Tongue Tied

There may be, like, two of you out there that noticed I haven't blogged in a super ultra long time. I can only imagine the kind of agony you are suffering as you wait...wait...wait for me to end my blogstipation and just write something, ANYTHING, even a stupid list of ten things. Well, wait no further, my friend. Your dreams are about to come true. Ten Reasons I Haven't Blogged in a Month: 10. School. Things have been chugging along in the homeschool department. I'm drowning in open and closed syllables and adjectives and adverbs and graphs containing all the birthdays of all the people we know. Oh, and plenty of whining. 9. Homegirl. If you haven't noticed, I have a baby, people. A very adorable chunky monkey whose chubby cheeks require regular and enthusiastic kissing. Sometimes there just aren't enough hours in the day to contain all the baby smooching. 8. Thing One and Thing Two. They're nice kids and all, but they're sucking out my soul like the dement...

Have you heard of these? They're all those pesky, ultra dramatic problems that just crumble you to bits and pieces....that when put in perspective aren't really problems. Sometimes when we poke fun at our non-problems, it makes the real ones a little easier to bear. It also reminds us how crazy blessed we are. Sethswife's First World Problems (To be read in a whiny, weepy voice): The internet was down all morning so I had nothing to keep me from doing laundry. Sometimes Pinterest's servers are overloaded so I can't log on. Just after I sat down in my recliner and put my feet up, I realized I was cold and wanted socks and a blanket. We're out of seasoned salt, so my popcorn is boring. My favorite show is going on "mid-season hiatus". Sometimes Pandora plays a song I'm totally sick of and I'm out of skips. Seth's First World Problems: It takes forever to text on my smart phone. Why is the Diet Mountain Dew always gone? I lost weight so now my...

This is a long one. Sorry. Some things I just can't edit down. ****************************************************************** Leave it to David Crowder to have me bawling at 3 in the morning. “How He Loves” is rapidly becoming my life song. In just the first few bars, I’m lost in it, swirling in a tornado of memories, good ones and bad ones. Scenes from my life play before me in a succession of pain and release, struggle and freedom. I know my attachment to this song isn’t unique. It’s everybody’s favorite…but for a reason. You can insert your story in between the lines and marvel at how God is bringing it all together. Last year was the year my life imploded. It wasn’t as though everything had been carefree and happy before, but suddenly, every trial came to a jagged point. Every arrow seemed pointed at my heart. All the constants in my life were shaken, threatened. Some even toppled from beneath me. I can remember sitting in my living room as I grappled to process a trial I ...

I'm conflicted. I'm going to be honest, though at the risk of offending someone. I hate how exercise-obsessed our culture is. It's not exercise that bothers me, not hardly. I spent a good portion of my pre-mothering life engaged in sweaty sports and had a great time doing it. And I certainly don't embrace the flip side of the coin of our culture--the side that has to supersize every meal and drown in in food. But I'm tired of seeing our culture's idea of beauty. I resist this idea that a woman has to be toned and bony in order to be attractive. Why does perfect equate to working out constantly in order to look like the airbrushed and photoshopped mutilation of women that we see in media? Because let's be honest, just eating right and working out apparently isn't enough for our celebrities to be beautiful. They need surgeries and technology to make it "better". As Cindy Crawford has said "I wish I looked like Cindy Crawford." So I'...

Things I don't freak out about: Higher taxes Medical emergencies Having $0 for college Diet/Exercise Unmedicated childbirth My husband entering burning buildings Things I do freak out about: Spiders in the basement Missing Fringe Dog poop on shoes Grammatical mistakes I'm weird.

I’ve seen a lot of beauty in my life. I’ve seen beauty in nature. The majestic rise of snow capped mountains kissing clouds. The crimson rock of an ancient canyon. Billowing spray from pounding waterfalls. White capped waves crashing against cliffs. The sparkle of blue green ocean slithering across sand. I’ve seen beauty in people. In the twinkle of my grandmother’s eye. My mother’s hands gliding across ivory keys. My Dad’s wink after he tells a joke. My husband’s hands reaching for mine. I’ve seen beauty in moments. When the church doors opened and I saw him waiting for me. The first time I laid eyes on my babies and whispered God’s love into their ears. Seeing Christmas through the eyes of my children. Singing with my husband. And I’ve seen beauty in pain. My grandfather sending flowers to my grandmother on the very day he died. A broken heart healing. The good news of God’s grace softening stone will. Tears of forgiveness. A father carrying his infant son’s casket to his tiny grav...

For Marissa ****************************************** She sees him everywhere. When she’s folding laundry, and she notices that his clothes are absent. When she’s picking up toys and she wonders if he would have liked to play with them. When she’s strapping the kids in the car and sees his empty seat. She couldn’t have imagined before that her heart could break so many times in a single day. Every day. How difficult it would be to navigate the ever present grief. Even when she’s not looking for reminders, they’re there. Like when a friend has a new baby or she hears a song on the radio or a familiar verse is mentioned during a sermon. It’s like her heart is instantly there, in those moments of fear, suffering, longing and desperation. She doesn’t have to try to remember. Some things are always there, just underneath the surface, easily erupting. There are days when she can’t believe she’s able to get out of bed. But she knows she is not alone. She knows every moment had a purpose. Ev...

It’s sort of sad how this doesn’t make her sad anymore. She steps blithely through the crime scene and catches the familiar sound of glass crunching beneath her boots. It should disturb her that she associates the taste of coffee with gruesome scenes of homicide. It should make her never want to drink the bitter brew. But here she is, downing her second cup this morning. Her mind goes into auto mode, sorting and cataloguing the details before her. She takes stock of the body, the wounds, the shell casings littering the area, the direction of the glass from the broken window. It isn’t hard for her to piece together what happened here, to imagine what sort of evidence the M.E. will find. She’s already mentally formed a crude sketch of the killer; not an actual face yet, but a profile. His habits, his history, his methods, even his motives. Nothing ever surprises her anymore. Well, almost nothing. “I see you’ve already got one.” She turns to see her partner smiling behind her, clutching t...

“You can see him now, Mr. Richards.” The young nurse motions toward the closed ICU door. Joe wipes his moist palms against the thighs of his jeans and stands slowly. This is it , he thinks, running a weary hand through his hair. This is the last time I’ll see my father alive . With shaky fingers, Joe pushes open the large door and is greeted by that signature hospital smell, a medley of antiseptic and the odor of illness, of a body failing at life. He forces himself to look at the form of his father in the bed, barely recognizable after losing 30 pounds. Wires spider web around his gaunt face as machines proclaim his heartbeats with an alarmingly slow cadence. The whoosh of the respirator pushing air into weary lungs forces a burning lump into Joe’s throat. He knows his father can’t speak to him. He doubts he will even open his eyes, let alone be conscious of their final meeting here today. Joe senses that whatever it was that made his father the man he has known all his life has alrea...

Morning milk coma. Tantrum. Narnia: Fringe for children Seth's awesome pyramid Did some painting outside Never ending laundry. Collected leaves Thing One's leaf rubbing Awana night Castle with Homegirl. The end

Suddenly, the dark night air had gone still. Very, very still. Caroline’s fingers gripped the flashlight handle. The sound of her own breathing was all she could hear. She froze in her tracks and felt as if a host of unseen creatures surrounded her. Watching. She shook her head as she mentally refuted her own paranoia, mustered her bravery and took another step. The crunch of her tennis shoes on the gravel path seemed as loud as gun shots. Caroline forced herself to ignore the throb of her own pulse in her ears and trudged forward. She loved this cemetery. For three years, it had been her place of solace, away from the chaos that was her life. She would come here and spend hours reading headstones, tracing her fingers along the worn letters that summarized with brief names and dates the expanse of a person’s life. It was as if the stones spoke to her, telling her stories of the occupants. How they lived their lives. The people they loved. Whether they were rich or poor. How they died. ...

5:00 am Nurse baby. Grow agitated when husband doesn ’t hear his alarm going off, because now that you’ ve heard it, you’re AWAKE, but can’t turn it off. 5:30-7 am. Doze. Wake up when husband leaves for work. Doze. Wake up when dog wants to go outside. Doze. Wake up when baby needs changing. Doze. 7:01 am Hear the rousing of children. Cry for lost sleep. 7:30 am. Decide that Pop Tarts are an acceptable breakfast. They have fruit in them. Sorta. Or they would if you hadn ’t bought the chocolate ones. 8:00 am. Nurse baby. Put her back to sleep. Envy her. 8:30-9 am. Nag children to dress. In clothes. No, in *matching* clothes. And brush teeth. Try to locate child’s missing toothbrush. Find it at the bottom of the basement steps. 9 am Simultaneously educate eldest and appease middle child with “school toys” so he feels like he’s in school too and will leave eldest child alone. 9-12 pm. Repeatedly refuse requests for “ Wii breaks” and continue with education. Try to work in chores during ...

The world changed when I was nineteen. Well, maybe not the world. The world had long ago lost its innocence. Pain and sorrow had been the theme throughout thousands of years of human existence. It didn't originate the day terrorists hijacked planes and killed thousands. But for all of us living now, things were different after that September day. I wasn't too young to realize how significant that day would be in my life. Just as my parents' generation would always remember where they were when they heard Kennedy had been assassinated, so would I always recall with crystal clarity my experiences that day. Sitting in my living room in my pajamas and orange bathrobe as I watched the second plane pierce the tower. Holding my breath just as the newscasters did as the buildings fell. Calling loved ones. Going to work feeling a bit numb. Looking at the faces of the children I taught and realizing they would never know an America without terrorist attacks. Driving home from work an...

Ten photos from my day every tenth of the month.

I should blog. But there's not really anything on my mind to blog about. So I'll do a random list. 1. I am tired. Not as tired as I could be, but I could sleep at the drop of a hat. 2. Because of number one, the start of school has been delayed till after Labor Day. Because homeschooling is awesome that way. 3. I've decided new baby's blog name will be Homegirl. Not because it's creative or appealing, but because I just can't stop calling her that. 4. I also can't stop taking pictures of Homegirl. 5. So far, having a baby girl is pretty much the same as having a baby boy. There's plenty of awwing and kissing and staring and clothes changing in order to obtain optimal cuteness. I will say that the clothing is slightly more fun. I heart baby leggings. 6. I feel like Seth went from working two full time jobs to working one part time job. The firefighter schedule of 24 on/48 off totally rocks my world. I've actually gone out into the world ...

Don't worry if you don't get the obscure television reference in the title. Only, like, eight people are awesome enough to get it. So...she's a week old today. Yes, the war of the onesies ended in a spectacular display last Friday evening when our little girl quite literally exploded onto the scene. I may have lost the gender battle, but I like to think I totally won at giving birth. The whole thing was over in less than five hours of labor and zero minutes of pushing. She fits right in around here. The Things are obsessed with her and I spend my days protecting her from their exuberant love. They think it's quite unreasonable that all she does is eat, sleep, and poop and are longing for the day they can make her laugh and play with her. We are all quite smitten. It feels like everybody's here now. Like our family's complete. And not being pregnant anymore feels fantastic, even if I am a sleep deprived, milky, weepy mess whose sh...

I worry about Christians today. It seems that we, as a whole, have a hard time being sensible. We seem to oscillate between extremes. As a church, we either embrace whole heartedly legalism and being Pharisees, or we fly the other direction and shun anything that looks like a firm opinion about right and wrong. Hard shells or free spirits. All rules or no rules. Neither are right. Neither are what we should strive for. And neither look like Jesus. I grew up under the thumb of legalism, and never even questioned it till I was an adult. Everything was sin. Don't do anything, like drinking or getting tattoos or dancing or listening to secular music, or voting Democrat, because it's all sin, and believers are supposed to be totally alien in this world. There was no room for the Holy Spirit there. But now, I've seen a great exodus of my peers that have flooded to the other camp. They spend more time complaining about the church than worrying about finding out what G...

It's a historic day. A long awaited, much prayed for, dreamed about day. It seems we've been ending a lot of chapters lately, ready to make way for the new words to fill the pages of our marriage. Our story continues. I didn't know it was possible to be this proud of you. I have always loved you. Always, without question, regardless of the circumstances. I loved you in your failures. In your hurts. In the trenches. And now I can love you in your triumphs. And to see you succeed makes me so proud of you. Not because you did this on your own. I watched you try that before, and the hardest thing I have ever done is watch you suffer in your failures. No, I'm proud of you because this time, you relied on Someone else's strength. You worked hard. You did what was required of you and more. You kept a good attitude during the struggle. Your faith gave you strength and endurance I've never seen in you before. And now you are reaping what you sowed, in the best way possib...

There's something wrong with our country. In 2009, the rate of Cesarean births in the United States rose to 34%. The World Health Organization recommends the rate should be between 10 and 15 percent in developed countries. In the last thirty years, we've blown that percentage out of the water. And it's not just America. Globally, c-section rates have exploded. In regions of Italy, rates vary from 44% to 60%, which some private clinics showing rates of 85%! C-sections are on the rise in places like Turkey, the United Kingdom, Brazil. China is the highest in the world with a whopping 46%. Half the women in China give birth by C-section. Which, I guess makes the USA's measly one in three not look so bad. But I live here, so I'll complain about here. Epidural use nationally is at about 61% It was hard to nail down statistics about Pitocin use and elective labor induction, but I did find an article saying that these rates had doubled in the ten years between 1992 and 200...

I have been doing things. Lots of things. Things that make me really sore. And tired. Nesting always kicks in during the third trimester, when my ankles swell and my joints ache and I can't bend or move easily and I get contractions from doing things. Why can't it come during the second trimester, after the puking stops and before I move like a beached whale? But at least it comes, I guess. And things get done. I only have two weeks until my deadline. I've given myself till 37 weeks to get all my big projects done, and hopefully most of my small ones. Thing Two was born at 37 weeks. I wasn't ready. I'm happy to share a few of the things I've completed. We've scored some major deals in the garage sale/thrift store arenas recently. I was scouring garage sales and craigslist for a long time looking for something we could use as extra kitchen storage. I was thinking a small hutch or something like that, but then I came across this cabinet at a garage sale. It ca...

Boy or girl, our baby essentially will have one outfit upon its arrival, aside from the plain white onesies I've got stocked up. I have no girl clothes. And the boy clothes are all the wrong season. I'm not worried though. For one thing, it will be hot. Onesies and a light blanket will do for a few days after he/she's born until I can send Hubby to the store to pick up a couple sleepers. With either gender, I know my sisters will supply me with stuff too. If I get around to it, I'll probably run to Once Upon a Child and see if there are any lightweight, gender neutral clothes. I did, however, purchase a "going home" onesie for a boy and a girl. Then, being the proficient homemaker that I am, I proceeded to hang them on the hallway cabinet handle. They've been there for weeks. Somewhere along the way, a silent war began surrounding those onesies. Without even noticing, I had hung the "Little Brother" onesie on the outside. I have a very visual mem...