Looks like summer inside.
Looks like fall outside. That’s actual water on the ground. We had to cut our morning walk short because I felt like it was probably a bad idea to soak the baby. While I do love the fall, we will miss the summer and the ability to go outside any time.
Wow. I am quickly realizing how behind I am on keeping things caught up. I didn’t think we had been doing much this summer, but as I am going through the pictures, the keepers keep piling up. I am working on doing a photo book, and the prospect of going through our thousands of pictures since Thad was born is more than a little overwhelming. So, as to not cause an emotional breakdown, I will do a short and sweet synopsis of our summer. Here we are:
Summer, 2012
We went fishing.
We went shooting.
Grandma C. had a birthday. (Note the cake: one of my best. I call it “Strawberry Shortcake Cake”. Consisting of yellow cake, fresh strawberry filling and topping, and the super delish frosting from my Oatmeal Whoopie Pie recipe, it was a good show, I have to say. Made at a moment’s notice too. Justin: “Uh, so I know it’s short notice, but I forgot it’s Mom’s birthday…do you think you could make her a cake?” She is due to arrive in an hour. Way to go, me…pulled off with style and grace…HA!).
Thatcher met Great Grandpa Frank
We went to parks. And playgrounds.
Thatcher Reid got bigger.
And started eating solid food.
We took the kids to the beach.
We played with friends while the Dads brewed beer.
We played outside. A lot.
We went to the lake.
Thad drove a boat.
We got ready for football season.
Other things to note: Amber moved back in after an extended stay in Longview to get her CNA certification. She quickly found a great job at a memory loss home, bought a car, and is working hard saving up money to move in with a girlfriend, probably around the end of the year. I started back to work. Just two days a week. Amber was able to arrange her schedule so that she takes care of the boys on her days off. Justin also switched his work schedule to 4 10’s, and starting this month will have Fridays off. We are looking forward to having long weekends together. I am enjoying the new office that I am working at, and am excited about the changes happening there, including remodeling a building in downtown Springfield and moving the practice there in the next few months. Mr. Thatcher is not sleeping through the night, but getting closer….ish. We have had some rough nights lately for an unknown reason, but seem to be heading toward a once-per-night feeding. While not the same as sleeping all night, I am grateful for any night that I am only up once. Lets just say it a LOT better than some of our nights. But, like I said, I THINK we are headed in the right direction.
We had the boys dedicated at church on Sunday, here they are in their Sunday finest:
They look like Children of God, don’t they? Ha. It was something that Justin and I have been wanting to do for a long time. We are also hosting a small group for the first time as part of a 40 days of Purpose series that our church is doing at the end of the month. A little nervous for that, but excited to get to know people at our church better.
I am looking forward to fall, and the holidays coming up. I have LOTS of ideas for holiday projects, and will soon post some fun things that I did last year.
I can’t believe I never posted anything on this! There were three new grandsons in my family this year; My sister’s son Colby (Jan 18th), Thatcher (March 20th) and my brother’s son Ezra (March 28th). In June, Mom had a giant party at their house for family and friends to meet the new babies. It was also our first time meeting Ezra since my brother and sister-in-law live in California. Needless to say, it was a giant fiasco. Super fun, but also super craziness.
Oh man, can you imagine what is going to be like when those three are 2 year olds? So much fun. Especially with good role models like Ashlyn and Thad. Ha! I can’t wait. I always love spending time with my family. In my dreams, we live in the same town and get to spend way more time together. In real life, we live a few hours a way at best, and a state away at worst. I guess you just need to enjoy the time together when you have it!
Not a lot. But, I feel the winds changing. I feel like I have been in a creative rut lately, or maybe just a rut in general. But a cool breeze is blowing. I am back to work, as of 2 weeks ago. It ain’t much, 6 hours on Thursdays and 5 hours on Fridays, but it’s nice. Not gone from the kids to long, but honestly, kind of nice to have a break too. It’s a good balance for me. Summer is coming to a close, Fall is on it’s way. My favorite time of year. THE HOLIDAYS ARE COMING! Love it. So, let’s clear out my camera, and rid my brain of a few thoughts:
Those are carrots. Not sure if you can tell that from the photo. We did a raised bed for the first time LAST year…lettuce and carrots and radishes. I learned a few things…radishes aren’t very good. Lettuce has bugs and tiny slugs on it. Finding slugs on my lettuce grossed me out so bad, I couldn’t bring myself to eat it. I realize that Safeway’s lettuce most likely had slugs at some point too, but I could NOT get past seeing the slug on my lettuce. But carrots…they grow below the ground where slugs do not go. You pull them up, rinse them off, and look how shiny and nice they are. Carrots I can eat. So we did carrots again this year, along with green beans and peas. All were fairly bug free, and quite edible. We also did strawberries, which Thad ate individually, as each berry ripened. Last week, we replanted the bed with cauliflower and broccoli. We will see how many bugs like those, and then I will see how much I like them. Those things go hand in hand.
Thad is still not ready for the responsibility of the rice box. Gah. Maybe I should just give up and play with the rice myself. Or send the box with him when he goes to college.
Now THIS picture requires an explanation. I assure you, that is not a heart. That is a cloth bag filled with cooked blackberries. Justin is squeezing the life out of that bag in order to make seedless blackberry jelly. We spent a long weekend at the in-laws, canning tuna (a Crossland thing) and picking blackberries. The tuna we have done probably 4 or so times since Justin and I have been married. The jelly we did for the first time this year. It took us a couple of after-work evenings, more time consuming because we did jelly (which means you have to juice and strain the berries) rather than jam (chunks of fruit). But it turned out really yummy. As you can see from the picture on the right, Thad enjoys it. He asks for peanut butter and jelly at every meal. Every. Meal. Our jelly success encouraged me to also make some applesauce with apples that my sister had picked at a friends house. Turned out great too.
Speaking of fruit, we have been having smoothies at breakfast quite a bit this summer. We got into this when my sister moved in and started making ‘green smoothies’ with spinach. Sounds gross, but tastes delicious and so nutritious. You make the smoothie with spinach, yogurt, a banana, and whatever other fruit you want. We use various berries usually, but you can also use watermelon, cantaloupe, peaches, etc. Really anything will work. Also delicious is an oatmeal smoothie (pictured) using uncooked oats instead of delicious. Thad absolutely LOVES his ‘juice’ that Auntie Amber makes. He has to be monitored for fruit intake though…he would eat it all day long, and usually pays the price the next day. Or, I pay the price, depending on how you look at it.
We really wanted to go to the county fair this summer. Thad loves animals, and at this point he is big enough to enjoy stuff like that. But, the week that the fair was going on was the hottest week we had all summer. High 90’s in the afternoons. Maybe not record-breaking heat, but hotter than is pleasant with a toddler and a giant infant that you have to pack around. And, as Justin put it, “They don’t have VIP suites at the fair”. True, Justin. True. So, we decided we would skip it this year. The biggest disappointment for Justin and I was missing the fair food. (I mean, besides the disappointment of not making our child happy, of course). As a weak substitute, I made a “fair” dinner the night that we had wanted to go:
I found this recipe for homemade corndogs a few months ago and had wanted to try it. They were still not exactly like the delicious goodness of fair corndogs, but close. Plus, we ate them in the comfort of the AC.
My creative juices have not been flowing much lately. Usually, I have lots of projects or thoughts that I like to blog about so they stop floating around in my head, but lately, things have been a little slow. For some reason, I feel like it has been taking a lot of energy to get through the days. Thatcher’s general mood has continued to improve. He is taking good naps, and sleeping pretty well at night. But he is hard to keep content if he is not being held. We have about 40 different baby apparatuses (what? no spell check on that? so that’s really a word? huh.), Bumbo seat, bouncer seat, exersaucer, forward swinging swing, sideways swinging swing, play mat, etc. He stays happy for approximately 3 minutes on each of those things, otherwise I am typically carrying him around. And Dude is heavy. Anyway, the point is that I have been feeling that frustrating feeling of constantly being busy, without actually getting anything done. So nothing major has been accomplished, but I still wanted to get out a few thoughts:
1. Thank God for church. Literally. It is always a battle in my mind to make the decision to go, since often it means waking Thatcher up in the middle of a his morning nap, or I will be due to feed him in the middle of the service, or I’m worried that he will be fussy. But, we have been going anyway, and I have never regretted it. Most of the time either Justin or I end up in the hallway with him, but it is still so worth it. It really helps re-center my mind, encourages me, and recharges me.
2. It’s good to force yourself to try things. Justin gets frustrated with me sometimes about my hesitation to take the boys and do things, and I have to agree that I am really bad about it. So, when he said that he wanted to take the boys to a local minor league baseball game, I decided that I would go along with it with a good attitude. Unfortunately, we have had some really warm weather lately, and our seats were scorching in the direct sun. I had Thatcher in the Bjorn, and I took him to go stand in the shade. Thad and Justin made it a little longer, but joined me in the shade before the 1st inning was over. While we were standing there, a guy in a park uniform came up to us and said that they were taking families up to the private suites, and asked if we would like to go. YES! Yes, we would! So we got taken up to the air conditioned, shaded suite to watch the rest of the game. There was another family in our suite with 2 little girls. So not only was the temperature a billion times more comfortable, Thad had space to run around and play rather than sit in a seat for 3 hours. It was really fun, and I was so glad that we were willing to try something!
3. Know when to give up. There is only so much poop you can wash off a onesie after a poop-splosion before it makes more sense to just throw it away.
4. Animal crackers are delicious! Seriously, how do I have a 2 1/2 year old and not know about animal crackers? Do they make them more delicious than they used to be? They are sweet, lemony deliciousness!
5. I have a new favorite band. Thad and I had Madagascar 2 on the other day. We have it on our DVR, so whenever he watches it, I need to be present so I can fast-forward through the commercials (otherwise he goes running through the house to find me yelling "Pause it Mommy, pause it!”) When the movie was over, we caught the end of the Rachael Ray show (apparently, she no longer cooks on her show?) as a band was playing. Thad LOVES music, and the song the band played really caught his attention. It sounded like our kind of music, so we YouTubed it later that day. The band is Need to Breathe, and they play all the time on KLove! Apparently, they have been around for years, and while I know a few of their songs (Something Beautiful and Washed by the Water), they have a TON of good ones. Check out Slumber, and Keep Your Eyes Open (sweet Optometry references in the video). They are really good, I love their style of music. Thad does some serious dance moves when we listen to them.
6. Cute baby picture, just for fun.
The other day, after I had put up a couple of new posts, Justin mentioned that I have not blogged anything about Thatcher since he was born 3 months ago. I told him, yeah, I should update some pictures and info on him. But I kept putting it off. Thatcher is adorable. He is huge. He is healthy. But I have had a really hard time feeling happy.
If you knew me back when I had Thad, you heard about my struggles with him. He was colicky, he was crabby, I had a really hard time nursing, it was terrible. But it got better. (See previous post HERE). When I got pregnant with Thatcher, I told myself that if I had another colicky baby, I could handle it because at least I knew what to do. Fast forward to Thatcher at 3 months. I have cried a lot. I don’t know that he is really a difficult baby, I think it is mostly me. Yes, he fights me on sleep a lot. But, he nurses GREAT (When I said before that he is huge, I mean really, the kid is huge. I had to pull out some 12 mo jammies the other day. He is 3 months old). He really does a decent job sleeping at night. Naps are sporadic, and some days they are minimal, but overall, he is right on par for a 3 month old.
But. I haven’t been happy. We are at an age where a lot of our friends are having babies. With constant Facebook updates, I feel like sometimes I am hammered with new moms and their “I love my baby” comments. “My baby is perfect”, “Look how wonderful my baby is”, “I am in heaven”, “I couldn’t be happier”. And it is so upsetting to me. I love my baby too, but why don’t I feel happy? Why am I not in some La-La land where everything is unicorns and roses, and I just spend my day gazing at my baby’s face in a cloud of love? I don’t know. It’s just not the way it is for me.
My unhappiness really hit a peak last week. I was up in the middle of the night with Thatcher, and although it wasn’t an especially difficult night, I found myself feeling so ANGRY. Angry that he was crying, angry at myself for not handling things better, angry at God for being in this situation, and angry at the poor baby. I just felt really, really mad. The next day I decided that I had had enough of being angry and unhappy. I started thinking about the verse that says that God won’t give you more than you can handle. I couldn’t remember the specifics of the verse, or even if it was really a verse, and not just a saying that you hear. So, of course, I googled it. Turns out that the specific verse, (Corinthians 10:13) is referring more to what God will allow you to be tempted with. But, in my search, I also came across a chunk of verses in Psalms that really hit home.
Then I realized that my heart was bitter,
and I was all torn up inside.
I was so foolish and ignorant—
I must have seemed like a senseless animal to you.
Yet I still belong to you;
you hold my right hand.
You guide me with your counsel,
leading me to a glorious destiny.
Whom have I in heaven but you?
I desire you more than anything on earth.
My health may fail, and my spirit may grow weak,
but God remains the strength of my heart;
he is mine forever.
- Psalm 73:21-26 (NLT)
And when I say these verses hit home, I mean it couldn’t have not addressed my problem more perfectly. It is exactly how I have been feeling. I feel like my whole perspective has changed. I feel like I am seeing my baby with new eyes. It is wonderful. And it is without a doubt, an answer to my prayers. I was bitter. My spirit was weak. But now I feel God holding my right hand. I was trying to do things on my own, and failing miserably. I am so thankful that we have a loving God, who is willing to still care for us when we are acting like senseless animals. Will things be perfect now? No. Will I ever feel frustrated? Of course. But it is different. I finally feel happy because I am no longer trying to handle things on my own.
So! Without further ado: Thatcher Reid
He smiles a lot. He just started rolling from front to back, and he can get halfway from his back to his front, if he is really angry (this seems to give him extra rolling power). If you tell him he has stinky feet, he chuckles. He is oh-so-close to reaching for the toys that hang on his bouncer chair. He has recently decided to void our agreement on once-per-day poops. He has a healthy fear of his big brother (or as he calls him, the random screamer, hitter, and smotherer….gotta watch that kid). He eats like a fiend, and happily drools on your lap and stares at your food at the dinner table. He has a strong resemblance to his mother:
Or so I am told. I think it might have something to do with the giant cheeks, which I am still waiting to grow out of. He is a good boy. His big brother is a good boy. I have a great life. And for the first time in a while, I feel content. I am very thankful for what I have, and will keep my verses in Psalms as a constant reminder that God is holding my hand, and He is there to lead me with His counsel because I belong to Him.
