It's a GIRL!!

Born February 15th, 2012, 1:31pm 

7lbs 13oz and a full head of hair

Here is our happy family of 5!

She has three very proud big brothers - Mr. Mister, Mr. Newton, and Orange Juice.

Mr. Mister even sported a pink crown in honor of his new sister!

I am looking forward to posting more about her birth, the meaning of her name, and all of the specific  ways we have seen and felt God's incredible love and blessing over the past couple days.

I am still shocked and so excited that we have a girl.  We are in love with her already!

Thank you, Father, for blessing us with such a sweet bundle of rest and joy.

Baby Update

For anyone who might be looking for a baby update, he or she has not arrived yet.  Tomorrow, Feb. 15th, is my official due date.  I'm so excited to meet this little one!  We are pretty organized and ready to go...just waiting!

On that note, God knew that we couldn't have handled this baby coming early last week.  We had two or three very long weeks of Mr. Newton not sleeping at night (thanks to brief encounters with Star Wars and Chuck E. Cheese).  I cannot imagine having had a newborn at the same time.

So now that everyone is sleeping well again and now that we have our video monitor that we bought with overnight shipping out of desperation one night, we are ready to add a new baby to our lives!

Seasons of Life

Last week I went out for coffee with two great friends who are also pregnant.  A couple tables across from us sat four older women who we knew - moms of former Young Life kids we knew when they were in high school.  All of these women's kids are now grown and moved out.  

My friends and I joked about how that will be us in 20 years.  And as we sat and talked about our upcoming deliveries and baby things and nursing and all of those things that moms of newborns talk about, I wondered what the other moms were talking about.  Maybe they talked about their kids - reminiscing of when they were younger and life seemed so full of activity and challenges.  Maybe they talked about how much they miss their kids who have moved far away.  Or maybe they talked about how great and freeing it is to be empty nesters.  I don't know.  But I wonder what we will talk about years down the road.  When we sit a couple tables away from a group of young pregnant moms who are happy just to get a night out, overhearing them worry about their kids who don't sleep and how hard having another new baby will be.  I wonder if we will look at all with a twinge of sadness - not wanting to return to the newborn stage, but wishing for more years with our kids, not matter how hard they were.  

I don't know what that will be like.  I can't imagine life past the little kid season.  It's hard to even really believe that we will be past it someday.  So I want to enjoy these little guys and even this crazy, no sleep, nurse every 2 hours newborn stage that is coming.  Because someday I think I'll miss it.

Getting Closer

We are almost there - less than 3 weeks until our new little one is due to join our family.  I realized I haven't blogged much about my pregnancy.  I guess that's what happens when life continues at a million miles an hour with two boys who are full of life and energy.

The other thing that happens is that we suddenly find ourselves three weeks from our due date with nothing ready for the baby.  Stress threatens to overtake me when I look at all of the baby things we brought home from storage at my parents' house still sitting in the back of our van because it has no place to go.  While I had hoped we would be in a new house before this baby's arrival, I am realizing that we will just need to be creative in making it work.  It's a good challenge!

As I've been tempted to be stressed and panicked about not feeling ready and organized, I have been so encouraged by the Lord's promises and faithfulness and the peace that is in Him.  It has been so good to go to the Word for life, encouragement, and truth when it feels like tasks and our house and baby things and clutter are consuming me.    My all time favorite Scripture is Lamentations 3:21-24

²¹ Yet this I call to mind
   and therefore I have hope:

 ²² Because of the LORD’s great love we are not consumed,
   for his compassions never fail.
²³ They are new every morning;
   great is your faithfulness.
²⁴ I say to myself, “The LORD is my portion; 

   therefore I will wait for him.”

These verses have been foundational for me through so many seasons of life and here I am again refreshed by the truth of God's great faithfulness.

Through this time leading up to my delivery and the craziness of life that is sure to accompany life with three kids, I have been learning to pray instead of think.  Trying to immediately give thoughts to the Lord when they enter my mind rather than dwelling on them and trying to figure it all out myself.  Sounds like a basic spiritual practice but amazingly it takes effort.

As a side note, I love both of the baby names we have chosen.  It's kind of funny that the boy name is very common and the girl name is very uncommon.  But both have much meaning for us and for who we pray our baby becomes!

Stay tuned...

Cool Books

Today I took the boys to the library and as we picked out books, I began to see a divide between what books I wanted to choose for Mr. Mister and the books he wanted to choose.  He loves to read and will still listen to any book I choose - I don't think he's ever found a book he doesn't like.  But the books he wanted today were "cool books."  I encouraged him to ask the librarian for help and here is what he said to her:

"We are looking for cool books.  Like ones about Batman, karate choppers or Superman.  Or any superhero."

Haha. As opposed to the Curious George and Llama Llama books I was picking out!  So we brought home some Curious George books and a couple superhero books.  I know he'll still be excited to read the ones I chose, but I'm glad he is excited about his books.  Even though it's hard sometimes for me to be excited about things like superheroes, I do love seeing his personality and interests continue to develop!

The Third Person

One of my favorite stages in toddler language development is when they start to refer to themselves in the third person.  Mr. Mister called himself Mars for so long.  I loved it and it still makes me laugh to remember that.  Mr. Newton has just started saying his name and calls himself II.  That's not a roman numeral - that's two I's like eye eye.  It's super cute and will make you smile!

Star Wars Nativity

Here is a nativity scene according to a 4 year old boy.


The wise men drove their three cars down the train track to the stable.

Then King Herod (Darth Vader) came to try to take Baby Jesus but Yoda fought him off!