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Powered by LifeTypeI am the kind of person who enjoys writing. I process my thoughts well by writing, and I like recording my thoughts and my family's life.
This year, I will be posting more. At first, most will be catch-up posts. I have a whole year of pocket notes to enter, not to mention Nathaniel's birth announcement and story!!
And even if the only readers are my mother and my future self, that's ok! I'm doing it for myself.
Happy Epiphany!
We went sailing today in the Black Rabbit, which is the name of our Flying Junior. I do need to find out the history of it, because I think I don't have it quite correct. But Heather's grandpa have it to her when she was a kid and we've sailed it since we were married.
It needed a couple things fixed this year: the toe strap finally snapped while we were sailing under rough winds on Lake Owasco a couple weeks ago, and on the same trip, the main sheet cleat's screws rusted away and so we had an adventurous trip to get home.
Yesterday was an exhausting day, so I made sure to get us ready for bed early. We were in bed by 9:00. But Jeremiah kicked his covers off just about every hour and asked me to put them back on again. By 3:30 or so, his medicine had worn off and he was wheezing and coughing. It was apparent by 3:50 that he was not going to sleep without more medicine, so we did that. In the middle of the night, it is easiest to make sure it dispenses properly if he sits up in my lap. (That way, if he does fall back asleep, I can still keep him upright.)
But this morning, he did not fall back asleep. He was quite awake. So I decided I might as well pay some bills if I'm awake. Jeremiah sat in my lap but still was not sleepy. At this point, I realized that there was a business bill due today and I had transferred too much money into the personal account last month so there wasn't enough in the business account. So I got everything ready for making a deposit as soon as the bank opened.
At the opportune time, we went to the bank. I knew I did not have the energy to make sure Jeremiah would listen to me if he walked with me, so I got out the double stroller so he could ride. As I was at the teller making my deposit, the lady next to me answered her teller's customary, "How are you?" with, "Good. Every day is a good day."
Yes. Even if you were awakened at 3:30am and have not yet had a nap, "at least you woke up." Even if your two year old is driving you crazy, he still has a great smile. Even if you have to go to the bank when you weren't planning on it, at least the money is there. Oh yeah, and when you have a baby who sleeps all through the hours the toddler doesn't, it is an almost unbelievable blessing.
This is the day the Lord has made. Let us rejoice and be glad in it!
I'm very much behind on the blog. But I have kept the pocket notes safely typed up in my email. So here goes.
In June, the kids and I made a trip to Florida to visit my parents, and my sister and her kids visited, too.
6/14 - Joy, "Mommy! I saw a dinosaur!" (It was a lizard in Grandma and Dad-o's yard.)
6/15 - Joy, "Jesus die, then froze again!"
6/17 - JPD lower right lateral incisor
June - JPD give kisses
During the Florida visit, I confirmed that I am pregnant! Due on Joy's birthday. (More)
5/1 - Joy playing with even/odd dot cards. Didn't quite get the concept but sometimes was lucky, so I praised the correct answers. Then 6/2 - much more consistently correct.
5/1 - Jeremiah, watching the kids in karate class, copying them - doing punches from the "en guarde" position. Very cute!
Jeremiah claps every time someone says, "good job!"
5/2-4 - Jeremiah says, "Uh! Uh!" going "up" the stairs.
5/7 - We were walking home from karate and I saw a place in someone's yard where there was a pile of dirt spilled on the sidewalk from the landscaping. Faith was behind me and when she got to the place started yelling very excitedly for me to come see this cool thing. I'm thinking, "dirt is really that cool?" But I came anyway, and when I got there I looked closer. She was right! It was ants. A whole giant mass of ants, crawling all over one spot, looking like some spilled dirt. It was worth all her excitement! (Jonathan says to make sure to note that they were not army ants.) (More)
Got a bunch of spam comments and then when I was looking at posts, the boys pointed out that my last post was a month ago and I said "trip to DC goes in a separate post"... So here we go.
When we went into downtown to see the sights, we split up into smaller groups. Jonathan, having recently studied the beginning of our country, was excited to go see the original documents at the National Archives - the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the BIll of Rights. It was pretty neat to see, and we enjoyed it. But Jonathan and I think it would be pretty hard to wait in the longer lines that form during peak tourist days. Faith had decided to come with us because she wanted to be with me, but she was pretty bored by it because she has no context for it yet. (More)
I think I have found a key to living selflessly. When there's an emergency, it's easy to serve. I see the great need, and I know it's temporary. It's hard to keep serving in the ordinary, mundane, because it feels like it will never end and the needs don't always seem so great. The key, I just realized, is to remember that these ordinary things are temporary, and the needs are still great; they're just spread over a longer time.
When Barbara and Phil's house burned on Wednesday, all of a sudden the self-pity I had been feeling the previous weeks just evaporated. Helping them and getting our apartment ready for them to live in has made me even more busy than I was, and I'm not less tired at the end of the day. But my attitude is so different and it makes it so much easier!
Now if only I can keep this when life returns to the mundane. It IS temporary - Jeremiah won't be a baby forever (he's already a toddler now!) They do learn. AND, that is part of the great need. I'm their only mother. They need me greatly. They need me to help them learn and grow and discover. They need me to comfort them and rejoice with them. May I remember to rejoice in that and not resent it. And maybe someday I'll ask Jon to hold one of my hands behind my back and tap my shoulder and lean in between my face and the screen while I write a blog post, just to remember the Good Ol' Days.
12/4 - F putting on chapstick. Joy recalls, "Last time my lips sting. Now my lips better."
12/6 - JDD, in a growly voice, with a straw stuck in his teeth and the other end in a glass of water, "I am the savage, saber-toothed mosquito!"
12/6 - JPD upper right primary incisor
12/7 - Noah, "You can use anything for dress clothes. It just won't look as nice."
12/8 - JPD 9 steps to Mommy
by 12/19 - JPD record 11 steps, and 24 seconds standing up.
12/20 - JDD realizes that the words to Deck the Halls are not "Don we now our gray apparel."
12/23 - I'm upstairs with JPD on toilet.
Joy, "Mommy, come down here."
"Is it an emergency, or do you just want me there?"
"It emerdenee."
[I come down, naked baby on hip, wondering if the cider is boiling over, or what]
"Guy come in here."
[yikes! Don't see anyone, oh, maybe just UPS man]
Then I see our friend on the porch peering in.
I was very happy with the way Joy handled the situation. She didn't freak out when she saw someone, but she also made sure I knew it was not just a whim of hers for me to come down.
12/23 - It's all how you look at it. Joy's take: "That nice day. My 'pecial time." It was 32 and rainy as we walked to the bank. But we found a quarter in the slush, and she got a lollipop at the bank, and we looked at the water pouring into the grates, and she had her special time with Mommy.
~12/25 - JPD upper left primary incisor
1/4 - The fire in the pellet stove went down some, and I looked at the thermometer to see why. I exclaimed, "It's toasty now! Seven degrees." Jonathan doubtfully replied, "Negative seven isn't all that toasty..." Me, "No, positive seven!" JDD, "Oh! That is toasty!"
1/6 - JPD walked 21 feet.
1/11 - The boys had their first karate test. It was very interesting to watch. For the first rank up, from white to yellow, it is "only" two hours long. All testers are in the dojo together, and they do much of the same moves at first. Lots of pushups, jumping jacks, sit ups. Lots of repetition. It required concentration and endurance. It was intense, hard work. As time went along, I could see red cheeks, sweating brows. After an hour, the current white and yellow belts got to rest in the meditation position while the upper belts did more advanced work. However, after a while that turned out to be a test of endurance also. I think if I stay in that position too long, my feet fall asleep! They got a water break at the hour mark, and then a few more after that. Jonathan commented that it wasn't fair that they got more water breaks than the more advanced kids. But everyone says the test is harder the more advance you are. Jonathan's concentration and determination never wavered. Noah did the best I've ever seen him (sometimes he gets sloppy) and he only figeted towards the end. They did a great job and they earned their yellow belts! (Sorry about the picture, our camera puts orientation info in it but the blog didn't read it and I do not want to redo it.)
1/12 - JPD went down the kitchen stool steps successfully. Also that same day, he got down off the bed purposefully by scooting himself backwards, tummy down feet first until he slid off.
He is now definitely a walker. Still holding his arms up for balance.
1/17 - JPD has a pincer grasp now.
11/8 - It was gusty and the maple seeds were being blown off our big tree by the thousands. It was such an amazing sight! The little helicopters were fluttering everywhere, even swarming like a host of grasshoppers or little birds. The grand picture was the swarming, and then if you focused on one little seed, you could see it twirling and swirling up and down like a little hummingbird. It was such a neat thing to watch!
11/9 - JPD first step - JDD saw it
11/11 - JPD climbed up the stairs all the way with me behind
11/12 - JPD climbed up the stairs all the way by himself
He's done it several times with and without people behind him and he's had a few tumbles (with and without people behind him.) (More)
I'll take this opportunity, home from church with two sick kids, to post my notes.
10/19 - JDD, "Most fun things are spoiled if you HAVE to do them." I forget the context of his quote but it reminded me of my thought at the harvest supper. The middle and high school youth groups were the servers for the meal, and they did a great job and looked like they enjoyed it. But then I saw one of them asking Barbara to sign off on the community service hours and it got me thinking. I'm disappointed that the kids are required to do some number of community service hours. The requirement takes away the free service part of it and basically makes it forced unpaid labor - slavery! Now I understand that sometimes it takes persuasion or force to get you to do something at first, but then hopefully you can see what a joy it is to make people's lives better. I would think that even if you enjoyed a particular service, there is something taken away from the freedom in it to have to keep track of the hours. But at any rate, these kids are making the best of their requirement and enjoying it anyway!
10/19 - JPD rolled back to front.
10/25 - JPD 8 mo visit. 20.5 lb, 27.25"
10/26 - JPD has been saying "hi" (sounds like "ha") and waving this month, and today he said, "bye".
10/27 - Joy, "I really like my song blanket. It's really fun, with music."
10/28 - Faith counts from 900-1000. Then continued, taking 10 minutes to get to 1100, then another 40
minutes to get to 1200.
10/28 - JPD gets 2nd tooth. (bottom L incisor)
10/30 - JPD says, "da, da" for dirty diaper (Not necessarily repeated - da,da is a common word for him.)
11/2 - JPD climbs up two stairs, Faith saves him.
11/3 - JPD climbs half way up the stairway, Mom spotting. One time he sat down, one time he slipped. At the
triangle threshold, he had difficulty. After some work, decided he was done and Mom carried him up the
rest of the way.
Jeremiah has been a bit wheezy with this cold but of course it's the weekend so we can't call the doctor. Joy was coughing a lot last evening, but has not wheezed. She seems much better this morning after I let her sleep late.
9/13 - A Friday. Jonathan had been asking me if he could read Harry Potter for a while. I told him I needed to talk to Daddy about whether we thought he was ready, but I kept forgetting. The strategy that worked was asking me in Daddy's presence so I didn't have time to forget. So the decision was "yes, but you have to finish all your school and chores first." Immediately after completing those in record time, he ran to the library. Jonathan proceeded to read the first Harry Potter book in four hours. He started book four by Saturday evening. In these first two days, whenever he talked about the story, he kept calling Harry "Arthur". Daddy made him take a break from the constant reading on Sunday, but Monday (after school) he was at it again. He finished the whole series the next Saturday 9/21. So that's an average of a book a day.
9/16 - Jonathan whistles the Imperial March from Star Wars while reading Harry Potter. (More)
Heather and I had the opportunity to attend a marriage retreat with 10 or so couples from our church this weekend, up at Rangeley Lake in Maine (thanks Scott, for the house!)
We were the youngest couple (by far, the average marriage length represented there was 31 years), and we haven't been in this church for very long, and so we feel out of place in some ways - some of the people have known each other for decades, and have been married for longer than we've been alive.
In the following video, Doug and Betty Henderson discuss some aspects of their marriage. Technology failed (the battles consisted of Apple vs. Windows, HDMI vs. VGA, HDMI vs. analog audio, and after all of those were accomplished, CPU speed or a codec issue...), and so we weren't able to see the video until we got back home.
I had a couple things strike me during this video - one is one I've thought about before. Two of the first couples that were around my age to get married said that they didn't believe in the bible verse that says:"let not the sun go down upon your wrath (Ephesians 4:26)" as that led to just being tired and still arguing. I always wondered about it, but figured - they know better than I do, since they are actually married, and I wasn't. After we got married, and the very few times that we would be lying in bed not talking to each other, we always (eventually) came back together to talk and resolve the issue before going to sleep, and so I think it is a good practice. What I was reminded of today is that those two couples are now divorced, and so perhaps this discussion could have provided an "early warning" of what was ahead, if they continued on the same path.
Heather and I do also have some difficulties shopping together, and I'll have to ask the Hendersons if they have any solutions other than not shopping together. It does seem like it doesn't happen as much now (in NH) as it did in Pennsylvania - I think we drove a lot more in Pennsylvania, so we would stop by a store on the way to somewhere else, where we are now more likely to go out specifically to shop somewhere, and so probably shop together less often than we used to.
I was also struck by Doug's comment about not having a "bosom buddy", and not really seeing the need for one. Another guy at church made a similar statement this weekend, though he has been looking for one. That does seem to be a common occurrence at churches, at least from my perspective - most people are comfortable where they are, and are not interested in adding any close friendships. As a campus minister said when I left college - prepare to be disappointed - that's just the way our modern, busy lives are.
I did enjoy the weekend, and we drove up and back with another couple, and some other conversations at the retreat were good, so it does give me hope for the future.
Faith had a blast at Star Island with Grammy and Papa.
7/25 - JDD, explaining why he likes to use a certain spoon for his breakfast cereal, "That spoon
is special to me, because Grammy gave it to me for Christmas last year."
7/28 or 29 - Joy had a cold and I gave her 1 or 2 nebulizer treatments. (Putting this in so I can
keep track because now I wish I had written in other ones.)
7/30 - Noah lost his upper right 2nd incisor.
8/3 - F: "I like brothers, I just don't like when they're annoying." (More)