Where the rubber meets the road

I'm not exactly sure what that saying means, and in fact my family often laughs at me for being "that MK" who either doesn't get a lot of those American sayings or mixes them up a bit. Either way, I think it fits right now. This is where the rubber meets the road, the true test for my joy in anticipation....will it wane with each passing day dilated at 5+ centimeters but still not birthing my child? will it wane with an evening of pointless cramping that doesn't turn into fruitful, productive contractions? Will it wane during my first sleepless night as precious moments of potential sleep pass me by? This computer tells me its currently 4:24 a.m and I've now been awake since sometime between 2 and 2:30, after getting up to go to the bathroom for the 4th time in 2 hours. Its a RARE night when I can't sleep. I love to sleep and it takes A LOT to keep me from sleeping, even during pregnancy. Until tonight. My mind swims with all kinds of random thoughts. Thoughts about our friends who were passing through on their way back to China and just left for the airport, thoughts about my friend and her family who today will make the little trek from Anderson to Cincinnati to finally meet the little boy from Africa who is now officially their son and meeting his new family for the first time in a few short hours, in the initial moments of me restless insomnia i stared through the darkness at the bassinet set up 3 ft. from my side of the bed and once again began to dream and wonder about the life growing inside me, I thought about my dad still in Peru going to meeting after meeting to sort through some recent church issues, I thought about my recent writings about Anticipation and how to guard my heart and keep the anticipation from turning to irritation, I thought about my sleeping 3 year old and how excited I am to see him interact with his little sibling, I thought about the whole chicken i forgot to get out of the freezer before going to bed, i thought about which organizational project i will tackle tomorrow since its looking like there still will be no baby yet...what haven't i thought about?! Its not the fact that I am slightly overdue that is hard for me to accept...its that I am already at least 5 cm dilated and so I built up an expectation in my head that in the next day or 2 I'd deliver. Cuz really, how long can one walk around 5 cm dilated without being able to complete the process and birth a child?!

I felt the waves of little body parts moving all across my belly and thought of that old school song that says
Waves of mercy, waves of grace
Everywhere I look I see your face,
Your love has captured me
Oh my God this love, how can it be?

So, even as I grow weary of waiting for this child I still have the choice. to choose to see His face, to see His love, to feel the waves of my God's mercy and grace in the little moments, even in the cramping and discomforts that seem to be leading me nowhere closer to true labor.

I thought about one of my favorite writers, Ann Voskamp, and her blog post on being a womb for God. Click the link for that must-read about comparing a physical womb, the dwelling place for my babe and the literal womb, my heart and life being a dwelling place for God.

I thought again about what I wrote about anticipation back on that December day when God planted a seed of inspiration in my heart that has turned out to be more significant for this joy and waiting journey than i could've imagined at the time.

ANTICIPATION
Peaceful Unhurried
Savoring, Beholding, Waiting
Eagerly Expect, Prayerfully Rejoice
Readiness

Do I continue to walk in a peaceful, unhurried frame of mind? Am i savoring and beholding the beauty of this period of waiting? Am I eagerly expecting and prayerfully rejoicing through each moment now matter what it holds? Am I living out this time in a way that will leave me dressed in readiness for my child's birth day and prepared to embrace what the future holds? Only by your help Jesus!

Soon enough our child will join us outside of my belly and each night will be filled with its own sleepless hours of nursing, burping, changing, consoling, etc. While I can I better hop back in bed and try a little harder to sleep!

Anticipation continues

In an earlier post I talked about Anticipation....anticipating the birth of Jesus through the Advent season and also anticipating the birth of our second child. Christmas has come and gone and our baby's due date, today, has come and almost gone. Although there are signs of this one arriving soon, who knows when it will be! I was pleasantly surprised to find out the other day at my appointment that I am already 5 cm dilated and 90% effaced. The midwife told me that she was the one that would be on call starting that night and through this coming Monday and alluded to the fact that she could very well be the one to deliver our baby. Since that's halfway to being full dilated I thought for sure I would've delivered by now, and I was really hoping that I'd deliver before my grandpa headed on to Florida friday morning. But here we are continuing to wait, wonder, dream, anticipate..... I realize this isn't that big of a deal, especially since it seems more common for women to go past their due date than to actually deliver early. This is just quite a different scenario than what we experienced with Lucas. He was 9 days early, according to the due date the midwives gave me so the waiting game wasn't quite into full effect like we feel it is now. I also never got this uncomfortable with him, and never had near as much braxton hix contractions, never got the groin pain, never had trouble breathing when I lay down, etc. I know I'm 31 now and have had 3 more years of wear and tear on this body since Lucas but 31 isn't that old! Or could it be harder due to the fact that i was actually in shape before and during my pregnancy with Lucas but have only exercised maybe a total of 5 times since giving birth to him? Or maybe its simply that each pregnancy is different and this one just happens to be somewhat of a harder different. Despite the aches and pains and discomforts, especially of these last days, I do embrace these days of anticipation and use them to continue to pray for this little one, its adjustment to our family and each of our adjustments to having him/her join us. It has been a sweet time of excitement and wonder and gratitude as I contemplate what this one might look like, be like, whether it is a boy or girl, how Lucas will respond to him/her, etc.

My mom joined us (along with my grandpa for a few days) on Wednesday. She's already been such a huge help and Lucas is having tons of fun having her here. We are all ready for whenever this active baby decides to appear. We've washed some boy clothes and the few cute little girl things that I bought this summer at a garage sale, some snacks I think I might want during labor are ready, my bag is packed (and repacked) and actually already in the van, friends are lined up and "on call" to keep Lucas for us so mom can join us at the hospital, and our friend who is a labor and delivery nurse has people lined up to help with her kids too so she can join us in the delivery room.... Everything I can think of to do to get ready for this baby has been done. And every time I get up to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night I wonder if this will be the time when my water breaks (like it did with Lucas), as if I've been promised that things will happen the same way!

Above all, I'm thankful that this time leading up to this birth has been a time of excitement and anticipation instead of fear. A time of preparation and nesting and even some good resting too. All we need now is a baby delivered!

Here's some due date pictures of the lazy day the 3 of us had while Derek was away for basketball and the intense storms kept us cooped up.

40 weeks!

we attempted to go to kohls (before realizing that wasn't the smartest idea due to the storms) and this is what Lucas insisted on wearing: his pijamas, hooded sweatshirt and his "hard hat" (a backwards yellow fireman hat he picked out at the dollar store yesterday!), with his new peruvian wallet too!

instead of shopping we pulled out the sofa bed and watched a horse movie

getting lots of good reading and playing time with this fun grandma while she's here for the birth

Pictures and news of our new baby coming soon hopefully!

Tomorrow??

Our sweet little 3 year old

This week has been a fun week in our home celebrating the life of our little man. On Wednesday the 11th, Lucas turned 3!

I had 2 trivial wishes for this week: The first was that our baby wouldn't be born on the 11th, I want our kids to have their own special birthday and not to have to share the day with a sibling (although I realize that wouldn't be the end of the world if it were to happen). The second wish was that the baby would hold off coming until we could make it through Lucas's birthday party with his little friends tonight. My wishes came true. The 11th came and went and we were able to focus on Lucas, and our kids (at least these 2) won't be sharing a birthday, and his party just ended a few hours ago. Success. The house won't be getting cleaned tonight but at least we successfully made it to and through the party without having to reschedule due to labor and delivery. Derek has the day off tomorrow for MLK day and a friend from church is coming over for breakfast, hopefully he'll be able to overlook the crumbs smashed into our hardwoods and the piles of dishes in the kitchen awaiting attention!

Here's the week in pictures:
On Lucas's actual birthday we took a trip to the library, then to my appointment with my midwife where he loves "helping" to hear the baby's heartbeat and also insists that his be checked too. Then we headed to visit daddy at school.

Later that evening we headed out to watch daddy coach basketball and then had dinner at a Mexican restaurant, a favorite of all 3 of us. Even though it was late when we got home we still made time for presents. A real saddle arrived in the mail from a special someone in Indiana. Lucas loves the gift...the only problem is he's wondering where the pony is and why he has to use a tub of baby clothes as a replacement

I make it a point to celebrate all the birthdays in our Thursday night community group so I of course had to make some cupcakes for everyone to celebrate Lucas. These were gluten and sugar free but definitely not flavor free! They were quite yummy and most importantly Lucas loved them! His party tonight was Curious George theme so I had some pictures of Curious George and a few of his friends to decorate the cupcakes.

Lucas is especially fond of "his Jill"

and "his Calvin"

Sometime before Christmas I started talking to Lucas about his upcoming birthday and asked him what kind of party he wanted to have. He couldn't really think of anything so I gave him some choices: a horse party, basketball, or Curious George. Horses and basketball are still his first loves but he has also recently become fond of Curious George and loves watching him on the PBS channel. And here he is ready and waiting for his friends to arrive to celebrate with him and Curious George!

Daddy giving the boys a pre-party pep talk to get 'em excited

rockin' out on the guitars while Kindergarten teacher Ryan Harry led the kids in some fun tunes

yes, there are 6 candles on this cake...a few extra just cuz my little guy loves to blow them out!
(the cake was actually a peanut butter pie with bananas, chocolate chips and coconut on top)

my sweet Atlanta friends: Mindy Pierce, Stephanie Harry, Sharon Koerber, Abby Norman, Jill Locklear....so blessed to have these ladies in my life

the guys enjoyed watching some football amidst all the birthday action

A fun time was had by all!

It was so great to be able to celebrate the life of our son with great friends.
Thank you to all of you who love our son so well and continue to support and encourage us along this journey called parenthood!

Christmas 2011

With baby due in less than a month after Christmas, we opted to stay close to home this year, just like we did when I was pregnant with Lucas. Nick came down to spend the holiday with us and made it in time to go to our church's Christmas Eve service saturday night. Afterwards Lucas posed for yet another foto shoot by the tree while the guys made some Mexican food for dinner.




Christmas day was for the most part just what I wanted it to be...more about being together and celebrating/remembering Jesus than a presents frenzy. Refreshing. Keeping up with my dad's tradition of making the family breakfast on Christmas morning, Derek fixed us a big breakfast of sausage gravy and biscuits with eggs and fried potatoes Then we skyped with mom and dad in Peru, and later the rest of the Hiatts in Indiana.

Grandpa and Grandma got to watch Lucas open the present they sent for him, a cajon drum the same as uncle Nick has. Nick brought his down with him so they had lots of fun playing together. I was too busy holding the webcam in the right direction so mom and dad could see him and didn't get any still shots of their concert. Another super special gift that Lucas got was a handmade nativity set from Grandpa and Grandma Strong. I've seen these at my aunts' house and envied them so grandma agreed to make one more set. I'm so glad she did and will forever appreciate the hours and hours of work that went into making each individual piece.

After the skype sessions we hooked up a projecter we are borrowing and watched The Nativity Story on the big side wall in our living room. Derek found the whole movie on YouTube and its captivating. It brought the Christmas story to life and will hopefully be part of our Christmas traditions for years to come.

We stayed in our pajamas most of the day, I think i finally took a shower and put on "real" clothes around 6! I figured since we were roasting a duck for dinner I wanted to look and feel a little more presentable for such a fancy feast! Derek wanted a traditional Christmas dinner consisting of turkey, mashed potatoes, green beans, etc. In the end we opted for fresh duck and rabbit from my uncle's dressing plant in Rochester, IN, specially delivered by Nick.

We decided to just roast the duck and threw the rabbit in the freezer to bust out for a celebration when the baby comes in January! The guys thought it was a little overcooked, and maybe it was but it was tasty (with a honey maple glaze on top) and it looked exactly like the picture on the internet recipe. AND it was a pretty fun, unique experience to have duck in our own home for Christmas.
At 8 PM we finally sat down to this yumminess: roasted duck, spinach salad with herbed goat cheese (another specialty from my family's farmer's market in south bend, IN), mashed potatoes and green beans!

And since we hadn't already spent enough time in the kitchen, we then decided to cook some Ethiopian on Monday! Nick had discovered a restaurant in Louisville, KY that will sell all the authentic spices in bulk and supply the recipes so he stopped there on his way down. We had chicken, beef, and lamb dishes with the typical injera bread (bought at the international farmer's market here in atlanta), and a side salad of tomatoes, onions, and cucumbers. Culinary perfection!

We tried to mimick a true Ethiopian experience by setting up a small table (tub of my winter clothes that will fit once i've had the baby) and all gathered around that eating with our fingers from the same plate.

3 special men in my life who share my love for ethnic food, yes, even the little one who is stuffing his face with that soggy pourous bread and spicy meat!

On Tuesday morning we ended our time with Nick by eating at the Flying Biscuit, our fav breakfast place in Atlanta, before he headed back north.

Looking forward to more years of Christmas memories, more years of Advent and focusing on the significance and presence of that special baby born in a manger...

Anticipation

Each year when Christmas is over I think about how much I wish I had been more focused on preparing my heart throughout the Advent season instead of getting caught up in all the crazy hustle and bustle that Christmas has become. The parties are great, the gift giving is nice and thoughtful, being with family is the best but through it all I feel like every year my thoughts are anything but centered around Christ and how the significance of his birth and entrance into this world can truly, continually change my life. So this year, instead of simply wishing my heart were more focused on Jesus, I decided to actually do something about it. This sweet lady, Deitra, has become a dear friend of mine throughout the last year and a half since I met her and have had the privilege to be mentored and receive some much needed spiritual direction from her.

Almost every month she holds day-long retreats at her house, each centered around a different theme. In July I signed up for her Advent retreat scheduled for the first week of December and eagerly anticipated this day, knowing that it would be just the springboard my heart would need to cultivate the deeper focus I long for. The day came and went and I was NOT disappointed. Every time I go to her house, whether for one of her retreats or for one of her study groups I used to be a part of, I ALWAYS come away refreshed and feeling closer to the Lord. I knew that God would have something special in store for me during this Advent retreat. He did! At the beginning she passed around a basket of rocks, each with a word written on it. We were instructed to pick a rock without looking at the word. My word was Anticipation. How ironic....as i was attempting to focus more on anticipating the coming of Christ while also anticipating the arrival of our second child. She gave us a folder of materials, showed us a stash of Advent related books, and set us free to go into any room in her home for some solitude. The first chapter of the book I chose to look at "just happened" to be titled Anticipation. Hmmmm....must be a concept I really need to unpack and contemplate. So i did just that for the next 3 hours. It was a beautiful, peaceful time that set the tone for the weeks remaining leading up to Jesus' birth. One of the pieces of material she gave us in our folder encouraged us to write a Cinquain: a simple structured form of poetry which encourages you to get to the heart of what you are experiencing in just a few words. I am no literary genius and certainly not anything close to a poet so I wondered what I might possibly come up with but decided to give this cinquain thing a try. It was to be 5 lines and there were instructions about how many words or how to structure the phrase for each specific line. I sat with my word (Anticipation) for quite a while, contemplating it and its special significance in my life write now as I prayed and read through my Bible and some other materials. I came up with a long list of words or phrases that came to me when I thought of Anticipation, and then I narrowed it all down into my Cinquain:

ANTICIPATION:
Peaceful Unhurried
Savoring, Beholding, Waiting
Eagerly Expect, Prayerfully Rejoice
Readiness

To you it may just be a mumble jumble of words, and that's ok. To me its a picture, a reminder of what I wanted these weeks leading up to Christmas to be like, as well as the weeks leading up to the arrival of the little one growing inside me.


We enjoyed anticipating Christmas day with our almost 3 year old, and incorporating Advent candles and readings. Lucas's favorite part was probably the lighting and blowing out of the candles but it still is neat to see little concepts relating to Jesus start to take root in his mind as he hears us read the Word and discuss the Hope, Peace, Joy, and Love of the season. He always insisted on grabbing his picture Bible and opening it up to some random page, pretending to be following along with us, and his guitar was also a must have during the times we sang some Christmas songs together as a family. He remains somewhat clueless about who Santa Claus is and what his role in the Christmas season is. So Derek and I feel like we still have another year to figure out how we'll approach that subject with our kids...

Last year we were living with friends so we didn't put up a tree, and the year before that was just before Lucas's first birthday. So, this was the first year he could actually take an active and interested part in decorating the tree. He had fun! And so did we, watching his excitement as he put most of the ornaments at the 3 foot level on just a couple of branches!

I think the finished product turned out pretty nice!

And the little man is a pretty cute model in front of it. He felt pretty good looking in this outfit that he wore to a wedding, so it didn't take any coaxing at all to get him to stand in front of the tree and smile. This was the fastest photo shoot ever!

its time

its ok to admit that you are suffering from the so called "pregnancy brain" when you make mistakes (although minor ones) ALL the day long at work and at the end of it all realize you have only put deoderant on under one arm. Time to clean up the kitchen and call it a night and hope for the best for the new day tomorrow! (Can I claim "pregnancy brain" even when i do dumb stuff AFTER the baby is born!?)

he no like this

Still no card reader, still no new pictures downloaded to the computer....just more 2-year old funnies. One night this week Lucas wasn't a big fan of the dinner I made (thankfully that is a rare occasion) and after announcing that he "no like this", he then informed me that the baby should eat it. Clever son, and even pretty cute...but think again! He said something else pretty funny that also involved the baby but I didn't write it down and now it has completely slipped my mind. Those moments though I know were a gift because he was particularly challenging to me that night, and I was tired, and Derek was out for some much needed guy time with his friend Ryan, and I began feeling discouraged about the many challenging moments I've had with my sweet son this month. I'm humbled as a mom and continually asking God for wisdom and Derek and I have had more than one good conversation on the topic of parenting and shepherding our child's heart. What a big job this is! I'm so thankful for the responsiblity of parenting and thankful too for the many fun and happy moments we have even amidst the more frustrating ones.