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I have a sourdough starter in my refrigerator. It’s been there for months. When I first made the starter, I had grand visions of delicious sourdough bread. However, life happens and before too long it was placed into the back of the fridge on the shelf of forgottenness. Back when I started the starter (heh!) I named it Goob, after the adorable character from Disney‘s “Meet the Robinson’s.” If you’ve seen the movie, the rest of this post will make sense to you. If you (by random chance) haven’t seen it, drop everything and go watch it. Seriously. It’s amazing.
So at any rate: Goob was good to me, and then I abandoned him, and now he stinks.
I opened the fridge today to put away some pizza, and there sat Goob. My failure out front, in the open, for all to see. I turned to my husband and sighed.
“I’ve got to take care of poor Goob. I’ll try to look it up tomorrow and see if there’s anything I can do to save him.”
My husband immediately pops up with: “Go back in time, don’t neglect him so much.”
I love my husband.
Dear Benjamin,
Last week you turned the big TWO!! I was reading the letter I wrote you at 21 months and it’s amazing how much you have changed. Even over just a few months you change and grow.
You still talk and talk and talk. You love to run through the house, play with swords, and tickle Mommy and Daddy. The dogs drive you crazy (especially Frankie), and when you and Frankie are energetic and chasing each other you both drive US crazy. We’ve been swimming half a dozen times this summer and if I put you in your swim donut you can swim around the pool yelling “Kick! Kick! Kick!” as your legs frantically propel you forward. It’s a joy to watch.
We had your birthday party the day after your actual birthday. Lots of friends and family came over. I made you chocolate and vanilla cupcakes with chocolate and vanilla ice cream. You started crying when I lit the candle on your cupcake and everyone started singing. I’m not sure why – maybe the attention? Maybe the singing? However, as soon as we were done and you got to eat the cupcake, you were much better!
You got some neat toys for your birthday and love to play with them. Lots of animals and blocks and cars and trucks. Puzzles and dinosaurs and oh, my, the vehicles. Our house has become a speedway and you are the driver of racing machines darting in, out, and over the couch.
We took a trip to California almost two months ago. We were worried about how you would do in the plane, but we shouldn’t have worried. You love any kind of vehicle, planes included. Daddy sat next to you on the plane and talked about how you were going to go really, really fast, and go up, up, up! You loved it. We rode in the car for ages and ages, and you rarely fussed about it. We drove through random subdivisions in Elk Grove, and you asked if we were going to Mae Mae’s house! It was the cutest thing, and you made Mae Mae’s mom giggle about it when I told her. We went to a wedding for my best friend Amy. You love Amy, and you loved dancing at Amy and Keith’s wedding. We went to Monterey Bay Aquarium, and you had such a blast hanging out with your 3 cousins. We went camping (which you LOVED) at my old camping site in California. It was heart-wrenchingly beautiful to see you scale the same rocks I had scaled as a child. To see you in the “rock club” and down at the water’s edge was an incredible experience for me. Even though the water was freezing cold you stood in it until your feet turned to chubby little icicles, and you loved it. Watching you eat s’mores with your cousins is a memory I will treasure forever.
A few weeks ago we travelled to Senatobia, Mississippi to visit Papa’s parents. Mimi and PaPaw loved you, and we loved visiting them, and you had a good time running around their house and showing off. A mere week after that we went down to Houston for your cousin Austin’s graduation. Each road trip you demonstrated your willingness to sit still when needed, your love of movement, and your love of music. I love how you love music.
Son, I’ll be honest, because it’s my letter and I’m allowed to be: I don’t know what the future holds for you. What I do know is that you capture the attention of people – your joy, your mannerisms, and your movement. Watching you is like watching life take place – it’s like observing the best the world has to offer. Maybe you’re just like every other two-year old on the planet, I’m not sure. I hope that I can teach you to harness that attention-grabbing skill and use it to better the world around you. I know that living with you teaches me every day the meaning of slow down. Observe. Breathe. Love. Be patient.
Your Daddy and I talk about you, often, after you’ve finally given up and gone to sleep. We lay in bed, snuggled, and talk about whether or not we’re doing a good job (most days we think we’re doing OK). Recently we were talking about your exposure to television and video games. We don’t want to shelter you from the world and its issues, but we don’t want to desensitize you either. It’s tough to say “No, we won’t play this video game while Benjamin is awake, because it depicts violence too accurately,” but that’s exactly where we are at.
This world is dangerous and violent and broken, son, and you’ll have your whole life to learn that. I hope that we can teach you about the beauty of the world first, and it’s dark side later.
Eventually, Lucky will die, and you will learn grief. Eventually, you will ask where Mommy’s parents are, and you will see me cry. Eventually, you will ask why Jesus hangs on the cross, broken and beaten, and you will learn about sacrifice.
Our hope, though all of that, is to teach you about love. Love that shines through grief and brokenness, love that taught Mommy how to heal, love that makes Daddy get up even on the days when his depression beats his heart and soul, love that put Christ on the cross and love that triumphs all of the dark things in this world.
However, before you have to learn all of those things, I want you to know joy. I want to continue to see my baby boy, beautiful and full of grace and energy, running around squealing with laughter. I want to continue to love you so much it hurts. I want to see animals for the first time all over again, though your eyes. I want to continue to chase the dogs in the backyard until we collapse into fits of giggles. I want to dance with you in the living room until I’m sweaty and exhausted. I want these good and wonderful things for you so that when darkness seems to sneak in, you can remember the things from the light.
I hope you understand, one day, how hard it is trying to figure all this stuff out. I hope you have enough grace to forgive us when we mess up. I hope I have enough grace to forgive myself! But either way, we’ll muddle through this crazy adventure together. Being a Mommy is quite an amazing experience in general, but being Mommy to you – well – I think that’s my favorite job yet.
I love you son, happy 2nd birthday.
Love,
Mama
Dear Benjamin,
You are 21 months old! Holy cow! I am not sure I realized how much you would change between 18 months and 2 years – but here you are, growing and changing so fast I can barely keep up.
You talk. A lot. I know every parent thinks their kid is special, but when I read an article on temper tantrums that says kids under 2 1/2 ”usually have a vocabulary of only about 50 words and can’t link more than two together at a time” I have to wonder about you telling me to “wait a second please” or to “come play pool please” at 21 months. Obviously you are not a “usually” kind of kid when it comes to talking. So while I don’t think you’re necessarily a genius, in some ways you are just like me. Sorry in advance for all the grief this will cause you.
Your dad came up to me about two weeks ago and said “Baby! I just had one of those moments that make being a parent worth all the hassle” and told me about how you and him were staring up at the sky watching an airplane and he was telling you all about planes and the sky. A few minutes the plane flew by you looked up at your daddy. “Go?” Your Daddy asked you where you wanted to go. You pointed to the sky, “Up der.” “Benjamin, how are we going to get all the way up there?” You stopped, like you were thinking hard, concentrating, then you threw your arms in the air and told your Daddy, “Jump!!”
You love watching TV and playing pool. If you had your way, that’s all you would do. You also love playing with blocks and puzzles, but those toys require fighting with the dog and Frankie likes to chew up anything he can get his hands on. When you wake up in the morning you ask for ”TeeVee, mommy, go dawnsteers, UmiZoomiez?” (Team Umi Zoomi!) or “Bubblebuppies” (Bubble Guppies). If you never learn how to correctly say “Bubblebuppies” I’ll be OK with that, you say it better than they do anyways. I try to limit your TV, but of course we’ve been sick so it’s been a good way to keep you entertained while Mommy and Daddy lay on the couch moaning about how much they hurt.
Pool. It drives me absolutely crazy that you’re fervently and passionately attacking the pool table with your dirty fingers, rubbing a broken stick across the felt, pushing the balls across the table and occasionally across the room… but it makes you SO happy. It’s one of the few things that I just have to learn to get over as a parent. It’s really because I’m jealous, though. My Dad wouldn’t let us play pool until we could demonstrate a respect for the pool table – and here you are, not even 2 years old, holding one of my Dad’s broken cue sticks (so it’s only half a stick) asking me to shoot the black ball at you so you can put it into the triangle. You’ve very proud that you know it’s a triangle, you tell me every time you pick it up and set it on the table. “Tri-gale” you tell me with a smile. I at least console myself with the fact that we can work on our colors, and shapes, and words while you play. You know most basic billiards terminology (stick, table, pool, balls, cue, rack, triangle) and can pronounce most of the colors (even if you don’t tell me which is which). You know some balls are striped, but you won’t correctly identify any of them by color. You just repeat them back to me as I say them – orange, black, blue striped, black, and on and on.
When you want someone to take you with them, whether it be to pick you up or just take you with them upstairs or downstairs, you hold your arms out and say “Take-um.” It’s so cute! We think it originated from us telling one another “Here, take him for me for a second?” We never correct you. “Take-um, Mommy!”
Bedtime has been a challenge lately. You want to do so many things and you don’t want to stop and slow down. When we would put you in your crib you would jump up and down, holding the railing, until you launched yourself onto the edge and flipped over… which would have landed you on your head had I not been there to catch you. I found you a toddler bed for $35.00 on craigslist and immediately reserved it. As I was researching how to transition you (you’ll learn about how I obsessively research everything) it said not to jump to conclusions as soon as you tried to get out of the crib, most kids aren’t ready till they’re closer to 3 years old, blah blah blah. You were trying to pole vault! What was I supposed to do? So transition you did. It only took one failed attempt, then we both got the hang of it. You seem to like your “big boy bed.”
At bedtime we usually read a book – the bible storybook, or the farm animals book, or Green Eggs and Ham, or Mr. Brown. You love things that rhyme and/or involve animals. Sometimes, instead of reading (or after reading), you’ll ask me to sing. “Sing, Mommy?” and oh, son, I love it when you ask. I don’t have an angels voice, but I love that you still want me to sing to you. Those are sweet, precious moments with you.
But it’s tempered with reality. A few short minutes later when I get up to leave, you start screaming bloody murder. I have to rush out of your room and quickly shut the door so when you run to follow me all you get is the cold reality of a door you can’t open. You sob, then retreat back to bed for a quick cry before settling down. I hate leaving, but staying is even worse because you’d never sleep then! It’s cruel, but you need your nap and I need time to fold laundry and watch reruns of Bones. Trust me, it’s for the best.
You have temper tantrums – usually because we won’t give you soda, or let you watch 2 hours of TV, or you didn’t take a nap, or you’re tired, or you don’t want to go to bed, or get dressed. But they don’t last long, and I can usually distract you.
This is getting long, but here are a few more things I don’t want to forget:
“Go disway” while pointing in different directions, the way you call a slice of cheese “maccheese” and wail if you don’t get “peekles” from the fridge, “No Frankie No!” while swatting at both dogs, the way you say shout “kick!” when kicking the soccer ball, how much I enjoyed dancing with you and Daddy at Teresa and James’ wedding, jumping on the trampoline at cousin Noah’s birthday (and then again at Ms. Leslie’s house), how when I ask you to use your manners you look at me and say “manners? (pause) peas mommy peas” while making both hands into fists and rubbing them both across your tummy (which is only a little bit correct), the way you have been giving hugs back, the way you love to climb on my back and “run run” with me through the house, the way you help me knead dough,
the way that I love you even when you’re driving me crazy.
Thanks for being cute,
Love,
Mama
In honor of Valentine’s Day (which I actually thing is a lame holiday) I saw a few bloggers I read doing this and I thought I’d join them and tell you guys a bit about my hubby and I!
1. How long have you and your significant other been together?
Justin and I started dating in August, 2006. Our first date was a baseball game!
2. How did you meet?
I worked with this lady named Charla at my old job who had two kids. We hung out and became friends and before too long I was going to her house to hang out with her kids, go to dance recitals, go to ballgames, that sort of thing. Her nephew moved in with her a while after we became friends to help with childcare. Her nephew was this moody guy who didn’t talk a lot who was a little older than I was. He was completely off my radar but Charla kept telling me about how funny and nice and clever her nephew was. I would occasionally talk to him at one of the kids ballgames. He slowly became more of a person and less of a fly on the wall, and one day I realized that there was a lot more to him than met the eye.
3. If married, how long have you been married?
We got married July 24th, 2007, this year will be 5 years! Woohoo!
4. Where did you get married? Big or small wedding?
We got married at the Arch of Reno wedding chapel in Reno, NV. We eloped, so it was a ridiculously small wedding.
5. Do you have any nick-names that you call one another?
Not really anything other than the usual sweetie, darling, honey, etc.
6. 3 things that I love most about Justin.
Only 3?! Ok here goes:
1. The lines around his eyes when he smiles.
2. His spaghetti.
3. His passion.
7. How did he propose?
We were sitting in Arby’s eating and talking about our future and we had both kind of expressed the knowledge that we would spend the rest of our lives together. We were talking about paying for expensive things like wedding and Justin asked me, “We should just elope” and I said “sure.” It’s not the most romantic proposal you’ll ever hear, but it is one that is perfect for us.
8. Flowers and teddy bear or strawberries, champagne and rose petals for Valentine’s Day?
I don’t really put too much stock in Valentines’s Day. I can appreciate presents and romance and stuff, but I think it’s silly to only do it one day a year. It puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on guys to buy their significant other something to represent their feelings. I like taking a day to celebrate love, but I’d much rather get a present on a random Thursday for no particular reason (other than my awesomeness).
9. What makes ‘us’ work?
I could say honesty and communication (and those are both true), but the real truth is that “we” work because we balance each other out. I’m a perpetually happy, outgoing, slightly OCD, way over scheduling, over planning type-A person. Justin is the absolute opposite. He is a bi-polar introvert who has little desire or ability to envision the future and literally lives for the now. I could plan every single day of my life down to the minute and be perfectly happy. If Justin doesn’t have alone time and unscheduled time he gets cranky and stressed.
In some situations one would think being polar opposites would work to our detriment, but in our case it helps us out. Justin forces me to slow down and breathe because I have to “plan” downtime and make it a priority in our life. Sometimes it drives me crazy but it is always beneficial. And I force Justin to accompany me on social calls – dinner dates and parties and social gatherings. Which he usually hates, but he goes and knows it is good for him.
I think if we summarized our relationship that would be the best way to do it. We’re good for each other. He is the yin to my yang.
10. Most romantic thing Justin has ever done for me?
Depends on how you define romance. He once accompanied me to a fancy restaurant and dressed up and had a miserable time at my expense. A few days after we got married, he surprised me with a stunning necklace I had admired in the store previously. Is that romance? Really?
How about this: He rubs my feet after a long day even though he’s tired. He kisses me, and holds my hand. When certain songs come on the radio and I say “Baby dance with me,” he will, even if we’re cooking dinner, even if the baby is fussing and there’s chaos in the house (which there usually is)… he will take me in his arms and dance with me as if I’m the only girl in the world. At night in the summer when it’s too hot to lean against each other our pinkies intertwine. At night in the winter he moves his legs so I can place my ice cold feet against them so I can warm up. He let me play Skyrim first. To me, that’s more romance than dinner or a necklace or flowers.
Happy Valentine’s Day!
Last week was not a good week for working on my balance. However, it was an amazing week for working on my work-related development! I was able to take an instructor course that helped me learn how to create lesson plans, match a power point to said lesson plan (which I pretty much knew, but the review was beneficial) and teach within a certain amount of time.
Those of you who know me will not be surprised to hear the hardest part for me was keeping it within a certain amount of time 
Usually training is not very energy-consuming, but this class took up all of my time/energy/brain power to pass. It was very informative and definitely worth the effort, but I didn’t get to spend nearly enough time with the family. I’m really looking forward to next week, which will be much less stressful and unbalanced.
It’s interesting how much more mindful I am of the “balance” of my life now that I’ve listed that as my word to focus on this year. I always had issues with resolutions, and this is much less of a resolution and much more of a constant reminder – it seems to be working so much better.
I have grown to love bath time with Benjamin when he’s not being a complete and utter pain. He eagerly wants to help us wash him, as long as it’s not behind his ears. And I know I posted this on facebook, but it bears repeating:
Justin and I tend to give Benjamin baths together. It is one of the few, precious moments where we can be together and enjoy each other’s company without someone running away (ahemBenjamincough). One of our favorite things to do with Benjamin is teach him words. Words, my friend, are power. Words help people communicate and ask for their way!
So we teach him words, especially animals because that is the age he’s at right now. And he loves it. He loves horses, dogs, frogs, fish, turtles, sheep, pigs, cows, bunnies, dogs, bears, monsters, and did I mention dogs? So we’re in bath, and Benjamin has this mat from Target (which I love because of the Octopus, which is sadly not pictured). We ask him, where’s the shark? He points to the shark. Good job, Benjamin! Where’s the fish? He points to the fish. He also identified the octopus and the yellow fish (hey, it’s never too early for colors!)…the yellow fish thing might have just been a good guess, though, because he couldn’t find the green fish (or red fish, blue fish, haha, just kidding Dr. Seuss).
Then Justin asks him to find the frog. He starts looking. I get a bit confused - I’m looking at this very clear underwater sea diagram and thinking “oh no, am I losing it? I don’t know where the frog is!”
But then I spot a frog, beautiful and tiny and green, on the washrag floating in the water by Benjamin’s left foot. I look at Justin. He grins. “Snnneeeaaakky!” I tell him with a smile. He shrugs, “I know. I want to see if he’ll find it.”
Benjamin, meanwhile, is staring furiously at the bath mat looking for the frog. He finally expands his search, his eyes travelling around the length and width of the bathtub. His eyes dart back and forth, his tiny perfect hands still with dirt under their nails searching the air and water for the frog. He is still at this age where he searches with all of his being.
Finally… he finds it! He points to it triumphantly and says “FROG!”
My heart swells. Such joy from such a tiny creature, such love in these tiny moments. When this stuff happens, when my heart grows to bursting and my tears want to fall at the beauty of everything… it is in these brief moments that I feel the most balanced.
p.s. If you have a child (particularly a son) I highly recommend reading this.
Yesterday we really wanted to go eat out with a friend (who we randomly ran into) for dinner but we couldn’t because we hadn’t budgeted for it. I’m not going to lie, it sucked. If not for the strength of my husband, I would have caved and put it on a credit card.
So we didn’t eat out and the credit card was saved that expense. We went home and ate hamburger helper. And today, when we got paid, I sat down to pay bills saw how much money I had for groceries the next two weeks… and I was thankful my husband talked me out of eating out yesterday.
See, we are really trying to get our finances under control after all the health issues we had last year. Rebuild our savings, pay off the credit card (whoops), etc. It would be much easier if we didn’t have three weddings – two of which I’m an integral part of – and a new dog. Trust me, I am not complaining, I’m blessed to be a part of this important day for two people I care deeply for. And the new dog is adorable to watch. I’m just saying, it’s hard to save money when you want to spend extra money on fun stuff. Saving money is not fun. But sparkly things (and things that go ruff! ruff!) are definitely fun.
Luckily, my husband is a strong man who stands by me as I pout about not eating out. And pout about not buying cute shoes. And pout about not eating steak anymore. In the long run, he makes my life much, much more rich!
Two things. First: today is a good day. Not only did my wonderful, amazing, fantastic husband sleep slightly-less-comfortable last night so that I could get a good night of sleep (by sleeping with the bed at an angle, which makes me sleep deeper and him sleep lighter for some reason), but the visit with the doctor seems to have actually helped my breathing. A steroid shot in the hip seems to have reduced the swelling in my nose to the point that I can, once again, breathe. That plus two new prescription allergy medicines (xyzal and singulair) and I have FINALLY.. FINALLY woken up without feeling like I needed to immediately take a pain killer for the pressure in my head. Thank you Jesus!! Modern medicine once again helps!
Waking up able to breathe, feeling like I got enough sleep, it’s amazing what those two things can do for a person. I feel brand new. I feel like if this keeps up, I’ll be ready to start working on some other projects. Projects to help me get more balanced.
I initially thought that my primary goal this year was to get to my target weight. However, the more I think about it, the more I realize it is much more than that. When I think about how much work the weight loss is going to take, I realize that my REAL goal this year is to obtain a little bit more balance in my life.
See, I want to get down to my target weight (160) and I was doing REALLY good until December. Have you ever made 500 cookies over the course of a month and NOT put on a few extra pounds? So I was at 190 (I am putting my numbers on the internet, WHAT!) and now that the holidays are over I’m back up to 200.
200 isn’t bad – still better than my max weight of 250 (ohmywordIjusttypedthat) – but I have a extra problem there that has prevented that number from going down in the first half of the month. I’m going to say it. Are you ready? I quit smoking. Yes, yes, I smoked. I’m not proud, and most of you probably didn’t even know. It’s terrible, I know, but I honestly enjoyed it. I didn’t smoke around Benjamin, and I had quit when I was pregnant, but I didn’t stay quit. So anyways, I finally made up my mind that even though I enjoyed smoking, it was going to slowly kill me (and I didn’t want to die from something so stupid), so I quit. I’m done. No more. Not another single one in my life, I hope, so help me God.
But with me quitting smoking I’ve been having a very hard time controlling my eating. It’s kind of like, I finish a meal and I really want a cigarette but I can’t have one, so I think: “Oh, I’ll just have seconds, or maybe I can have something sweet to reward myself for not smoking!”… yeah. Not good. So one of the ways I have tried to cut down on my calories is by drinking more coffee in the morning. I’m up to about 4 cups before 10am on the days I work.
Do you see where the balance thing comes in?
I’ve been trying to be cognizant of these issues, even if I haven’t really taken much action to prevent the overeating. I’m self-aware enough to know that I can’t just change all my bad habits overnight. It’s frustrating, but luckily I can be patient. I have to ease in to this or I’ll stress myself out to the point that I cave and smoke. I don’t want that, but I also don’t want to be overeating.
Balance.
I think if I can figure it out, 2012 may be my best year yet.
Tomorrow is my final follow up with my surgeon that charged me 5k to do nothing to fix my nose.
Well, no, it is more like she charged me thousands of dollars for a surgery that was supposed to stop my recurring sinus infections that only repaired my deviated septum.
I’m not really sure what I want to tell her tomorrow. I feel like I was promised one thing, given another, and am powerless to do anything about it. Justin is coming with me and hopefully he will help me tell her how horrible the last few months have been health-wise. A sinus infection that lasts years is terrible. I’m tired of tossing and turning so I can breathe, I’m tired of blowing my nose, I’m tired of taking pain killers every day. I’m just tired of it.
So I will go tomorrow and paint her a picture. We shall see how it goes.
I’m having a hard time relaxing at my new house these days because there is still a lot of stuff that needs to be done. Boxes of junk to go through and I just honestly want to throw it all away. But I have to sort it – junk, to be filed, to be donated… and honestly I just want to take the box, dump it in my trash can, and be done with it. I realize people could use it, that I can donate it to a better cause, but honestly I don’t know that it’s worth my sanity at this point to do a good thing. But at any rate, I can’t just throw it all away – nevermind all that, there’s so many random boxes of junk that there’s no way to tell where all the really important stuff is! So I have to find it all by sorting through every single box. And it’s driving me crazy!
It’s driving Justin crazy that it’s driving me crazy, because I am (unintentionally, of course) resenting the fact that he can relax while I’m constantly feeling like I need to be cleaning or organizing or decorating or…something. This is much worse than at my prior house, but at my prior house I had everything unpacked and organized within 3 days. This has only been a little over 2 weeks, but with a kid and a family and a full time job it’s been a bit harder to organize. My OCD is going CRAZY. I only have a tiny bit of OCD, just a bit, but the little bit I have right now is making me anxious and irritable and making Justin miserable. Which, in turn, makes me miserable. Because no one wants to be the source of their spouses misery.
I am eternally grateful that Justin and I can handle our fights like two people who love each other and patiently explain back and forth what’s going on. But honestly, I just need to chill the heck out.
I find myself at an impasse, of sorts. So much has changed in my life in the last two years (losing my parents, having a child, getting out of debt, buying a house, living with so many relatives, etc) that I find myself in desperate need of some time to re-evaluate myself. I need some time to meditate on who I am, who I want to be, why I act the way I do and ways I can better myself. These things will make me a better Christian, spouse, parent, friend and worker. But I can’t adequately do that until I get everything finished at my house. And I can’t do that with so many interruptions.
I’m trying to relax. And I’m taking breaks here and there, just not like I need to be. I’m going to try to limit myself to 1 hour of cleaning after I put Benjamin to bed tonight – we’ll see how that goes. I honestly don’t think I realized how bad it was until yesterday. So I’m trying to fix it. Wish me luck.
This weekend was a constant stream of boxes back and forth, furniture turned upside down, heart-bursting help from my church and a 103.3 fever that had me scared. In other words, it was a busy weekend and I’m actually VERY glad to be back at work.
We moved this weekend, and at 10am Saturday morning, with the truck backed up on our lawn, we started seeing church members trickle into my house asking how they could help. I am not kidding, we probably had almost 20 people there to help. Pastor Tony brought some kolaches (we had actually bought some too, we wanted to keep everyone fed!) and in ONE HOUR we had all our boxes and furniture (with the exception of the pool table and our bed, which were moved the day before) in the moving truck. Amazing! We drove it over to the new house… everyone came back….and 40 minutes later everything was unloaded and in the correct room. After we were done Tony called Justin and I over into the garage and everyone prayed for us and our new home. I teared up. Every time I doubt I’m where I’m supposed to be God gently kicks me in the face and tells me I just need to realize I’m exactly where I need to be, of course.
Benjamin ran a fever most of the weekend. It started Thursday and went until Sunday morning off and on. It got so bad that we had to give him a cool bath. It was scary. We think it may have been some sort of virus, as he had 0 other symptoms. No noticeable ear problems or anything. And even though he was burning up, he stayed in pretty good spirits. That made me happy, that my son is happy even when he doesn’t feel good. It was a little tiresome to hold him all night each of those nights… but I just remind myself that he is a tiny scared baby who can’t tell me that he needs me close, and he won’t be this way forever. So I enjoyed the snuggle time and made the best of it.
Right now my house is in sad disarray, but I’m so excited about the house that I don’t mind. There are boxes everywhere and lots of little things to do, but I’m already enjoying being in “my” home. Most of the kitchen is unpacked, but the pantry still needs work. My room is a mess of boxes and bags of clothing and Benjamin’s room (which is kind of the most unpacked room of the house right now) still needs rearranging. I’m hoping to get my room unpacked this week.
I’m about to go back to dayshift, which is awesome and happy and exciting for me. We worked out an arrangement with my mother-in-law to watch Benjamin on the days Justin and I both work. We have yet to decide if we are going to stay on the same weekends off, but I’m leaning towards us having different weekends off to limit the babysitting she needs to do and also give us each time on the weekend with just Benjamin and either Mommy or Daddy. I think that time will be more important later on, and any weekends we want to do things together I can usually request off from work with a little bit of notice. But we shall see. It’s also nice of us to have weekends off together to go do things. There are a lot of pros/cons we have to figure out, but thankfully we can decide that stuff later on. After we unpack!
One of the most important things for us to do right now is organize and purge. We very desperately need organization in the house to ensure sanity in the coming years. Purging will help with that. So we’re on a mission to simplify our lives and I’m excited about the prospects.
If I can manage, sometime in the next week or two I’ll try to get some before/after pics of the house. It’s AWESOME, you guys. Seriously.
