Saying No

There are some things I'm really good at saying no to:
Does it require driving around town on the weekends? No.
Can you watch more tv? No.
Would you like to attempt to induce labor by walking around in 100 degree heat with me? Not if you paid me.

But there are a lot of things that I find myself opening my mouth to say "yes" to, even if I know I shouldn't.
Can you teach Sunday School the month you're due? Sure!
Would you like to join the new Worship committee, even though you're already serving on Missions, and in seminary, and about to have 2 kids? Heck yeah!
Can you skype in to our Seminary retreat a week or so after you have a baby? Of course, they just sleep all the time at that point anyway!

I have also had to nearly physically restrain myself from offering to be the new chair for the Missions committee (don't do it, don't do it, don't do it), and from offering to teach Sunday School in the coming weeks. (Again, do you remember life with a newborn? No? There's a reason why.)

In general, I am an overachiever who thinks my schedule can handle basically everything, even with tossing a new baby in there. Only overachievers take on master degrees + working full time + little kids at home. And last year was fine, it was great, in fact. I enjoyed all my classes, I got great grades, it wasn't easy but it was so worth it. I have an entire year of seminary under my belt. It feels like quite the accomplishment.

When we decided to try for a second baby, the idea was that hopefully we could have this baby after General Conference, and before I started school for year 2. That really gave us a window of June to July and thankfully we managed to make it work. I assumed I'd go up to United in early-mid September to start my semester with a Spiritual Formation retreat. Having a baby sometime in July would still let us travel in September. It wasn't until after I got pregnant that I saw the new schedule for the school year. This year, the retreat was moved up by six weeks. It was now August 2nd. And I am due July 16th. "There's no way," I thought. "There's no way I can travel to Ohio the first week of August. What if she's late, like Caleb was??" I arranged to Skype into the retreat as I was available. "No problem," I thought. "I'll just do it between feedings. It'll be fine."

Earlier this week I got the pre-work and syllabus. All of sudden, with less than 2 weeks to go in my pregnancy, I have a paper to write and a couple books to read. And you know what I don't want to do this weekend, even if I'm not in labor? Write a paper. Read academic books. Nor do I want to attempt to juggle a newborn, feeding, diapers, attempting to eat a meal myself, and trying to video conference and available to my classmates a week or so after I leave the hospital. It's just not a good idea. It's the same feeling I got when I tried to start the candidacy process in the Wisconsin conference and came up against a number of road blocks. That's when I know that God is asking me to slow down and look closely at what I'm trying to do. Rethink things. Is there a better (usually easier) way? Where is God directing me? It took reading that syllabus to realize that God was saying "slow down. You can come back to this. Take a real maternity leave for goodness sake. It is a gift."

I called my seminary yesterday with a pit in my stomach, asking to put a hold on my Spiritual Formation class for the year, and pick it up again next fall. It was hard to admit to myself, and to my program director, that I just want the month of August to snuggle my baby girl. Watch the Olympics. Nap. More snuggles. But I almost didn't get the sentence of "If it's not a big deal on your end to pick this up next year" out before he was affirming my decision. "We really wanted you to be in the driver's seat on this, but I'm so glad you came to this decision." They were just waiting for me to call and them I needed to put myself and my family first. I was so relieved when I got off the phone. No skyping in. No trip up to Ohio with a 5 or 6 week old. As my mom pointed out, God was providing for our family before I even knew to ask.

I'm still going to do school this year, and take a full 9 hour class load, but those won't start until mid-September, when life has settled down a little bit. In meantime I'm looking forward to those hours on the couch with baby June like I remember with Caleb.

The Highs and Lows of Parenting, contained in 1 short hour

Last night was a great example of the highs and lows of parenting an independent toddler. We sat down to dinner around 6:15. It was a pretty great dinner, I'll say. A potato-salmon hash, with leftover steaks and scrambled eggs. I upped the ante on the eggs with some truffle salt, a gift from my sister. She recently visited from LA and brought us some goodies from an "LA-made" market, including a set of flavored salts and some onion-garlic jam. Brian and I ate the steak with the jam, which Caleb demanded to try. He loved it too, and dipped his steak pieces into the savory jam, ate up all his eggs and I got up to scramble another batch for the three of us. We laughed over our little foodie kid, who loves dipping his food into any condiment.

Then Caleb and Brian ramped up playtime, roughhousing and shooting basketball until it was...time for bath. We told Caleb numerous times it was time for bath, to be met with "No, it's NOT time for bath!" and continued play. I finally ran his bath, we wrestled him out of his clothes, and that's when the low portion of the evening started. Bath was a crying disaster, brushing teeth was a crying disaster, reading a book was a crying disaster, bedtime was a mix of Brian and I trading off a book, a kiss, a hug, a good-night song, and finally, finally, silence.

Watching your kid break down because they cannot handle moving from playtime to bedtime is just rough. You can almost see the synapses refuse to process. They exhibit confusion, (A bath?? Again?? Just like every other night, what are you talking about?), betrayal (Mommy!! Mommmmy! Only to find that Mommy isn't going to relent either), and finally, flat out exhaustion.

We finished up "bedtime" around 7:30 or so and I know I personally felt 2 things: like a really shitty parent, and also, as I cleaned up the massive amount of cars, trucks, and trains scattered across the living room, like making a drop off to Goodwill. (Please, for the love of all that is good and holy, no more toys. We are FULL UP.) I was also exhausted and out of energy for anything I had possibly planned for the reminder of the evening.

Parenting a two-year is hard, hard work, y'all. It's constant and never ending. I may be misremembering, but it's way harder than parenting a baby. How much good behavior should I try to instill? Where do I draw the line on letting him be a little boy? How do I reconcile the kid who leads us in prayer at mealtime with the one who lashes out in the bathtub? Does he know I love him if I've been fighting with him for a solid 30 minutes before bed?

While I know this is a phase I can't control, I have a couple thoughts. One, he's not waking up as tired in the mornings, so it might be time to try actually pushing his bedtime back a little bit. Right now it's lights off by 7:20-7:30, and he might be able to handle 15 minutes later. Second, cutting down on the high-energy play after dinner. It's hard because Brian gets a very short window of time in the evenings with him, but we might need to keep it a little less wild.

We'll see how all this changes when Baby June enters the mix this summer and we figure out how to be a family of four.

A Long Stretch of Quality Time

Brian left this morning for 2 and 1/2 weeks in Portland, OR, serving the United Methodist Church at our quadrennial General Conference. I'm serving the church too, by staying home and holding down the fort with our son.

I've been dreading this trip for months now. 30 weeks pregnant, alone with our toddler for 2+ weeks of the morning routine, the bedtime routine, dinner + dishes + laundry + outdoor chores.

But this morning, as I woke up from a nightmare about our house being broken into, I decided I needed to have a change of heart and a change of thought about this time. So I roused myself and Caleb, put on cartoons for him while I showered and got dressed, and decided to get us out into the beautiful day before it got really hot out. We went to our local coffee shop here in our small town for iced chai (me) and a blueberry "nuffin" (for Caleb). Then we went to the park. Caleb conquered the tallest slide on the playground, and we saw our next door neighbors and watched their son play soccer. Caleb was entranced by all the running up and down the field!

I realized somewhere between the iced chai and watching Caleb giggle down the slide that this is my last stretch of time where it's going to be just me and him. When Brian gets back it will be all hands on deck in preparation for June to make her mid-summer arrival. But right now I can't put together furniture or paint her room, so it's just Caleb and I, getting in our quality Mom & Son time.

I'm thankful and lucky to have our so-called village helping during this stretch. I let our neighbors know that Brian was gone so they can keep an extra watchful eye on the house, and I asked for help getting out our garbage can and mowing the lawn. I'm setting up weekend playdates for Caleb and I, and my sister is coming for the last week. It also looks like my mother-in-law might come to stay for a few days. People have offered to send over meals or babysit. I'm also grateful to have such an easy-going little boy, who's willing to entertain himself for long stretches of time or play while I rest and watch "a cooking show."

I'll try to pop back in and let you know how our one on one time progresses!

Long Overdue Check-in

I already used the line "I didn't mean to be away this long," right?

Truly, I didn't.

It's become clear to me that I need one outlet for writing, and one alone. Since September that outlet has been seminary. But that means I haven't kept up with Caleb updates, a pregnancy announcement, spring gardening activity, what we're eating, anything.

So I'm back, and hoping spring will propel me to write a little bit more in this space. No promises though.

Caleb
Caleb's 2 years old. In fact, he turned 2 years old in January, so he's now 26 months. That kid is ball of personality. His verbal skills are off the charts, especially for a boy his age. (Only family reads this, so I can brag, right?) I couldn't begin to guess how many words he knows, it's in the hundreds. He speaks in full sentences/paragraphs, just as we guessed he might do. He can hold a full conversation with you, which makes this stage really fun. My favorite phrase of his might be "Hold my hand, Daddy/Mommy." He uses that when we're headed down to the garage. I don't carry him up and down stairs anymore, so we make him hold hands to walk down the stairs. His little voice asking us to hold his hand is just too cute.

 His latest trick is balancing on the top of his sit and spin.

We're about to move him into a big boy bed, if we can only pull the trigger on that purchase! He's been trying to climb into his crib at night. Thankfully he doesn't try to climb OUT of it!

 Our new-to-us minivan has a DVD player. Caleb was mesmerized on our road trip to NC.

He continues to be a really happy and loving little boy. He adores his grandparents and extended family. He gets good reports on his behavior at day care, and he likes to tell me what activities he did and who he played with. He's a toddler, so yes, we see stubbornness and pickiness and we're trying to get rid of his pacifer, but in general, he's a great easy kid. 

5 months pregnant

June
Our daughter is due in the middle of July. (No, not in June. We just like the name June.) I've been pregnant for most of my first year of seminary, which has been challenging, but not too bad. We're thrilled to be expecting a girl- I was convinced we'd have boys forever and ever, but the sickness in my first trimester should have tipped me off. I feel like I'm be able to pinpoint on boy or girl in future pregnancies depending on if I'm sick or not. Otherwise the pregnancy has been pretty easy, and I'm looking forward to a warm-weather maternity leave this time around.

 Tomatoes, peppers, parsley, basil, cotton

The Garden
I will freely admit that I have next to no energy for gardening this year. Seminary + pregnancy = very little energy left over. But that doesn't mean I don't have 30 some-odd seedlings in the basement already started, with plans to start more this weekend. I'll be planting my fenced-in garden as well as two big beds in front of the house. I ignored the bed along the front of the house last year, letting it get weedy and gross. Then in the middle of summer we had a big delivery of fill dirt put in, to try to alleviate water pooling down into our basement and garage. When that happened, I asked the guy to use the front bucket of his small bulldozer to plow up the grass directly in front of our porch, so that I could use it as a garden bed as well. (This was a surprise to Brian, but he saw my mother's garden before he married me and knew I had the gardening bug. He should have seen tearing up the grass coming. Plus that's less he has to mow.) I've got three azaleas in there now, and a lemon thyme plant that overwintered nicely. I noticed some hosta coming up in that bed too, it must have been gardened at some point. My mint came back in full force in the other bed. So those front two beds will be a mix of flowers, herbs and vegetables, some edible landscaping, if you will. I also noticed the rhubarb and peony plant has come back up as well in our back yard.

That's about it- I may post a seminary and ministry update soon. I'm halfway through my second semester and so far classes are going well and I'm feeling good about continuing down this path.