First Birthday Mom Thoughts

I’m going through all the rituals.  Remembering the feelings, scents, trepidation and prayers. Lots of prayer.  Getting out my bleach.  I swear that I craved the scent of bleach with his pregnancy.  The house had to be smelling like bleach and coffee constantly.  Remembering being in labor and thinking “Drywall.”  As hard as I tried, I’m going to always associate the smell of drywall with Blake.  Something about the bathroom remodel that wasn’t quite done.  Meeting my sweet baby and thinking “He’s big, he’s really big.”  Realizing that I never hit the “I can’t go on” wall.  Praising God.  And now I’m crying.  Because I was so afraid for Blake through so much of my pregnancy, that he would come too soon.  That the homebirth would go awry. I fought fear, constantly.  And fear won, many times.  But God overcame every fear, and he took care of me.  He took care of me, and best of all he took care of our little Blake Lee.

Birth Story  >Here<

 I was for certain that I would go into labor early considering how many contractions I had every day, so I spent the last two weeks sleeping on the couch.  One morning I woke up to the passage of Matthew I have on our living room wall.  Come to me, all who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest.  I couldn’t stop laughing.  That heavy laden part sure described me, but labor, she was still no-show.

And then my Bebe is one.  One year we’ve been gifted with him.  A year in which there were days where my nerves were shot from never being able to turn my back on The Kamie, not for fear of what she could do, but knowledge of what she would do.  Time when the line from a song kept playing through my head ‘Remember when, the sound of little feet- wasn’t music, we danced from week to week.’  Surviving colic.  Being elated the first time I figured out how to get a shower with both kids staying safe. 

I love this little guy.  Kissing his little round cheeks, hearing him say “Mama”.  The heartbreaking cries when I leave him with anyone.  Anyone but his daddy that is.  He adores his daddy.  I’ve loved watching him take his bowlegged first steps with arms upraised.  Crawling up the stairs and shaking Kamie’s crib until she wakes up.  Doing a late night hotel swim with him, cuz he just loves the hot tub.  Watching him ‘wrestle’ Bronz, then crying big ol’ sobs when the tractor leaves the driveway. Looking into his eyes and seeing this amazing little person.  A little person I met one year ago.

Happy Birthday!
Blake Lee

 

A Helping Hand From A Few Good Friends

I think I mentioned awhile back that I am starting a Couch 2 5k...  It's been great being able to fit a workout in.  And running makes the most of my l e e t l e bit of exercise time.  I usually go early, while Bronz feeds Blake breakfast.  Can I just say that it's incredible to have your husband encourage you in a goal, and make sacrifices (like some mornin' sleep) in order to help you reach it?  Cuz it is.  My bright spot is getting home and having him ask me how I did, and telling me how hard it is to do what I'm doing. (Which is like zilch compared to what he could do with zero training.) 
I had a really lousy run yesterday.  (Lousy, is completely my Dad's word, he uses it about everything negative, and really should own a patent on it.  I didn't realize how much I talk like him until Kamie is starting to point out that "You sound like Grandpa Dean" I do, like what? Then she proceeds to do a pretty good imitation of Him... But I digress.)  My home cheerleader even began to be skeptical.  "So do you think you can do it?"
This morning I called in reinforcements, one of us has a 5k tomorrow (Def. not me) So I pulled out of their warm little beds my 13 year old Brother-in-law and 17 year old sister, and the three of us did a training run.  I told them to just race each other at their pace and I would follow, but they didn't.  Nope they hung around me,  my brother-in-law literally running in circles.  When I quit for approximately thirty seconds they made me start running again.  When I said I couldn't do it, Wally ran backwards in front of me telling me what a good job I was doing.  While Abbie kept updating her Spotify playlist for the most motivating music ever.  And y'know what.  I got 20 minutes of running in the books.  And that's pretty amazing for me.  To top it off we used our cool down time for praying together.  I learned that from my Mom.  She uses her exercise time to pray for each family member.  I determined to do that, as well, while running this summer. 
There are some perks to running with the older sista... We celebrated our run with warm, -out of the oven- warm, Rhubarb Pie.  And my home cheerleader even freed up some of his Schwans Vanilla Ice Cream. 
In the genre of Inspiration/Running:  I just read an incredible book this week.  I happened to grab it at the Library.  Link is Here

 

It made me cry, and I don't usually cry over books.

I think what drew me into his story was his attitude.

Rather than spending his time finding out why his life was rotten, He accepted it.

Rather than waiting for life to happen, he ran to meet it.

His work ethic

"Why do you want to come to America?"

"To work!!  I Love to Work"

Acknowledging God in everything.

Complete Nail Biter.

I won't be a spoiler. 

So,

this is a must read.

 

Parallel Living or Not

Saturday night we wrapped up the last of the weekend’s open houses.  –It really went out with a bang too, our friend and their foreign exchange student did an ethnic themed open house, the big hit with the kids was a piñata every half hour – How cool is that?! 

I came home about 9:30 and ran across this little gem of a quote on Facebook:

Parallel Living vs. Entwined Living:           

Ecclesiastes 4:12 says that a cord of three strands is not quickly broken. Sometimes we choose to live parallel lives that never intersect, or that happens a little bit at the time.  Entwined lives include  activities and interests that drive us together (physical intimacy, shared interests, purposeful interaction.)  God didn’t bring you and your husband together so that you could live parallel lives. He brought you together so you could live entwined lives and impact the kingdom.  ~ via The Busy Mom

That pretty much hit me right between the eyes.  This time in our lives right now has quite a bit of the parallel element to it.  It’s pretty rare that I can be of much help to Bronz with the kids in tow… And he’s swamped-busy and can’t really flex his schedule my way.   That’s ok to a degree, cuz those things are basically ‘unchangeables’.  However it’s not a rut I want to be stuck in, or comfortable with.  It also isn’t very comfortable or easy to build in marriage time right now.  I did have an idea… Bronz was going to work all night in order to beat the rain.  Bedtime was already past for the babies so just maybe… >enter< my fabulous family…  Of course, they could have the kids sleep at their place. Yay da Yay. By the time all details were in place  & Bronz was starting a new field it was around 11:00 p.m.  I won’t bore you with all the details… It just takes a ton of intention to make time together happen. 

This marriage thing isn’t a piece of cake.  It is valuable.  And value isn’t cheap.  It takes time, energy, sacrifice. It hurts, it helps.  My diamond ring didn’t happen onto my finger, Bronz didn’t pick it up in the end aisles at Menards either.  Why, cuz it’s valuable, precious, significant.  And our marriage is so much more so.  It’s not disposable, or cheap.  And so why do I expect the upkeep to just accidentally ‘happen’?

I hopped in the tractor and rode until 3:00 a.m.  We didn’t talk about anything big, I actually scrunched up on the floor for a little bit and dozed.  Then rotated between the my.right.leg’s.asleep.seat and the bounce.your.head.off.the.roof spot. (If I were President there would be a Buddy Seat in Every Tractor)  In a lot of ways it was a lot of trouble for not very much payback… And yet it wasn’t.  Because we invested in this marriage.  This marriage, that God gave us to be a reflection of his relationship with us. And that’s worthwhile.  That’s worth dragging crabby, tired kids to church on Sunday, that’s worth drinking a couple extra cups of coffee, myself.  It’s even worth the sore back…  Let me tell you, a tractor sure doesn’t have sleep numbers.