Resolutions

2008 has been a crazy year. I am hoping to never have another year quite like it. It was too much! Painful mistakes, big surprises, overwhelming challenges, scary decisions, hard lessons, a move, major surgery, and a preemie. I'm not sure I could take many more years like 2008 went! I am not too sorry to see it go...

But I'm ready for 2009! There are already some exciting things on the horizon, a few unknowns, and I look forward to it all with hopeful anticipation! I have many big goals and changes in mind for this new year.

Whether I like it or not, I always make resolutions. Even if I tell myself I won't, they are always still there in the back of my mind. I almost always break them eventually, in most regards anyway, but that's human nature for you. However, it gets the year off to a good start and I really do want to try my best here. Here's a chance to start afresh!

I've actually made a pretty detailed list of resolutions and I won't bore you with all the painful details, but here's the quick list:

• Lose weight. (Yes- I, like so many other people, am making that my top resolution. I've got 2 years of baby weight to work off.)
• Run three miles again. (3 miles in 30 minutes would be great! I'd love to get back to that level of fitness.)
• Spend more quality time with my kids. (Take them to the park regularly and play/color with them at home.)
• Get back on track with Emily's schooling. Complete her kindergarten year.
• Read one book a month on average. (I already have three lined up ready to go!)
  
• Don't have a baby. (Did that in '06, '07, and '08. Hopefully it's time for a little break.)

Please pray that God would grant me special grace and keep me motivated and disciplined to keep these resolutions and that even when I fail, He'd help me get back on track. I don't want to fall back into bad habits and get into an unhealthy cycle of apathy, self-pity, and laziness.

I wish I could bottle up the motivation, inspiration, and determination I feel every year at the start of the new year and save some up for later! I'm going to need it!

Christmas Peekatures!

         

My sweet (easy) baby is back!

Apparently Ephraim doesn't care for traveling. While we were in Georgia for Christmas he hardly slept, he cried way more, and nursed way more. He wanted to nurse constantly and didn't want to sleep at all. If he was awake he was generally crying (or screaming). It was very tiring and frustrating! I was afraid that it was his "new normal" and that he'd continue once we returned home, but thankfully, he seems to just like being home. Since coming back he has happy awake times and sleeps fairly easily. His first night back he slept about 4 or 5 hours straight. It was amazing! I haven't felt so rested in probably weeks.

How do babies know so well where they are when they are so tiny? We had his bed set up exactly the same way and we brought his snuggle nest with us. I don't understand!

He does love his swing though and we didn't bring that. I never knew how much he likes that swing until we were without it for a few days. First thing we did once we walked in the door here was to swaddle Ephraim and put him in his swing so we could unpack and he gazed at the Christmas tree until he fell asleep.

Just now I fed him and propped him up in his boppy and he's just looking around, very alert, and happy. AKA- not crying. This did not happen on our trip at all! It's soooo nice to have my sweet happy baby back!

Aside from Ephraim's traveling woes, Christmastime was very nice. We were all showered with way too many gifts, ate way too much incredibly yummy food, and are very appreciative!

Steven and I gave each other mice! (Computer mice.) Mine is pink and his is red. I didn't know a computer mouse could be so cute! Steven also gave me this beautiful necklace.

Oh! And Steven also gave me a new diaper cover for Ephraim in my Christmas stocking. Does the boy know me or what!? Yes, I get very excited over such things!

My biggest gift might not have even been a Christmas gift. My dad gave it to me before Christmas and it wasn't wrapped or anything, but he gave me an electric violin!! Can you believe it!? I have a real electric violin. Maybe I'm a rock star after all!? It is pretty cool! I want to figure out what I can do with it so I can use it! Playing it feels very different from my acoustic violin. I might need an amp/effects pedal to use with it! I'm sure Glass Hammer will put it to use at some point. I will have to take pictures of it sometime.

I also got this audio book from "Nana" that I'm very excited to listen to! Steven also gave me two new books that I am very excited about as you can imagine!

I got several movies that I LOVE and have wanted for a while! Juno, Once, Narnia...

Then of course there are the Starbucks gift cards that we will put to very good use! (And probably very soon...)

The kids got American Girl Dolls (Bitty Baby and Emily!), cute puppy bedroom slippers, Care Bears (Claire), My Little Pony (Emily), toy trucks (Will), shoes (Ephraim), lots of great clothes, books, and too many toys to list. Yesterday we reorganized everything to try to fit it all in with mostly good success.

The gift I was most excited about giving was a CD for my parents that my trio recorded. We each got wedding pictures from our parents and asked for their songs- as in the songs that meant the most to them in their relationships. You know, that old "They're playing our song!" kind of thing.

It was a lot of work to get it all put together but it was really fun and I loved the end result! A nice collection of new arrangements of special songs to our parents put together in an album with their wedding pictures on the front and on the inside. We added an inscription on the inside as well. I was SO excited about that present that I could hardly wait until Christmas to give it to them! I think they liked it. And I really hope that they were at least a little surprised though we had to ask questions and give clues a little earlier on. They might have suspected but they didn't let on too much.

All in all, a very enjoyable and exciting time! We had a flat tire on the way home on Christmas night, but it wasn't too bad. Two cars stopped to ask if we needed help. Christmas must be a good time to break down on the side of the road as far as getting help goes! We were fine though and Steven put on our spare and today we're going to get our tires taken care of so it won't happen again.

I know I'm forgetting something, but my husband is anxious to get going today. Lots of little errands to run.

Merry Christmas!

After a night of not-much-sleep (Thank you, Ephraim) it is finally Christmas morning! Our kids are dressed and waiting on the adults to get their act together. The smell of sausage cooking is filling this warm kitchen and making me hungry!

I have a few Christmas surprises up my sleeve that have been killing me to not pull out early. And now Christmas morning is here and here I am cooling my heals! Time to GET MOVING!

Have a wonderful Christmas, everyone! May you always remember and hold in your heart the only reason we celebrate this day- the birth of Christ our Savior!

Christmas has hit A Chair of Bowlies!

...and it might even be white. ;-)

What's in a Name?

It seems that there is some confusion on how to pronounce my youngest son's name. In honor of his due date today, I'd like to clear that up!

We had a difficult time choosing a name this time. We both liked the name Ephraim and had discussed it at length many times, but I was very hesitant to use such an unusual name. I thought it was just too weird.

After he was born we had yet to pick a name and were debating between two. Steven really loved the name "Ephraim" and wanted to use it which won me over. Finally, choosing Ephraim just felt right. Looking at him after he was born, "Ephraim" just felt right and the other name did not fit.

So far he has been called, "EE-frame," and "EE-free-um" and "ee-FRAME" by various parties. I'm sure he'll get many more miss-pronunciations as he grows. It was another one of the reasons I was hesitant to name him Ephraim!

Most people think that it is pronounced "EE-free-um." (\ˈē-frē-əm\ - according to the dictionary.) That isn't the pronunciation we use. I'm not quite sure why that pronunciation is considered the right one in so many places or how it got that way. It is not the original Hebrew pronunciation (Ephrayim). I've not found it even listed as one of the pronunciations in many places that I've looked, yet it is the pronunciation given in Webster's dictionary! If I had not looked into it further upon first considering the name, I very well might have thought the same thing! It is definitely the most common miss-pronunciation of his name. Even the pastor at our church has been using that pronunciation during recent sermons about the second son of Joseph!

After hearing it that way so many times, I seriously began to doubt our decision of how to pronounce it! I feel like we did it wrong sometimes!

However, it doesn't look like "EE-free-um" to me now that I've studied the name more extensively. The Hebrew pronunciation is "ee-FRAH-im" or "ee-FRY-im." However, we don't use that pronunciation either. I guess you could say we use the American pronunciation-- "EF-ram." Very simple! It is the same pronunciation as many of the several variations of his name: Efram, Efraim, Efrem, Efrim, Ephram, Ephrem, and Ephrym.

Even though it is weirdly obscure and hardly ever used, I do love the name. It fits him perfectly and we love our cute little Ephraim! I don't regret naming him Ephraim despite all the miss-pronunciations and miss-spellings that I know are coming our way in the future!

Follow the Star

A lot of people over on this post commented about our star, so I wanted to tell you a little more about it.



Believe it or not the star was actually a Christmas card- sent to us last year. I'm lucky enough to be friends with Serena over at Serena's Scrapbooks and she never just sends a regular Christmas card! She is a very talented artist and makes stuff like this all the time! This amazing star was hand-made and it collapses into a small enough folded paper to fit into an envelope. On the back-side of it is attached a little tag that says Merry Christmas and has her name on it. She sent it to me last year and I was so impressed with it, I immediately used it as a Christmas decoration! When it was time to put our decorations away, we decided to keep it and use it again this year! I'm hoping it will last for many years to come as it has become a favorite decoration!

Another cute video from Will's First Birthday!

After the cupcake disaster and a much-needed bath...


Will's First Birthday - Presents from Steven James on Vimeo.

At least he liked presents better than the cupcake!

Awesome!

My new favorite* birth website: Pushedbirth.com

Very well done, well written, informative, thought-provoking, intriguing... everything an educational website on research-based birth practices should be! It's going on my Google reader feed.

*Truth is, I have lots of favorite birth websites, but this is my newest exciting discovery.

Birth Matters

Even though my c-section was a necessary evil, and I am grateful for the outcome, I've discovered that physical healing is not the only healing that needs to take place. My recovery has been both physically and emotionally painful. Processing all the events that happened before and during Ephraim's birth has been difficult and painful and I still have a lot of emotional healing to do along with physical healing.

When I find myself feeling sad or angry over what happened during his birth I also feel guilty for resenting the process that brought me such a beautiful gift- my son. But I've learned that it is okay to mourn the loss of my ideal birth.

To quote from the International Cesarean Awareness Network website:

"You have the right to mourn your birth and your trauma while celebrating your child. These are two different events in your life, even if they are happening simultaneously."

Reading that hit home for me. I need to mourn the traumatic event that was Ephraim's birth. It's okay to feel angry about some of the things that happened even though I deeply love my son and I'm so glad to have him here safely. As necessary as my surgery was, I still feel that some parts of it didn't have to go quite as they did. That doesn't mean my experience was outside of normal at all. Only that perhaps "normal" should change a bit in order to treat people like people and help them to feel human and keep a little dignity whenever possible. I feel certain that the process could change a little to allow for that. Little changes would have made all the difference for me. I wish there were some way I could help that to change.

Other resources I've found helpful are:
http://www.birthtruth.org/index.htm
http://www.birthtruth.org/grateful.htm
http://www.birthtruth.org/essaysetc.htm
http://ican-online.org/recovery/home

Sidenote: The author of birthtruth.org will be a speaker at the ICAN conference!

I think it will also be very valuable for me to attend the ICAN conference this spring. It will be good to be able to openly talk about my experience with other women who've been there and will understand the feelings of loss and anger. I'm as much of a birth junkie as ever (if not more so) and I can't wait to be with other women who understand what I've been through and how I feel about birth. I know that I will be in my element there!

One week suddenly feels really short.

To be able to get ready for Christmas at a relaxed pace... how do you do it? I've yet to accomplish it. Some day I will figure it out. I'm really hoping for next year! For now, I'm hanging on by a thread, but by the time we leave for home (singing "I'll be Home for Christmas" in my head!), I should be able to give a big sigh of relief. And I very well may sleep all the way there.... nah, I know all too well- I'll be too excited for that! I'm running on adrenaline from here on out.

I hope I will plan things much better next year as far as Christmas shopping and prep goes. I still have baking to do and mountains of laundry before I can even begin to think about packing. And I'm not talking about the Smokey mountains worth of laundry here. More like the Rocky Mountains or... the Himalayas. (Whichever mountains are biggest...) Lately it feels impossible to keep up with the piles of laundry and I get easily overwhelmed. (I hate that.)

On the upside...

• A good friend is taking my girls to the Creative Discovery Museum today so I will have part of the afternoon with half as many kids so it will be half as chaotic around here. Hurrah!
• I already exercised today! (Couldn't sleep at 4am. What else was there to do? And I must add that the instructor is DISGUSTINGLY tiny. (I don't hate her, I don't hate her, I don't hate her...)
• I love how satisfied, cuddly, and cute Ephraim is just after feedings. I love that a full tummy of milk makes him happy. I'm so glad that breastfeeding seems to get easier with each kid! I love nursing him (whereas with Emily at this point I was pretty much in agony).
• I'm playing in the Holiday Pops with the Symphony this weekend. That should be pretty fun! I missed the Holiday Pops last year due to having Will so it will be nice to get to do that again.
• Did I mention that I'll be Home for Christmas? :)

Note To Self: No cupcakes next time...

The most hysterical 1st birthday yet!

(But I'm not sure I'd want to repeat it.)


Will and the Birthday Cupcake Catastrophe from Steven James on Vimeo.

Happy Birthday, Baby Boy Brother!

One year ago today Will was born! What a year it has been!

Joseph William
12/16/2007
9lbs 5oz - Home Waterbirth
One of the most amazing experiences of my life so far!

Beautiful boy!

His sisters check him out.
From before he was born they called him 'Baby Boy Brother.' So sweet!

Baby's first Christmas- one week old!


And then he grew. A lot.



And then he got a new baby brother of his own!
Will meets Ephraim for the first time.

Joseph William- 1 year old!

Claire 2
Will 1!!!
Emily 4

Happy Birthday, Will! We love you!

Check Out my Decked Halls!

Welcome to my Home!

Nativity and Stockings




The top of our bookshelf all decked out.


Another angle. Christmas books!


More Christmas books on my sewing shelf.


Which happens to be just behind our Christmas tree!


The Tree

I got so excited, I even decorated my kids!
(Except for Ephraim, but who's gonna wake a sleeping baby!?)Merry Christmas!

Monday Morning Optimism List

• We had Ephraim's bilirubin levels tested yet again at the Children's hospital (this would be our fourth trip to the Children's hospital for labs since we brought him home!) and they are finally on their way DOWN! (It's about stinking time.) His last test number was 14 point something and as of yesterday it was down to 10! This is such a relief and it feels wonderful to not worry so much about sunning him all the time.
• Over the weekend my nerve pain issues dramatically improved. I can now dress myself with no help! haha I can also roll over in bed without ending up in tears. It now takes a lot more dramatic movements to cause the level of pain I've been experiencing. The nerves that were growing back and causing severe pain have finally become less sensitive. After the past week and a half of agony and being afraid to move at all? Sweet relief!
• I think most of our Christmas shopping is done now!
• Today is my last day of having two babies under one year of age. Tomorrow is Will's first birthday! I am both happy and sad about it. As you might expect. Tomorrow my kids will go from being 4, 2, 0, and 0 to being 4, 2, 1, 0. It has actually been really fun having two under 1. I have enjoyed it!
  
• This is crunch week. Trying to finish up those few last Christmas projects. Wrapping presents. Trying to clean the house as much as possible and keep up with laundry. If I can just stay on top of all that this week, next week won't be so stressful while trying to pack and get final details all finished!
• At the moment I need to swaddle one baby and get him settled for a nap, let the other baby play in his packnplay, get the other kiddos to clean up their toys, and start on my Motivated Moms list for today. I also want to let the girls make birthday cards for Will, wrap his presents, and see about at least getting him a cupcake for his first birthday! Then I need to finish up one more little project for a Christmas present. After I finish that, my stress level will go down. Just a little. ;-) Oh- and a shower would be nice too. We'll see if that happens...
  

Stay tuned though because later I hope to participate in this: