One fast year

It’s nearly my daughters first birthday and I, like so many other mom’s, are sitting back and wondering where in the world the time goes.  To mess with my mind all the more it’s practically summer in during winter in WISCONSIN!  It’s so weird.  It’s going to be a high of 79 tomorrow and a high of 80 Monday and I’m wishing there were some ripe tomatoes and fresh greens in the garden to pull up and have a nice summer meal to go with this heat.

As I sit here and think back over the last 12 months I think of what a joy this one little girl has brought into my life and how I want to work to be the best each day for her and change so much about myself to give her the best possible life she can have.  I think about the day she was born often. Woken at 4am by labor pains and then her wonderful little body being placed on my chest right before midnight at 11:40pm.  I remember calling my mom right after and telling them her name and crying and wishing they were with me and feeling like Jolene was the best gift ever given to me.

I remember staring at her for hours and hours as if I just wanted to burn the image of her cute little face into my mind.  I think back to all the milestones she just seemed to hit without much/or any nudging from me.  She’s funny and is constantly making me laugh – like who knew babies were so funny? I guess the thousands of people who post funny baby clips on youtube.  It really is true what they say, it’s like she’s always been in my life.  She’s a healer and a laugher and a dancer.

Today was one of a couple birthday parties.  For sure this was among the largest and somehow we all just barely fit in our tiny little apartment.  I had been planning the decorations and the gifts for months.  Party hats (handmade of felt), Streamers (but in a tasteful way), Cranes dangling above the table, the first cake, her gifts of felt veggies and a hand sewn apron.  It really was a smash hit.  Jolene wasn’t quite sure what was going on during the Happy Birthday song – and I’m not even convinced she realized we were singing to her. She dug into her cake very slowly as if to wonder if she was indeed allowed to eat it and then thought it was so yummy at one point that she was rubbing it all over her belly.

Now as I’m about to pass out from being so very tired I wonder if this post even makes sense.  It’s been a great year with the love of my life and my favorite little Jolene.  Here’s to, hopefully, many more years of dancing and fun and birthday cakes.  Goodnight.

Alignment

Here I sit in a dark room, being quiet since Jolene is asleep, and just reflecting on life and how much has changed, in me and in my surroundings, in the past year. I’m currently obsessed with a song by Laura Hackett called Lowest Place. Give it a listen:

It says:

You said there would be joy in the laying down
You said there would be joy in the letting go
You said there would be joy in the giving up my rights
and now I see

The river it rushes to the lowest place
the river it rushes to the lowest place
the river it rushes

There’s more to it but currently those are the words I’ve been letting sink in. I feel so much healing and change in me lately. It’s hard to pinpoint or explain but there’s a deep uprooting of insecurity, anxiousness, and hurt and a deep deep well of Gods grace being planted inside me. I’m still a bit wobbly walking on these new legs but much more content and happy and full filled in all the right things (God) lately.

I’m so done and over with wallowing in all the things I can for sure work at and change (my weight gain and things in my heart that need to go). I’m so done with putting up with this feeling of needing to do what’s right according to every one else. For so long I’ve been trying to please others. I want others to be happy for me in happy times and grieve with me in the down times, and that can be good, but what was happening is that I was letting how I thought others would react effect what I did and didn’t do. Like I needed to be able to prove myself or explain myself and there wasn’t room for stepping out on a limb and trusting God about something within that mindset. If I perceived or feared others would see my actions in a not so good light, well then I would quickly climb back down to safe and steady ground. I don’t want to think about how much time I’ve wasted by fearing man. Fearing what others would think of my decisions. I’m finally starting to realize that I can’t live my life that way. I can’t tiptoe around on egg shells throughout my entire life and I certainly can not fear God and man at the same time.  It’s one or the other. So I started lessening my circle of influence.

I’m also very much done looking at what others have and feeling like what I have isn’t good enough. And this one is a hard one. It’s easy to look at other people and wonder if what you’re doing is right. I find this most commonly with raising my daughter. I’ve never been much of the type to attach myself to one style or system or logic of parenting and stay at that extreme. I look at the options, I look at what God tells me in His word, I pay attention to the god-given mothering instinct put in me, and most importantly I have to look at the ever changing and growing of my daughter – because I’d be lying if I said I didn’t have to constantly be on my toes and shift with her as she grows. I’m also not under the mindset that if we are blessed with a second child that I can put on cruise control and do all the same things I’ve done with Jolene because Lord knows they will be completely different. In my mind there isn’t much time to relax and rest on auto pilot to raise a loving, respecting, joyful, and well nourished and rested young lady – read – not a complaint, I truly love and appreciate this life of raising my daughter. I’m really forming my own parenting style where sometimes I make all her food, and sometimes my sanity relies on a jar of canned summer vegetables from the store, and sometimes, yes I’ve fed my daughter bananas for breakfast and then again at lunchtime (gasp). What I’m trying to get at is I also sometimes have the tendency to look at other moms who are “doing it right” and wouldn’t dare put their child in a highchair, feed them from a plastic spoon (even if it is BPA free), and heaven forbid give them any canned baby food and I can start to feel unnecessarily inadequate as a mother. The reality is that I’m doing great, Jolene is happy and content and social 95% of the time, and our life is good.

I’m learning what is important and how to tune out what is not helpful and life giving and nourishing to my soul and keep what is iron sharpening iron, and what is encouraging, and loving. I’m not perfect and I’m for sure still in progress (always will be) but there is a for sure shift in me. An alignment with the only One who matters.

It’s been a while and I’m not even sure that anyone reads what I write here at all but here I am. This is more for me anyway.

Jolene is laying beside me sleeping. I like to call her Jols these days and can’t hardly believe it’s been over 7 months. It seems like every day something that fit her yesterday is now, suddenly, too short.

Life seems a bit hard lately and I’m a bit tired, all the time. I miss people who’ve made poor choices and don’t want anything to do with me so I feel silly. I just want to find a job but it’s the last thing coming to me easily. Jordan and I are trying to decide if he quits his second job if God will show up and provide and days like today where almost all our money is “spent” as soon as it’s automatically deposited into our account (don’t worry, got enough groceries to last two weeks) make me think we’d be crazy to quit and just assume everything will work out. Or are we crazy not to trust. hmm.

Sweets

I’ve grown to love the routine of nursing Jolie, even at 3am when getting out of bed is the very last thing I usually want to do. This dear daughter of mine is sucking away at her middle of the night feeding while I admire the cutest parts of her personality that come out only when she’s doing her favorite task. She seems to smile while sucking and she’s never quite as content as when she’s here with me. In the hospital they taught me to move her arm around in circles, kinda like if she were swimming, to gently get her to wake up and continue eating. The other thing is that she, more often than not, skips all early hunger cues and just jumps straight to the screaming- even after having been nursing for an hour and you stop to change her diaper so transitioning to going back to sleep is easier. In the rare moments she decides to tell you she’s hungry without screaming, it’s the cutest thing, this is also true anytime she’s dreaming about eating. She’ll smack her lips while moving her arm in that circular motion, while also putting the opposite arm straight up in the air- because I’m always putting her arm up so that when I turn her towards me it’s in the right position for nursing.

I like to call her sweets, even though she seems to cry so much more than other babies and it’s been harder than expected dealing with her loud and fiery personality. No one can say I wasn’t warned though, 20 minutes after birth the nurse was already telling me that she was strong willed and maybe the other words used were high maintenance… I like to speak good and encouraging words over her feisty self because one can be sweet and wonderful while also feisty. I love who she is just the way she is.

Tonight is the first Friday night Jordan hasn’t had to work since early in our marriage. His schedule changed and even though it’s a hard change, I can sure get used to having every Friday night and Saturday morning/afternoon spent with him and Jolie. Tonight we took a walk and ate hamburgers with his parents. I sat outside a little while rocking Jolie in the beautiful weather and I have to say it was a proud moment as she lay in my arms so content with the breeze hitting her face and then fussed as I went inside. For the first several weeks of her life I was very worried she’d hate the outdoors since she fussed anytime we were outside. I’m looking forward to spending lots of time learning to garden together and exploring nature and doing one if my favorite things- laying in the grass on a hot summer day.

This momma is content- and at 4:30am very sleepy now. goodnight.

A whole lotta music

I knew that I wanted to have music playing during parts of the labor and delivery of our sweet Jolene.  I knew this at the start of the pregnancy and thought long and hard which songs I wanted to play.  Music has always been really important to me and I usually remember different seasons and times in my life based on the music I was interested in during those times.  For instance a few days before Jolene’s birth I got caught up in listening to a new, live album that Denison Witmer is soon releasing.  You can listen to the entire album on his bandcamp and that’s exactly what I did.  And I cried happy joyful tears because his music reminds me of falling in love with my husband, Jordan.

Several days before her birth I settled on a play list I was happy with and burned it to CD. Labeled Baby. Some of my most favorite music was on that disc – all calm, mostly instrumental (but good instrumental from the movie soundtrack Sweet Land). Patrick Watson, Enter the Worship Circle, Bon Iver, Andrew Belle, Joanna Newsom. Perhaps one of my favorite songs was this:

To Build a Home by The Cinematic Orchestra (sang by Patrick Watson)

I would hear this playing during labor and know why I was doing what I was doing. We were building a home, something richer than any physical house could be. “Out in the garden where we planted the seed, there is a tree that is as old as me” – ever since hearing these lyrics I’ve wanted to plant a tree when each of our children are born. Now to see if my in-laws will let me plant a tree in their yard on this first year of Jolene’s life.

When I hear the music that played on Jolene’s birth day I remember everything that was so wonderful about that day. I also like to think she feels a bit more settled and calm when I play these songs for her to hear. I never want to forget these little parts of her life. I never want to forget which songs were playing when she was born either. I added the music on to CD in random order. Turns out, at a time of a lot of pushing and her birth so close the song Winnowing the Wheat by Mark Orton (Sweet Land soundtrack) was playing. The song is a bit more intense then the others on the soundtrack. It plays during my favorite part of the movie that has a lot of meaning to me. I could describe it to you but I somehow think it best for you to just see the movie. Here is a trailer:

Then when she came the song Woods by Bon Iver came on.

In my mind there was one song that I wanted to play when she was born. I’m not sure why but maybe because it’s one of the most meaningful songs to me. It didn’t play right when she came out BUT at the time where Jordan and I were admiring her and so thankful for this new little girl that we FINALLY were able to meet and see with our eyes the song played. Your House by Enter the Worship Circle was the song. Not a big deal to many but to me it had and still does have meaning.

We sing as people God set free
You dream the very best, You dream
and then we know, we know
a home is what we make with You
You love Your children, yes You do
we are Your house, Your home

There are things I want my daughter to know, to care about. I want her to care about the poor and the broken. I want her to know that her home is in God. I want her to know that loving God and loving others most times looks very different than just “being a christian”. She will be her own woman with her own passions, desires, and dreams but I want her to know what loving others looks like and man do I still have a long way to go.

Then…

One great thing about Jordan’s job at the school is that he had Spring Break completely off and with the knowing that we wouldn’t be lacking any paychecks. We’ve never had that before and it was so nice – even better that his spring break landed a week after Jolene’s birth. It was such a huge help to have him up with me at night and helping rock her to sleep. Much more than that it was a sweet time of bonding as a family for us and a time where I would look at Jordan and know exactly why I love him so much and why this man was and is the only man I ever wanted to marry. We kinda got into this groove of him keeping me company at night while I nursed and to keep us both awake we’d watch tons of you tube videos and talk about our passions. One video that we found during that sweet week was this by Jenny & Tyler called Faint Not. It’s currently a favorite and yes, I listen to it over and over again until it’s words are burned into my memory.

Other videos we watched, probably way too much during that week:

Bon Iver singing For Emma, Forever ago (take away show by Lablogotheque)

and I can’t embed the Radiohead video for Lotus Flower so you’ll just have to follow the link.

I think that’ll give anyone a good dose of youtube for now.

leading up to the great birth

Here I am, alone in my apartment all except for this sweet sleeping girl all curled up on my chest.  I like having her here with me.  I sit and picture her still inside my belly and wonder how she ever fit in there even though she only weighs one ounce more than her birth weight.  I waited so long for her to be here and now she is – it’s funny how that works.  I thought about who she was so many times, only having an inkling that she was in fact a she but while still in the womb she could have easily been a he and I would have never known the difference.  I think about the day she was born often and I feel blessed that it is such a rich and joyful memory to me.  There were many details of the labor and delivery I knew I couldn’t possibly have control over but I wanted everything to go a specific way.

The week leading up to the birth I lost all interest in talking to people in general.  I was getting tired of people looking at me like I was going to go into labor right in front of their eyes – all the while I myself was feeling no different than I did at month 7 (except for the growing belly).  I thought for sure I’d never go into labor and I didn’t want any more reminders that I was no closer that day then I was the day before (or at least that’s how I felt).  It was 4am on Sunday morning (the morning after the “super” full moon), March 20th, that I had my first contraction and by 11:00am when we were trying to decide about going into the hospital I finally felt as though this child was about to be born.  The bags had been packed and waiting for weeks (literally weeks).  The house virtually spotless because I always like a clean house when going away for longer than one evening and I had nested a week before the birth and finished everything with much time to spare. I never want to forget how I felt that day (well…  I’ll be fine to forget the pain).

Driving to the hospital while in active labor, hoping they wouldn’t send me home.  Not being able to find a close parking spot and instead walking further than desired with what seemed to be all the belongings you’d need for a weeks vacation.  Stopping in the hallways to make it though the contractions.  Sitting in Triage for two hours waiting for them to let me get to a room (and all I could think about was getting “comfortable” in the tub). Our amazing doula, Katie, arriving right when we got into our room.  The midwife hanging twinkle lights above my bed so I didn’t have to deal with the harsh hospital room lights.  Jordan holding my hand tightly during each contraction and forcing me to sip water in between.  Realizing I was going to be strong enough to go without medication for my new little baby.  Feeling Jolene move and hearing her good heartbeat throughout labor.  Being able to change positions and move around the room as my body felt the need to make a change and shift around.  Finally becoming aware that the midwife was going to let me start pushing and feeling like I was pushing for hours and hours (only to find out I only had to push for 48 minutes).  Knowing it was finally almost over when they let me touch the top of her head as she was crowning.  The songs on my play list that played during labor and birth. Oh – that feeling when she comes out and they lay her straight onto my belly.  Jordan announcing that she is a girl! Feeling more in love than ever before with my husband Jordan as I watch him be dad (he would prefer to be called pappy) to our little girl.

Man, I love him and I love her.  I’m feeling very blessed by my little family.   I just don’t want to forget a thing about this new life laying here on my chest.



Welcome March

It’s been a while since I’ve posted here.  My main reason?  Because I’ve reached my limit for the photos I can upload to wordpress and I haven’t brought myself to the point of figuring out a different solution.

I can’t believe tomorrow is March 1st and I will officially be 37 weeks pregnant.  It seems like it’s taken forever to get to this point and I’m trying very hard to just enjoy these last few weeks of pregnancy (or however much time I have left) and not think too much about going into labor but I really really want to go into labor soon!  I probably should be like everyone else who wants their baby to stay in as long as possible to come out in the best of health but I feel this baby is strong and healthy and really – I have no control over it anyway so I guess I can wish for it all I want and it’s not going to change anything. Today we had our last ultrasound.  I originally wasn’t interested in having another (we technically should have gotten 4 ultrasounds over the last 4 months since our 20 week US but I said I’d only do one – maybe two) but the midwife asked if I’d be willing to have a second growth ultrasound so I agreed that would be just fine.  Turns out this baby is doing more than fine off that single artery umbilical cord and is weighing in at over 7 pounds with still at least a 1/2 a pound to gain each week!!  A little frightening but I’m excited for our little chubbawubba baby and just happy the head is measuring average.    We also could tell the baby had hair!  I’m so excited.  I always pictured our little one with a bald head but that will not be the case.  We also saw baby doing what the tech called “practice breathing”.  SO CUTE.  It’s really interesting getting to see an ultrasound this late in the pregnancy.

Today I purchased a few last-minute items (nail clippers, oil for cradle cap, baby wipes, but I held off purchasing newborn diapers – we might pick those up on the way home from the hospital just in case I deliver a 8+ pound baby).  I’m feeling a huge urge to hurry and get everything in order, a bag packed for Jordan and I at the hospital, the curtains and mobile finished *hopefully tomorrow*, and the last of discussion topics for Jordan and I to talk about before baby comes.

This feels a lot like just a bunch of rambling – and maybe so…  Maybe next time I post will be to introduce baby   Hope everyone had a great February!