Baby Thoughts

So I went to the doctor yesterday to find out I'm almost 2 cm dilated, and that baby girl is about 7 pounds. Which is right on cue for delivery time based off history. I was 3cm with Josh when I went into labor, and just over 1 with Jack, Josh was 7 pounds 8 ounces and Jack was 7 even.

My midwife asked if I had my bags packed and gave me her personal cell number (I love my midwife, she's AMAZING!), pretty good signs I better get ready.

Which is what I've been trying to do all week. We have a lot that we're involved with and or obligated to now days so we've been trying to wrap up all the loose ends and make plans to make life as easy as possible for the transition.

I have a freezer full of food, lessons plans ready to go for church, a baby room finished, Valentines for Josh's school party ready to go, and a clean house. Tonight I get to go out with my dear friend Lia to get pedicures and go to a fun restaurant. Chris is having a guys night with the boys and getting them pizza and treats. Tomorrow is supposed to be sunny and up to 60 so after Josh's baseball tryouts (yes we are doing baseball this spring, and yes we agree we may be crazy for it, but he loves it and so do we) in the morning we are headed to pick up some last minute supplies from Babies R Us. And make a stop at the toy store next door for Josh (and probably Jack as well) because he has spent the entire week on on GREEN! Which means his behavior has been impeccable, no warnings or anything all week long, and he's been a big helper at home! Then hopefully head outside to the park for awhile and grill out for dinner.

Sunday we have church and then hopefully we'll get some more outside time with the boys. Monday evening I'm going out with all the girls in my womens bible study for dinner.

Lots of fun before baby time. Hopefully. And admittedly, I'm trying to focus on that.

While I'm super excited about getting to fill our pink room, and having someone to put all those cute clothes on, and finally meeting our baby girl and seeing what color of hair she has...I'm a little bit anxious as well.

There is no naiveté with this birth. With Josh I had no idea what I was in for, and with Jack I thought if I just had a VBAC instead of the c-section it wouldn't be as bad. Now I know that it doesn't matter which way you give birth, it hurts like hell.

On top of that, there are lots of other unknowns. We haven't changed baby girls diapers. We don't know if a baby girl will be smaller than what we are used to, if nursing will work out, if we'll be able to pick up our normal routine quickly...

Plus, I've gotten accustomed to boys. I know what they are into, how to play with them, the different "phases" (Cars, Trains, Superheros, etc). I've spent quite a bit time educating myself on what makes them tick and how I can help them grow into men of God. While for the most part I think I mentally get them, it is a bit different. I know enough to feel like we're doing most of it right, but I don't know just how deeply different things can affect them so there is a certain naivete to just how badly I may be screwing them up.

With a girl, I know what makes her tick, and I know how one comment can get in your head and stay with you. I know how different images will impact her and make her feel. I know that she wants to feel beautiful and treasured and while Chris and I will do our best to make her feel that way, only God can truly satisfy that desire. Knowing what being a woman of God is, and all that can happen along that path and now getting the opportunity and responsibility to try to raise one is pretty intimidating.

I know I'm going to fail. I know in some way I've already failed with the boys. It's inevitable, I'm a sinner, and that's what we do, and thankfully there is grace and forgiveness, so far from both God and my children. I think with a girl I will be more in tune with how I am failing though, and that scares me a bit.

So in the days before birth that's where I am: excited anxiousness.

Trying to trust God with my fears and not put so much pressure on myself. Besides, it's His daughter too, as am I and He's got both of us in His hand.

Baby Shower

Sometimes when I look at our life right now, I almost have to shake myself. Admittedly I asked God way too many times if we would get to a point like this in our lives. Thankfully I feel as though He has chosen to honor our following Him down many bumpy paths with a season of life full of blessings.

One of the biggest blessings we have had since moving to GA is the blessing of friendship. Going two years in CT without any social contact whatsoever we were thrilled just to have people talking to us in stores when we first moved down here. To think that in 2 1/2 years we are at a place where we have friends that feel like family, have people that love us enough they don't mind watching our kids while we have another one, and go out of their way to help and bless us humbles me to no end. Only by God's grace.

Four of my sweet friends (my friend Emily didn't make it into the picture above) helped throw me and baby girl a shower a couple weeks ago. It was beautiful, and delicious, and a day I will always remember. Not only did they go out of their way to make the day special for me (like they knew I think most shower games are cheesy, so we played Scattegories, and they knew I loved cheese, so there was a cheese tray, and so many other special touches...) but I was amazed at how many people came.

That may sounds silly, but my out of town guest list was longer than my in town guest list, and none of our family or friends were going to be able to make it in that day. As a general rule you only expect half to three quarters of your guest list to show up, but almost everyone on the list was able to come. And they all brought such sweet and thoughtful gifts for baby girl.

Even thinking about it I feel overwhelmed with love. It was an incredible day, not just the friends and food and gifts, but dwelling in God's mercies, grace and blessings in this period of life and doing my best to take it all in.

Two and a half years ago we were begging Him for His guidance and will. We were thrilled just that it led to us leaving Connecticut. In the past two years we have asked for close friendships, a church where we could serve with our talents and that was consumed with Jesus and His word, another baby, and then more specifically a baby girl.

So grateful we serve an abundant, loving God who hears us.

Baby Girl's Room

We finally finished the baby room! Much excitement to be had!

Believe it or not, this is the first nursery we have gotten to decorate. We moved a month after Josh was born, and 10 days after Jack was born. So one our third, and possibly final kid we got to decorate a nursery.

My wonderful husband happens to have (among many talents) wonderful decorating taste, so he had just as much input and guidance (as well as work!) for the room as I did.

The furniture has all been refinished, and the chair recovered. The tissue balls, flower art, and bow holder/memo board were all made by me.

We love how the room turned out. Both of us usually wonder down the hall before bed just to glance at it, or we'll sit and chat for awhile in it. It's so calm and soothing. A pretty big difference from the crazy red boy room down the hall.

Now we just need a baby girl to put in it!

Christmas Update

So now that it's almost February, I'd like to update y'all on Christmas : )

I'm hoping to crank out a few posts on here in the next couple of days...we'll see.

We had decided back when we knew we were pregnant that we weren't going to be traveling anywhere for the holidays. 10+ hour trips are interesting enough with two boys and adding the uncomfortability of being pregnant was less than appealing to both of us.

We welcomed our family down to our neck of the woods but as it turned out for Christmas day it was just out family. Some good friends of ours were in the same boat and so we invited them over for the day of.

Knowing that we were going to be spending the holidays with any packing to do, or wrapping more intensive than what would survive shipping, we decided to put that time to better use.

Josh is getting to the age to where he is easily engulfed in the materialism of the world, much to my dismay. Hearing talk of the upcoming holidays and how it mainly surrounded presents we wanted to give things a different focus. This is always our goal, but we took some extra steps this year to help avoid it.

We wanted to step out and do something that I'm sure seemed a bit crazy to everyone else. Having both lived in another country and being been in areas that are less than comfortable we both believe fairly strongly that there's only so much you can teach someone about the rest of the world, and beyond that they have to see. We both though Josh was getting old enough where he could handle, and even benefit from seeing.

Some friends of ours have a parking lot they know of that always has a lot of homeless people in it. Each year they gather as many coats as they can and take it down. After hearing her talk about it, I thought it would be neat if we could pack a ton of sack lunches and head down there with them. Kids in tow, Josh helping hand them out.

After some bumps and divine guidance we ended up on street corner passing out jackets and lunches. We had a ton of coats and over 100 lunches and passed out all but a couple of coats. Josh was out there with us for about half an hour handing the lunches to the people.

It was so rewarding. As serving always is, but we've never gotten to do it as a family before and invest in our kids this way, and there just aren't words.

Now let me say the day did not go perfectly by any means. Jack was crying in the car for about a half an hour because he needed to poop but didn't want to. Josh was only outside for half an hour and then spent the rest of it wreaking havoc on our car. I was on high alert the entire time as I saw people shooting up just across the road and people walking very close to our car with a DVD player in it and my two children.

But it was SO worth it. We were talking and processing things on the way home asking Josh what he thought about all of it. I asked him is he was scared at any point, and he didn't seem to understand. He asked what he would be scared of. Even though we had explained to him before hand that not all of these people were nice people and he needed to be careful and stay by mom and dad, he still viewed them as just people. Not good or bad, just people we were supposed to help. He had also spent a good five minutes chatting with one guy in particular named Jeff. He started praying for him that night.

We did Operation Christmas child and both the boys helped pack a box for two boys similar in age. My small group of women also got the opportunity to go serve at a processing facilities so I got the tell the boys about that as well.

Chris's work did a food drive and we had both of the boys help us pick out food for that. Chris was also able to help get a bunch of extra coats for when we went downtown form his work.

Also when we sent out Christmas lists we asked everyone to refrain from getting us toys. And more importantly they listened : ) That was huge right there. There was still plenty he was thrilled about (most of even more so than toys that typically get tossed aside a few days later) and he got money and gift cards which he enjoyed and was a huge blessing to us. So far we've gotten the boys the last of what they needed clothes wise for winter and enrolled Josh for baseball all on someone else's dime, and had a couple of fun family nights out at Chick-Fil-A.

Finally we controlled the tone of the day. We went to a Christmas Eve service and a surprise blessing was that kids Josh's age and up stayed in and listened. We're still having conversations off of what he heard that night. Because we were out late the boys slept in a bit and we got up and instead of diving right into presents we sat down to breakfast together. While we were eating we read the Christmas story from our bible and the boys childrens bible (Jesus Storybook bible, SO GOOD!). And then we talked about it, and what that meant for us. We finally got around to stockings and presents and took our time with those as well. The day allowed more time for reflection and capturing the moments. It was wonderful.

We missed having family around on Christmas, however we've learned that some of those times can be a blessing in disguise allowing us to become more established in our own traditions and control more of the focus that we choose to be important for the day. As much as we missed having family around we were thankful to have more time and capability to be more focused on communicating what the day was about to our kids.

So that was Christmas. I think Josh in particular learned a lot from our unrelenting discussions and inclusions in serving. Hopefully we will get a chance to do some of the same things next year!