—Bought bread.

—Failed to bathe my baby every day.

—Failed to bathe my kids for up to 3 days in a row (gasp!) and it’s the hot summer time.

—Craved good apple pie like crazy (and haven’t bought any because I know I won’t like them).

—Encouraged my children to go swimming in the swimming pool before we go away, knowing I couldn’t fit a bath in, but at least they’d get rinsed.

—Gone away with Hannah’s hair uncombed and very out of control.

—Remembered that Adolph Hitler was once some mother’s sweet newborn–and then renewed my prayers for the salvation of my children.

—Eaten food that I didn’t really want because that’s what we had and I didn’t have time or energy to make what I wanted.

—Lost my mind in a bigger way than ever before in my life.  Sometimes I’d declare I was in a coma.

—Enjoyed my new baby more than any baby yet.

—Read my Bible more than in a long time, because now I’m sitting down and nursing at hours when no one else is around.

John-Bear III watches over Hannah as she takes a nap
lying on John-Bear II.

Now, it’s not perfect.  His A’s look like H’s because he doesn’t close the top, and his E’s have lots of horizontal lines.  But it is the first he has written something other than his name (or Hannah’s name) all on his own, thought up in his own mind, and not prompted by me!  I was thrilled!  I called Andrew out to see this, and then Andrew encouraged him to write “the hat”.  With the promise of some M & M’s afterward, Paul proceeded to draw a box around “the cat” and then wrote “the hat”.

Since then, he has been walking around at times and producing a string of letter sounds (such as “m-a-t”), and then announcing to me the word that those letters spell.  He is also starting to be able to read 3-letter words without having to stop and sound out each letter.  Just this week I have introduced to him 2-syllable words, which he seems to be catching onto without any problem.  It’s coming, folks!  It’s coming!

Now, about the treasure maps.  Recently, Andrew started offering a sweet reward and a game to boot for reading.  Every day after lunch, he hides 2 Oreo cookies, one for Hannah, and one for Paul.  They are hidden in different places.  Then, Andrew draws a picture-map for Hannah, and writes and word map for Paul.  Hannah has to figure out what the picture is, and then go looking for it to find her cookie.  Paul has to read the 2 sentences on his map to find out where to look for his cookie.

At first, he needed lots of help.  He has gotten better and better at it, and now can just about read it all on his own.

He still really likes his daddy to get down on the floor and help him with it.   (Hannah takes that opportunity to use her daddy for a jungle gym work-out.)

Here’s a glimpse of our music department.  Paul picked up his kazoo and said, “Here, Hannah.  I’ll blow on this end, and you blow on that end!”  Needless to say, no noise came out when they did that!

Another of Paul’s skills that has rapidly developed in the last few days in the ability to use the computer mouse fairly well.  Since I am sitting down and feeding Marie a lot of the time, for one of those feedings, I sit behind them while they are at the computer, and with Paul working the mouse, Paul and Hannah do school on the computer.  They positively love doing school on the computer, and usually beg to do it every day.  Now, I don’t have to have my hands free and do it with them manually.  I can just talk them through any snags.

Before Marie was born, I was concerned how in the world I’d be able to manage any kind of school with them.  I’m finding it’s pretty easy.  They want to be where I am, I’m sitting in the chair for about an hour at a time feeding Marie every little bit, and so we just capitalize on that.  For one feeding, we might do Bible story and memory verses.  Another feeding I might verbally quiz Hannah on letter names and sounds, and sing the song for each letter.  And of course, for one feeding, supervise their school at the computer.

That’s how we’re managing the school part of our lives at this point.  I know it will be a whole different ballgame later on when Marie is crawling, and whenever Paul and Hannah are deeper into organized school.  But, we’ll figure that out when we get there.

I believe she may be in some sort of a growth spurt.  She has been fussing and crying in the evenings for a multiple-hour spell.   During that time, she wants to eat every hour or every hour and a half.  I work at meeting her needs.  That means I spend lots and lots of time nursing, burping, wiping up spit-up, and trying to figure out what her needs are and how best to meet them.

Paul and Hannah like to be around me pretty much all the time.  Sometimes they sit and rock while I’m in my rocking chair and we sing songs together as Marie eats.

During this time of her needing and wanting lots of food, a couple times we’ve dipped into the formula to meet her needs.  Paul and Hannah have delighted in helping to feed her.  I really hope to get by with very little use of bottles because I don’t want her to prefer them.  I remember Paul’s first 4 months, needing a supplemental bottle after nearly every feeding.  If Marie needs that, we’ll do it.  But if we don’t need to, I want to spare both of us the headache.

Marie is still tiny enough for my grandmother to enjoy holding.  We had her out here for supper on Friday.

Marie now sleeps in her big crib at nights.  We have a monitor with the extension in our room so I can hear her when she wakes up at nights.

Marie is giving me plenty of challenges this week, trying to figure her out.  Yesterday, with the timing of all her feedings, she ate 11 times.  That’s a lot!  Today, she’s been more content and ate 7 times, I think.  However, she still had a fussy spell from 4:00 until 10:00.  That’s better than yesterday, when it seemed like the fussing was nearly all day long.

One thing I’m really thankful for is that she does settle down and sleep well at nights.  She usually gets up around mid-night, 3:00, and then 6:00.  Sometimes she stretches one of those times 30 to 45 min. longer, but not all the times.  When she eats, yes it takes a whole hour, but then she usually settles right down and goes back to sleep.

I still think she’s a very beautiful little girl.  I’m looking forward to having a beautiful, happier little girl one of these days, but we’ll love her just as much as we work out these kinks and try to meet her needs.

Tomorrow I go to my post-partum check-up (and hope to get a good report).

Tomorrow starts my first week without my full-time live-in maid service.

Tomorrow starts a brand-new week in which I will once more strive to have a Bible time every day with my children.

Tomorrow, I need the Lord.

Tonight, I got royally peed on during church by Marie.

Tonight was our first Sunday evening service and fellowship meal at church with Marie.

Tonight I was embarrassed to death to get to church late—highlighted by me being the piano player and Andrew the song-leader.  Others had filled in until we got there.

Tonight, whether right or wrong, I did the dishes and cleaned up the kitchen after putting Marie to bed.  I’ll be glad in the morning.

Tonight, I have an overwhelming and intense desire for God to save my children.

Tonight, I need the Lord.

**************************************

I discovered one of the kids had put their doll
bottle in the bassinet with Marie.  It wasn’t
doing her much good, obviously.

Paul (I think, or else it was Hannah) while pretending to make calls on a toy phone, “I’m calling a prayer request.”  This was less than an hour after I had been passing things on the prayer chain and leaving messages on people’s answering machines with the prayer requests.

**************************************

After reading about Peter walking on the water (and then sinking and crying out, “Lord! Save me!”), Paul and Hannah were playing in the basement.  I didn’t go to see what they were doing, but I repeatedly heard cries of, “Lord!  Save me!” from the basement.

***************************************

Very soon after we brought Marie home, Andrew asked Hannah what our new baby’s name was since she was born.

Andrew:  “Is her name Baby Miranda?”

Hannah:  “No.”

Andrew:  “Well, what is her name?”

Hannah:  “Have to wait until New Year’s!”

Andrew said she’ll be really good at faking answers when she gets Alzheimer’s.

**************************************

I was putting on some socks after getting up from my nap.  Hannah pulled a pair of socks out of my drawer and wanted me to wear them.  I told her not now.

Hannah:  “You can wear them on Facebook.  I have Facebook just like Mommy.”

Me:  “What is Facebook?”

Hannah:  “Facebook is an iiiii-dol that goes down to the river and makes the rain jump out.”

Hmmm…Andrew says she’s more right than wrong.

****************************************

She wants to suck her thumb!

Katie combs Hannah’s hair before putting her to bed at night.  After getting combed, Hannah came out to my rocker to tell my good-night.  As she came, I said, “Hannah, you are beautiful.”

Hannah said, nodding her head, “I have hair.”

Does she ever, and it’s so beautiful too!

**************************************

Marie in Hannah’s doll stroller from Aunt Wendy!

In the first week or so after we brought Marie home, Paul made astonishing observations.  Once, as he walked past me and saw Marie’s eye’s open, he said,

“Oh!  She has eyes!”

Another time, as he was passing by he happened to see her hands and said,

“Oh!  She has hands!”

Each time he said it, he sounded so surprised, as if he had never noticed that before, and hadn’t expected to see those things on a new baby.  He is getting educated!

*********************************

Paul and Hannah were eating a Tootsie Roll as a treat for picking up toys.  They were discussing whether or not Tootsie Rolls have seeds in them.

Paul:  “No, they don’t have seeds.  After a long, long time they would have seeds in them.”

I guess he thought they might grow seeds after a while.

*********************************

Paul and Hannah have been playing with the hickory nuts that drop from a tree in our yard.  They like to put them in cups and buckets and then put water on them.  Paul said that he puts water on them so they will get all furry.

As I get older and more of my life gets behind me, I wonder if I’m getting a little cynical.  Maybe a lot cynical.

When I take a moment to look around, either at relatives, people I keep up with (a little bit) through blogs or Facebook, I see carefree teenagers and young adults.  The things they do in their lives– sports,  getting together for a hotdog roast with friends, having a great time laughing and talking together until the wee hours of the morning, taking days off (from work or school), taking trips across the nation either planned or on a spur-of-the-moment whim, and just all the things young, carefree people do– it just jolts me.  I think, “How?”  Don’t they know that’s not real life?  Don’t they know that at some point they’ll have to keep their nose to the grindstone and earn a living and keep a house and mow the lawn and pay the bills?  Why doesn’t all that consume 120% of their time?  Where in the world do they get the energy to do all that (and the money)?

And then, I stop to think a little more rationally and realize that, at least to some degree, once, when I was young and in my early 20’s, I was there too.  I enjoyed the cook-outs, the volleyball games, the late-night discussions with friends, a trip or two to the beach with my aunts, etc.  And, my mom was tending all the little kids at home and making sure the house kept standing while I was off partying.

Riding a tandem bike at the beach with my Aunt.

Then, I see young people fall in love and walk around with stars in their eyes.  I, on the other hand, walk around with bleary eyes that I can hardly keep open and wonder when I can get the next nap.  And the young people get married and are just head-over-heels in love and to all appearances are as excited as they were on their wedding day.  I wish I could just get dressed and fix my hair before noon so I don’t look like a bed-hair witch for lunch.  I think, “Enjoy it now, folks.  Just you wait until you have little bottoms to wipe, diapers to change, people to fix 3 meals a day for, laundry that must be done if you are to have clean clothes, other people that need you to dress them and comb their hair, and there’s a whole lot more to life than holding hands and strolling along a river bank.”

Rowing the flat-bottomed boat on the pond with friends.

Then, I stop to think again.  Yes, I was there once too.  It seems so far away, and so long ago, but there was a time when I was hopelessly in love, childless, and (compared to now) free of most responsibilities.  Yes, it was somewhat tempered by my working full-time, but that’s still a lot less responsibility and a lot more freedom than I have today.

Riding my motorcycle with my sister Rachel.

Truly, “There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under heaven:” (Eccl. 3:1)  So, I need be happy for others to enjoy the season of life they are in, even if it’s one that’s already passed for me.  I need to enjoy my season–the season of holding a tiny baby, of watching Hannah’s curly pig-tails bounce as she nods her head, of watching Paul endlessly delight in “vroooming” is cars around on the floor, of hearing our children pray over their pretend meals of hickory nuts (gathered from the yard) and water, of watching my big, adult husband get down on the floor and play with our children like I never knew possible, of seeing my children get exceedingly happy over receiving 2 M & M’s–and know that some day this season will be over also, so I had better enjoy it to the fullest now.  And quit wasting time thinking somebody else’s season is better and happier than mine is right now.

One of the things I had on my project list, but it was pretty far down in priority, was to make a curtain for the sliding glass doors in our living room.  There were some vertical blinds there, they were smoke-stained, but the worst thing was that the mechanized track they were on did not function and it was extremely difficult to get them open or closed.  The whole thing was a headache.  When we brought Marie home, she was supposed to be in the sunlight to help clear up her jaundice.  The best place for her was at those sliding glass doors.  I had been leaving the vertical blinds closed to keep out the heat of the afternoon and evening sun.  I pulled on them to try to get them open for Marie, and the whole bloomin’ business fell on the floor.  Andrew just opened the sliding glass doors and drug the whole fallen mess outside beside the trash barrels.  (He hauled it to the dump on Saturday.)

That left the sliding glass doors standing there naked (curtainless).  I figured we’d just have to put up something make-shift until I had time to sew a curtain in about 5 years or something like that.  Well, Katie was here.  There were afternoons when we were all napping at the same time, and hmmm….

I found out Katie didn’t have hardly any knowledge of sewing machines.  Can’t learn any younger, right?  We rummaged through the 2 boxes of material in my basement from my Great Aunt Kathleen (I got it from her when she was cleaning out her fabric stash) and found some suitable material.  Katie had a crash course in how to thread a sewing machine, wind a bobbin, and sew straight seams.  She practiced a while on old scraps, and then she was set to go.

I had psyched myself up for crooked and bizarre seams, a curtain that hung at a crazy angle, and something that would definitely look like a first-time sewer project.  I expected what I would have sewn when I first started using a sewing machine, way back in the Dark Ages.  I have been astonished!  The seams are straight!  (And they’re even French seams.)  There are no crooked and bizarre edges, bulges, and unsightly tucks.  She has been so patient and careful with this whole project, painstakingly taking the time to do everything just right.  She even admitted that it was relaxing to sew!

Now, thanks to Katie, we have a beautiful curtain in our living room at the sliding glass doors.  It not only looks great, but now people on every high hill can’t binocular (use binoculars to peek into other people’s houses–no I don’t do that,but I’m sure there are those who do)  into our living room every evening as it gets dark.

I give Andrew the credit for the hardware.  He buzzed over to Lowe’s and picked up a rod and the works to mount it.  He took down all the stuff from the flimsy curtain and then put up this real wooden rod that hopefully will last our whole lifetime.
Now that Katie has more skills, if she sticks around long enough, the window in Hannah’s purple room might get a curtain too!

Reading to Paul while feeding Marie.

I continue to be positively amazed at how good I feel!  I just can’t believe it, but I praise the Lord for it.  Ever since about a week after Marie was born, I have felt a whole lot better than I did the entire pregnancy.  I didn’t realize how miserable I was, and how little energy I had during this pregnancy.  I realized I felt lousy and could hardly make myself function most of the time, but I kept telling myself, “Better get used to it, you’ll only feel much more tired and have much less energy after she’s born.”  For whatever reason, God has spared me that extreme exhaustion, the weeks of painful recovery, and stress that makes me feel like the world is ending.  I am so thankful to God for giving me these blessings.

Marie has spiky hair–just like Paul did!

Another thing that I’m really enjoying is that everything seems so much easier this time around, being the 3rd time.  The nursing, the burping, the figuring out why she’s crying, and so on.  It doesn’t mean I have it all put together, but it is easier and I am much less stressed over things, and less rigid with trying to make it work “according to the book”.  Another thing that makes my life easier is I am getting further and further away from trying to do it like my mom and doing it how it works for me.  That is mostly letting everything else slide in my life, or else having someone else do it.  The biggest step for that is having Katie here helping me.  Getting rid of that expectation for myself (doing everything as well as my mom–and doing it all myself) has relieved me of so much stress.

One morning I couldn’t find Hannah.  After looking
other places, I finally found her out on the porch
snuggling with her blankie.

Another thing I really wanted to blog about was the wonderful providence of God arranging events in our lives so Marie’s arrival was smooth.  My family was gone to NC for Laura’s (my sister) wedding the weekend of July 31st.  Andrew’s parent’s do not live in the area.  Andrew’s brother and family that live in the area were actually out of the country for 10 days.  So, we had pondered what we’d do with Paul & Hannah if she was born on the weekend of July 31st.  Guess what?  God waited to have her birthday until Aug. 2nd!  My sister Gail was planning to keep our children when Marie was born, and she was back from the wedding.  On top of that, Andrew’s mom had called and she was coming to the Valley and came Sunday evening and spent the night and was planning to visit here with us through Monday morning.   So, when we needed to go to the hospital in the middle of the night Sunday night, we didn’t even have to call Gail to come.  We just woke up Andrew’s mom and told her we were leaving and to contact Gail in the morning to pass off the kids.  It just all worked out so smoothly!

Marie is relaxing with her John-Bear.

A tremendous blessing to me is all the projects I completed before Marie’s birth.  Having my file cabinet purged and organized, the basement cleaned and in order, Hannah’s room finished, the closets done–it all makes my life so much easier now.  It’s easier for me, and it’s easier for me to tell Katie where things are and where to put things.  I’m glad I persevered until I got those things done.

Marie is continually loved by her
siblings.  They had put a lot of softies
in her bassinet for her.

Andrew reading stories to all our children.

Occasionally Marie takes a night that she doesn’t
sleep much and does a lot of fussing and crying.
She had been doing excellently, and then she took
one of those last night (Sat. night).  We still made
it to church.

Hannah is holding and hugging Marie
while we’re watching the “Cars” movie
with Paul & Hannah.

She loves to hold Marie and frequently
asks to hold her.

Well, Marie wants to eat, so I’ll have to save any more writing for next time.

(Note to Grace:  Please feel free to come visit with your little ones whenever you want!  I keep meaning to call you but just haven’t squeezed it in yet.  Paul and Hannah would love to have some little people to play with.)

(Note to Davene:  My high-carb food request–the cherry/pineapple crisp recipe you posted a while back.  It looked so good! Other than that, all the food you make looks and sounds scrumptious!)

I have several things I want to write about in a blog post, but somehow the time gets away every day, and all the blogging time should be spent sleeping.  So, this will be pretty short, and we’ll try again another day.

I feel like a whole different person now that Marie has been born.  I have no pain, I sleep well, I can move like I had forgotten was possible, my blood sugar seems to remain completely normal even with high-carb meals, all my doctors have told me to forget about checking my blood sugar and diabetes, etc. until and unless I have reason to worry about it again, and I think all the fluid has finally left my body!!  I bravely ventured onto the scales this evening, and lo and behold!  I was 28 lbs. lighter than at my last doctor appointment!  It’s no wonder I feel like I’m floating around the house.  I must have been lugging gallons of fluid around in my cells during this pregnancy.  I am shocked at how thin my legs look, how tiny my feet are (I’m back into my regular shoes today!), and how easily I can move my fingers.  Nothing is tight and fat and squeezed and hard to bend.

I know a big part of the reason I am feeling so good is because Katie is here doing whatever I don’t have the time or energy to do.  I feel like I’m on a vacation with a maid and a beautiful new baby to boot!

I can’t believe how well I feel so soon.  Sometimes I wonder why I even have Katie here.  I believe there are several reasons for feeling so much better this time than after Hannah was born.  My labor was only half as long.  I did not come down with a horrendous cold at the same time Marie was born (that happened with Hannah), and some of the difficulties of Hannah’s birth, when I described them to my doctors, they figured out ways to keep that from happening again, and I lost less blood this time around (thanks again to my wonderful set of doctors).  But even more than all that, I know the Lord blessed me with an easier time all through this.  Thanks to all you who prayed for us faithfully throughout this pregnancy.

We got some special presents for
Paul & Hannah to give them when
Marie was born.

They were all yard sale items.  Hannah’s was a
baby changing station.

Paul got some animals (including a bunch of
dinosaurs, of which he had few) and a big
truck.