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Today I was working on Isaac’s baby book.  I was sitting in a hotel room with Isaac and Chloe while they napped and I’d actually thought to bring it with me along with 2 stacks of photos I’d had the foresight to have printed during a free photo offer.  Anyway, I think the most remarkable part of that is the only time I’ve had to work on it is 1100 miles from home with no house to clean and I actually had it with me.  So I was going through old (relatively speaking) photos and figuring out where to put them on each page and then filling in the pages around them.  I was reflecting on his life thus far and it was just poignant because right now he will turn 3 in two days, we’re here for my sister-in-law’s wedding, one of those huge life events you think about way in advance for your kids, and he’s curled up fast asleep on the bed next to me, sleeping the deep sleep of a tired child who knows he’s safe, protected, and will take on the world once he wakes up again.  It’s so hard to believe he’s only going to be 3.  I can barely remember a time without Chloe, let alone without Isaac, and it hasn’t been that long.  These little people enter your life and soon it seems as if they’ve always been there, always been a part of you, even before they even existed.  I wonder if God ever feels that way about us?  Because he knows us even before we were born, knows every hair on our heads, knows the number of our days.  So to him, he’s always known who we are, even before we really existed in this time.  Deep thoughts for a Tuesday night, I’m sure.  Must be the enchiladas.

Easter is such a good time to remember how very little I actually deserve.  I listened to an interview done with Pastor Rick Warren this morning on the news and he put it so well.  When asked why so much bad happens to good people, he responded that it’s really more amazing that anything good really happens at all given that we all have free will and so many of us make so many bad choices all the time.  Many people are under the impression that when they die, if their good outweighs their bad, then they will go to heaven.  That if they are just better than those considered the worst sinners, then they should be just fine.  But if we are made by a perfect God and presume that Heaven is a perfect place (because really why would you want to imagine a Heaven that isn’t perfect?) then wouldn’t we have to be perfect to go there?  Because if you put imperfect humans in a perfect place, wouldn’t you pretty much end up with what we have right now?  And I don’t know about you, but I’m not too keen on living in a place just like this for eternity.  I’d prefer to go to a perfect heaven, though I still don’t know what that looks like.  Back to my point.  Which was, I know myself.  I know how completely imperfect I am.  Sure I haven’t committed any of those “major” sins, the ones that we classify as major anyway, but I know how selfish, prideful, envious, etc. I am.  And I know that I do not deserve to be allowed into such a perfect place.  No matter how much good I could ever do, I will not ever be perfect.  I will continue to struggle against selfishness, against jealousy, against my base human nature.  I will continue to strive to become more like Jesus throughout my life, but I have no illusions that I will get anywhere close to him this side of Heaven.  Which brings me back to my point, I can’t ever get to Heaven on my own.  And God knew that.  He, in his infinite wisdom, love, and grace provided the only way for me to get there.  Himself.  And on this Easter, I celebrate the grace of God in providing Jesus, who came to Earth, lived, taught, and then died and rose again.  That whoever, meaning me and anyone else, believes in him will still die in this place and then live again with him in a perfect Heaven.  Because on my own, I can’t ever be perfect, but with Christ, his perfection takes over, takes the place of my sin, and provides the way to be with him forever.  And yes, it is the only way.  You can choose to believe it or not, but that doesn’t make it any less true.  So thank you Father, for your love and grace.

I’ve decided, yes again, to try to keep up with this thing, only this time with a slightly different purpose in mind.  I’ll still be writing about the kids occasionally, but mostly I just want to get my thoughts out there, out of my head.  No one could read them, in all likelihood that’s exactly what will happen, but that’s not really the point.  I feel like I’m still learning so much and I want to be able to share that, maybe with you but mostly with my kids and maybe you’ll just get something out of it in the meanwhile.  I won’t remember it all when they are old enough to understand so maybe by getting on paper now I will still be able to share it later.  And I hope to be able to process my own thoughts by writing them down instead of just trying to think them and constantly getting interrupted in the process.  There’s something about actually writing that makes you finish out your thoughts, something that doesn’t always happen when I just think them.  I know some people don’t like the trend towards everyone having a blog and putting everything out there for everyone to see, but that’s not what I intend to do.  I don’t intend to write anything I would be embarrassed for my mom to read, because let’s face it, she probably is the only one who will.  I intend to write down some things I’ve observed over time, what I’m learning in Bible study, what my kids are teaching me, maybe some of the other things I’ve tried and learned, or not learned, over time.  So, we’ll see how it goes and who knows?  Maybe I’ll actually write more often than every 3 months.  Let’s hope that I learn at least one thing more often than that!

Time, she is a flying.  You have no idea how many blog posts I have been composing in my head, but it doesn’t seem like I actually get them down on paper very often, so again it has been a while.  There are many changes around here going along with the growing up of three active children.

Ethan is doing well, his latest accomplishment is learning how to read and spell a few words including mommy, daddy, love, is, this, Ethan, Isaac, Chloe, eel, dog, and various others.  He likes to play with his spelling airplane to put letters together and see if they spell anything.  He loves to draw and color now, something he has never shown much interest in before.  We go through a LOT of paper!  Fortunately he doesn’t seem to care that I don’t keep most of it.    I would be a serious hoarder if I did!

Isaac is working on potty training and so far it is going pretty well.  He’s had a few accidents so far, nothing unexpected.  One of which was actually my fault but worked out for the best.  I forgot that teaching to pee in a toilet is different than teaching to pee on a tree so when we went to the park and he needed to go, he couldn’t do it standing up because we just haven’t taught him how yet so he ended up wetting his pants.  So I changed him into a diaper and clean pants.  Then when he went #2 later, he was already in a diaper and it saved us quite a mess.    So it ended up being a mistake in both of our favors and now I’ll remember that we need to make the transition from sitting to standing before asking him to pee on a tree again.    I think he’ll pick it up pretty quickly, he’s pretty cute running around in his little underwear!

Chloe is growing so fast!  She’s started crawling and gets faster all the time.  She started pulling up on the furniture a while ago and now she’s even started to travel along the furniture.  She has a walker that she likes to pull up on and I have a feeling it won’t be long until she starts pushing it along.  She’s started eating more solid foods, we’ve found she likes just about anything from pasta, to peas, mac and cheese, rice and lentils, and bread.  She’s still a pretty mellow baby, unless she’s hungry or tired, in which case you can get an earful.  She’s also pretty loud, gotta make sure she can be heard over those brothers!

They are all great kids and love each other very much.  I love watching them interact, they have some usual push each other over behavior, but overall they would do anything for each other and are very protective.  They are my babies. 

Well, it’s the end of another Christmas.  Hey wait, it’s New Year’s Eve so it’s actually the end of another year.  When did that happen?  Time really does go faster the older you get; some days it seems like the end of the day comes before I’ve even had a chance to think of plans for the day, let alone eat breakfast sometimes.  We took down the Christmas decorations this evening, a much faster but less festive process than putting them up.  Both Ryan and I can’t believe that another Christmas has come and gone; I wasn’t ready for Christmas to be here and now it’s over.  It seems this year has really flown by.  I’m sure having a baby in the middle of it contributed to that overall feeling, as well as a general lack of sleep over the past 5 months, but really I haven’t been prepared for the last half of this year.  For example, it took me a few days into November to realize that November contains Thanksgiving, which apparently it has for as long as I’ve been alive.  And since when did November come the day after Halloween?  Oh wait, apparently since forever.  Or at least as long as Halloween has been on October 31st.  Which to anyone reading this has been for forever.  I don’t know if it’s just because I’m suffering from a serious case of mommy brain, which some scientists claim isn’t a real thing, but obviously those scientists are men without wives who have had children or they would have been injured by said wives, or if it’s just because I’m getting older.  In either case, I know time isn’t planning on slowing down any time soon so hopefully the new year will find me getting with the program and able to enjoy each day as it comes while still remembering to plan ahead and check the calendar for the next upcoming thing.  Even if that thing is a major holiday that hasn’t changed dates in centuries.  And since New Year’s is a time for resolution making, I resolve to enjoy my children more, make spending one on one time with each of them a higher priority, and not always look forward to a time when they can do the next thing (walk, talk, go to school, etc), but enjoy them in the stage they are in, realizing they will never be there again.  Because time slows down for no one, not even me.

There is a wide variety of responses you get from people after you have kids.  For example, very shortly after having Ethan (too shortly in my opinion) I heard “when are you going to have another one?” pretty frequently.  Which was kind of funny because I also heard “another one already?” after we got pregnant with Isaac, and they aren’t THAT close together (20 months apart).  Then, after Isaac was born, we heard “so now you’re done right?” which we hadn’t really decided on one way or the other, but I felt that we weren’t quite done yet.  But it was like, you really need to make sure you have two kids but really, that’s probably enough.   Then we got pregnant with Chloe, and mostly just got strange looks.  Now that we have Chloe, mostly what we hear is “so, when are you getting your tubes tied?”  Not really, but that’s about what it sounds like.    And no, I don’t write this with some big announcement in mind (!) just as a little observation on the differences in responses you get depending on which child you’re on.

I read an article just the other day about the other milestones, the ones that aren’t in the baby books that you don’t realize will make an impact on your life until they happen, or until they have passed without you realizing that life was going to change after that point.  Some of them are big and significant, others are just little things that wouldn’t mean anything to anyone else.  Things like preschool graduations, first parent-teacher conferences, mastering the slide at the park, or finally putting away the last of a piece of baby gear.

We’ve had a few milestones today, both of which have made me a little teary-eyed for basically the same reason.  The first was moving the baby swing back down to the basement for probably the last time to make room for the exersaucer in the family room.  I’m not entirely sure it will be a permanent move, Chloe still sits in it from time to time, but there is only so much room in here and right now she seems to prefer sitting with toys to sitting in her swing.  It’s a hard move for me, both because it means my little girl is getting bigger and already on her way to growing up, but also because we don’t really plan to have more kids and so it marks the beginning of the end of the baby phase.  I may need to put her in it at least one last time so that I will be aware at the time that it is the last time.

Our second milestone involved my oldest baby.  Tonight, just before dinner, Ethan informed me that he no longer wanted his booster seat on his chair in the dining room, that he was too big for it.  So I took off his seat and he’s now eating dinner on a regular dining room chair, albeit still covered in plastic which he also wanted removed but was told no which was a good call since he later spilled an entire glass of milk on it.  I asked him who told him he could grow up to which he gave his usual response of “not you mom!” and then he made me cry with “But I am growing up mom.”  Yes, my sweet special boy, mommy knows that you are growing up, and mommy is so proud of you.  But that doesn’t necessarily mean that mommy is ready for that, any more than I’m sure my mompy was, or her mommy before that.

So many of the milestones are beautiful things, little markers on our kids’ way to becoming independent, responsible (hopefully) and wonderful human beings.  They are bittersweet too, reminding us that our kids won’t be with us forever, but that is the way it is supposed to be.  Our job is to raise them and then let them go.  But that doesn’t mean we can’t celebrate the small things and remember those little things along the way, marking the transition from baby to toddler to big kid and on.  And it definitely doesn’t mean that we don’t hug them a little tighter at each step along the way, rejoicing with them in their accomplishments and reveling in their beauty.  Because they are beautiful.

It’s been a long time since I’ve posted, yet again.  Don’t worry, I’ve composed many postings in my head, just haven’t had the time to get them out onto “paper”.  As I write, I can hear the door to my room upstairs opening signifying an end to the peaceful nap time I’ve been enjoying the past few hours.  So this may be brief, but I promise to get back to it.  Eventually.

We’ve been doing well around here, enjoying the holiday season that starts with Halloween and will end in January after the New Year.  The boys have really enjoyed decorating their thankful tree with many fall colored leaves listing the things that they are thankful for.  The most common of which have been family, each other, and random things like windows, pumpkins, and monitors.  I love hearing their little voices tell me at the end of each day what they have most appreciated around them, even if at times they try to be deliberately random.  They have done a better job reminding us to be thankful than their parents!  We decorate a tree branch to remind us visually to count our many blessings, a reminder that should not extend only to the month of November, but all year long.  Let the littlest among us lead the way.  Speaking of the littlest, he’s curled up under my arm, still sleepy from his nap, and asking for my attention.  So I will go and spend some rare one on one time with him before his siblings wake up, because I am very thankful for him.

We walked in our third Light the Night fundraising walk for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society tonight.  We started walking after one of our best friend’s son was diagnosed with leukemia before he was even two years old.  Pierce is doing well today and in the final stages of his treatment, his mom tries not to count down the days lest something happens to extend his treatment.  Another friend had her 3 year old diagnosed about a year later and he is progressing through his treatment as well.  Ryan walked with a gold balloon this year, in remembrance of his grandmother Maudena who passed away just days after Chloe was born.  It is a great, fun not being quite the right word, event to raise money and awareness about blood borne cancers and we are happy to help do some small share of our part.  It is a strange feeling to walk and look at all the balloons that are light up against the night sky.  One the one hand you are excited to see so many people helping and participating in the event, and on the other hand you are saddened by the thought of so many people’s lives touched by cancer.  I’m sure people who have walked for breast cancer or other diseases can relate to that.  We saw quite a few white balloons this year, survivors carry the white, and not as many gold ones in remembrance, small things to be grateful for.  I don’t know if it’s because I’m more aware as I’ve gotten older, or that I’m just older, but there seem to be more people walking and raising money for causes like Light the Night and various other diseases than ever before.  We’ve had friends raise money for breast cancer, prostate cancer, Lou Gehrig’s disease, and many others that I’m not even very familiar with.  I guess it’s another sign of the decay that goes on in our world, and a sign of the hope that we have that we can actually make a difference from our corners of the globe.  God does not give us more than we can handle, and he gives us the support and courage to make a change in the lives of the people around us.  So if you’re reading this, thank you for ever donating to any cause and please consider even a small donation the next time someone asks for help.

At the risk of sounding not very “Christian”, I will admit that there are things I am hesitant to pray for.  So hesitant in fact that I really don’t pray for them, not without a lot of caveats at least.  Why, do you ask?  Because I don’t really want to go through what it might take to have those prayers answered.  For example, one of my old roommates in college used to get really mad at me when I’d pray for her for patience, which she did want to learn.  But every time I would pray for patience, something would happen that would really test her patience level.  This is exactly what I want to avoid.  I would like to pray for a greater dependance on God, but really dread what kind of experience he might use to get me to rely on him to a greater extent.  Would it take a serious injury, sickness, or even death?  These are all things I really strive to avoid.  Maybe he could just teach me reliance without using any serious examples.  But, given my thick head, I doubt it.  Thus I wish to have greater reliance on God but try not to actually pray for it for fear something would happen.  Yes, yes, I know, all things for the good of those who love him and all that jazz, but seriously, I don’t like it when bad things happen.  So I ask God to help me teach my kids, learn new ways to discipline them, love them to a greater extent, and the like.  And I tell him that they are his, and I do mean that, it’s just that I’d rather he leave them right where they are, thank you very much.   So while I do wish to gain a greater sense of his presence in our lives, I’ll keep praying with the caveat that he do that while maintaining our health and sanity.  Maybe someday I’ll hold things a little more loosely and be able to pray for everything exactly the way he would want me to, but for now I think God understands me right where I am.  After all, he can work with that.