OK so just have to vent a little, and then it will be a happy post I promise. I HATE (yes a strong word I know, but it fits here) living in a town where everybody leaves!!!! Seriously, it is just SO hard. I am so serious that I just don't even want to make friends anymore, the motivation is dying people! I know everybody is a general word, and no, not everybody leaves. BUT most people do. This is not a permanent setting for most people. I understand that, we are in the middle of nowhere, there is the college, so obviously people are just here to do their school and move on. This is just getting ridiculously gut wrenching though. Tonight as we hung out with a few of our small group friends to kick off the year, I was thinking about how in the next year and a half 2 more of those couples will be gone, and one already left and it is just so sad. Like really sad, and I know I am someone that tends to lean more to the emotional side, and I feel things really deeply, and I cry fairly easily, but it just aches, and there is no easy answer. I wouldn't trade the richness of knowing these people for anything, the joy, laughter, challenges, truth, love, realness that they bring to my life, it is invaluable! But the goodbyes....I just don't know.

Anyway, this blog is in some serious need of positivity (if that is even a word) SO here are things that I am loving right now.

- Baby snuggles and soft fluffy hair and baby smells! (although this poor poor child has my skin, so sensitive)

- A husband who reads to his children! This guy can out read me sometimes, and for a man who doesn't read himself to try and instil that quality in his children, that is so wonderful!
- A really beautiful fall so far, the weather the last two weeks has been SO nice! (for where we live at least)
-Good friends to laugh with and share life with
- That my dear friend in Africa has better Internet access then she did before she went and it makes the distance seem not quite so bad.
- TEA!

A dear friend of mine introduced me to this tea that her mother-in-law sent her and it is my desert! Typhoo tea, decaf, I LOVE it. I look forward to the time during the day when I can sit down and have my tea while...
- Enjoying the At Home In Mitford books! These are just books about a small town and their everyday life, I love them.

- My two year old's imagination. This kid blows me away with his speech and what he comes up with, he is so funny!
-Amazon's wish list thing and their universal wish list button! Ingenious!
- Mom's Time Out! This group refreshes me, I love it, and it's making me seriously rethink the way we are doing holiday's and where the focus is. Sadly it hasn't been on Christ enough. Things are going to change this year. But all that to say that I love the way this group challenges me and helps me grow and connect with women.
-Pillsbury cookies. I know I know, SO bad for me on SO many levels, but it is like my breastfeeding weakness! I craved these things when I was breastfeeding Theo and now again. I husband has to do serious intervention to get me out of the isle or these out of the shopping cart in the store. lol

Well, there you have it! I do have so much to be thankful for and apart from all these I am SO eternally grateful to a God who chose to save me, to give me a wonderful husband and bless me with two children. I love that he knows me better then I know myself and even if I don't always like his choices for my life, like withholding things from me that I want, I am thankful that I HE is in control!

Happy Thanksgiving!

P.S. What Soren does while I type..

I am in serious need of an attitude adjustment these days. That and maybe just more time in the Word, or sometime in the Word instead to none. I have not been a very good mother lately, especially today, and I feel sorry for my children.

Vacation was wonderful and I don't ever feel ready to leave the mountains. I feel like I could camp forever. The simplicity, the views, trees, water, mountains, I just can't get enough, ever. Not that I don't think the prairies have a beauty of their own, but I am in LOVE with the mountains. And the trees were changing color's, there are just no words or pictures to do it justice, but the views do something for my soul.

I miss a lot of people tonight. People from back home, my dear dear parents, and my church, dear friends that have left this town. Heaven just gets sweeter the more that I say goodbye. But I am beginning to hate goodbye's more and more. I would never want to hold anyone back from where they are going, but the loss feels so great sometimes, and the voids they leave that are never filled, because there is no one just like them.
Ok, so not a very happy post, but tomorrow is a new day, and thankfully His mercies are new every morning.

Randomness

- I am finally coming out of my haze and feeling more like a normal person again. I don't cry everyday anymore and the c-section still hurts, but I decided that it's time to move on from that, stop focusing on it, and enjoy my two precious boys. So I wear Soren in a wrap even if it hurts, and I hold Theo on my lap even if he elbows me in the stomach every now and then and I would have to say that I am happier.
- Theo adores his brother, asks to hold him all the time, and goes up to him and says, 'Hi sweets, what are you doing sweets? Are you looking at me?' It is so cute. He calls Soren a she, asks what's she's doing or if she's crying. We will have to work on that.

- Talk about monkey see, monkey do, Theo decided he needed to breastfeed his baby like I do Soren. This was a conversation I was not prepared for, so I have just let it be, and figure it will work itself out. I hope, lol. He try's to feed his baby through his belly button and he is very patient about waiting for a burp. It really is funny.


- More of Theo's phrases... He calls chipmunks monkey chips, (lol) and milkshakes are shake-a-milk. I must call Brian honey a lot because he always wants to know 'what honey is doing', or 'where is honey', or says 'I go see honey mom.' He told Brian the other day to ask him a question. So random sometimes.
- Soren smiled at Brian and I both yesterday, he has such a sweet smile. He is still a wonderful baby, fairly easy most of the time. It is weird having another child sometimes, we have almost forgot him in the house twice sitting in his car seat ready to go. He is just so quiet and we are still not used to carting him around. :) But it is fun to look in the back and see two children. Oh and his beautiful head of hair is curly on top when it is wet. Man I love his hair! I am trying not to be too attached to his hair cause there is still a chance he could lose it all. But it is just so great. (Here are some attempts at getting pictures of his great, curly hair)


- We are leaving on Tuesday for a week of camping vacation and I am so beyond excited I can't even tell you. We haven't gotten to get out much this summer, just with my pregnancy and such, so we are headed to the mountains and I am going to take a gazillion pictures and spend every evening in front of the camp fire and watch Theo run and play and get all the outdoor time his little heart can desire. I might even indulge in some S'mores, I hope Soren can tolerate them. :) I know Brian is excited too, and I think we really need this before the cold weather sets in and we are stuck indoors (mostly) for the winter.
- I think that is all for now. I will put pictures up of our trip when we return.

So after Theo was born life was bliss. I held him for the first time and nothing could be wrong with the world after that. For the first time I had a baby, of my own, that I wasn't taking care of for someone else and then would have to give back, he was mine, and I loved it! I thought I would feel the same when I had Soren. Now don't get me wrong, holding him is bliss and oh how I LOVE him! He is just the sweetest big baby and is so good to his mama with all his sleeping. :) But the world doesn't seem as bright as it did after Theo was born.
I know I am in need of an attitude adjustment these days, I feel frustrated more often then not and every time I turn around I feel like there is some limitation that reminds me of why I hate c-sections. I feel like complaining about that a lot. I had a fever on and off all weekend and back pain enough to make me want really strong drugs, which I usually hate and try to avoid at all costs. I feel so behind on everything, and I mean like everything, like life. I can't keep up. It turned fall overnight here and I almost panic inside thinking that winter is so close. I don't mind winter, for about 4 months, but this last one seemed SO looooong to me and I just don't feel ready to do it again. I LOVE fall, I just don't like that winter comes so quickly after it.
Anyway, I just really need to refocus here, remember that I just had a baby and that it's ok to be a bit behind for a while, but I am just finding it hard this time around.
I will end this with some pictures now to try and redeem this pathetic post a little. :)
Theo Loving his bike these days.

3 weeks old and 12lbs now. I hope he levels out by 3 months like Theo did cause I hate that he is growing so fast.

I love his chubby cheeks and his super soft full head of hair!

Soren's Birth Story

So I am finally done and ready to post this. Don’t read it if you don’t like birth stories, cause it is long. And the pictures aren’t really edited, but that would probably take me another two weeks, so we are just going to go with this. And I have to preface with the reminder that with Theo I was induced with cervidal 7 days after my due date, labored for 18hrs and never progressed past 4cm. It ended in a c-section and those who know me know I wanted this baby to come out naturally as much as I wanted this child. :)

Anyway, a week before my due date I was hoping to have gone into labor already and my last two appointments before my due date left me in tears with news that the baby hadn’t dropped, I wasn’t showing any signs of going into labor and I began to fear that my body didn’t know how to go into labor on it’s own and that I was going to end up with a scheduled c-section. I was told to come in on my due date and have a NST and then they would check me and asses what they were going to do. So I went in, baby sounded fabulous, and they checked and I was 1cm and 40% effaced, so they said they would leave me till the 13th and then break my water. I was excited and left with high hopes for the week ahead. I talked to my Doula, Lola, and she asked if I would be up for trying Castor Oil on Tuesday to see if that wouldn’t help, so I agreed.
So Tuesday morning, 5:30am I was awake and decided to just go for it. It makes me feel really sick just to write this, I can’t believe I got that stuff down, but I did. Within an hour I felt nauseous and just awful all over. Castor Oil is thought to take 4 to 5 hours to kick in so I figured it could be a long day. Well, not much happened by noon besides feeling gross all over so I took a nap and figured that it wasn’t working for me.
Fast forward to 4pm and I got one major strong contraction. I didn’t think much of it till I got another one shortly after, and then another until I realized they were every two minutes and I was having a hard time walking or talking through them. Called Brian and my Doula to give them a heads up. By 5 I asked Lola to come over because I didn’t think I was handling the pain all that well and she came and told me to take a bath and see what happened. Well, nothing changed so we decided to go into the local hospital to get checked before driving an hour to the city where I was supposed to deliver. (I was considered high risk because I wanted a vbac and they are short on doctors here in town so they didn’t want me to deliver here)
Enter stage chaos!! We got to the local hospital and encountered the ruddest nurse I have ever met in my life who gave Brian a hard time for bringing me in and made sure we knew that the didn’t do vbac’s there and why didn’t we just go to the city. I think she would have rather me deliver in the car then have it there. She was truly awful and if we would have been there 5 more minutes I would have asked her to leave the room and never come back in. Anyway, this was about 5:30 -6pm and I was 5cm and in active labor with contractions every 2min coming fast and hard. They started to get concerned I wouldn’t make it the hour to the hospital but decided in the end to send me by ambulance. All this time rude nurse barked orders, stabbed (ok maybe not stabbed, but she was evil) me with a second unneccessary IV which was never used, yelled at Lola, snapped at Brian while they tried to help me labor and just all around was awful. So I was happy to see the ambulance crew and get out of there before I blew up at rude nurse.
Ambulance ride was super bumpy, but we got there in 36min, which is great. Better then the old winstar could have done. :)
Anyway, I lost all track of time while I was in labor. I would classify myself as somewhat of a train wreck. lol. I think that comes from expecting it to be like labor with Theo and it turns out it’s a whole other ball game when your child is actually putting pressure on your cervix and coming out. I was not prepared for that kind of pain, and I don’t think I handled it well, I was not impressed with myself. :) So anyway, when I got to this hospital they broke my water almost right away and things continued to move quickly and I think it was around 10pm that my body started pushing, and I was almost 10cm. I pushed for close to two hours and baby just would move down a bit while I was pushing and then go back up again when I stopped, so not much was being accomplished. There are a few things that stand out in my mind during this period of labor. The first is that my husband was SO helpful. I know I shouldn’t be surprised, but he really hates hospitals, and seeing me in pain, but he really stayed focused and with it and let me squeeze the life out of his hand, (which he thought I was going to break at one point). The second was how thankful I was to have Lola there. To have the presence of a woman who understands labor and can look at you when you are in pain and say that they understand, and know that it is true, but who can help keep you focused and try and get you to pull it together, it was just invaluable. Not to mention that she was also able to suggest different things for me to try so that I really felt like I was able to give labor my best shot. Best doula ever. :) The last thing I remember is how chaotic that room felt all the time. It was far from a relaxing. In Lola’s words it was like they were waiting for my uterus to erupt at any minute. It was kind of frustrating how uptight everybody seemed, they were nice, but uptight. I had a nurse pushing something into my stomach every contraction to get a read on they baby’s heart rate, even though it was perfect the whole labor, they refused to take the monitor’s off. I think it would be safe to say that Brian and Lola were the only ones in the room focused on helping me try to get the birth I wanted. It was really too bad.
The doc came in around 11:45 I think and suggested it was time for a c-section. (This doctor was the one that was on call and he was a whole other story. Horrible bedside manner, beverly hills smile (Brian’s terminology), laughed a lot, wasn’t helpful at all, I could go on, but I won’t. :)) After talking to Lola and Brian we concluded that this was probably going to be the way it was going to have to be. So within half an hour they had me in surgery. The spinal couldn’t come fast enough at that point, there is nothing like having to push for another 20min knowing that it’s not doing you any good. I was happy to be able to be awake this time and to hear Soren cry when he came out and to see him and kiss his sweet cheeks. When Dr. Horrible Bedside Manners pulled him out all I heard was ‘This kid is a giant!!’. Soren was born at 12:25, August 11, 2010 and was 10lbs 9oz and 21 1/2in long. He has a full head of dark thick hair and is just the cutest chunky newborn ever. He eats like a champ, (at 2 weeks is about 11lbs 5oz.) sleeps like a champ and we are so in love with him.

Some of the best moments ever!


I would have to say that I am of course disappointed that I had a c-section but not in the way I was with Theo. I am so thankful that I got the opportunity to really labor, to push, to feel like I gave it every effort that I could. The disappointment comes more from having to have a surgery, again, and feeling like I didn’t get to give my baby the least traumatic entry into the world and that I didn’t get to feel the satisfaction of having him placed on my chest right away. And oh the pain of a c-section. The recovery is long and hard for me, was the first time, feels even a bit worse this time. I have cried many a time in the last week and a half about the pain that makes it impossible for me to get out of bed without help, unable to wear my baby in a wrap for a while, unable to pick up my firstborn for anything, to get outside much because I can’t do 3 flights of stairs very well. But to hold a newborn, one that is perfectly healthy and eats and sleeps well, that is bliss. And I try to hold on to that in the hard moments, and be thankful that he is here, safe and sound, blessing us with his presence. Soren is my Samuel that I prayed earnestly for and had to learn to wait on God’s timing but God as been merciful to grant us this blessing and we are thankful!


Oh, and the name Soren is one that we had picked for him a year before we even knew he was on the way. We just both loved it right away when we saw it in a baby name book and that it is not super common and sounds masculine. It means thunder, or war. His middle name Cameron is named for Brian’s older brother who died at the age of one from mistakes made in the hospital. It is a sad story, but we wanted to honor his memory.

Thank you to all those who have prayed for me and supported me, as I waited on the Lord to even get pregnant, that felt like a long journey, to praying that I would get the delivery I wanted and that we would have a healthy baby. I am so thankful for the women that God has brought into my life in the last couple years and appreciate so much all the love and support and prayer being offered up on my behalf. I pray I can be such a friend to others.

Love these boys!

I have been putting off blogging so I can put Soren's birth story up, but that is taking some time, so I felt that since I am no longer a lady in waiting that I needed to put something new up here. Baby Tiger is here, our dear Soren Cameron and we are loving having a newborn. It would be a lie to say that it isn't an adjustment for sure and I have had a weepy couple of days, thank you hormones. Overall though it is bliss to hold a newborn in my arms again and to watch T interact with him and want to hold him etc. And I have seen my husband step up and serve and love me and our boys in an amazing way and I feel that I have fallen in love with him all over again. I am so blessed and thankful!
Anyway, I need to go, but the birth story will come soon along with pictures.

Lady in Waiting...

So I am still here, still pregnant. For the most part I am ok with that, but I have my moments where I am just done. It is so nice having my mumsy here, she has been cooking for me, and keeping me company, going for walks with me, rubbing my feet and I think my favorite thing, reading books to my little boy. My least favorite thing about the end of pregnancy is the hormone changes. I go from really happy to irritable, to mad, to wanting to cry about nothing or everything. I feel like I am keeping myself in check a lot to not take these emotions out on people all the time. Still can't wait for that 'newborn high' :) I will be induced (by breaking my water) on Friday if nothing happens this week, so it is nice to have an end in sight, and it is nice they are not just scheduling me for surgery.
So I have been feeling a little sad about the thought that things will change for Little T and I. Of course I am excited and want more children, but the firstborn really has it made and T has had 2 1/2 years of just me. And I sure have enjoyed almost every minute. :) (It would be a lie to say there haven't been rough days.) He is really just so delightful with all his little winsome ways. And man can this kid ever talk. I am not one that likes to brag about T's ability to communicate because I would never ever want another mother to think that I thought less of a child who didn't talk as much. It is not anything that I have done that has made T such a great communicator, it is the way that God made him, and I get the front row seat to watching him excel. And each child's mother gets the distinct privilege of watching and noticing and enhancing the gifts that God has given their children at any given time in their life, and if we don't cheer them on, who will. Anyway, all that to say that T speaks at the level of a 4 year old and he just amazes me with what he understands and responds too. It makes some things more challenging, but overall it is so fun to watch. I have been wanting to record some of his phrases for some time, and I will probably come back and add some as I remember, but here is what I can think of for now.

When he wants to get dressed he says "I get my dressed on." This is one of my favorites.
When Brian would leave for work he used to say all the time 'Go buy some money Papa'
His most common is 'I try some' having to do with food and 'Hold you mommmy' when he wants to be held.

I can't think of any more at the moment, but I will add as I remember. I should probably go get my day started though seeing as it is 10am. A good long walk is in order today too. Come on baby, we can't wait to meet you!!