After waking up crying a lot throughout the night (unfortunately, not out of the ordinary), Ava was in rare form this morning.  She broke my glasses (did you know that, technically, I’m “legally blind” without corrective lenses?  I hate it…even more so when it costs money).  She wandered into the bathroom while Elijah was showering, and decided to get in the shower herself, fully clothed.  She refused to eat her breakfast.  She screamed and squirmed when I tried reading to her, which is very unusual.  I tried putting her down for a nap early, but she wouldn’t sleep.  Ugh.

I made pizza for dinner, ’cause Tuesday is pizza and movie night around here.  Why Tuesday?  Well, when we started this tradition (when I was pregnant with Nathanael?), the local Papa John’s pizzeria had a special – a large, one-topping pizza for $5 on Tuesday.  That’s all it took.  Tuesday pizza and movie night was established.  Eventually, making pizza became the norm, though, and to be honest, it has been a love-hate endeavor for me.  I love the routine, the specialness for our kids, the mindlessness of it.  I hate that I have the hardest time making good pizza.  I’ve recently switched pizza dough recipes, though (no kneading!  yay!), and that, along with using an actual pizza pan, seems to be improving my luck.  My kids still prefer pizzeria pizza – always – but that may be because things like spinach and broccoli often find their way onto the homemade pizzas.  Honestly, though, I don’t really prefer homemade either.  Maybe someday…

Elijah tells me almost daily, and sometimes more often, that I am beautiful and nice.  I’m not sure what he sees in me, but it leaves me convicted every time, because I am painfully aware of just how often who I am with my kids is not nice or beautiful.

My belly is starting to get in the way.  At 28 weeks, I feel like it is a little early to be feeling encumbered, but I am nonetheless.  I can’t see my toes without leaning forward.  I can barely put my socks on.  I get off-balance way too easily.  I anticipate a long three months ahead of me.

On a positive pregnancy note, however, I have peace – almost excitement – about the birth.  I started out this time around really apprehensive, but I’ve brought it before the Lord over and over again, and I’m not afraid anymore.  I’m so glad He hears and answers.

We now have a tp holder in our downstairs bathroom.  Sounds exciting, huh?  Well, it is to me.  And it’s a pretty one…if a tp holder can be pretty, that is.  Sometimes, the little things make me happy.

Nathanael has very neat writing.  The older two?  Not so much.

I’ve been trying to make bread on a more regular basis lately.  Thanks to my recent realization that there are no-knead bread recipes out there, it is actually working fairly well.  Kneading dough is something I will avoid at almost any cost, so bread making was previously reserved for incredibly ambitious days.  Not so anymore.  I may even find the motivation to teach Bethany to make it now.  We’ll see.

It seems my thoughts and writing become more disjointed and superficial as my pregnancy gets further along, but oh well.  My brainpower is a limited commodity these days.

There are a lot of things I’ve been thinking about, but can’t really devote a blog post to any of them…some because they’re not really complicated things, just things that come up a lot through the day, some because I haven’t fully worked out my thoughts on them, some because I struggle to find a biblical perspective that seems to match the reality of circumstance.  But, I like to get my thoughts out in writing…it helps, somehow…so, here are some of those thoughts, incomplete and broken and boring though they may be.

:: Food.  I think about it a lot.  Partly because I’m pregnant, and food always plays a prominent role in my pregnancies…sometimes because of how sick it makes me, sometimes because of how much I need to consume to keep sickness at bay, sometimes because of heartburn or bloating or headaches that all somehow seem affected by what I eat.  Then there’s the fact that I have three meals a day to prepare for my family.  I also think of food a lot, though, because of the continuous stream of “eat this, don’t eat that” advice that’s out there, and constantly changing, as I strive to figure out healthy meals that can be made without breaking the bank, or requiring 50 gazillion hours and steps to make a reasonable side dish.  Thoughts I land on?  I could never be a vegetarian.  I love soup.  Dairy doesn’t help my heartburn (and neither does chocolate, by the way, but I keep trying it in the hopes of garnering different results).  Moderation and variety matter more than restriction (though processed stuff is kept extremely limited).  A belief that God made our bodies to be adaptable (to an extent) to what is available, and that He can keep us healthy even if we fail to come to the right conclusions about what is good or bad for us (at least, I really hope so, since what is considered healthy today is completely different than it was fifty years ago, and probably what it will be fifty years from now).

:: 8+ passenger vehicles.  It is with dragging feet that we are searching for a replacement for our Sienna.  Not that we love the minivan, but we definitely don’t love the thought of a vehicle with worse mileage, or the thought of having to go through the hassle of selling our vehicle, or the thought of quite possibly having to drive a fair distance to even be able to look at any potential vehicles.  And then, there are the debates between different makes, cheaper versus fewer miles, SUV versus full-size van, something that will just fit versus something with room to grow.  Being the analytical people that we are, these questions all make the process move forward at a snail’s pace.  Time is running out, though.  I’m kind of hoping for something to just fall into place.

:: Wondering, again, about what I can have faith for.  With our recent bout of sickness (which has still not completely left), with a budget that – at best – has no wiggle room, with disappointments in a lot of the intangibles of life, I find myself questioning what exactly it is I can ask for, seek for, “knock” on the door for and trust that I will receive, find, and be given.  I wonder why the Bible bothers to say “give and it shall be given” when it doesn’t always work out that way (and, sometimes, seemingly never does).  I would have an easier time just accepting constant hardship if the Bible never made promises of something better for the here and now.  It is a frustration for me, and leaves me feeling like God isn’t keeping His promises and that I need to just stop trusting Him for anything.  This is one of those areas where I don’t know how to reconcile belief and circumstance.

:: Homeschooling, and what it’s all for.  I am not an organized person.  I don’t do well at planning, or follow-through.   A lot gets missed in my efforts to teach my kids.  And I often panic a little that their lives will be ruined because I’m not doing a good enough job.  But then I am reminded that the goal of it all is not a perfect education, nor even a love for learning or a strong work ethic.  The goal is a love for the Lord and the equipping to passionately and fearlessly pursue whatever He calls them to in life.  Not that this goal seems easier, necessarily,  but it relieves the burden, in a way.  Because my role in it is so much smaller, so much more about submission and obedience and seeking His face than about following a checklist.  I know there are other important things to teach, but nothing else can really be a priority.

Lots of other things, too, I’m sure.  Equally fascinating.  But for now, I’m done.

Caedmon wanted a lemon meringue pie for his birthday.  I had attempted a lemon meringue pie once before, with lackluster results.  I tend to be easily discouraged when I don’t succeed the first time I try something, so that one time was left as my only time, until this past week.  I found a new recipe, read some tips on keeping the meringue from “weeping”, and felt fairly confident as I set to work.

Right away, though, I dropped the ball.  I tried putting a braided edge on my pie crust (something I’ve never tried before, as my function over form self generally sees no need for such things).  I failed to thoroughly attach said braided edge, and when I checked the crust eight minutes into its ten minute baking time, I found the edge draping over the edge in a couple big loops, baked into a shape that could not be easily put back in place.  Nonetheless, I did what I could with egg wash and pieces of the edge and eventually ended up with a not pretty, but functional, crust.  I figured the meringue would kind of mask it, and my practical side won over my perfectionist side (it usually does) and I decided it was good enough.  One disaster (sort of) averted.

Then, I started making the filling, and honestly, the litany of mistakes I made is probably too much to make any sense out of in writing.  A brief summary, though, includes using too much lemon juice, not making enough, adding ingredients in the wrong order, and (my personal favorite) accidentally using baking powder instead of cornstarch.  There were several instances at which I was certain I was going to have to scrap the whole thing and start over.  Somehow, though, I persisted through the fifteen minutes of foam-to-the-top-of-the-pan that was caused by the baking powder, and amid many prayers of “please, God, just make this work”, did what I could to fix my mistakes…and in the end, the filling was just right.  The meringue, thankfully, went without incident (really, there’s not a lot of mistakes that can be made with whipping egg whites).  In the end the pie was presentable, and yummy.

I’m not writing to highlight my ineptness, though, or some instance of dumb luck.  The reality is that this pie should never have turned out right.  Most times, I would have just given up, but I really did not want to start over.  I felt certain that if I messed up so miserably when I was at least sort of focused and confident, I would be completely incapable of success trying again in my frazzled, defeated state.  I cried and I prayed, in all seriousness and desperation.  However trite that may seem, my reality in that moment was that I needed God to intervene.  And He did.  He took my mess and made it work.

And this is how I often find God’s grace at work in my life, these days.  My efforts rarely (um, possibly never??) go toward monumental things.  My failings and weaknesses and insufficiency surface in the every-day, mundane, should-be-easy-but-sometimes-aren’t moments of life.  So that is where God shows up, too.  He helps me see that when I am not enough, He is enough; when my efforts deserve failure, He grants success; when I am at my end, He makes up the gap and lets me know that He is with me.  And He is for me.  And I’m so thankful that He is, because I can’t do this on my own.  Apparently, even when “this” is simply making a pie.

Ten years with Caedmon have been…

…filled with questions.  Non-stop questions.  Hard questions.  Silly questions.  Questions asked over and over and over again.  Questions from him and questions about him and questions of God to help us please not mess this up, and to have mercy when we do mess up.

…joyful.  He loves to laugh.  He loves to make others laugh.

…seeing him learn, and being often amazed at how easily he does so.  He knew his alphabet by 18 months, could count to 20 by the age of two, and was reading words like “pharmacy” at four.  He still learns with minimal effort, and though I sometimes worry we’re not doing enough to help him “reach his potential”, for the time being, I am satisfied allowing him to direct his brainpower to age-appropriate endeavors of Legos, Hardy Boys, and snow forts.

…being blessed by his love of cooking.  He has currently claimed three mornings a week for breakfast making…oatmeal on Wednesday, fried eggs on Friday, and pancakes on Saturday.  I can’t say that I am at all put out by not being needed in the kitchen at those times.

…reminding myself that he’s still a kid.  This has been happening for years.  His quick understanding of many things often leaves me with the faulty impression that he can understand most things.  There is a constant adjustment that happens in my mind trying to reconcile his age with what he should be able to grasp.  More and more, though, he is getting the tough concepts, and our conversations can go deeper.

…seeing the Lord draw him, and watching him respond.  He was water baptized this past summer, and words can’t describe the joy and thankfulness I felt hearing him make his first public declaration of his faith in Jesus.

…becoming increasingly aware of the fact that his life has a direction and purpose that will take him away from home, away from me, and I need to figure out how to be okay with that, and even more so, how to prepare him for that eventuality.  I can imagine it being one of the hardest things I will ever have to do, but it really shouldn’t be about me at all.

…so rich, so full, so challenging, so good for me.  Caedmon was my first baby, my first toddler, my first student, my first little helper, my first boy, and now my first young man.  I love him so very much.