Tomorrow, Isabelle will be 6 weeks old.

She loves to look around, and if awake, wants to face out and take in the world around her.

She rarely wakes up crying, instead signalling her wakefulness by wiggles and squeaks, much like her oldest sister did as a baby.

She has the.most.adorable dimple in her right cheek.  It’s elusive, though.  Despite several attempts to get a picture, it is as yet unphotographed,  Otherwise, I would show you, because it’s so sweet.  Oh well.

Her eye color is still yet to be determined.  We’ve had to wait to find out for each child.  So far, we have two with solid brown eyes, one with a brown and green mix (hazel?), one with light gray-blue, and one with dark gray-blue.  Whatever color they are, though, they are big and beautiful and full of the wonder of this life that’s so new to her.

She loves to be rocked.  She is the first child to really take to it.  It definitely beats walking around late at night.

She has fussy times, but she has times when she is really content just looking around, too.

She is adored by her siblings, even her nearest-in-age sister who, despite some obvious adjustment difficulties, has quickly added words like “cute”, “gentle”, “kiss”, and “Belle-belle” to her vocabulary, and has taken to swaddling her own little stuffed bear in a washcloth so that she can have a “baby”.

She wraps her arms around me and my heart melts.  Her head gets kissed endlessly, and I choke back tears as I look in her eyes and tell her she is beautiful.  Words can’t really describe how beautiful.  I love her – this fearfully and wonderfully made little girl – completely and indescribably, for ever and always.

…contentment – and distinguishing it from apathy.  I will never be perfect.  I know, I know – that’s a shocking notion.  But, really, it is a difficult concept for me to grasp.  I have trouble setting goals that are anything short of perfection, and since I never come anywhere near perfection even on my best day, even in the littlest things, discouragement comes easily.  And I want to be better than I am, I want my kids to be better than they are, I want my house to be better than it is, and on, and on, and on.  I need to learn about grace – more and again.  I need to find the freedom that comes with acknowledging that the gap left by my failings and insufficiencies is covered.  I need to not let all of the things that don’t go just right dictate my attitude.  So far, I do a pretty lousy job of this.

…submission.  You may be surprised to learn that my husband and I don’t always agree on everything…but I really hope you aren’t.  In any case, there are times when we don’t see eye to eye…times when I wonder if we’re even facing each other…times when we’re both convinced the other is wrong and giving in would seem to mean certain devastation.  Sometimes it’s little things, but sometimes it’s not little things.  And I know I’m supposed to let him lead, and trust that God is bigger, but it goes against every fiber of my being.  My childhood was one where submission meant the forced relinquishing of any say and then bracing for the fallout of what would almost certainly be a bad decision.  Authority was not trustworthy, in any capacity.  I don’t know how to let go of that.  I don’t know how to submit when I’m convinced that a mistake is being made.  But I do know that the weight of responsibility for this family is not mine, and I don’t want it to be.  So, I need to learn how to stop arguing.  I need to learn how to support my husband even when I don’t agree.  I need to learn how to follow.

…blind faith.  Normally, I would argue against this.  Even now, I’m certainly not advocating for it in a general sense.  But, in trying to understand why life has seemed so devoid of God’s presence lately, the only answer I’ve sort of gotten is that I need to learn to trust Him in His absence – not just absence from circumstances, but absence from my worship times, absence from my Bible study, absence from my prayer time.  I’m seeing that I have grown used to having Him answer me, rebuke me, comfort me and challenge me on a very personal level.  I haven’t learned to rely on the foundation of faith that has been laid in my life.  Instead of answering my questions and fears and doubts with the truth that I should have embedded in my soul, I have expected that still, small voice to answer me every time.  I can’t fully explain it.  I don’t really know why I shouldn’t expect Him to answer me.  And I have struggled to reconcile my faith with how it is supposed to bear fruit in my life.  But, I’m trying to figure it out.

When faced with the reality that a cesarean was going to be my only option, 5 weeks ago, though I had many reservations and concerns, few were regarding the recovery period that would follow.  My first two children were born by cesarean, and – really? – I didn’t have much objection to how long it took me to be “back to normal”…if “normal” can be called that with a huge gash across one’s abdomen that had not previously been there.  In any case, I figured this time around would be no different.  I didn’t consider that being 8 years older, or four babies later, or even having my insides cut open and rearranged for the third time, among other things, would affect my ability to recover.  I was hoping that, at least, this part would go right.

At first, everything seemed to go as I expected.  Standing and walking didn’t pose any greater challenge than previously, my incision appeared to be healing well, and I was allowed to go home after 36 hours.  The day after coming home, though, I got the most excruciating headache ever – and I’m not entirely unfamiliar with brutal headaches.  After trying Tylenol, and caffeine and water with absolutely no effect, we realized that this was a spinal headache – what my anesthesiologist claimed he’d only seen twice in 24 years, and which was only relieved by laying flat on my back.  Perhaps being forced to lie flat on your back doesn’t sound like the worst thing in the world, but when trying to nurse a baby, it becomes inconvenient, and when you have a just-starting-to-heal abdomen, it’s also incredibly painful.  The solution, then, was to get a dural blood patch.  What is that?  Well, it’s when they take an epidural needle (or a slightly larger one when they don’t have any of the usual size available), stick it into the spinal column (while admonishing you because you aren’t adequately tightening your incredibly sore belly in order to round your spine, which is reflexively arching in pain in spite of the claims that it shouldn’t hurt at all because a local anesthetic has been injected) then draw blood from an arm and inject it into the spine until it feels like a horrible muscle cramp, and then inject some more in until it officially becomes the worst pain thus far in the whole labor-surgery-recovery-headache course of events.  But it worked, and over the course of the next day, or so, the headache subsides.

At this point, I thought things should be getting easier.  After my previous cesareans, it took about two weeks to resume normal life activities.  This time, I could barely stand for even five minutes at the two week mark.  My abdomen was visibly bruised…I can only presume from a less than gentle delivery technique…and I was still pretty much useless for any kind of productivity.

Since then, I have improved…slowly.  Pain from the incision has become less frequent, but as I move around more, I am finding that my hip joints are extremely loose.  My balance is easily thrown off and after walking short distances my legs are shaky and sore.  This is new for me, and I guess it may be in part because I have been off my feet for so long, but I find it hard to not be discouraged.

I just wasn’t ready for this.  I was hoping to move quickly past the frustrations of this birth.  I was hoping to be able to look back on all of it and think it wasn’t really so bad.  I was hoping that I could possibly consider the thought of another baby in the future without even more anxiety about the now even greater probability of another cesarean.  I was hoping to find some silver lining to all of the disappointment.

…

I write this with a beautiful baby girl asleep in my arms.  And I would endure all of this a thousand times and more, if that were necessary to ensure the protection of her life.  Please don’t misread this as any resentment over the cost that a safe birth sometimes carries with it.  Mostly, it is just a weariness of soul and a wondering why and a fear of hoping.  That’s all.

When Isabelle was born, we didn’t have a name picked out.  Through the course of the day right after her birth, we didn’t get a chance to try to figure one out, either.  I was hoping that we could that night.  But that night, we realized Ava would be too much for Tim’s mom to handle on her own, and the hospital would not allow Ava to stay with us in the hospital room, so Tim went home and we spent our first night apart in fourteen years.  It was hard for me, honestly, but there was grace in it, too.  As I sat awake for most of the night holding my baby girl, I prayed for a name.  Tim and I really were at an impasse, name-wise, and I was extremely discouraged and desperate for God’s guidance.  After a while, the name Isabelle Sophia – devoted to God; wise – settled in my heart.  I don’t know how to explain it other than it seemed right, which was fairly significant since neither name had been my preference.  When Tim arrived the next morning, I asked what he thought of the name, and his response was that it was exactly what he had been thinking.  That was it – she was named.  And I was thankful, in the end, for the timing.

Since then, I have gone through the inevitable struggle to not call her the names of our other children, and I think I’m now mostly through that phase.  She has acquired a few nicknames, however…most consistently Belle-belle, which is what Ava calls her, and Sweetpea, which was Tim’s attempt to have something to call her so that he wouldn’t inadvertently call her by any of Ava’s nicknames.  The others…Izzy-Soph and Izbo…were mostly just meant to be silly suggestions of possibilities, and really haven’t been said much, but do somehow seem to fit upon occasion.

Maybe a particular nickname will stick, maybe we will decide that ‘Isabelle’ is most suitable on its own…time will tell.  But whatever we call her, we are most happy to be able to call her ours.

I stood at the sink, scrubbing away the mess from newborn clothes.  It’s a part of life with a 3 week old.  This was yesterday’s mess, actually.  It had been left because, yesterday, I was so exhausted I could barely stand.  And Tim said he would clean it, but then forgot.  And that’s more than okay.  Because he was working all day, plus doing a dozen other things – at least – that were more important than cleaning baby clothes.  So, I stood scrubbing.

After a couple minutes, I felt the sharp stinging pain in my abdomen that told me I was doing too much, that reminded me that things had gone wrong and I’m not all better.  I finished scrubbing.  I got another load of laundry going.  I went to fetch the not-quite-two year old for her nap, telling her to hold my hand – that I couldn’t carry her right now.  When she didn’t take my hand right away, my ten year old offered to carry her for me, and it seemed almost laughable that he could do that which I couldn’t.

I finally sat down after going through the naptime routine.  It wasn’t even two in the afternoon yet, and I had to be off my feet.  I feel like a failure.  I have lists of things that need doing and I can barely manage to do laundry and throw simple dinners together.  My brain is foggy and days are slipping by with little order and little productivity.  And I doubt that I will ever measure up to any standard.  I tell myself that this is why God doesn’t answer, this is why He overlooks me – ’cause why would He bother with someone who does such a terrible job at life, even when trying to do well?

Even as I tell myself these things though, I am reminded that it’s not really true.  I’m reminded of a moment in worship several weeks ago when He did answer these particular doubtings of my heart.  The logic that has run through my mind countless times in life that says He loves me and saves me by default, that He only “loves” me because He loves the whole world and I’m a part of the world, that if He could choose to love me, He wouldn’t – was assaulting my heart at that time, too.

But, His words to me then, and again today, were simple: If I had wanted to, I could have chosen to not die for your sins.

See, I forget sometimes that the whole idea of salvation was God’s alone.  I tend to think that He was bound by some rule that forced Him to make it an all or nothing thing.  I gloss over the reality that the punishment Jesus bore wasn’t for the idea of sin, but for the personal, one-at-a-time a gazillion times over sins that each hold the power to separate the sinner from God…which means that each of my sins had to be addressed on the cross, and could have been left out if God so chose.  So, to be saved, God had to want to save me.  I know it’s simple, but I guess I need simple.

At that same time, my other question to the Lord was why didn’t You make me good enough? I asked because I felt like so many others were good enough.  Everyone always seems to do so much better than me at everything.  It can appear as if others make God’s gift of salvation worth it.  Me, though?  I was sure I was a waste of His time and effort.  His answer, however, was that He didn’t make anyone good enough – that not one is righteous apart from Christ, that even what I might see as amazing in someone falls so far short of His standard.  Even if He were in the business of comparing me to someone else, the reality is that my worst and someone else’s best are hardly different when compared with sinless perfection.  He’s not in this to garner from us a certain level of performance, and regardless of how I might perceive things, the free gift of salvation is impossible to deserve. This wasn’t a new realization, but I obviously needed to learn it again that day.  And again this afternoon.

Much of the time, lately, it has seemed to me that God has just been completely absent from my life.  I have a lot of frustrations and confusion about a lot of things.  It’s easy for me to be so focused on those things that I ignore the times He does show up and speak truth to my often foolish heart.  But remembering those moments is necessary (obvious, right?), especially when I feel forgotten.  They may not be as frequent or faith-building as I might think I need, but they do remind me of His character, and His presence with me, and that I’m not so far removed from Him that He can’t or won’t reach me.

Where can I go from Your Spirit?
Or where can I flee from Your presence?
If I ascend into heaven, You are there;
If I make my bed in hell, behold, You are there.
If I take the wings of the morning,
And dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea,
Even there Your hand shall lead me,
And Your right hand shall hold me.  —Psalm 139: 7-10

Tim had a birthday yesterday.  When I think about what makes him so amazing – even on a regular basis, but more so when life seems to be in a bit of upheaval – I most often think of his servant’s heart.  This heart that enables him to look past himself to see what someone else’s needs are and then give all of himself to meet that need.

Obviously, I see it most clearly in how he serves me and our family – sacrificing sleep, personal comfort, his own [long] project list, and so much more, so that we are taken care of.  But, I see it everywhere else, too.  With extended family, with neighbors, with coworkers, with anyone that ever asks anything of him…or, really, with anyone that he sees in need…he will lay aside his preferences and go out of his way to make life easier for them.

And it’s not out of obligation (though, he might sometimes assert that it is), but rather, any time his desire to help someone is challenged (I know from personal experience), his response never has anything to do with himself, but is always based on what is best for the other person.  Even if someone has hurt him, or been selfish, or disregarded his help in the past, his response doesn’t change.

Though he will say that he’s not a compassionate person, I can’t say that I’ve known anyone with more genuine compassion than my husband.  It is a joy, and often a source of conviction, to walk beside him and see the outworking of this in our lives.  I am so thankful for him.

The night before Isabelle was born, I had a dream.  I don’t usually apply any significance to dreams.  I don’t usually even remember any dreams to which I could apply significance even if I wanted to.  But, that night, my dream stuck with me, and seemed to have a point.

I dreamed that I was being chased by someone or something that really terrified me.  And then I got away, or thought I had.  And then I was surrounded by people pointing guns at me…caught by whatever/whoever it was that had me so scared.  And as I stood, defenseless, the only thing I knew to do – felt I had to do – was surrender…not to those that had me surrounded, but to the Lord…and trust that He was still in control.  So, I did.  In my dream, I said “not my will, Lord, but Yours be done”…resignedly, I think.  But, there was peace.  And after saying it, inexplicably, this enemy that was surrounding me lowered their weapons and walked away.

To a normal person, this might not sound like it has anything to do with birth, but my first thought upon remembering the dream when I awoke, was of the last time I really felt the Lord tell me I needed to surrender.  That time was right before I went into labor with Bethany, when I was so, so scared of having another cesarean.  And I surrendered, went into labor, and ended up with the cesarean that I feared.

So, as I went through the next day, this dream was stuck in my remembrance.  I thought about how, for the past ten years, I have been doing everything possible to avoid facing another cesarean.  I thought about how I finally felt like, maybe, cesarean was no longer anything more than a remote possibility.  Through the contractions, and the bleeding, and the hospital, and the eventual cesarean, I felt some level of certainty of how it was going to end.

But I didn’t understand why.

I don’t understand why.

While there is comfort on some level in knowing that God knew the end from the beginning of this situation, on the flip side, that knowledge has also been a sharp blow to my already weakened faith.  I acknowledge that the cesarean was the only reasonable response to the placental abruption, but why, in His omnipotence, did God think it right and good for the problem to arise in the first place?  I was desperately hoping and praying for an easy delivery.  As much as it might sound shallow and weak, I needed that prayer to be answered.  I needed a reason to believe in God’s goodness and faithfulness again.  Prior to the birth, I had already lost pretty much every bit of trust in Him.  I thought maybe some could be restored, though, by a simple reminder that this part of my life – this birth – that had caused me an inordinate amount of fear throughout the pregnancy and which represented a lot of past hurt and disappointment, mattered to Him.  But instead, I got almost the exact opposite of what I prayed for.

I’m sure many people would point out that all of this reveals some gigantic flaw in my theology…and honestly, I’m really, really trying to figure out what that might be…but I have yet to hear a legitimate correction…or, at least, one that doesn’t hinge on the presupposition that God’s ways are always good.  When that belief falters, what is there to build it back up?  Why has God been only silent during these past several months when I have wanted more than anything to see His face and hear His voice?  My faith can’t shrink much more before it disappears altogether.

There are a lot of different perspectives that I have had concerning Isabelle’s birth.  Some – like the fact that we have a beautiful, healthy, precious daughter – are pure joy to my heart.  Others, though?  Not so much.  For now, I will try to focus mostly on the former, and maybe down the road, I will be able to adequately communicate the latter.

This birth story starts out fairly innocuously.  Thursday night, May 15, I started feeling some cramping…not contractions yet, but previous pregnancies had taught me that this cramping usually meant real labor was only a day or two away.  About 4am on Friday, I felt my first “real” contraction.  It wasn’t long or painful, but I took note nonetheless.  Over the course of the next few hours, there were 7 or 8 more, so I emailed my midwife just to say that labor was likely to happen sooner rather than later, but my expectation was that I still had a while.  We went about our day as usual.  Tim’s plan was to do a shopping run to Massena that afternoon, and though we debated briefly whether or not he should go, it was fairly easily decided that nothing of any significance was going to happen that afternoon, so he went.

At 2:30, though, as I was baking cookies for the kids’ Academy Night, I felt something leaking.  I thought maybe it was a small leak of amniotic fluid, but when I got to the bathroom, I discovered that it was blood, and not a small amount.  I panicked, a little.  I called Tim, he didn’t answer.  I called my midwife, she said she would call back in 15 minutes to see if the bleeding had continued.  I struggled to discern whether the blood was “bright red” or “dark red”.  I bled some more.  I called Tim, he answered, and I told him to leave his almost completely full shopping cart and come home now.  The midwife called and told me to head to the hospital, and said she would be on her way shortly.  It was 3pm.  Tim got home in about 20 minutes, I think.  He was (understandably) frazzled.  After making sure his mom had whatever info she needed to run the household for the evening/night, we left for the hospital.

By this point, I didn’t seem to be bleeding anymore.  We got checked in at the hospital and taken to labor and delivery.  While I had waited for Tim to get home, I  had tried to figure out what might be causing the bleeding…the most likely options being placenta previa (where the placenta covers the cervix) and placental abruption (where the placenta pulls away from the uterine wall)…so I was trying to prepare myself for the advice I felt sure was inevitable, but I was also praying desperately for wisdom and clarity.  I absolutely did not want to get stuck on a slippery slope that led to another c-section without good reason.  The first couple hours were spent getting an ultrasound and a non-stress test.  The baby’s heart rate seemed fine (or so we were told at this point), and the ultrasound showed low amniotic fluid, but the placenta was high, which ruled out previa…however, it was mostly behind the baby, so it wasn’t possible to tell if there was an abruption.  We hadn’t yet seen the doctor, but he went ahead and order some bloodwork (which was supposed to help determine if there was internal bleeding happening) and a test to determine if there was any amniotic fluid present near the cervix.  Eventually, (before any test results were back) the doctor came by and said his working diagnosis was an abruption and that his recommendation was cesarean.  Since his diagnosis was, at this point, based on next to nothing, we insisted that we wanted something more concrete to base our decision on.  He then told us that he wasn’t happy with the variability in the baby’s heart rate (never mind that the nurse had previously said it looked great), but when pressed, couldn’t/wouldn’t tell us exactly why.  It was at this time that the results came back which indicated that my water had broken (I think probably just a slow leak), which explained the low fluid on the ultrasound.  The doctor decided to order a biophysical profile (BPP), which would apparently give a better idea of how the baby was tolerating life inside the womb.  The BPP was a timed ultrasound where the tech measured movement, muscle tone, fluid levels and breathing “movements”.  Movement and muscle tone were fine, fluid was low – but for an obvious reason, however, there apparently weren’t enough breathing movements (when the baby mimics the breathing action, though it actually serves no useful purpose in the womb), so the overall score for the BPP was low.  Once again, explanations were not given that could explain why it mattered if the baby was mimicking breathing, we were just told that it wasn’t good.  During the ultrasound for the BPP, another attempt was made to view the placenta.  This time, it was more visible, and it was determined that there was a clot on the placenta, which apparently equated to a partial abruption.  After learning this, the OB was pretty set on doing a cesarean.  If the BPP had not been low, there may have been the chance that he would have approved a transfer to another hospital…if there were one willing to let me labor.  But, as it was, he would not approve a transfer.  My midwife (who arrived around 9pm) at this point was convinced the birth needed to happen in a hospital, so we were left with the option of having a cesarean, or – in the unlikely event that there were any hospitals within a few hours that would have even considered a trial of labor – leaving the hospital against medical advice, while in labor (contractions were pretty consistently about 10 minutes apart at this point), and risk the possibility of a full abruption while making the hours long trip to another hospital.  In other words, there really was no option.  And as much as I did not want another cesarean, I was thankful that the choice was made clear for us.  We agreed to the cesarean.

There was a lot more in the way of thoughts and feelings that came up before, during, and after the cesarean, but of greatest importance was that at 11:41pm, Isabelle Sophia arrived (though nameless for more than 24 hours).  She was our smallest baby yet, at a slight 7lbs, 10.6oz, and 20.5 inches long.  She was healthy and strong.  While I couldn’t hold her until an hour or so after her birth, when finally given the chance, she nursed easily and often.  I am thankful for that.  I am thankful for her.  I am thankful that she’s here and doing wonderfully well.  She is a priceless gift and whatever the “cost” to ensure her safe arrival was more than worth it.

Fourteen years of sharing life with my best friend

Fourteen years of falling asleep beside him, every night.

Fourteen years of learning, and then being reminded over and over again, just how much strength and love and grace there is in my husband.

Fourteen years of long conversations about everything and nothing and lots of things in between.

Fourteen years of work and babies and sleepless nights and hard decisions.

Fourteen years of house projects and learning to cook and learning to garden and figuring out what we can live with and what we should live without.

Fourteen years of never going to bed angry.

Fourteen years of growing a family and everything that comes with it.

Fourteen years of coming to grips with imperfection, in myself and in him, and realizing that imperfection in loving doesn’t mean absence of love.

Fourteen years of leaning heavily on him and becoming increasingly aware of how much of a “weaker vessel” I am.

Fourteen years of, almost daily, wondering how in the world I could be so blessed that he thinks I’m someone worth loving.

Fourteen years with a husband who I am thankful for beyond words.

Life lately has been a very strange mix of extremely full and heartachingly empty.  I can’t really do much to explain the emptiness, but I can write about the “full” portion…superficial though it often seems to me…maybe more to just have some marker of these days than anything else.

Obviously, a lot of the busy-ness is because the calendar says that I am due in just over 2 weeks.  While I am trying to brace myself for what I think is an inevitably “late” delivery (the earliest I’ve ever gone into labor is 5 days late), 2 weeks sounds really soon.  Especially as I sit here with my fourth cold in the past 4 months, that has made doing anything for more than five minutes at a time utterly exhausting.  My list of baby prep to-do’s is still pretty long, and that is after having reconciled with myself that some things I would like to have done are just not necessary.  We will travel to Albany one last time, next week, for a final midwife appointment, and then wait until this baby makes his or her entrance.  With any luck, we will have decided on a name by then.

A week from tomorrow, Tim’s mother arrives.  She’s coming to be on hand to wrangle children during birth and the crazy few days after.  But, since she has trouble with stairs, we’ve needed to come up with a guest room alternative (a couch in the living room just didn’t seem a viable option for any of us). If you’re experiencing difficulty with your stairs, don’t hesitate to contact the professionals at https://stairlifts-near-me.co.uk/ for expert assistance with your stair-related needs.  The solution has been to make the back room of our house…formerly an unfinished utility area with only half a floor and stairs going down to dirt for the other half…into a functional guest room.  And, really, while “functional” has been taken to its most basic form, it still has been quite an undertaking.  Tim first had to empty the room of our stuff (which was quite a lot) and gut the whole area (just extending the floor wasn’t a great option), then construct a new floor, almost entirely within the confines of the room, given the cold and rainy weather we have had, which isn’t so easy when dealing with 16′ boards and an uneven dirt floor.  Of course, his meticulous nature has necessitated a lot of planning and a couple moments of backtracking to make sure that the final product met his standards, but we now have a room.  Floors are plywood (I think we we’ll be adding a large area rug for the short term to make it seem a little more finished) and walls are brick, but as my mother-in-law has insisted she’s okay with it that way, we are saving drywall and flooring for another time.

Of greater priority right now is getting a chicken coop constructed.  In mid-March, we bought seven chicks to have as laying hens, and this past weekend bought eight more, to raise as meat birds.  The kids are enamored with them and [mostly voluntarily] assist in cleaning and filling food and water…Tim does the rest, and though I am hardly an animal lover, I do love the thought of having our own eggs in a couple months, and I appreciate the opportunity for responsibility and reward it offers the kids.  However, as much as the kids have really enjoyed having the chicks in the middle of the living room, the older ones are now officially cramped in the crate we have housed them in and need bigger quarters.  The plan is to move them to the second story of our garage with a covered ramp down to the yard and compost area.  Tim can picture it all – I’m still a little fuzzy on the details.  Hopefully, though, by the end of this week, at least the older chickens will have more room to roam.

To make life just a bit more scattered, baseball has also now started.  Four evenings a week (when it isn’t raining) will find some of us at the park for practice.  Once games start, we will probably all go, but I’m not entirely sure what that will look like with (at some point) a new baby.  In the meantime, we will divide the baseball responsibilities so that our evenings are not entirely unproductive on the home front.

During the days, we are attempting to wrap up schoolwork.  Extra math and English lessons are added in whenever time allows in the hopes of being done in the next couple weeks.  We’re trying to catch up on spelling (which gets too easily forgotten on a normal basis), science is getting down to just a few lessons, and history is slated to be done whenever necessary.  This whole year has been a bit muddled, school-wise, with pregnancy and sickness and my struggles with organization, so I am looking forward to being done – to having a summer to plan and prepare for a new year, to a fresh start in September after a few months “off” to maybe clear my brain.

And, of course, during those more relaxed summer months, we will have our garden to tend to.  I was tempted to forego gardening altogether this year, but Tim was insistent that we could still manage, despite my very pregnant state at the moment (when gardens are needing to be prepared) and the arrival of a new baby that could make weeding, pruning and harvesting a bit more complicated.  But, I’m glad he insisted.  I am growing to love gardening…or, at least, some aspects of it…and even when I am up to my eyeballs in zucchini, I find so much enjoyment in the harvest, and am always in awe of God’s creative power.  So, we have one small garden planted with our cold-weather seeds (minus a few that just didn’t fit), strawberry plants are green and growing, chives are flourishing, and maybe, once a chicken coop is done and the rain stops, we’ll get a few more areas prepped and planted before our window of opportunity closes on some of the not-yet-planted early-season veggies.

In addition to all of that, May is just a busy month.  A good kind of busy, but I keep worrying that I’m missing something important in my inability to really keep everything straight in my head.  I’m not generally good at multi-tasking, so life right now has me trying my hardest to not focus on more than one thing at a time, lest I find myself too overwhelmed to accomplish anything.  I’m just hoping to be able to look back in a month or two and see that some order, some productivity was accomplished in these days.