What a tough week can teach you

It has been a crummy week. Coming back from Grandma's is almost always like that. We love the Grandmas, but the re-acclimation to life at home is always tough. You add in colds and a perhaps teething baby, and this is one stressed out mama. So here is how today went.

The baby woke up to nurse at 4:30. Curtis' alarm went off at 5. As he tried to creep downstairs, Elijah come out of his room and yells, "Hi Daddy!" The baby wakes up again, I nurse her while listening to Curtis try and fail to convince Elijah to go back to sleep. Curtis leaves earlier than usual for work, and I try to make some progress on cleaning up thehouse while Elijah watches some PBS and Rachel sleeps. I make some progress before Rachel needs to eat again and while I'm sitting here nursing, the carpet guys knock, which is sort of surprising given that they were supposed to call before they came and therefore I am still in my jammies. So I let the carpet guys in to do the measuring, Elijah runs around the room they are trying to measure, totally in the way while Rachel whines because her feeding was interrupted. On and on it went.


Then I got both kids down for afternoon naps and I stood at the sink violently scrubbing away burnt on gunk, telling Jesus about how horrible my life is, how completely unhappy I am, how I can never get anything done that will actually stay done and I hear, "Its not about you."

"But, didn't you hear me, Jesus? Every time I wash a dish another three get dirty, and don't get me started on the laundry. Every time I get the screaming baby quieted down, her brother yells, 'Rachel sweeping!' After which she is screaming rather than sleeping. And no one ever even notices all that I do. And..."

"If anyone would be first, he must be last of all and servant of all."

"Yes, I know what that but, it is hard to live that way, Lord."

"I know that so much better than you child."

So then I got to repent, and remember that in the sometimes extremely difficult process of raising children, God is also still raising me. It is still a moment by moment process of learning to lay down my rights and delight in the inside out, upside down world that is Gospel-centered living, but right this moment I am grateful that God is using the little people in my life to remind me that it is a beautiful thing to live in the Gospel.

Rachel's first ever Christmas and Elijah's first Christmas of the year

So my plan today was to write something spiritual about idolatry because I've been thinking about it a lot lately, but let's be honest, Elijah is more fun to talk about than idolatry, except for when he is idolizing something food-related. Then he is not fun to talk about or over at all.

This was our year to spend Thanksgiving with my parents, so we went ahead and celebrated Christmas with them too. That meant opening presents on Saturday. This is the first year that Elijah really had any idea what was going on. He opened the first present, realized it was a book, took it over to Sal (she is my extra grandma :)) and said "Read, pwease." Totally disregarding the fact that he still had a ridiculously large stack of presents to open. He only took a little bit of coaxing and a promise that we would read to him later to open some more.

After he had opened several more presents, all of which he thought he needed to play with immediately, he opened his lamp. Now, this was no ordinary lamp, no it has construction machines on it, to match his construction sheets. He insisted that we set it up immediately in my parents' living room. It did go just perfectly with their living room decor, thanks for asking. We turned it on, he then informed us, "That's a wamp." We thanked him for the information, and for the rest of the day any time he walked by the lamp, he informed anyone who happened to be around, "That's a wamp." That's my boy, he is very helpful.

Also, Rachel was there. She slept through the festivities, which is probably good, since most of her presents were wrapped in plastic bags, which all come with warnings not to let small children play with them. So all in all everyone was quite happy with our first Christmas of the year. Especially Elijah, whose "wamp" is now set up on our kitchen floor. It really adds something to my interior decorating style.

The Paige inspired post.

So Paige V. wrote a lovely post about Lindsay Lohan. At the end she asked people what makes our mom moments worth it, although in slightly different terms. You'll have to read the post yourself to find out what exactly her terms were, because I don't want Paige to accuse me of plagiarism. So in the last post I wrote about why I love Rachel so much right now, so here are some of Elijah's best moments right now. -He loves to sing "Amazing Grace." It sounds something like this, "Mazing gwace, how sweet the sound that saved a wreck wike meeeeee I once was wost but now am fond was bwind but now I see." He sings all four verses although sometimes mixes them up a bit, which makes it all the harder to not crack up at his singing, which would be bad because he is VERY serious about it. -While we were reading the Bible together the other day, sin was mentioned. I asked Elijah was sin was and he said "When we d-obey God." Because, well evidently he is a gangster. When I asked him who forgives sins he said, "The cross." Wasn't exactly what I was going for, but also wasn't totally wrong. -He pulled his high chair tray to the ground the other day, spilling some oats on the ground. He says, "Uh-oh. Lijah make a mess. Lijah cwean up." He then walked over got the Swiffer, and pushed around the oats, in an attempt to fix his mistake. -He also likes to say "SHHHHHH!" at the top of his lungs while his sister is napping, so as to help me stay quiet while she sleeps. -Last week, he went with his grandma to Target to buy things for an Operation Christmas Child box. Grandma told him that they weren't going to buy toys for him, because these were toys for children who didn't have any. The next day we went back to Target and as we were pulling into the parking lot, he said, "Today, Lijah get toys." Evidently the selflessness lesson was lost on him. Oh well, maybe next year. I think I'll stop there, but you are right Paige, being a mom can be a really gross and exhausting job, but also an awesome one.

My baby is 3 months old

It is time to put away the bouncy seat. How do I know? It could be that Rachel screams every time I put her in it, or maybe that Elijah has spent more time in it lately than Rachel has. I went to pick it up to bring it to the basement while both kids were napping though, and I couldn't do it. Not yet. She is only 3 months old after all. When we get back from Thanksgiving, she will be almost 4 months old, and I don't know where that time went. I don't remember being sad when Elijah outgrew little baby things, perhaps because I was always praying that with each baby thing he outgrew, maybe he would finally sleep through the night. It could be that with your first you are just that much more excited to see them grow up. Whatever the case, anytime someone says to me, "Wow she has grown so much in the last few weeks!" I want to cover my ears and scream "Lalala. I can't hear you." I'm not ready for her to be big, I want to remember things about her the way she is now and not think that I will turn around and she will be like her brother saying, "Potty, Mama." Or turn around again and have her be going to kindergarten. Beyond that, I'm not even ready to start thinking about. So I decided to make a list of thinks that I love about her right now, so someday when she is two and I have forgotten all of this, I can look back and be reminded of God's faithfulness through all the stages of her life. -Her eyes get big whenever she hears Elijah coming and she smiles so sweetly at him when he talks to her. She especially likes it when he tells her she is pretty. -The way she thinks she is so big already. She has no interest in laying on anyone's shoulder, she needs to see and would far prefer to be sitting or standing. -When she sees me getting ready to feed her, the way she opens her mouth into a perfect O and lunges, as if someone else might get there before she does. -She prefers to nap in her carseat than in her crib. I like this better anyways, as it gives me a better view of my sweet sleeping baby. -She is a mover and a shaker even in her sleep. While swaddled one night this week she managed to take off her pants. Two nights later, she woke up with both of her legs in one leg of her blanket sleeper and both of her hands tucked into her armpits with her elbows in her sleeves. So that's my girl right now, at three months. I didn't write the hard stuff because that isn't what any sane mom wants to remember. Oh and the bouncy seat? It is still in my kitchen. I think I would rather trip over it a few more times than be ready to admit my baby is growing up so fast.

A New Blog

So pretty much every day, I think to myself, "I should write this down somewhere. I'm going to want to remember it someday." So I will use this as a dumping ground for those thoughts and maybe, if I get really good I will find the camera and there will be pictures too. Don't hold your breath on that one though. Today a plumber came to my house. Well, not just randomly showed up or anything, I called and scheduled an appointment. We had water in our basement and weren't sure where it was coming from. The guy that came couldn't fix our problem, some other guy has to come out and give us an estimate because fixing the problem will require ripping out walls. Sounds like fun, no? Owning a house is pretty expensive... My friend Amanda and her kids came to hang out this morning. As usual her kids come up with things that Elijah would never think of doing on his own, including pretending to cut Amanda's hair with toy scissors and toy knives. Also, Jack found it hilarious that Elijah calls naps "snoozers." Yes, I do use creative vocabulary to get my two-year-old to nap and no, I am not ashamed of it. When someone was here helping with the kids after I had my appendix out (that happened exactly two weeks ago. Not a great idea to have emergency surgery two months after giving birth, but who says that I have ever had great ideas?) my Moby Wrap got put away. That's a good thing because it hasn't been put away since we moved here at the end of July, but a bad thing because since it isn't living on my living room floor I have no idea where it is. This makes for one cranky baby. Maybe I'll find it tomorrow. Also I should go switch the laundry. Only I think there is laundry already in the dryer, which means folding, and I only have one arm free right now, due to the missing Moby problem. Guess Curtis will have to switch the laundry for me. :)