The fastest year ever.
Alexis
I am so exhausted that the idea of anything coherent coming through in this post is laughable, yet I still want to try and capture what is swirling around in my heart and mind.

I just tucked my sweet Zoe into bed for the 3rd time tonight...seems 3 days of festivities celebrating her first birthday is just a bit too much for her.

I was holding her, alone in my dark living room, listening to the rain and I could barely believe that this amazing little person was mine. That this entire year has passed much too quickly. That I was almost surprised it wasn't over.

Is that weird? That every morning, when Zoe is still here, feels like a new and precious gift? And that every bedtime is a treasured remembrance of the day?

So I was holding my sweet baby, looking into her face, and I just needed to write it down.

I am so blessed to live my life. With all the struggles. All the stresses. The busyness and the cranky attitudes we sometimes throw around, I am so incredibly blessed.

I am honored, everyday, that God has entrusted these amazing people to me to raise. That He loves me so much that He lets me be a part of the plan for their lives.

Even with Eden...it was an honor.

I am blessed.

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Not Where I Was Headed
Alexis
All around me people are embarking on new adventures. New dreams are being realized, and I sort of feel like I am being left behind.

Not that any of them are leaving me, exactly, just that my life is slow right now. There are still 4am feedings, stuffy noses, and school work.

I'm still in the highly needed stage of parenting, and honestly, I love it. I'd not choose anything else... but at the same time I am feeling a little restless.

Being wife and mom requires that approximately 80% of my time is devoted to someone else. To meeting sombody's basic needs. Feeding, clothing, cuddles. 80%.

Lately I have been noticing a real lack in the refueling that needs to happen in the other 20%. So I am watching people with new dreams and noticing that spark and wondering where mine is. I have written about this before. It's a pretty common 1-year-after-a-baby syndrome.

It is a little sad, but also a lot exciting. This time I am trying ever so hard to shut down the voices that are trying to tell me that this feeling is from my own, personal. lack. That it is a mark of my inadequacies. That I will feel this way forever.

I'm trying to hear God's voice as He guides me.

I am trying to fight against the urge to measure myself by someone else's yard stick.

And when I start to fail, I can hear myself speak these same words to my daughter, and I am reminded to hear them again.

So here I am...again...waiting. Wondering. Dreaming. Struggling.
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Memorial Stones
Alexis
Today was a no good, horrible, very bad day around here. It started bad, got worse, and then went down hill.

The kids were cranky.

The mom was cranky.

The dad was cranky.

If we had pets, I bet they'd have been cranky too.

It was awful.

I was so happy to put the kids in bed tonight I could have cried.

Yet, in the midst of the terrible day, who shows up to meet me? God does.

My hubby and I stole a few moments to talk about all the little things piling up to turn me into a crazy person and in that conversation, God just confirmed so many things, through him, in my heart. It was truly beautiful really.

I am trying to build little monuments to remember my blessings as we trudge through some economic stuff, and as I trudge through some emotional stuff.

I have been watching my kids lately, with different eyes as they go off to school 2 days a week. After having them full time for the last 4 years, I see new things about them as they head out in to the great big world...without me.

I am struck by the confidence and maturity I see in my eldest.

It was not too long ago that he couldn't look most adults in the eye and answered all questions from just about anyone with one word answers.

I am grateful for the chance to have been able to pour into him and help him to find his voice, his talents, his faith...and to now see those things lived out.

I am, perhaps, the only mother to an eighth grader whose son leans in to hug and kiss her good-bye each day, on the steps of his classroom. He's not interested in being "cool". He's interested in being Noah.

For all his stubbornness at home, he steadfastly refuses to be someone other than himself out in public.

And who he is, is pretty awesome.

There is Phoebe, who doesn't quite have that grip on staying herself, but whom I know so well, that I can see it in how she is walking, if the day has been one where she has had to fight her insecurities with every step. I know the lies that play in her head enough to recite them...and I know when she needs to be loved on and reminded of the woman God has created her to be.

I love the days where she triumphs and the quirky, kind, amazingly generous and adventurous girl bounds through the door with a smile that bubbles up from her toes.

What do I say about Jack? There has never been a child more fascinated with the puzzle that is life. I see his mind absorbing so much each day, and I am so excited that I still get to be such a huge part of that. That his smile is one that fills each room he enters and that his curiosity is constantly expanding.

So, on days when it's really hard, I am going to look on these words and rejoice that all the hard days before have resulted in these children, and our beautiful relationships...and I am going to anxiously await the bigger and more abundant blessings to come.
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The most important things
Alexis
If this post gets finished and published it will be a minor miracle.

It's pretty hard to keep my thoughts flowing while battling Zoe for the keyboard and moving her away from the desk doors and out of all my paperwork. Right now I have, possibly, two minutes while she chews on a marker she shouldn't have, to write.

Today it is just us girls. The big kids are at school and we didn't have to drive them, so it's been a pretty free morning. I had visions of accomplishing so much.

Yet the laundry and dishes are still undone, clothes are still strewn about. (Why is Jack's pj shirt in the kitchen?) And the rest is just not tidied up.

Why?

Because Zoe wanted me to hold her instead.

We ate oatmeal.

She used me like a jungle gym.

She played with her toys, but only while I was holding her next to me, on the couch.

She is not a typically cuddly baby, but she really wants to be where the action is. And when it's the two of us, she wants my undivided attention. What a blessing.

Just like God. He wants my undivided attention too, and yet I find it so hard to give sometimes. I love to sit and talk to God, while I am crafting...while I am listening to music...while I am in the shower...

And yet, He is calling me, over and over again, to just sit with Him. To delight in that time. To love Him uninterrupted.

This is not where I thought this post was going...but I guess it is what God wanted me to hear. So I am logging off to visit with my Jesus.


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Choosing to Fail
Alexis
It was about 5 o'clock this morning when I heard Zoe crying. I was dead asleep and the idea of getting out of my cozy bed was not appealing, not in the least. I was warm. The blankets were molded just right. Everything was optimal.

I lay there for a minute or two thinking about how hard it is to get Zoe to sleep reasonably in the morning, and how if I get up to get her she will likely wake up at 4am the next day.

I thought about letting her just cry it out. Getting her to figure it out on her own...and then she started melting my heart with "Mamamama". I got up. I went to her room and saw, in the dim light, her little face light up and heard her now pathetic "mamamama".

I scooped her up, took her into my room, and nursed her.

The truth is, I love nursing Zoe in the pre-dawn hours. I'm sleepy and groggy, but she nurses like a newborn in those dark, quiet moments. There, with nothing but the sound of her breathing heavy and gulping milk, it's just us. Alone. I can feel her sleepy warm body nestled in the crook of my arm. I can study her little eyelashes, or I can close my eyes and snuggle with her while I meet her most basic need.

I am a sleep training failure with Zoe. I get teased that it is because I've gone soft...and I think that is true. There are so many things I will struggle through with her. So many hurdles that will require me to stand stronger and firmer, but is this that thing? Will this change her into a selfish, unreasonable, unloving child? Will this be an obstacle in her faith development? Will this *really* matter?

I just don't see the value in stressing out so much about it any more. As long as she is getting pretty reasonable sleep, why should I skip these moments...precious moments that will soon pass and I will never get to relive? Why deny that I love the sacrifice? That I cherish these moments far more than even she does?

Zoe is the baby. She is the last baby. She is the baby who God gave us to reveal something special. She is a baby of hope, and promise.

She changed everything I ever thought I believed about being a mother and parenting a child, save one. If I keep loving God and sharing Him with my kids, then I am doing the most important thing.

Sleep will come. Time will pass too quickly.

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Isn't it kind of icky?
Alexis
Today someone asked me about the benefits of cloth diapers, over disposables. They asked because they knew that I was using cloth now, after 3 babies in disposables.

I gave her all of the environmental/cost/coziness answers. Those answers are all good ones. Keeping dirty diapers out of landfills. Diapering for hundreds of dollars less. Cozy cotton on baby's bum. All good answers.

There was one answer I couldn't quite put into words though. One I have started a million blog posts on, and then left them half finished and unpublished. the answer that I'm going to try to give again.

When I hold Zoe, there is something even more precious in her big blue eyes, something even sweeter in her toothless grin, than with the babies before her. There is a knowledge of how fragile and miraculous her little life is. I want to drink in every second, every act of parenting her. I want to rock her to sleep in my arms and rest her warm cheek against mine, every minute.

The rush of "when will she...?" is replaced by a desperate desire to slow her down. She is my baby. My last baby. The baby born after a baby lost.

When I diaper her in cloth, it's a little more effort. It's a little slower. I wash them, i hang them on a line to dry. I smile with every clothespin because I am savoring a tiny part of her babyness in those moments.

I am taking the part of parenting her that is least precious, and I am making it special.

I never got to diaper Eden. I never had to meet that basic need for her...and that has made me choose to be fully present in that need with Zoe.

So there you go. In many ways I don't even want to post this, because even I think it sounds a little crazy. In other ways, maybe I'm not alone in finding such a simple way to connect with my baby, and someone else out there will read this and think, "Yes. That!"
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I should be asleep
Alexis
I'm sitting in the living room, listening to the washer run, tv paused, and I know I should get up and go to bed. That I should pick the messes up off the floor, turn off the lights, check the babies and snuggle into my bed.

I know that in 5 hours I will be nursing Zoe, wishing I had gone to bed before 11pm.

I know all of this.

But, I'm blogging instead.

I have been stalking Ebay and Craigslist looking for a used netbbook so I can get to bed at a reasonable hour and still have some time to write, but for now, I'll steal my moments at the desktop, when there is the briefest moment of relative quiet, and I'll see what flows out.

I have noticed a small victory in one area that my faith and fears are constantly at odds. I have lived a tiny bit in the freedom that comes from trusting God, fully, when it comes to His provision.

If I have said it once, I have said it a million times... *this* is where I struggle. This is where Satan whispers in my ear and I find myself nodding along with the lies. It's frustrating, but it is part of my story.

I have noticed in the past month or so that there have been some large financial setbacks, and I have not toppled under the fear of them. That God has consistently provided and blessed us, and that I have had the joy of someone living fully in peace with that trust.

Yet, at the same time I have noticed that old wounds are gaping and raw, once again. I am not sure why, but here I am bleeding all over the place and wondering where my peace, healing, and joy have gone. I poured out my pain and frustration at the feet of God and I hear *nothing*.

Until I pour it all out again to my husband.

I am still raw, but I am beyond blessed.

18 years ago I was just a kid, about to embark on the greatest adventure of my life, and marry my best friend. We had no idea where God would take us, or even what marriage was going to be about. We just knew that this was what God wanted for us.

In these 18 years I have laughed harder than I knew was possible, and cried from depths I didn't know I had. I have grown and changed and fallen and struggled, but I have never been alone. I have become a mother, five times over. I have given one of my children back into the hands of God all too soon. I have lived life with wild abandon and I have peaked inside death's door. I have lived so much, and I have done it all with the love, support, friendship, and spiritual partnership of a great and amazing man.

So much of who I am is a result of who he believed I could be. Every thing I am proud to be is because of God, working through him.

Tonight, I will think back on the excited anticipation I felt 18 years ago and laugh at all that that young girl didn't know she was getting into...and I will give thanks to a God who had a plan for me beyond any hope or dream I could have come up with.
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