame Street this morning (I know, babies aren't supposed to watch t.v., but 5:30 wake up calls are getting rough). There was this little boy learning how to ride his bike without training wheels for the first time. When his dad let go and he rode all on his own, my eyes filled up with tears as I was thinking about the day that we get to do this with you and how incredibly special it will be.

Everyone always says it, "time goes so fast", and now I know, they are more right than ever. Look at these pictures of you... seriously... how did this happen?

You have the best laugh. You love to be tickled and when we laugh with you, you laugh even harder. One morning (at 5:30 again) I was letting you play with my kindle. You like to open and close the magnetic screen, turning it off and on. This morning in particular, you figured out how to slide the lock button over. I started to laugh saying "uh-oh, that's not good". Then you started to laugh, causing a chain reaction of laughter. Now, every time you open my kindle case and see the lock screen, you laugh, crinkle your nose and look at me, thinking there is something incredibly hilarious about it. You're right. Now there is.


The happenings of this one year old:

• You love little to medium sized dogs. You like to say "hi, hi, hi, hi, hi".
• You love when "Uncle" David tickles you under your arm, making a "zzzzzuupppp" sound.
• You now say "hi" when someone walks into a room.
• You laugh when your dad and I laugh. You also laugh when I get upset and make grunting type noises. It actually works out pretty great because it makes me laugh and forget what I was upset about. 
• You are cruising all over the place, which means you're walking while balancing on things, like the couch or the wall. Your dad and I have a bet going on when you will start walking. My prediction is July 17th, your dad's is July 23rd. If you can shoot for the 17th, that'd be great! You're also pushing a little cart toy that we have around the house. You're so proud of yourself. We are too!
• You love to go outside and go for walks. You observe everything around you and like to say hi to any animals we see.
• You are clapping and mimicking some sign language. I get pretty excited when you do it.
• You continue to make all sorts of sounds and are a chatty little thing.
• You still love cheese and I think strawberries are your new favorite fruit. You chowed down on my homemade pasta salad we had last night.

Basically, you are the most perfect fit for your dad and I. You add so much laughter and joy to our family. I hope that we always make you feel like you are loved for exactly who you are because exactly who you are is so great!

 

HAPPY BIRTHDAY big boy! We are so excited for this next year with you.

Documentation. The process of documenting [my] knowledge [of you]

April 6, 2013

My sweet, sweet boy. You are now almost 10 months and I cannot express how wonderful it has been to be your mom. You are now crawling and getting into everything. You LOVE electrical cords and outlets and will do anything to get to them. You understand “no”, I know this in that you stop playing quickly and look at me each time I say it, but you continue to play with the dangerous things nonetheless. You are saying “mama”, “dada”, “nana”, “papa” and “baba” and sometimes you stumble on some other sounds. I’m pretty sure you even know to call me “mama” and your dad, “dada”. You just started becoming a mamma’s boy. When I leave the room as of recent, you either cry or start crawling after me quickly calling “mama, mama, mama…”. You are precious.

You have a fantastic smile which is almost always filled with such excitement. You have loved, every since you could sit up, reading your books with us. You flap your arms in excitement and make great noises. It’s almost like each page is filled with the excitement of 10 songs. You now, love to be thrown on the bed or couch and love to be chased and thrown down. You even have started to throw yourself down on the couch, laughing hysterically while you do it. You like mimicking and love to stick your tongue out and make farting noises. You can pick up little finger foods and put them in your mouth. You like cheese a lot.

Truly, you have filled our lives with so much joy. Everyone who meets you tell us the same. Yesterday I was at the grocery store with you. You were sitting in the cart with your legs propped up on the cart handle making noises, “baba-baba” and the woman checking us out said, “I wish I could give you a cute baby discount”. She wouldn’t let us leave before I knew how cute you really were. Little did she know, I already know and believe the same myself.

Please know, it is never your job to make us happy but you have given us a more complete version of joy than we have ever experienced. You are a perfect gift to us. I love you so so much.

I sing this song to you a lot and you like it:

“You are so beautiful to me. You are so beautiful to me. Can’t you see? You’re everything I’ve ever hoped for. You’re everything I need. You are so beautiful, to me.”

Here's the original song... a classic.

Being sad

In a past post, I referred to going through a difficult time in my family. This difficulty was dealing with the emotions and physical recovery of a miscarriage.

Grief. Whether it be losing a loved one too soon, losing an opportunity, losing the idea of something we’ve always hoped for. Whatever it is…it’s not fair. I’ve always tried to make people feel better about their personal sadness or try to rationalize why they may be going through it. Until it happened to me.

My parents lost a child before having me and my twin sister. With the sadness experienced by going through something like that, my mom asked me how I was doing after our miscarriage. Although some time had passed, the wound was still sore. I answered by talking about losing a baby and then quickly realized that my parents actually lost a baby, a fully formed, breathing and beautiful little two day old boy. They had his nursery ready, little onesies washed and ready to fit his perfect little body, a bed fitted with new and clean smelling sheets. And they didn’t get to bring him home. When I realized what I was saying, that I was grieving over the idea of having a baby, I felt guilty. I started to say things like, “I know it’s nothing like losing a baby, like you did with Michael…” My mom quickly stopped me and said “No, it’s the same. You lost the dream of having a baby. You thought about bringing your baby home and thought about what your family would be like”. It was then that I realized that grief is grief. Sadness is sadness. Whatever level of sadness we attach to someone’s pain is completely and utterly unfair. It was within my right to feel sad, without feeling any guilt that someone else’s pain is more painful than my own.

What I’ve learned through this is, I’m not going to rationalize why we were not given the opportunity to have that baby. I’m not going to say that we now have a beautiful baby boy, Emery Michael, and because we lost our first, we now have Emery. I’m not going to do that. I know that we live in a world that is fallen. Things happen that should never happen. And because of this, it is okay to be sad. That’s it. Sad. With no rationalization.

This is part of an email that I wrote to my dad several months after our miscarriage:

I think I experienced my first opportunity of healing the other day. I haven't been angry or as sad, like I was in the beginning, but it felt like some real healing. Let me preface this with saying that after experiencing this, I now would never say to anyone in their time of hurting, that maybe God will use this as an opportunity to help someone else in their time of need, but that is what happened. Because no matter what you believe, it never truly feels like God's good when you are in a hurtful situation that you don't understand. Despite that, a friend of mine has been trying to get pregnant for a long time and is feeling very discouraged and deeply sad about the situation; having a hard time rejoicing in any of God's goodness because this is clouding her mind. I felt that way for a while after we had our miscarriage. I didn't really know I was feeling that way while going through it, but I distinctly remember feeling feelings of happiness again, talking to people because I wanted to and not because I had to, praying again. I remember coming out of this "cloud". All this to say, being able to know just a glimpse of the pain that my friend was going through and express some of that to her, was, I think helpful for her and a little healing for me. It was nice to have some healing.

Grieve, and someday move into awesome periods of joy, but always be sad that something completely unfair and less than perfect happened.

My awesome period of joy...

some of my most favorite moments - a Thanksgiving tribute

I can't sleep tonight, which is pretty abnormal given my intense passion to be sleeping. It all started with analyzing the cracks on the ceiling in our bedroom and wondering when the roof might cave in on us..... to..... thinking about my most favorite moments:

So, here they are:
a good cup of coffee with just the right amount of flavored cream

impromptu dancing in the living room with my husband

when you get into the groove of running and it becomes easier, particularly, the moment it becomes easier

brunch with two of the loveliest people: Georgia and Lolly

laughing

when despite the fact that she has a baby and a husband and works a full day, my sister will still answer the phone when I call in the evenings, go in her room, close the door and spend time talking (usually listening) with me about nothing and everything for an hour

praying, in the quiet, on my way to work, while driving toward the mountains

happy hour with GSSW girls

when my nephew makes that noise he makes when I'm chasing him, the 8 month old baby crawl away quickly noise because someone crazy is chasing me

when my husband humors me at 3:00am while I'm poking him asking if he'd like to go play or take a walk. he said "no" but was, nonetheless, his charming self while I was intentionally annoying him

intentionally annoying someone

when I know I'm forgiven

that my mom asked me, two weeks ago while driving home from Madision, Wisconsin if I wanted to play the Alphabet Game. this in itself was my favorite, that at the age of 28 my parents still want to play the Alphabet Game with me. but then, what makes it favorite moment, PART II, is that she got really tired, said, "time out". then she woke up, saw a Quilt Shop (really a Quilt Shop!?!), got her Q and won the game

the moment that something really hard for me, like a difficult life circumstance, presents meaning in my life

dinner and couch dates with our best friends: Erin and Mike

when I truly believe in second chances. not just thinking I believe in them, but when, in the moment, I am meeting with someone who has quite honestly messed things up really bad. then they have a moment of genuine redemption. when I get to be a part of that and be reminded that life is made up of second chances, new moments in time to make new

board games

that we have a community group of people who genuinely want to love one another and God

the times I get to see my sweet friend, Tessa in the hallway at work

that my husband gets really excited when I get home, meets me at the door, takes my lunch and purse, puts them down and hugs me

singing with my dad

eating popcorn in bed

I treasure that even in the worst of times we can have favorite moments and I am SO thankful for that. SO thankful this Thanksgiving for my husband, my friends, my family, being able to see life change, and the perspective Jesus offers me.

would you consider this?

Almost two years ago, I had the privilege of meeting some beautiful people in a slum of Kenya called Kibera. People in the slum live in absolutely devastating circumstances with little opportunity to recover. One of the solutions to this problem is microfinancing, offering small loans to those who live in the slum to start a business and thus create enough income to move out of poverty, or at least fulfill some needs that were not previously fulfilled. One of those businesses is jewelry making. We have been taking orders from the jewelry makers (technically working with the man who started the bank and microfinancing business, Michael Nyangi, for about 1.5 years now.
*Click on Michael's name for a video that amnesty international made about life in the slum and what Michael is doing to change it

Please consider purchasing very reasonably priced jewelry to help change lives. All proceeds go back into the jewelry makers' business or goes home with them to their families as income.

This order will be placed by October 1st and will be received in time for Christmas gifts. I know it seems early but ordering now ensures that they will be here in time.

Please take the time to look through this online catalog.

You can then download and complete this order form and email it or any questions to KiberaJewelryInfo@gmail.com. Checks are payable to ANAW-USA.

Any of those of you who have already purchased the jewelry and would like to speak about its quality or process, please leave your comments!

I want to remember this...

I bought a travel, ceramic Starbucks mug three days ago. Its pretty weird but mugs have this ability to significantly brighten my mornings. For the last two days, I’ve been making my coffee and putting it in my new mug, feeling happy that I get to enjoy my coffee in a ceramic cup on my way to work before the day starts to turn to chaos. And let me tell you, something making me happy before 8:00 a.m. is colossal as, it is, without question, the most difficult part of my day, and likely the most difficult part of the day for anyone around me :)

As I was coming home around lunch time yesterday, my mug slipped right out of my hand onto the cemented driveway. Two days, TWO days, that’s all it took for my mug of happiness to slip from my grasp and shatter. I was upset. Actually, almost felt like crying that I spent my limited spending money on this mug and it lasted two days. Kevin cleaned up the mug for me. I went back to work.

When I came home in the evening, I looked to the counter and there it was. A brand new mug, three days newer than my old one, waiting for me with a Starbucks gift card saying that I was my husband’s favorite.

Yup, tears welled up in my little baby eyes. I love being someone's favorite. Particularly, I love being his favorite.