My little climber.

As I write, I'm huddled up in the nursery, lamenting the fact that we have no video monitor. Yes, I know mothers for hundreds of years have survived without video monitors, but they also survived without air conditioning and I'm the first to admit I couldn't live without that. Admit it, neither could you.

The way I see it, transitioning Eli from a crib to a bed would be much easier if I could catch the little stinker in action, slithering out of his bed to play with his toys, without having to sit outside the door like a creepy stalker. BUT, on this, his first official day in his new bed, I feel I have no choice. He'll learn, I tell myself. Obssesively.

Michael and I debated when to make the transition and once we saw baby #2's boy parts on the ultrasound, we decided to do the bunk bed thing and get Eli used to it before the baby arrives. The beds were scheduled to be delivered yesterday, which is funny because...

Eli's a little monkey and finds great fulfillment out of climbing on, scaling, or jumping off of anything with an elevation greater than 6 inches or so. That's why I was befuddled that he had never gotten out of his crib. Isn't that the ultimate toddler--and more specificially, male toddler--challenge? I figured it was largely out of fear and figured hey, maybe we'll wait a few more weeks before we make the switch--he's clearly content in his crib and there's no need to rush it.

Well yesterday, after putting Eli down and turning on his rain machine (complete with 4 other noise settings, one of which includes a heartbeat straight out of a kitsch horror film), I went downstairs and turned the (non-video) monitor on in case he put his foot through the crib slats again. About 20 minutes into what should have been peaceful slumber, I hear the heartbeat on the monitor, loud and clear. That only means one thing: he's escaped, and on the day we're expecting to get the new bed! I crept upstairs and shot this video of him caught in action. Yesterday's nap was a bust, obviously, as he was high on the thrill of figuring out how to escape.

This, I told myself, is clearly a sign from God that it's the fullness of time for little man to be in a big boy bed. The Lord knew my mind was wavering, and He put me at ease by graciously giving me the machinations of this sweet boy at just the right moment, on just the right day.

And so it begins... in the last hour Eli has had 3 (maybe 4?) failures to resist the temptation to get out of bed. And consequences to boot... But he'll catch on, and he and I will be none the worse for all this training! Oh, and also, how did I get to this point of having a near two year old who is in a bunk bed? Where does the time go?

Fall Craft Night!

Like millions of other people in this world, I have been made craftier with the help of Pinterest. Some ideas are so unique and do-able that I never would have thought of them, not even if I had had all day in isolation to brainstorm new ways to craft, store, or cook. Seriously, where do these people come up with this stuff?

I've also been made craftier with the help of my friend Tara, who has a great eye for cute crafts. Our most recent (and nearly only) dual project was making book page pumpkins. We didn't take process pictures because we were both diligently determined to finish three pumpkins apiece, which apparently takes a bit longer than originally expected. In all, the project (three pumpkins) took about 3.5 hours but we were also gabbing and munching. We had tons of fun but it's definitely a labor of love. These are our very own book page pumpkins...

Here's the blog tutorial--and the pictures BELOW are from her blog, as well, but my additional commentary is in red.

Book Page Pumpkin Tutorial

1- Make a pumpkin shape out of a piece of paper. I roughly drew one, then folded the paper in half and cut it so it would be symmetrical. Try to make sure the pumpkin shape has a relatively flat bottom. Consider, too, whether you want a taller or shorter pumpkin when you cut your "template." If you don't like it, try again!

2-Take the cover off of your book and place the pumpkin pattern with the fold on the binding edge. If it doesn't fit, trim it a little.

 


3-Trace around the pattern with a pencil.



4-Now it's time to cut out your pumpkin. You can use an exacto knife, but I found that it was easier just to use scissors.  I could cut through 5-6 pages at a time pretty easily. If you don't have fine tipped scissors to cut all the way to the edge of the binding, you can use an exacto knife there. The exacto knift caused us some problems because it frayed the edges of the pages. It takes longer, but the result is better if you use scissors.

 



5-After you cut all the way around, pull the excess pages over to the binding and they should tear right off.

 



6-Now trace around the pumpkin shape and cut through a few more pages. Tip: cut slightly inside the pencil mark, or your pumpkin will keep getting bigger. Yep, I learned that the hard way. Danggit. Especially when you reach the binding, it's important to keep it as clean as possible. We used what *I think* was some sort of apocalyptic knife weapon to "fix" all the small edges once we cut through the entire book.





7-Keep tracing and cutting until you have all the pages done.





8-Now put a thin strip of glue on the very edge. I'm the impatient type, so I used hot glue. Before you hot glue, get rid of any excess paper at the top and bottom of the pumpkin. Tara and I used hot glue as well. Definitely the way to go.

 


9-Now bring that back page around and attach it to the hot glue, keeping the outside edges as even as possible. Then add a stip of hot glue to that page, and glue the next page to it, just on the inside edges. I sure hope that makes sense.

 


10-When you stand your pumpkin up, it will probably look something like this:



11-Don't panic! It just needs to be "fluffed". Just go around pulling the pages apart and arranging them how you want them. If I had a space where the pages just refused to come together, I added a little hot glue right at the inside seam. When you are done, it should look more like this. It's OK that there are some spaces. We'll fix them later. This took a while, and don't expect it to look perfectly "fluffed." Almost DOES count here.





12- At this point I decided my pumpkin needed a little color. I could have inked all the edges with my orange ink pad. But I knew that would take awhile. So I turned to my best friend Krylon. Spray paint that is. Yep, you can totally spray paint book pages. Just use a very light touch, you don't want it drenched or anything. One light spritz is all you need. We probably used more than a "light touch," but not much more.... maybe three coats of lightly spraying areas that needed it.





13-Now it's time to add the stem. I just used a stick from my yard. If you have any stubborn pages, now you can bend them to your will. Bwaahaha! I used a bunch of hot glue, then forced the pages where I wanted them and held the stem in place till the glue dried. Voila! We used cinnamon sticks bought at Hobby Lobby. That way you get both the look and aroma of fall!







14-Next I tied a ribbon around the stem. Not only does it look cute and add some color, but it hides all the gobs of hot glue. Yay! And just because I love it so, here is another shot of it sitting on my entry table. We hot glued the ribbon to the pumpkin, just to keep it in place.

 

Baby Time

Okay, so now that my vocabulary can more readily include the words "pregnancy" or "baby" without sending me into fits of nausea, I wanted to include a blog from the author of Loving the Little Years, Rachel Jankovic, about welcoming a new little one into your household. If it doesn't apply to you now, tuck it away and pull it out later. It's a great practical read--and who doesn't like practicality?

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From http://www.feminagirls.com/    (totally worth the visit, especially for my female friends, with or without children)

 

 

It’s true! Baby number six has been making its tiny presence known in this house for the last many weeks. I just read the other day that hormone is the Greek word for impact. SO insightful. I mean, I try to be a pretty mellow person. But give me one whiff of a pregnancy-related hormone, and my body goes off like a bottle rocket of over-reactions. Luckily for me, there is a houseful of children here to sprinkle humor all over life. Blaire pretends to puke, rushing off to the bathroom, making everyone else howl with laughter. The bigger kids love to hush each other up whenever some kind of food is mentioned, “DON’T TALK ABOUT FOOD OR MOM WILL PUKE!!!” And we are old enough now to know that we forget about this phase later. We know that the baby at the end is worth anything in the middle, and more than anything we know that this baby is a gift. So, happy times all around!

 

But I am not the only one growing a baby these days, it seems to be quite the trend. I’ve been thinking back on having the other kids, about being a first-time mom, about being new to the world of nursing sagas. Thinking about welcoming babies, about things that could have been easier. Thinking of things that I’ve learned now, but wish I had known the first time. Terribly incomplete, but I can’t focus for very long these days, so you will have to forgive that!

 

Ways to Ease the Welcoming of Babies

 

1) Buy some new make-up, get a haircut, paint your toenails, and get some cozy new stretchy lounge clothes that are cheerful and fresh before you have the baby. It makes you feel so much better, and the pictures will thank you. With my first baby, I gained 22 pounds. She was almost 9 pounds. I figured with the placenta, the water, and everything else (besides the fact that you feel super skinny right after delivering), I could at least get into a few of my old clothes. Pulling out what I had deemed a loose button up shirt, I was unable to button any button but the neck. Nice. Don’t do this. Just wait until you are in a mentally and spiritually stable place before trying on your pre-pregnancy clothes! Now I have a pile of fat pants and fat-chance pants, proving that I have traveled this road before.

 

 

2) In the very beginning, trust your instincts, and look to your baby for answers. Do not let other people tell you what your baby needs, figure it out yourself. Of course I am not meaning to disregard medical advice or serious situations. I mean, in the normal scheme of “Is she hungry? Is she gassy? Is she wet? Is she tired?” Try to figure it out with your baby. Don’t stress about the baby crying and run look somewhere else for answers. Stay calm, look to your baby and work on figuring it out. And then, don’t take this too seriously. If you can’t figure it out, and you are sleep deprived and desperate, get help! Ask for ideas from people you trust.

 

3) About worry. I’m sure every mother remembers the first baby worry. Little burbles in the night, squeaks, choking while nursing, etc. Just remember that your baby is a gift, not a statistic. God created and sustained that life inside you. He gave you this child, open your hands to Him, and trust Him to protect what He has given you. I can remember specific times when I had to think, “Do not cling to this baby like it belongs to you. Open your hands to God, and trust Him to protect and preserve this little life.” Your protective instincts are good, but don’t let them rule over your heart.

 

4) Take advantage of the help you hopefully have in the first week or so. Everyone tells you this, but sleep when the baby sleeps! I did not do this the first couple times. Now, I know well that the help will end, the days will come when you cannot snooze in the middle of the day. Sleep when you can! It pays off when you are up in the night.

 

5) If you have other kids – especially little ones, put a baby gate in your bedroom door. I did this with Blaire, and it really helped. She slept in our room, so first thing in the morning I would clean our room, make the bed, etc. Then step over the gate into the real world. When I needed to nurse her, or change a blowout, I would go into our room. The little kids could come to the door, ask questions, and shout observations about how cute she was. It enabled me to not spend all the nursing time saying, “No, don’t climb on my lap. Don’t lean on the baby! Back off!” The gate was a simple way to enforce a boundary that everyone would have forgotten to obey in the excitement of a diaper change.

 

6) I used gallon ziploc bags to make what we called “blowout kits.” They smashed flat easily in a purse or diaper bag, and came in excessively handy more times than I could easily tabulate. I included a one-piece outfit (usually pajamas), a cloth diaper or two (the cheap kind – in lieu of a changing pad). Diapers and wipes we always have in my purse, in the glove compartment, and in my husband’s back pocket, so I don’t include those. The best part is that you simply insert all the soiled goods right back into the ziploc, later to be plunged into oxyclean. If your child is a blowout hobbyist, you might want to keep one in the car too. And a stack of cheap cloth diapers kept me from always having to change the changing pad, or sanitize the diaper bag.

 

7) Do not mind telling people who want to hold your baby, “No thanks.” If you don’t feel like passing your baby around, don’t. This is a great reason to have a baby carrier of some description. It keeps people from just trying to take the baby away from you, and might make you feel less awkward about saying no. Especially when the baby is new, and when a lot of people are around, feel totally free to say “I’m gonna take her back now, thanks!” or “I’m gonna keep him right now.” Babies are not public domain, it’s ok to say no. You and your husband are the only people who have rights, everyone else is just asking.

 

Enjoy yourself. You know babies- they don’t stay that way long!

 

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A Bit of Catching Up...

 

 

This is the best I could do with the sentimental "Let's get our son to wear a Big Brother shirt and look all excited that he's going to be a big brother!" 

 

 

Let's face it--boys are difficult subjects for photographs, which is why I thank my lucky stars for talented photography friends like Tara Molles. It's like there's a jumping bean inside his little body that's hostile to both looking at and smiling for the camera. But I did my best. Speaking of little beans inside bodies, it's true--Lord willing, Eli IS going to be a big brother on or around March 8. He seems pretty stoked, if you disregard the protest that comes after I ask him, "Guess what's in mommy's tummy?" But I'm going to give it time and hope he'll warm up to the idea, especially since his warming up to the idea matters very little in the grand scheme of things.

 

And also speaking of hostility, that's a fitting word for the past 13 weeks in regards to the toll our little bean is having on me--the Lord must know I need particular reminders that while children are the greatest of life's blessings, childbirth (and the plethora of joys that accompany it) is a result of the curse. Otherwise I might shout from the hilltops how glorious and energizing and FUN this is. I could enumerate some of the ways in which that's true, but the fact that I've gone without blogging all summer or even feeling the urge to type one word should suffice. There is a great degree of sarcasm in all this, but truthfully we are grateful that God would see fit to make us parents again. All the puking, heartburn, fatigue, and psychotic dreams? I'll forget about it.

 

I have often wished that God had designated an entire book of the Bible for pregnant women, full of wise council about how to survive during these tumultuous months that test the mettle of anyone, especially Christian women. How do I show grace to others when I feel so rotten? How do I feed my child when the idea of any food could send me straight to the bathroom in a fit of nausea? How do I reconcile how physically awful I feel with the spiritual blessings of a child?

 

In short, I think there'd be one verse peppered somewhere throughout that would first say,"Laugh about it. Find the humor in the situation." Then it might say, "Get over it. Millions of people are worse off than you." And when I'm being pitiful, I forget that the Word of God is sufficient as is. There is no verse about how to act when you're pregnant, but there are plenty of passages that instruct us how to act all the time, no matter what our physical state. I'm no more exempt from obeying God's law than a homeless man dying of starvation. We pregnant women are in a delicate state in all kinds of ways, but since when does that exempt us from obedience? Pregnant women need still be gracious, and thoughtful, and patient. But we should also be that much more aware of how gracious, thoughtful, and patient God is with us when we fail--and I have failed miserably in the past 13 weeks. We should be reminded of how good God has been to us, and consequently how good we ought to be to those we live with. It is a looking outward that He's after, not a morbid introspection of our own feelings and woes. If nothing else, I have felt pushed to the limit, dragged to a place where I am no longer dependent on my own ability or strength. God is faithful to His people and has provided plenty glimpses of mercy to me in my most desperate moments.

 

We welcome our March (perhaps February) baby and pray often for his/her health and safety. We also hope he/she will share his/her brother's love for the movie Cars, because I'm not sure we'll be able to convince Eli to watch anything else for a while. But that's for a different blog post altogether!

 

 

 

 

 

This picture is from our first doctor's appointment. No doctor pic, just Eli and Michael passing the time while we waited..

 



Talking Rocks

Recently completed from my summer book list was N.D. Wilson's Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl, a staggeringly beautiful yet sober look at human nature, God's existence, and our place in this carnival of a world. Wilson speaks the truth with clarity and interest. As a former English teacher, I was struck most by Wilson's image of Christ as a perfect Shakespeare, the author of a grand story who decides the course of man and has ordained an ending to each man--and to take it further, how balmy it is that the Author actually lowered Himself to become part of that story--so low, in fact, that He slumbered with pigs and horses on the night He was born. Crazy? YES. But wondrous.

Notes from the Tilt-a-Whirl is Wilson's attempt to capture just a snapshot of what the Psalmist David speaks of here, in Psalm 104: 24-30:

24 O Lord, how manifold are Your works!
In wisdom You have made them all.
The earth is full of Your possessions—
25 This great and wide sea,
In which are innumerable teeming things,
Living things both small and great.
26 There the ships sail about;
There is that Leviathan
Which You have made to play there.

27 These all wait for You,
That You may give them their food in due season.
28 What You give them they gather in;
You open Your hand, they are filled with good.
29 You hide Your face, they are troubled;
You take away their breath, they die and return to their dust.
30 You send forth Your Spirit, they are created;
And You renew the face of the earth.

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Read it, and enjoy.

Best Marriage Proposal Ever.

I have to share. Watch every minute of this.  A bit of joy for your Thursday evening.

Eats shoots and leaves.... ?

Poor Lynne Truss, author of Eats, Shoots, and Leaves, will forever be heckled for her courageous commentary on what might possibly be the nerdiest sphere of academia: grammar. And by extension, those who dare to read the book and actually enjoy it might also receive that same heckling. But that's okay. I will step out from the minority of obsessive grammarians and say I thoroughly enjoyed this book and found myself at times laughing out loud. She declares in the introduction that her point is not to write a "book about grammar", but instead to "give us permission to love punctuation." Haha. I'm still laughing about that one. If there's a way to make grammar hilarious, Truss has done it. She is both level-headed and self-deprecating about her fixation on proper puncuation, and the book is filled with various anecdotes to help prove her point that proper punctuation is indeed important, especially in the techno-culture we currently find ourselves in. Here are just a few of my favorite quotes... and hopefully I cite them correctly.


".... the world cares nothing for the little shocks endured by the sensitive stickler. While we look in horror at a badly punctuated sign, the world carries on around us, blind to our plight. We are like the little boy in The Sixth Sense who can see dead people, except that we see dead punctuation."

"One might dare to say that while the full stop is the lumpen male of the puncuation world (do one job at a time; do it well; forget about it instantly), the apostrophe is the frantically multi-tasking female, dotting hither and yon, and succumbing to burning out from all the thankless effort."

"The big final rule for the comma is one that you won't find in any books by grammarians. It is quite easy to remember, however. The rule is: don't use commas like a stupid person. I mean it. More than any other mark, the comma requires the writer to use intelligent discretion and to be simply alert to potential ambiguity."


And my favorite of all....

"In the family of punctuation, where the full stop is daddy and the comma is mummy, and the semicolon quietly practises the piano with crossed hands, the exclamation mark is the big attention-deficit brother who gets over-excited and breaks things and laughs too loudly."

For Carrie, any other teacher of English who reads this, and anyone who is a closet punctuation lover, grab a copy of this book at the library and enjoy!