be thankful today

breaking the 10th commandment.

2012-01-24T11:44:00.000-08:00

lashes.

prodigy.

2012-01-20T23:11:00.000-08:00

next up?

teaching her mom calculus.

have a great weekend!!

where the magic happens.

2012-01-18T16:57:00.000-08:00

our day was kind of lazy on monday, and at one point found all 5 of us laying on our bed. it started with june, who had been playing with toys while i put away some laundry. then ben found her, laid down, and started talking to her. eventually our other two kids sauntered into the room, wondering where the rest of us had gone, and both requested to be lifted up. that's when i couldn't help myself.

we stayed there for a half an hour or more, talking and laughing. goofing around and teasing each other.

there's something sacred-feeling about our bed. it eliminates unkindness between siblings, and stress from school or work. we're free from insecurities and fears, or jealousy and competitiveness. it becomes just us, our little family. it's a place where we can just be.

and gives us a moment to realize that we are really happy together, and have a whole lot of love for each other.

magic.

playing for keeps.

2012-01-16T21:37:00.000-08:00

several times a day, i brace myself for a slobbery smooch.

because when june wants a kiss, she does not mess around.

on broken jaws & facing fears

2012-01-15T21:56:00.000-08:00

{these are my teeth close-up. bet you never thought you'd get this view of me.....i have no upper lip when i smile.}

so there i was, sitting in the chair.

i had been extremely nervous up until the time i actually sat down, but for some reason as soon as i settled in, i became surprisingly calm.

sarah mclachlan's album "building a mystery" was on in the background. they said i could listen to anything i wanted to, and i picked this album because she kind of whisper-sings and i thought it would be appropriate as i drifted off to sleep.

"you ready?" he asked, but i could only see his eyes. the rest of his face was masked. he was holding up metal tools, one in each hand.

"um, sure," i said, my eyes darting back and forth between his masked face and the masked face of his assistant. the nervousness had returned.

"okay, we want you to count backwards, starting at 10. when you wake up, it will be all over with. nothing to be worried about," his voice was reassuring. he placed the plastic mask over my face and the air started blowing into my nose.

"ten....nine.......eiiiiiiighhhhht..........seeeeeeevvvvvv," i said groggily, as sarah's lilting voice carried me away to blackness.

suddenly, my eyes popped open. something was wrong.

i could hear the music, and tried to focus on it to take me away again, but something was louder, drowning out everything else. it sounded like darth vadar was right next to me, and he was running. fast. panting. what was that noise?

i could feel pulling. HARD pulling. on my face.

darth vadar started running again. then he made a strange sound, like a whimper. since when did darth vadar whimper? where am i?

then i heard,

"she's waking up. give her more gas," from a male voice floating above me.

only then did i realize that darth vadar was me. it was my labored breathing, i was panting. i was whimpering.

i was awake, and something was wrong. of course, i realized this just as the air in my nose became stronger and i floated back to nothingness.

when i woke again, i heard voices. familiar ones, telling me to wake up and that everything went well. i was helped up, helped into the car. i couldn't move my mouth, and felt like i had swallowed 20 cotton balls. my face was numb, but that numb feeling when you know it's going to hurt soon. the pain was just around the corner, i could feel it.

i tried to remember what was going on when i had woken up in the middle of my wisdom tooth extraction, but the details were fuzzy. did that really happen? it felt real, but i was pretty out of it so i wasn't sure.

the next couple of days were a blur, except for a couple of things.

one being the time i threw up. i knew it was coming, and tried to stop it because i was so scared of how much it was going to hurt. i screamed as i vomited, because every time i opened my mouth more than 1/2 an inch wide, pain seared through my face and head. as i threw up i had no control over how to not open my mouth further. so i screamed and threw up through the pain.

i also remember that on day 3, i could not even fit my toothbrush in my mouth without crying and tears streaming down my cheeks. that was when a phone call was made, with a decision to bring me back in for x-rays.

i returned to the chair after x-rays, only to hear him whispering on the phone in his office. things about surgery, and liabilities. i didn't understand, but soon would.

"your jaw is broken," he said, and explained that this is one of the risks you take when you sign that paperwork. one of the teeth had been impacted, but he had made the decision to continue on with the extraction. "you need to see an oral surgeon immediately, and he is going to wire your mouth shut in order to fix the broken bone."

uhhhhhh.

i was confused, angry, scared. and realized that as i had woken up mid-surgery it was most likely when they had broken my jaw, the whimpering and fast breathing because of feeling pain i couldn't express.

being 19 and in the middle of a semester at college, and a waitress at a restaurant where i talked to people all day wasn't the most ideal situation for having my mouth wired shut. it was only supposed to be for 4 weeks, but then i somehow contracted an infection in the broken bone, so it turned into 6 weeks. i had to drop out of school, request for my boss to hold my job for me, and tried to learn how to enjoy food through a blender. {which never happened, even with my handy-dandy cookbook handed over by the oral surgeon on my way out the door after surgery.} my friends who came to visit me couldn't help but laugh as i tried to talk through clenched teeth, which then made me laugh at myself, which made them laugh harder. it was a pathetic and funny cycle.

i survived the experience, unfortunately gained back all of the weight i had lost on my liquid diet once i was able to consume pasta again, and tried to chalk it up to experience. because what else can you do, right?

thanks to groupon, after over 9 long years of not going to the dentist, i sat back again in one of those chairs last friday. i was surprised at how freaked out i felt, not necessarily thinking that my jaw would be broken again, but because i remembered the pain that can come by "routine procedures" and i knew full-well that i had a couple of cavities. i could feel them, and was nervous that i would be told i have to go under again to have them taken care of. i prepared myself for the worst news. root canals, extractions.....would i walk out with a mouth full of dentures?

5. five cavities, all in their beginning stages. not awful, not great. i'll tell you what though, the anxiety of getting them fixed is pretty high, even though rationally i know it will probably be fine. i'll set up my appointment in probably....another 9 years?? okay, just as soon as i can talk myself into getting anesthetic again.

am i alone here? anyone else have an awful experience with the dentist??

expressions.

2012-01-11T11:46:00.000-08:00

mad face.

sad face.

excited face.

happy face.

scared face.

serious face.

i love this face.

the price of freedom, part 3 of 3

2012-01-07T07:30:00.000-08:00

in my mind, i am still 20 years old.

i'm just past my teenage years, riding in the red cabriolet convertible i wrote about so long ago, the windows down in my carseat-free car, hair blowing, music blasting, and i'm singing along as loudly as i can. my face is wrinkle-free, without my tired under-eye circles, my hair isn't falling out due to the loss of hormones after having a baby.

i'm playing house in our 3 bedrooms 2 bathrooms, these lovely children are little people who i am supposed to return back to their real parents in just a hour or two. i'm too young for them to belong to me.

i don't answer to anyone but myself, only worry about my own finances, and don't spend a minute of time thinking about my future. i live only in today.

i can drive as long and far as i want to. i'm not concerned about nap times, or dinner, or homework and piano practicing. or waking at 6 a.m. to correct someone else's 25-page paper before a deadline.

i think about frivolous things: the cute shoes i want to buy, what i'm doing for the weekend, which concert is coming up that i want to go to, the phone call with the boy i'm dating, how i'm going to make next month's rent after buying those cute shoes.

i don't think about double ear infections and high fevers, or when to set a firmer consequence, or having to hear who just poked who in the back of the car, or figuring out how to teach empathy, compassion, and integrity in another human. i don't work through ups and downs of a marriage. a strong, good marriage... but a marriage nonetheless.

i am still 20.

and i am free.

then i happen to glance in my rear view mirror.

the rear-view mirror that reveals i am actually in a newly-purchased mini-van, surrounded by car seats.

my hair is not blowing in the wind, because the windows are all rolled up. the soundtrack to "curious george" playing on the speakers. i no longer sing loudly, i hum absentmindedly along to tunes that i have been listening to repeatedly for 4 years straight. i know every word of every song, every instrumental change in every chorus.

i see my eyes, and they are tired. a result of too many sleepless nights with sick children in the past few years. my skin is worn, with more wrinkles than i'd like to believe. {why did i ever tan my face? a very poor decision.} my hair is limp, sprouting the post-baby regrowth along my hairline.

in the mirror i see the 3 children behind me. my children, with marks left behind from them on my body as reminders. one is asleep, clutching her soft blankie for comfort, her plastic linky-rings dangling from the handle of her car seat. another is crying, calling for me, telling me her ears are hurting. my words of attempted reassurance last only seconds, until she cries out again. and the last one is uncharacteristically quiet in the back, staring out the window, watching the cars pass by. he is content.

our home has dishes piled, and clean laundry piled, and toys strewn about. there are weeds that need to be picked in the front yard, cars that need to be washed, filters in a humidifier that need to be changed. and dare i admit it....christmas that still needs to be taken down. results of the week we have had, a week i title coping.

financially, i worry constantly. i stay up too late working to bring in extra income, my husband is gone long hours after school is over to bring in extra income, i count the days until the student loan comes through, the taxes can be finished and the return on its way, the paycheck deposited.

we consistently work to keep our marriage off of a back-burner and on a front-burner. to prioritize each other, to spend time with each other that matters, connecting and re-connecting after many days apart. it is not always easy to do, and takes effort and planning.

i am going to be honest here.....there are moments that i long to be my 20-year old self again.

to be free of anxiety that was spurred by seizures and spinal taps, hospital visits, IV's and tests and orthotic casts for tiny legs. constantly feeling it resurface when illness hits our home. to be free of real financial concerns, free of the nagging feeling that i am potentially messing up my children by whatever i have or have not done during the day. to be free of the hours of 3 p.m.-10 p.m. where i am on my own so often, doing it all with little people who have so many needs that i can't answer at once, only to then begin all of my other responsibilities well into the night. to be free from answering to someone almost all of the time.

there are moments when i itch for an escape, for the real parents to walk through the door, take the unfolded laundry out of my hands, wiping the toddler's messy face as they pass by, thanking me for a job well done, telling me they can take it from here, turning the role of supportive wife and constant caretaker over to someone more competent than i am.

as i hop into my car-seat-free car, roll down the windows, turn up the music, and drive away.

but, there is a price of freedom.

freedom from the difficult and tiring means i pay the price of so much good.

freedom from the anxiety of illness in my children means i pay the price of learning what it truly means to surrender my will to God's, and the memory of when i first learned to want another's well-being over my own. and the overwhelming gratitude that came when those scary days of colic and seizures became less and less frequent.

freedom from under-eye circles means never knowing what it feels like to hear a tiny, sweet voice cry out for my name in the middle of the night, and answering those cries with comfort just by my touch. no longer being able to rock a baby back to sleep, or pray with a little one for God to take away the scary dreams.

freedom from financial hardship means losing the knowledge of what it means to sacrifice, to save, to feel true humility and appreciation for the help of others. knowing the difference between needs and wants. learning how to never pay full price for anything.

freedom from a currently messy home means losing the feeling of satisfaction after hard work. a home where i have been given the opportunity of creating a colorful and creative space, one that is full of light and has a feeling of peace and love within its walls.

freedom of the hours from 3 p.m. to 10 p.m. means losing some of the sweetest and best times of the day. the smell of a fresh fuzzy baby head just after a bath, hearing the words of a toddler saying a family prayer, reading and being read to by a young boy who is growing up too quickly. peeking in on them every night after they've gone to sleep, kissing their cheeks and whispering in their ears how good they are, and how much i love them.

freedom from a marriage means losing the feeling of unconditional love, safety, comfort, teamwork, stability, happiness, a place where i belong. working together for a common purpose. knowing someone depends on me, counts on me, needs me and wants me, and that i return the same.

so yes.

there is freedom in a car-seat-free car, with my 20-year-old self. where the music is loud and the worries are minor.

but i prefer buckling my children into their car seats, climbing in my mini-van, rolling up the windows, humming along, answering their requests, looking forward to their dad coming home, and staring back into my tired, 31-year-old eyes in the rearview mirror with a satisfied smile on my face.

to give all of this up?

no way.

because for me, the price of freedom is too great.

***can you believe i finally finished this series? it has been so so long, and i'm sure anyone who read the first two parts probably thought i had long forgotten. i never did, i always knew what i wanted to say....i just couldn't figure out how to say it. and today, i did. it's much less humorous than the first two parts, and i decided not to include anymore of our past car history like i had originally intended, but what can i do? it's just the time of life i'm in, i guess. less humorous, more thoughtful. but there it is anyway. let it be written, let it be known. hope you liked it.

{the price of freedom, part 1}
{the price of freedom, part 2}

christmas eve~ in pictures

2012-01-04T19:06:00.000-08:00

eyelashes.

2012-01-03T12:25:00.000-08:00

this sweet baby girl has been sick--like, legit sick. {i guess sick is a relative thing.....by this time in caleb's 5 month life he had been in the hospital about half a dozen times already.} you know, fever, vomiting, a cough that sounds like she swallowed a bag of Pop Rocks.

we came home from texas with 3 sick kids who have been pretty miserable. caleb has had the least of it, but that's because he took care of his portion of illness on the ride home, holding a garbage bag to repeatedly vomit into while we drove.

june being sick has shown me just what a calm, happy personality she really does have. it's one thing to be cheerful when you feel fabulous, it's another to throw up everything, having it come out of both nostrils, and then to have her look up at me with her sweet face and smile and coo.

her already-long eyelashes are darkening, just like my other kids at 5 months.

it's funny because with her being such a content baby, you'd think i would leave her alone more than my other two who seemed to need constant attention. but it's turned out to be the opposite, where i can't get enough of holding her and kissing her cheeks and feeling her chubby hands on my face, even if there is slobber all over them.

i'm so grateful for my kids, even if they're tired and cranky {the oldest two anyway} and not feeling well. it gives me a chance to comfort them, and serve them.

i've been reading several things that have made me put things back in perspective and look outside of my own quarantined home.

stories about real suffering, and loss, grief and heartache.

An Inch of Gray

Lloyd Family Love

Rockstar Ronan

reading words that bring me to tears, and help me to hug those i love closer, longer. with more intention. to know it could change in an instant.

ben and i listened to this talk yesterday {a favorite in the strader household},

be of good cheer

and i found peace again, listening to knowledge, and truth, and insight full of faith and love.

i'm going now, to do more laundry, wipe more snotty noses, give more hugs, smooch my husband when he comes home after the sun is down tonight, and sit in awe and gratitude as i witness more eyelashes darken.

happy 2012!!

2012-01-02T14:45:00.000-08:00

last year's theme was acceptance. and i must say, i'm not there 100%, but i sure am a lot farther along in that process than i was a year ago. i have proof of it, and at some point i'll write about the proof.

i've been trying to find one word for 2012 to work on, and know generally what i'm looking for, but want to be more specific. i feel like even though choosing one theme sounds more generic than a list of detailed resolutions, i find that it actually causes me to work daily on changing who i am, and it's more effective for me.

anyway, when i find it i'll write about it {also helpful for me, to put it down to remember}. but for now, a look back on 2011....

i went through my blog posts and couldn't believe just how much has changed for us. an unexpected pregnancy, changing emotionally unhealthy pieces of me to mold who i aspire to be, an emergency move, caleb's broken arm with surgeries included, the birth of sweet baby june, the passing of my grandma, ben charging through the hardest semester of school so far, a lot of really great memories with family and friends, starting a new job, and more than anything,

continuing to find happiness.

2011 wasn't a breeze by any stretch of the imagination. but what it did show me is that yet again, i can push myself to stretch in ways i haven't before. i've been telling myself "i can do hard things" for 2 years now, and when i look back, i see that it's actually true. not just do them, but go through them with an ability to believe of good things to come on the other side of them.

i know that life is full of difficulties, and i may have not even cracked the surface of those to come in my life, but i do believe that this year was about laying a foundation for those times. to let optimism override pessimism, to choose to rise above any situation, having faith that there is a God in heaven above who is mindful of me and my family.

i have felt that so many times this year.

so here's to more love, more faith, more courage to change, more gratitude, more humility, more honesty, more happiness.

here we come, 2012!

now let's see if those mayans know what they're talking about. :)

the surprise.

2011-12-29T23:32:00.000-08:00

here is a picture of ben's oldest brother matt, and his wife jennie.

matt is honestly one of the best people i have ever known. genuinely good to the core, how many people can you say that about these days?? {by the way, his wife jennie just as awesome...maybe even more awesome than matt. but this post is about him, so i will carry on.}

matt has been there for our little family when we needed support, good advice, and unconditional love. specifically multiple times last year when there were some rough days.

this year, on christmas day, was matt's 40th birthday. we haven't been out to visit his family in texas and decided that if there was any way we could be there to celebrate with him, we wanted to make it happen.

luckily ben was able to round up some of his family members to join us for the surprise, we made plans and amazingly enough, pulled it off. {ben is convinced that matt was onto us, but whether or not he knew, we saw him shed a few tears as we surprised him, and the emotion was genuine.}

the surprise was set up in 4 stages, so he could be surprised with each individual family:

matt's own family decorating & surprising him with a family party.....

ben & i hiding in the closet when he came home from work to change.....

carrie, troy, bailey & carter hiding in the minivan & screaming out while he drove down the street to the restaurant....

then ginny {my MIL} walking down the street in the neighborhood as matt drove by.

they all went off without a hitch and it was so fun!

anyway, i'm going to write about our time in texas, but for now, here are some pictures of the initial surprise.

setting up decorations:

ben hiding in the closet:

leah hiding in the closet:

june sleeping through all of the screaming:

the official SURPRISE!! face:

a hug:

going out to dinner, eating the most amazing fajitas, wearing our awesome MATT IS OVER THE HILL t-shirts, complete with his face on the front, and a picture of him riding a jazzy on the back:

{carrie makes me laugh.}

singing cumpleanos feliz with a sombrero:

scaring june with the song:

then we went home to the kids, and got settled in for a week of birthday & christmas fun.

3 287.17979 days

2011-12-27T21:54:00.000-08:00

is how long i have been lucky enough to be his wife.

happy #9 benjamin!!

the nugget at 5 months

2011-12-26T21:49:00.000-08:00

{all dressed up, christmas morning.}

so it looks like time does fly,

and june turns 5 months old.

oh i just adore her,

that's pretty much all there is to it.

all is calm, all is bright.

2011-12-25T12:29:00.000-08:00

surprise! we are in texas for christmas this year!

we have been planning a surprise visit to see ben's brother matt and his family for matt's 40th birthday, which just so happens to be on christmas day. i couldn't write about it, because he reads this blog and facebook, but after 3 days in a car caravaning with ben's mom & twin sister & her family, we arrived.

the surprise went off without a hitch and now we're here to enjoy ourselves. this break from stress, worry, and sadness is exactly what we needed.

it has been a big, loud, happy, messy, laughing, fabulous christmas. and the fun isn't over yet!

i'm so grateful for this crazy group of people, and all of my other loved ones.

happy christmas!

may your days be merry and bright.

missing december

2011-12-22T23:38:00.000-08:00

{june, minutes old.

just wondering how she started out looking like this and now i can hardly remember her this way?}

when i look at the blog at how much i haven't written lately, it tells me a couple of things:

1) i'm probably not taking great care of myself. because i love to write, and love to think about things to write, and love taking pictures and writing about them. then looking at how much i haven't done these things, i'm wondering what i've substituted as an outlet for me lately? and why do all of my pants feel too tight? and where did the rest of that ice cream go? hmmmmm....

2) it's the end of another really tough semester.....for both ben and myself. holy toledo, am i glad this one is over. why is it that the wives of grad students don't earn some sort of certificate when this is all over? or at least enough chocolate and massages to last a year?

3) i am busy. that's all there is to it. sometimes so busy that i feel like i'm not sure which way is up. and this is definitely a busy time of year, complete with illnesses, parties, working, selling cars, buying cars, endless laundry, the random medical mystery of my strange knee continuing, baking, fighting with our insurance company yet again, planning and planning christmas surprises, and a lot of happiness in between the madness.

i had a little bit of a nervous breakdown last week. just felt like something had to give before i gave. but luckily i caught myself before i went over the edge, voiced my needs, and got out for a couple of much-needed hours. sometimes that's all it takes to return ready to dive back in.

life is good though, isn't it? here it is, almost christmas. i just love christmas. the tree, the lights, giving presents to others, to my children and husband. opening the mail and getting so excited to get another christmas card from friends.

i'll tell you what, it's my new year's goal for 2012 to send out family christmas cards, because i really love receiving them. plus it would force us to actually get a real family photo taken. what would that be like? it hasn't happened since caleb was 2. a sad and true fact, which is going to be changed, mark my words.

well this was a lot of writing about not much. i'm tired, and surrounded by sleeping family members. i'm going to join them, and enjoy the rest of this december that has gone by so quickly.

da hoo doray, da hoo doray, welcome christmas!

2011-12-12T23:06:00.000-08:00

"clowns to the left, jokers to the right and here i am, stuck in the middle with you"

2011-12-06T07:27:00.000-08:00

before june was born, ben used to give leah a biiiiig hug and jokingly say,

"oh you poor girl, you're now going to be the crazy middle child."

of course, he would say this knowing that

i
am
a middle
child.

i always felt proud of being the middle child, the one who didn't ruffle feathers too much, who liked hanging back for the most part. i actually didn't like a lot of attention, and pretty much loathed a shining spotlight.

so whenever ben would make a jab at my cute little leahpants, i would defend her honor.

"that just means she gets to be the sweet, easy-going kid! at least she won't end up a spoiled brat like the youngest kids of families do."

{no offense, my sweet baby junealicious....i was only saying this to jab back at your father who is, in fact, the youngest--technically a twin, but treated as the youngest--of his family}

ben, being the spoiled baby that he is, then had to list all of the poor qualities of the middle child. {of course he had memorized them, as spoiled babies tend to do} i couldn't believe it! i hadn't heard of all of these negative characteristics before.

so i did what middle children do---and tried to call his bluff. i google searched "middle child characteristics" and woah boy! did i pull up a seriously depressing list. hold on to your hats. {for the middle children--my peeps! : a warning. you might feel like jumping off of a bridge after reading this.}

"The middle child, unlike the others, is not given much attention. The following are just some characteristics that define middle children. Note that not all of them or maybe even none may be observed in middle children. Middle children have low self-esteem. They need support for anything they do, sometimes talents are wasted when they do not pursue their dreams. Middle children have a feeling of emptiness.They are always lonely and are jealous of others. This is a very broad trait, since it affects every aspect of their lives. They may be a little weird, unfriendly and even worse, psychotic because of this feeling of emptiness. The two traits mentioned above can interact differently with different personalities. For example, an introvert middle child may prove to be more depressed and lonely than the extrovert middle child. There are a lot of possibilities for middle children, but the results are mostly negative."

found here. 

well, there you have it.

my favorite part? "they may be a little weird..." that one struck me as randomly funny.

and as i was reading these traits, and trying to pick up my shattered ego off of the floor.....who happened to walk by but this lady:

who was wearing a bike helmet on her head, a pair of june's socks on her hands, a big poofy skirt over her pants, her hair in pigtails, and holding in each gloved {socked} hand, a plain noodle from lunch a few minutes earlier, talking to them and singing about how they are friendly snakes.

and i smiled at her and thought to myself,

she is so weird.

then stopped myself. oh, no! i've totally created the middle child monster in my own daughter! this must be corrected before it's too late. i am going to give my poor, forgotten middle child the attention she deserves, darn it, and talk about her for the rest of this post.

leah is an absolute crack-up. yes she wears crazy things on her head and hands and feet at pretty much all times of the day. she sleeps with her hippo on top of her face. when we drive in the car with the windows down, as soon as we pull up next to another car with windows down, she'll yell out a really loud, "HI FRIENDSTH! WHATCHA DOIN?"

she could have totally been potty trained a good 6 months ago, but honestly? i just didn't feel like it. i like to potty train my kids late, and move them to big-kid beds late too. {it had nothing to do with me forgetting about her, maybe it was because i need support in everything i do?? because i'm the middle child??} but she announces to me every time she's going #1 or #2. in public that's a whole lot of fun, especially because i congratulate her each time to encourage her. it doesn't even phase me anymore.

she laughs when she burps, and has to walk around the room while she prays.

she is both friendly and shy, it's such a funny combination. she has no problems with nursery or playing with friends, and has easily gone into situations like that from the first day with no fear. i love that about her.

we signed her up for a little kid's fitness class to give her something to do, and she loved it. but when the teacher would talk to her, i noticed she was more quiet than she is at home. she knows colors, shapes, animals, numbers, letters, all of it. but when she's asked by an adult who isn't someone she's particularly close to...she just smiles at them.

she is extremely talkative, we carry on conversations all day long. i find i'm having to remind myself that she's only 2, especially when she says things like, "mom, i'd like to share an idea with you!" and then goes on to tell me whatever thoughts are swirling around in her brain.

she has multiple songs and books memorized, long books and she makes the characters use different voices. she tells me what she dreams about when she wakes up in the morning. she loves being outside.

she is a master at torturing her brother, and he loves to tattle on her. one day, i heard some sort of scuffle going on in his bedroom between the two of them, and i heard caleb yell out, "I'M TELLING!" then heard leah quickly follow with, "NO, I'M TELLING!"

and i thought to myself, this should be interesting.

they both came charging up to me, wanting to be heard. caleb had arrived first, so i told him to go ahead and then it was leah's turn. {always second, in true poor-middle-child-fashion. wink.}

"MOM, LEAH HIT ME!" he screeched.

"okay leah, your turn. what would you like to tell me?" i asked her, thinking she would defend her honor.

"MOM, I HIT CALEB!!" she yelled in reply, tattling on herself. i busted up laughing, so did caleb. so did leah.

she is so sweet with june, another thing i'm thankful for. knock on wood, she is soft and sensitive to her, and always announces to me when she's crying. over and over and over and over again, until i get the chance to pick june up.

she loves music, and we dance a lot around here. she spins, points her toes. she is easily self-entertained. she has an amazing imagination. she loves the "little einsteins."

leah is spunky, and fun, and hilarious, and sometimes a little devil of a child, but in a good way. now i'm going to go and play with her, making up some sort of game together, i'm sure.

my lovely, not-forgotten, middle child,
who is going to achieve whatever the heck you want to in life,
{and i'm sure no matter what, you're going to be awesome.}

i'm going to dance to this song with you today.
and enjoy being right where we are.

roly poly

2011-12-04T21:59:00.001-08:00

well after that last really uplifting post,

which was written partially on an airplane
with the lady next to me reading over my shoulder
{not nerve wracking at all}

and the rest finishing up at 4 a.m. on friday night, by the way.
i'm sorry if it was fragmented & all over the place.
{those thoughts made all sorts of sense in my head though.}

how about we switch things up to a lighter note??

junie june junerson
is 4 months now.

4 months!! i love it.

she technically rolled over on her own for the first time a couple of weeks ago,

but i never consider it a real milestone with my kids until they do it a few times,

so i know it wasn't just a fluke.

and now she has the skill down pat, along with the classic toe grabbing pose.

what a big girl.

p.s. don't mock the hat, i've been waiting for winter for a LONG time and now that it's here,

i'm kind of refusing to turn on our heat.

i get heat 9 months out of the year, you know?

but june's poor noggin doesn't have anything to keep it warm, so we help her out.

p.s.s.? she's started saying "mum mum mama" for the past 2 days.
pretty sure she's a prodigy. and that she adores me.

minimizing the damage

2011-12-03T08:00:00.000-08:00

this post may sound a little sad. melancholy? depressing? i hope not depressing.

maybe, just less....spunky....than other things i've written. it doesn't mean that i'm not happy, because generally and over all, i truly am. but there have been circumstances lately that have caused deep thoughts, and i know that expressing them will help me let them go. sometimes i worry about writing these things, because i know people who know me read my blog, and i don't want them to think that i portray myself as someone i'm not.

i am the laughing until i cry, upbeat, outgoing person who loves getting together with friends, and absolutely loves my husband and children. believes in God, and goodness, and blessings. is so extremely grateful for my life.

but i am also someone who feels. things get deep sometimes in lynsey world. {i'm assuming by now most readers here know that} and i don't know if i hide that side? or just compartmentalize it? or it's just not necessary to always show it? i definitely don't hide it, if i'm asked about it. anyway, this isn't really about me explaining myself. just wanted to give that perspective so that those who love me don't think i'm about to go and jump off a cliff or anything. {though drowning in a bowl of ice cream is more my style.}

there are things in life that happen that are sad. devastating. things that are hard for me to understand, and when i try to, i just end up getting a stomachache. then i find myself turning inward, not knowing how to release this sadness because i don't know where it can go.

i am not someone who has escaped things that are devastating. they are a part of me. they have brought me to places that are hard for me to understand sometimes, places where i have found myself waking up in the middle of a moment thinking "who in the world am i?"

there are more difficult stories than mine, however, i get that. i try not to exaggerate the sadness i have seen as much as i try to not minimize it.

i know that life is about choices.....free will.....deciding our own adventure. what is difficult for me to sometimes wrap my mind around, is that many times in the life i have seen, myself and those i love have been the product of someone else's choices.

"minimize your damage," words spoken by my kind and wise brother, who has seen his own sadness. "everyone is screwed up. just figure it out. get help, fix it. and minimize your damage."

i'll be honest, there have been times when i've felt hopeless or jaded, extremely sad at the fact that most people i know have had some very devastating things happen to them. i've become angry that it seems so unfair to suffer at the hands of another who is also screwed up, but has decided that instead of fixing it, they want to project it, sharing and continuing their pain. they cause the domino effect to continue, knocking down those in their destructive path. allowing the cycle to continue.

however, i recognize that on those hard days when i'm lost in my own thoughts and find myself getting really down about what people are put through at the hands of others, my perspective actually is jaded.

because there is hope.

we all are given the ability to overcome these things, and by going through them, we are actually able to achieve such a deeper level of understanding forgiveness, and self-worth, and what it takes to break the mold. the blessings that come from really facing the ugly are there, just waiting.

i also know that not everyone i've come across has gone through ugly things. hard things, yes. but hard and ugly are different. the hard things still allow us to look at life through rose-colored glasses, while the ugly causes us to looked through a cracked lens.

i love these people, who lift me up when my cracked lens becomes consuming. i love that they are optimistic, have not had to fight for happiness, and genuinely believe that most humans are still good.

but there have also been days when my lens has been cracked, and i've felt like i'm losing hope in my abilities to fix myself. and on those days? i will be honest. i've found myself often jealous of those who still have obtained their rose-colored glasses. i look at them and wish, and wonder, can i ever get back there? can i work hard enough to really become one of them?

i know i can. i am already changing, i've been feeling it for the past 2 years now, and it is such a feeling of freedom. it's why i keep pushing myself, keep working, keep fixing. it started for me with really getting honest. with myself, with others.

i go through this fight not only for me, though i know i'm important enough to do this even if i stand alone. but when i made the decision to be a mother, i had not known the weight and responsibility i would feel to fix my broken parts for them. i am doing my best to raise children {fingers crossed} to have this perspective. to go through the hard, but escape the ugly....at least any residual ugly from me.

i refuse to pass this on.

it takes hard work, turning to powers greater than me. there is something magical about the combination of therapy + God. if you are open to it, it brings miracles, and change.

courage. humility. patience. understanding. forgiveness, whether it's asked for or not. unconditional love, for myself and others. acceptance, even when it is not what i hope for with a relationship. letting go. saying good-bye to the hurt. breaking out of the mold i was cast in, knowing i can be whoever i want to be, no matter who has tried to tell me differently.

i am minimizing the damage that has been done, repairing the cracks in my lens, refusing to let the dominoes behind me fall down too.

and changing my course.

i read this today, and loved it.

2011-11-27T21:31:00.001-08:00

"God is in the midst of her; 
she shall not be moved; 

God will help her when morning dawns."

gobble gobble.

2011-11-25T18:34:00.001-08:00

we've had such a fun week & a fantastic thanksgiving.

my sister and her family have come to stay with us, and my kids are in some serious heaven. cousin time galore, laughter, meltdowns, movies, games, staying up too late causing more meltdowns, tons and tons of games, and the fun is still going. it makes me realize just how much i've missed them.

we made our first ever real turkey for thanksgiving and i have to say it turned out simply spectacular. we brined it overnight, syringed it full of rosemary garlic butter, then stuffed it with apples, celery and onions.

some of the males in our group just wanted me to take a picture of it while it was still in its nasty bag and roasting pan~~what?!? our first turkey?!? blasphemy.

i poured cranberries in the bottom of a much nicer-looking ceramic platter and then snapped a picture. looking at it now, it's a little disturbing to me for some reason. i won't go into details of what this picture is reminding me of, except to use one word:

childbirth.

but anyway, at the time the turkey looked nice.

my sister's husband brett was a trooper and took out the innerds for me because the thought made me dry heave.

cue the heave:

he also did the turkey massage with rosemary garlic butter. and then he stuffed it. oh who am i kidding, brett pretty much prepared the whole thing. and then carved it too.

between helping out with the kids, and then contracting some sort of strange infection in my knee, i had to direct him from a chair. but i will pat myself on the back and say i am awesome at reading a recipe and telling someone else how to do things!

more pictures from the day:

pre-dinner nap time.

pre-dinner reading time.

carbs!!

the peeps:

i love love love my sister.

and after dinner.

this picture pretty much described the feeling in my belly {happiness!}:

thanksgiving is one of my favorite holidays for the mere fact that i really slow down and take time to look at my blessings. life is not perfect, but it's never going to be. i'm not trying to be pessimistic, that is me accepting things for where they are and being grateful for who i am, right now. not beating myself up for needing to be more, do better. just accepting, and loving my life right now, as it is.

i look at where we were a year ago, and where we are today and i can see how many things have fallen into place, how God is aware of my little family, how continually pushing ourselves to do hard things and come through on the other side always leads to happiness.

i'm thankful for blessings, i'm thankful for trials, i'm thankful for health, for love, for marriage, for calm babies and happy children, for family and friends, for God, for sacrifice, for mercy, for forgiveness, for my Savior, for this life.

i am thankful.

two weeks in photos

2011-11-18T21:02:00.001-08:00

smooch!

story time.

what was once lost, now is found.

chubby cheeks.

pretty girl.

end of season.

strange sleep habits.

running over

2011-11-06T13:12:00.000-08:00

{caleb took this picture. i kinda like it.}

the past couple of weeks have felt like a whirlwind.

erase that....the past month or two have felt like a whirlwind. between starting a new job that i'm getting the hang of, and ben's homework piling on and on, and all of the rest that comes with kids and friends and family, i haven't had much time to just be still for a moment. my simple little life seems to have vanished with the hundred degree temperatures, blowing in cooler nights and chaotic days all at once.

i feel like even when i sit down, i need to be doing something. folding laundry. feeding a baby. sorting paperwork. cleaning out a closet. and honestly? that's not a feeling i love. i like to feel like things are in order, and i have time to actually enjoy myself. i don't know....read a book? paint? write?

i've felt like my plate is so full--too full.

i kind of lost my mind on friday, after being pretty sleep deprived, to jumping up at 7am to go! go! go! get caleb off to school, get ready to go into work for an hour, get leah and the baby fed & dressed. it doesn't sound like much, but there was a lot more in between all of that. friday just felt like one of those days when anything that could go wrong, did. and those things went wrong always at the last minute, leaving me frazzled from the get go.

leaving out all of the whiny details, by about 3:30 pm i had had enough. i was stressed out, and feeling angry and anxious and just over all not awesome. so, i went back to my roots of therapy, one of the first things i was taught was to stop stuffing my emotions. stop telling myself to not be angry/anxious/stressed, and instead just own the feelings. because sometimes life just is stressful.

i could feel my insides just boiling, and i didn't want to explode, specifically because i knew i would explode on someone, but there was no one who was really to blame for all of these situations. i was worried that my kids or ben would become collateral damage to my stress.

"i'm going outside in the backyard to throw ice cubes," i announced to caleb.

his eyes grew wide. he knows what this means.

throwing ice cubes is something that caleb gets to do when he's having an emotional meltdown. it's not for every time he is mean, it's saved for those special days when he's really angry and continually freaking out over things, unable to control his emotions.

we have him go in the backyard, throw ice cubes, and yell about everything he's mad about, no matter what it is. {most of the time it's about ben, me and leah so that's fun.} it works like a charm though, almost always ending in him laughing. once he's finished, he comes back inside and is calm.

"why?" he asked.

"i'm just feeling really frustrated right now, and i think it will help me to feel better," i explained.

"can i watch?" he asked.

"sure," i said, as i was filling up a big kitchen bowl with ice cubes.

he watched from inside, standing at the window with a big smile on his face.

i threw ice cube after ice cube, as hard as i could, against our cement wall, watching them explode into pieces. i didn't yell as i threw them, but i did think in my head every little single thing that i was mad or frustrated about. i finished the bowl, and felt better but wasn't done.

so i came back inside and started filling up the bowl again.

"i think i need to do some more," i said to caleb. "want to come help me this time?"

"YES!" he said, so excited. "you say what you're mad about and then we'll BOTH throw ice cubes!"

i laughed over his excitement, it was like i had just offered him a day in disneyland.

"good idea," i replied, as we went back out the door with another full bowl.

"okay, what are you mad about?" he asked me, his arm back, his fist clutching the ice cube.

"I'M MAD WHEN I'M LATE FOR THINGS!" i yelled, not too loudly so the neighbors wouldn't think we were completely nuts.

"O-KAY!" caleb yelled back, and we chucked our ice cubes as hard as we could. "what else?"

"I'M MAD WHEN MY KIDS FIGHT AND ARE MEAN TO EACH OTHER!" i yelled, and was kind of hesitant about it. i wasn't sure if that would bother him, expressing my anger about something related to him. but he took it like a champ.

"YES!" he yelled, and we threw more ice cubes. "keep going!"

"I'M MAD WHEN I DON'T HAVE TIME TO DO THINGS I WANT TO DO!"

"NICE!" i love that he was yelling too, but his yells were cheering me on.

"I'M MAD THAT I DON'T FEEL ORGANIZED!"

"WHAT DOES ORGANIZED MEAN, MOM?" he yelled, as we threw. so i explained. "okay, next one!"

"I'M MAD WHEN JUNE POOPS OUT OF HER CLOTHES AND ALL OVER ME, RIGHT BEFORE I'M LEAVING TO PICK YOU UP FROM SCHOOL!!"

at that, he laughed. you know, because i said the word 'poop.' boys.

"GOOD ONE!" and we both giggled as we threw ice cubes this time.

we threw one after the other, and i felt the stress and anxiety and anger melting off of me as i watched the ice cubes become a puddle on our back porch.

as we finished, i thanked him for his help, we high-fived before we walked inside, and i felt much better about life.

it started me thinking about when people say they have "too much on their plate." then i thought about when they say their "cup runneth over."

both sayings mean that things are full to bursting, spilling over. abundant. but one feels a little pessimistic, the other optimistic....like the glass half empty/full concept. and i realized that for me, the difference between the two sayings is recognizing my blessings, and gifts, and that i'm living a full and happy {if i choose it} life.

being honest, i do miss the quietness of a year ago. there were still things going on, but it felt like i could breathe a little more often than i have been lately. i love simple days when i can just play with leah and help caleb with his homework, and talk to june, and then spend time with ben when the kids are in bed. when the dishwasher is running, and i can hear the hum of the dryer going.

after i threw ice cubes, the day did not slow down. it was full to the brim with running, shouts, spills, tears, laughing, chasing, crying, smiling, excitement. until i crashed in bed extremely too late, knowing in just a few short hours i would begin again.

no matter how much is on my plate, i look at my life and realize i am surrounded by what is most important....love.

and my cup runneth over.

villains vs. superheroes

2011-10-31T23:36:00.000-07:00

happy halloween!!!

a video: june laughing (3 months)

2011-10-30T22:58:00.000-07:00

as a debut of our first official video to be posted on this blog,

we thought it would be appropriate to make it the video

of june laughing & going insane.

of course, if i had a loony woman in my face

giggling like a chipmunk and saying i was "CRAZY"

over & over again,

i might act the same way she did.

yes i make a fool of myself here.....let's just focus on june though, shall we??

ALSO. i'm doing our first video blog review over at baby half off!!

CLICK HERE to watch!

first giveaway!!

2011-10-27T08:35:00.000-07:00

okay, this giveaway is awesome.....seriously. {worth almost $200!!!}

and because i'm new & not many people know about the blog yet,

NO ONE has entered to win it.

so CLICK HERE and enter!!

excited!!

2011-10-26T19:16:00.000-07:00

{this is june, when she's excited.}

{caleb and leah, when they're excited.}

{ben when he's excited....or, just being a dork.}

{annnnnd me. i couldn't find a true "excited" picture of myself.

it was a toss up between this one & one during labor with june, which was more "freaked out" than "excited" so i went with this one.

which is really just a picture of me flipping my hair up & andrea snapping away.

but i look pretty excited about it, don't i?}

so, friends.

i'm excited to let you know that i'm now part of the Baby Half Off team as their company blogger!!

this was the dream i was referring to in this post....getting paid to write and do something that i love, while also being able to stay home with my kids. i have thought for a long time i was asking for too much, that i wouldn't be able to find something that fit me so perfectly. i'm so grateful for this opportunity and for how much it will help our family out.

this isn't the first job along these lines that i've applied for. there was an offer a few months ago {right after june was born} that ended up falling through. i was disappointed, and tried really hard not to tell myself that it was because i wasn't good enough....easier said than done.

but i really feel that part of this whole thing was actually believing that i could do it. then saying it out loud to someone, and then finally....putting myself out there and asking for what i was hoping for. and the timing has been perfect.

the company is great, they have AMAZING deals, and the people i work with are wonderful.

so i get to write over there, doing product reviews, hosting giveaways and also doing video blogs {yikes! i'm much better behind the computer than i am on camera.} while also continuing to write for myself & my family over here.

anyway, that's the big news!! i am so excited about it. now i just have to figure out how to handle all that is on my plate without going prematurely gray....

so here's my first post, with a giveaway to follow tonight!!

an enormous THANK YOU to my friends and family who have supported me and believed in me....even before i could believe in myself.

learning to love holland.

2011-10-20T09:08:00.000-07:00

my fantastic friend, meggan, emailed this to me a long time ago.

i've been writing how i feel about it, but haven't gotten my jumbled thoughts just right about it yet. about how my "trip to holland" brought out anxiety, and fear, and stress. how i have been working extremely hard the past year and a half to try to quiet that anxiety and let go.

i will finish writing my experience, because i think it's important. not just for me, but for other moms who have had a child with disabilities or extreme health problems that has brought out anxiety in them, because the letting go process has helped me enjoy being caleb's mother so much more than the anxiety did. the anxiety was a false sense of security that kept me wound up tightly, hyper-alert, taking away my ability to truly enjoy.

anyway, my piece will come. but until it does, read this. even if you haven't ever had a child with special needs, read between the lines and apply it to other situations in your life. whether it's becoming a parent, or a marriage that takes a turn, or a job that wasn't what you thought it would be, an unexpected death, or even that your life just isn't what you hoped. where you went into something expecting one thing, but finding another. there is the need to grieve the loss of certain things in life, and that's okay.

i've learned that once i've recognized and acknowledged the loss and grieved it, the most important part is releasing it. seeing the blessings that are there, in any situation.

appreciating the tulips.

WELCOME TO HOLLAND
by
Emily Perl Kingsley.
c1987 by Emily Perl Kingsley. All rights reserved

I am often asked to describe the experience of raising a child with a disability - to try to help people who have not shared that unique experience to understand it, to imagine how it would feel. It's like this......

When you're going to have a baby, it's like planning a fabulous vacation trip - to Italy. You buy a bunch of guide books and make your wonderful plans. The Coliseum. The Michelangelo David. The gondolas in Venice. You may learn some handy phrases in Italian. It's all very exciting.

After months of eager anticipation, the day finally arrives. You pack your bags and off you go. Several hours later, the plane lands. The stewardess comes in and says, "Welcome to Holland."

"Holland?!?" you say. "What do you mean Holland?? I signed up for Italy! I'm supposed to be in Italy. All my life I've dreamed of going to Italy."

But there's been a change in the flight plan. They've landed in Holland and there you must stay.

The important thing is that they haven't taken you to a horrible, disgusting, filthy place, full of pestilence, famine and disease. It's just a different place.

So you must go out and buy new guide books. And you must learn a whole new language. And you will meet a whole new group of people you would never have met.

It's just a different place. It's slower-paced than Italy, less flashy than Italy. But after you've been there for a while and you catch your breath, you look around.... and you begin to notice that Holland has windmills....and Holland has tulips. Holland even has Rembrandts.

But everyone you know is busy coming and going from Italy... and they're all bragging about what a wonderful time they had there. And for the rest of your life, you will say "Yes, that's where I was supposed to go. That's what I had planned."

And the pain of that will never, ever, ever, ever go away... because the loss of that dream is a very very significant loss.

But... if you spend your life mourning the fact that you didn't get to Italy, you may never be free to enjoy the very special, the very lovely things ... about Holland.

a calming influence.

2011-10-18T07:00:00.000-07:00

on caleb's blessing day in 2005 i was an absolute wreck. caleb hadn't slept all night, but had stayed up screaming, until he finally fell asleep at 5 a.m. i then had to make the judgement call between getting two hours of sleep, or taking a shower and start getting ready. i chose sleep.

so i had greasy hair, dark circles under my eyes, and probably a stress pimple or two. i wasn't feeling my best.

ben and i were so worried that caleb would scream, or worse, have a seizure, during his blessing. we said a prayer before we left that he would be calm, and hoped for the best. as church started, caleb began to cry so i took him to the mother's lounge to try to feed him and calm him down. while we were in there, he had a seizure, and fell into his deep, coma-like, post-seizure sleep. i cried over what i could not stop, wiped my tears, and went back to sit down. he slept through his blessing, not stirring for the rest of the meeting.

as we drove over to the park to meet with our family and friends, caleb had another seizure. and fell asleep. i was in the back seat with him, and i cried again over my inability to comfort him, wiped the tears away, and went to join our loved ones for food and pictures.

mentally, emotionally and physically i was exhausted. during the lunch, i continually heard comments like, "oh he's such a good baby!" and "it's amazing, he sleeps through everything!" and i kept quiet, not saying the reason that he was in such a deep sleep. i'm not really sure why, except that i didn't want to sound dramatic when i expressed that caleb was actually the most difficult baby i had ever encountered {and i had encountered a few in my lifetime}. i worried that they wouldn't believe me, because here he was, looking and acting like an angel.

i tried to focus on the positive...that he was calm during his blessing, and he was calm for others to be able to enjoy him and that even though i had felt i had aged 5 years in the 3 months he had been alive....that he was alive, and he was my baby. i loved him with an overwhelming love and was grateful for all he had already taught me.

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

on leah's blessing day in 2009, stress came because i had caused it, planning too much and overdoing it. the swine flu had just broken out, the first case of death happening about a mile or two from our apartment. because caleb had been such a sick newborn, we were cautious with leah. family members were concerned as they flew in for the blessing that they were going to catch it, so we changed from having the blessing at a church, to having it in our little apartment.

i was also participating in the real mom's guide online show, and they had asked to be able to film us while we were with our families. i had agreed, which looking back now, was too much. i stressed myself out, worrying what i looked like because i was now going to be on camera, what our house looked like, trying to fit enough chairs so that people could be comfortable in our small space, baking and preparing food for everyone.

there were a lot of fun moments that weekend, and there was happiness and laughter, but i realized when it was over, i hadn't really enjoyed the actual experience of blessing our new baby girl. because i had crammed so much in, i had felt internally chaotic, and the chaos had taken over the joy.

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

two weeks ago was june's blessing day.

this time i decided to do things differently. i wanted the day to be simple, low-key and not stressful. my house was clean but not sparklingly immaculate, i didn't bake or cook but instead allowed others to bring food or i bought it from the store. our clothes were set out the night before, i was showered and went to sleep at a decent time.

for me, the day was perfect.

spending it enjoying my family and friends, and specifically this sweet baby girl.

in june's blessing, she was told that her "calming influence would bless her life and the lives of those around her." i absolutely love those words, and have felt that since she has been born. her quiet and content spirit has been a healing piece for me as a mother.

i know i've written a little about this already, but before she was born, i honestly had convinced myself that i was only going to be given difficult babies. that there was some sort of lesson i needed to learn through them. in the back of my heart, my fear was there was something that i did or had done, or was doing to make my newborns scream. i knew in my head it wasn't true, but i couldn't convince myself entirely that it wasn't my fault.

i know now it wasn't my fault.

isn't that such a weird thing to say? i don't know how to really explain it. but i took on their inability to be comforted as my inability to comfort, wondering if i was somehow the cause of it all.

i have also released myself from doing too much. i have accepted that i'm not one of those fabulous party planners, who goes all out with decorating and baking and hosting. i love attending parties like those, and admiring the talents of others. it's not that i can't do it, i just choose not to, and don't feel badly about that choice anymore. i no longer hold myself up to the standard i see others set for themselves, and i accept where i'm at without feeling one ounce of guilt for it.

much like my daily life, i love most just keeping things simple, and laid-back. doing things low-key helps me enjoy the rest of it without the chaos crowding in and taking over.

i can focus on moments like these,

so when the day is over, i can look and see that i have enjoyed

what i am most grateful for.

releasing my grip.

2011-10-17T13:40:00.000-07:00

{june holds her toes together like they're fingers and i love it.}

a couple of weeks ago, i spoke a dream of mine out loud, for the first time, to a friend on the phone.

it's a dream i've been carrying around in my heart for several years now, but haven't dared to say it. i know why i haven't dared to, because i feel insecure and like who am i to be asking for so much?

i have accepted what i feel i am worth, and have told myself that others are the ones who go out and do. i do not. i like my comfort zone, and will accept what falls in my lap instead of putting myself out there. the fear of rejection or failure or i'm just not good enough has a way of shutting things down quickly.

but i've been feeling a shift again, inside of myself. maybe it's that the temperature here is finally {sometimes} dropping below 100 and i can think more clearly without the heatstroke interrupting my thought process. {i am really, really wanting an evening walk in utah's october right now, with wind picking up swirling leaves as i wrap a sweater around myself.} or it could be that i am surrounded by really great, deep-thinking people who allow me to search inside of myself as i listen to them. i am watching those i love challenge themselves, take risks and stretch in ways that cause me to ache for the same.

so i've been listening to this voice inside, this whisper-lynsey that usually hides back in the corner of wishful thinking and push yourself harder. i've felt for the past month or so that i've been on the cusp of breaking through some serious things. i have made mistakes while sitting on this cusp, and have had to ask for forgiveness as i've tried to figure myself out. i'm not sure how to do this on my own yet so i feel like i'm muddling through a bit. but i'm getting there, and i can feel it.

i've held on a long time to the idea that i am not good enough to do what i dream to do, and the fear of failure at even trying has kept a tight grip on the lid around the jar that holds these dreams.

but i have started to loosen my grip, and allow myself to believe that i can do it, to just try. as i spoke this one particular dream aloud to a trusted friend, i was reassured that i am good enough and it isn't too much for me to ask. i felt that whisper-version of myself breathe a huge sigh of relief of acceptance, and start to come out of her hiding space, just a little.

the day after dreaming aloud, i met a stranger. we were talking, and somewhere along our conversation, this whisper-lynsey came to the forefront and spoke. and put myself out there, and tried.

i was thinking today, as i am getting ready to begin something new this week, and i'm excitedslashnervous about it, that this has come to pass because of a willingness to let go. i have kept myself in a certain space for so long. one that has been created by both myself and others, and circumstances. but i don't have to stay in that space. i can be different, better. i can push myself to take risks, because i don't have to hold onto these insecurities anymore.

releasing the grip, and being open.

this is when good things come. now i am accepting that i have the ability to do them. and actually deserve them.

{i will share what this is, soon!}

a blessing.

2011-10-11T10:32:00.000-07:00

we blessed this little lady on sunday.

it was a really, really great weekend.

i'll write more about it, when i can.

it's fall break this week.

a break from school for the kids = not so much of a break for me.

i'm trying to keep the kiddos busy,

so that they're too distracted to pick on each other

and drive me up the wall.

at least that's my hope.

in the eye of the beholder.

2011-10-06T10:30:00.000-07:00

i know i'm their mom,

so i would probably think this no matter what,

but to me,

these are the 3 most beautiful faces in the world.

why only one of my legs is shaved.

2011-10-04T23:57:00.000-07:00

{yep, this is me. you're welcome.}

i had just finished exercising, jillian michaels style. i have decided she is a cruel, cruel woman. but that's a different story for a different day.

my arms and legs were shaky from all of the lunges and shoulder presses. i checked on both girls...leah, quiet in her crib, supposed to be sleeping but instead reading books & playing. june, chilling in her swing, content.

i bring the swing into the bathroom to keep an eye on the baby while i took a shower. 5 minutes in, and i'm just about to rinse out the shampoo when june starts fussing. i knew she was tired, so i kept my eye on her and continued rinsing.

then i hear a wail from leah's room. this isn't unusual, she usually drops her beloved hippo or some other toy she's playing with out of her crib and dramatically cries about it until i come in to give it back to her. so i decide to keep showering, but hurry a little.

june's cries start going up in volume and urgency, so i rinse out the conditioner quickly. by this time, leah is hollering and hup-hup-hup'ing and my blood pressure is rising with the combination of the two of them. i decide i can't take it anymore and turn off the water, having only one leg shaved.

i'm sopping wet, and wrap a towel around my hair and one around the rest of me because caleb is supposed to be coming home from school any minute and i think we are past the age where it's no longer a big deal for him to see me in my birthday suit. i just about fall on my face on the tile of the bathroom because the floor is slippery, pick up june, get her swaddled with a binkie in her mouth. prop her up on my bed, on a pillow. and run down the hallway to leah's room, desperately trying not to fall while also trying not to lose my towel.

i open her door, and can tell something is wrong but can't figure out what it is. she's laying on her stomach, sideways in the bed. i ask her, "what's the matter? what's wrong?" but she's crying so hard now that she doesn't answer me. her face is blotchy and she screams on. i look through her crib, but still can't figure it out.

finally, she lifts her head and looks around to her leg. and i notice that one of them is sticking through the crib slats. it looks normal, but then i realize that it's stuck. and that's why she had been crying. i try to calm her down as i start to shimmy her leg out, but it really was stuck and hard to get out. of course as i'm moving it she's screaming even louder. finally, it's free. and i feel so guilty because i'd just ignored her cries while she was legitimately hurt that as i'm holding her, i tell her she can come and watch a movie on my bed. she replies with a small "o-kaaaay" in between her racking sobs.

i pick her up with her blanket, and walk back into my room, the whole time dripping wet and still trying desperately to keep my towel up.

as i get into the bedroom, i can suddenly hear that june is crying. her small cries had been drowned out by leah's loud ones. but somehow, june has rolled off of the pillow i had set her on, and now had the pillow on top of her face. and she was squirming around and kicking her legs and clearly upset. i lay leah down, pick up june, comfort her, get her to sleep, and throw on the closest clothes to me just as caleb comes walking through the door.

phew!

wanting to nominate me for mother of the year 2011 now, aren't you?

i'd like to say that this was an isolated incident.

that my hair isn't often wet, that my t-shirts aren't worn inside out because i've been either too frantic or too unaware to realize, and that both of my legs are shaved.

but i now realize what being a mother of 3 means.

i'm outnumbered.

sure, i was with 2 kids also. but adding the third child on somehow just throws that extra little curveball in there. the curveball that keeps me constantly on my toes, and running and feeling behind in pretty much every area of my life.

i remember someone commenting on my blog when i wrote before june was born about my fear of having 3 children, that with 3 comes the ability to let more things go. because you don't have a choice or you'll go nuts.

so luckily, i've quickly learned to let things go. shower today, or put on make-up? exercise or go grocery shopping? eat my first actual meal of the day or do the dishes? take the kids to the park or finally return the library books? call a friend back or reschedule the appointments with the dentist?

these are questions i ask myself constantly, weighing the options. because i just can't do it all. for a few weeks i was hard on myself because i felt this coming.....the knowledge that i'm out in public looking worn out and tired, or that i can't immediately help each child when they are crying, or that friends are dropping by and my house isn't as clean as i'd like it to be, or that i'd like to be losing more weight, or that those i need to call back will just have to be patient with me.

even though june has been an absolutely amazing baby, newborns still take a lot of time. and planning. and packing the right stuff. so she's amazing but it's all still a lot.

but once i could take a little while and look at what life is for me now, and accept where i am at and the changes and what they mean? the letting go and owning it, and just being okay with not being all of it?

it actually brings a lot of happiness.

even when i'm running around my house dripping wet, tending to one screaming child after another. or i'm seen walking around the grocery store with only one leg shaved, no make-up on and my shirt is still inside out.

there will be a season when life gets a little easier in some ways, when i can manage more and do more, and get out more, and feel more put together.

but right now is not that season, and it's okay.

i'm a mother of 3. and i'm happy.

conversations with a 2 month old.

2011-09-30T23:30:00.000-07:00

i can get her to smile,

but ben can get her to talk.

as soon as he comes in the room and she has his attention, she starts talking to him, kicking her legs and swinging her arms around.

she doesn't even mind his furry kisses.

{she is a better woman than i am already...i begged him to shave after taking these pictures.}

***2 month stats***

weight: 10 lbs. 12 oz. {50%}

height: 23 in. {75%!!! maybe she will have those long legs i always wanted. a mom can dream, right?}

head: 39 1/2 cm. {75%!!! it's her amazingly smart brain, i just know it.}

she took her shots like a champ, only crying for a minute

and then calming down.

took a nap, woke up a little fussy, took some tylenol,

and has been back to her peaceful little self.

i didn't even know babies could do that after shots.

i was telling ben tonight that i'm just amazed by her,

and wondered what life would have been like if she had been our first.

where i could have just lay and talked to her all day,

and my biggest worry would have been

wondering how long before her hair grew in.

i know things would have been more simple, easy

but that's not the path that we were given in the beginning.

it's been a long journey,

but it's the road that has led me to this amazement

and overwhelming gratitude for her sweet little spirit.

the story of mrs. feathersworth & ben the bird whisperer {also known as, that one day we saw caleb holding a dead bird & talking sweetly to it.}

2011-09-29T00:38:00.000-07:00

********

this story dates back a few months, to when we were still living in our mold-infested house, and i was about 6 or 7 months pregnant, and we had a wreath on our door.....

and yes the wreath had been there since christmas, but it wasn't too christmas-y, and plus, i liked it.

so there.

can you tell i'm defensive?

maybe that comes from one-too-many conversations with my lovely husband about how i should switch the wreath out for something more spring-esque and yet we did not have the budget for it. so i had done some mind trickery on myself to convince myself that i did, in fact, love this christmas-y wreath enough that i wanted to see it year-round. or something like that.

moving on, ahem.

one day, after picking up caleb from school, we walked to the front door and i was nearly scalped by a crazy bird who flew out of this semi-christmas-y wreath. i squealed and ushered the kids inside quickly before it came back and attempted another attack.

at first i thought it was just a freak event, but soon realized i was wrong. one day i came home to enormous sticks and twigs sticking out of the wreath at odd angles. it had been windy that day so i assumed it had carried them into the wreath, so of course i pulled them out. but the next day they were back. then a couple of days went by, and i stood up on my tip toes to see that the insane bird had fashioned a full-blown bird's nest in our semi-christmas-y wreath!

now, i'm all about the circle of life and was a little flattered that mama bird felt comfortable enough in our wreath, so i left it alone...which i now realize was a mistake. because after mama bird set up camp on our front door, every time we walked in and out of it, we risked our lives, and so did anyone coming to visit us.

after picking up caleb every day, i would hand him the keys to the front door while i got leah out of her carseat, and he knew to walk softly and crouch low. he would quietly unlock the door and then run! into the house like his feet were on fire. the only problem was, the fear of being attacked would become too much for him, and at the last second before crossing the threshold of the door he would let out a scream, which would send mama bird fluttering at top speed out of her nest, right as i came running for the door. so then i would scream and duck down, run into the doorway with leah and slam! the door closed before she could come after us. then the three of us would look at each other, eyes wide, panting and catching our breath as we tried to calm down, grateful we had made it through another day alive.

we were quite a scene, i'm sure.

after the bird nearly coming into our house one day, i decided i'd had enough. but i didn't know what to do about it. by this point there were 3 or 4 eggs in the nest, and i was worried that if i moved it to a different location, mama bird would abandon her babies.

i started telling ben about my dilemma, explaining the bird dive-bombs and the nest with the eggs when he interrupted me by saying casually,

"oh, you mean mrs. feathersworth?" he said back.

"who?" i asked, starting to laugh.

and then he got embarrassed. which he should have, because had named a random bird living in our christmas-y wreath.

"uh, yeah. she's been living there for a while. i uh, knew about the nest," he stammered.

"wait, wait, wait....mrs. feathersworth? you named her? did i just step into an episode of mr. rogers? are we on the set of mary poppins?" i was cracking up.

"okay, laugh it up," he said. "but me and mrs. feathersworth are tight. and the only reason she's dive-bombing you is because she's protecting her babies. you'd do the same thing, you know."

"you're right. if i was a bird, i would do exactly the same thing," i teased him. "but seriously though, i'm not only worried about her eggs and the babies once they do hatch and if one of the babies falls out, i'm also worried about everyone that comes to the door who has to risk their lives to come in. plus, what if one day she gets confused and flies into our house? you know how i am in situations like that....i panic. and run around and squeal a lot."

"oh, i don't think that will happen. she's just as scared of you as you are of her," he said. and started walking toward the door as he continued defending mrs. feathersworth. "well, let's look and see if there's another place we can put her wreath without her freaking out and leaving her nest."

and he opened the door.

and as he opened it, mrs. feathersworth freaked out. and flew in our house.

i kid you not.

so of course, i did what i do when i panic. i started squealing. and running around.

which freaked out mrs. feathersworth even more, and she flew up the stairs, and landed on the railing of our second floor.

can you see her? i was panicking when i took this, so i accidentally focused the lens in the wrong place.

now.

the door on the right of mrs. feathersworth was caleb's bedroom door, which was closed. then on the left of her was the bathroom door, which was also closed. but another door down, on the left, was the office door. and it was open. not only was it open, but the ceiling fan was going on high speed. ben and i quickly did the math and knew that if she sensed us coming to get her out of the house, that was the only room she could fly into, and she could get hurt.

so we came up with a plan.

i turned off the lights, and tried to sneak up the stairs to get to the office before she flew in there, and turn off the fan, while ben waited below in case she flew back down stairs. i knew she was skittish and quite frankly, so was i, so it would be a miracle if i could make it happen, but i knew i needed to give it my best shot.

it was mrs. feathersworth, for crying out loud! ben's one and only [that i knew of} ladybird friend!

i crawled slowly up the stairs, my heart pounding, trying not to squeal again. i got to the top of the stairs. now came the tricky part, where i needed to crawl past her down the hallway without her sensing me.

i got about halfway down the hallway when she noticed me and took off! and of course, right into the office.

"RUN lynsey!" ben yelled.

so 6 or 7 month bellied me ran down the hallway and hit the switch for the fan and turned it off. but i was too late, and mrs. feathersworth was fluttering around. i heard a little ping! and then a small chirp! and i knew she'd been hit.

i covered my eyes and yelled for ben to get up here! i think she's dead!

so he came running up while i looked away and waited for him to pronounce her dead on arrival....but instead he said,

"she's okay! i think. she's really scared though."

i peeked through my fingers covering my eyes and saw her sitting on the floor of our office, and could see her little chest puffing up and down really quickly.

"what are we going to do now?" i asked ben.

so ben crouched down on the floor, held out his hands and started talking softly to her.

"it's okay, it's okay. come on," he coached her.

and i smiled and thought that it was sweet that he thought he could actually pick up a bird who was as freaked out as mrs. feathersworth.

then....before i knew it, what in the spoon full of sugar! she was in his hands! i couldn't believe it. my mouth was literally hanging open as i snapped pictures.

she fluttered around a little and ben kept trying to calm her down by talking softly to her. he got to the front door, and carefully placed her back in her nest. and there she sat.

"you're a bird whisperer!" i said proudly, in a whisper-voice. and then i apologized for teasing him earlier.

we talked about what we should do, and obviously we needed to move her, because that could never happen twice.

first we moved the wreath to the side of our door, a little lower than it had normally been.

but ben was worried that if the nest was lower, cats could get to it. so he grabbed nails and a hammer, stood up on a chair, and literally hung the nest up in the corner of our doorway. mrs. feathersworth sat quietly in the christmas-y wreath the whole time. i was amazed.

"she's still going to dive-bomb us," i said, and spoke in a whisper-voice in case mrs. feathersworth decided to get crazy again.

"well, it's going to have to work for now. at least her babies will be safe, and once they hatch then we can figure out what to do," ben said.

and after what happened tonight, watching him coax a frightened and in my opinion, sort of insane bird into his hands, and even though i thought that the christmas-y wreath now looked all sorts of ridiculous...i decided to trust him.

days went by, and mrs. feathersworth seemed content. even though this sounds crazy, i swear her demeanor toward us changed. she didn't seem as frantic as she initially had. there were even times when she actually stayed in her nest as we came in and out of the house, without flying away.

now we get to the really fun part of the story.

it had been a couple of weeks since the incident of ben the bird whisperer.

caleb loved mrs. feathersworth. in a fearful way, like his gut told him that at any moment she could turn on him and peck his eyes out, but still. whenever he walked through the doorway he would duck his head and run through while simultaneously yelling hello, mrs. feathersworth! to her. he was constantly asking me when her babies were going to be born, and i promised him that when they were, we would lift him up so that he could see them.

finally the day came that we heard little chirps coming from the nest and sure enough....there they were.

caleb loved them, and would tell his friends about them when they would come over to play. i literally think that he thought they were going to become his pets when they got older.

one day after school, we looked up on the internet how long baby birds leave the nest. {about 14 days to hatch, and then about 14 days after they hatch to leave the nest, FYI} we started talking about mrs. feathersworth, and as i counted up the time that had passed since we first saw the baby birds, i realized that the birds had probably already left the nest.

i peeked in the nest, and sure enough, it was empty.

caleb was devastated.

he carried on and on about how he would never get to see mrs. feathersworth's birds again and how sad he was. to try to distract him, i showed him the pictures of when she had flown into the house and ben had gently carried her out to safety. he was amazed, and so proud of his dad, and stared at each picture intently.

cut to that weekend, ben was outside mowing the front lawn. caleb was in the backyard, doing one of his saturday chores of cleaning up all of the backyard toys. i noticed it was taking him a while longer than usual, but didn't say anything.

about a half an hour later, ben came through the back door with a weird look on his face.

"now, don't freak out," he said warningly.

"what is it???" i replied shrilly, of course freaking out.

"welllll, i went into the back yard to mow the lawn, and saw caleb back there. i noticed he had something in his hands, and i could hear him talking softly to it. so i asked him what he had, and he held up a dead bird in his hands. he thought it was alive, and sleeping or something, and told me he was carrying it just like he had seen me do with mrs. feathersworth in the pictures."

"OH. MY. GOSH. THATISSODISGUSTING!" i yelled, not sure whether to throw up or laugh. the scene from dumb and dumber flashed through my mind. { 'pretty bird...pretty bird'...}

"i know! i didn't have the heart to tell him it was dead. so i asked him to give it to me so that i could take care of it and put it back with its family. then when he wasn't looking, i threw it in the garbage can, and then told him that even though he saw me do it, it wasn't a good idea to pick up birds that were laying on the ground. then we both washed our hands for like 10 minutes."

ben and i looked at each other, both said a couple of "EW!'s" and then laughed hysterically.

when we moved from the moldy house, i didn't know what to do with the christmas-y wreath. it had the empty nest still in it, so finally i decided to just throw it away.

i am now on the search for a wreath that is more year-round friendly, and one that preferably doesn't attract birds.

on another note, if anyone is in need of a bird whisperer....and his eager-to-learn-the-bird-whispering-trade son.....let me know.

a season of peace.

2011-09-27T09:10:00.000-07:00

{this picture cracks me up}

in ben's morning good-bye kiss,

caleb's excited and happy chatter before school,

leah's bed head and adorable lisp,

laying so close to june that i can smell her baby breath and count her eyelashes.

i don't know if this is a calm after what felt like a year-long storm,

or it's a calm before another one on its way,

or just that life inside of our house is busy enough

piano lessons, homework, play dates, doctor's appointments, church callings, picking up & dropping off,

with ben gone during the week days before the sun is up,

and not arriving home until well after the kids are asleep

and we're both so tired we talk for about 15 minutes and then it's our own bedtime

whatever it is,

i'm grateful that the external chaos surrounding our family has calmed,

that i have a baby who sleeps through the night,

and we have such good friends and family who have seen us through a rough time,

to lift us up when our burdens have felt too heavy to bare alone

these moments,

with a good man,

and a happy boy,

and an adorable toddler,

and a sweet and calm baby

these are the things that i want to linger for a while.

even if they don't, and things change

and start to get rocky again,

i am glad i'm writing about it so that i can look back

and remember.

to remind myself that my kids don't fight ALL of the time.

2011-09-26T09:07:00.000-07:00

my favorite part of the picture?

how much room there was on the couch, but they're still sitting so close.

happy monday!!

8 weeks.

2011-09-21T23:51:00.000-07:00

it's been almost two months since june has been born,
and looking back on the pictures we've taken of the past two months,
i've realized how busy we've been.

so for our blog book purposes,
i'm going to post a bunch of pictures without much explanation.

date time.

cousin time.

saying good-bye time.

tummy time.

band-aid time.

relaxing time.

crazy hair day time.

sister time.

bath time.

play time.

grandma time.

papa time.

creative time.

laughing time.

first dead fish time.

dancing time.

family time.

sleeping time.

life analogies on a long walk home.

2011-09-21T00:31:00.000-07:00

i looked down the road.

the long way or the short way home?

those heat waves that you can see in the air when you look down in the distance were there, and i was already sweating. over 100 degrees can do that to you in three seconds flat.

i sighed. checked the baby in the sling, checked the toddler in the stroller. gave her snacks and water. cursed under my breath for about the twenty thousandth time about our broken treadmill, then firmly clamped my jaw and started down the long way.

i can always just cross the street over when i see our road coming up if i'm too tired/hot/tiredofbeinghot.

then followed immediately with a no! i'm not giving myself permission to take the easy way out! i can do this!

determined to finish, i tried discussing things with leah. the birds flying overhead. {were those vultures i detected? waiting to pick up pieces of me after i turned into a puddle of sweat on the sidewalk?} a truck that zoomed! by us. after minutes though, we both became too hot to speak, and simultaneously grew quiet.

trying to distract myself from thinking about the distance i still had to go as the sun beat down on me, i preoccupied my mind with analogies. i do that a lot.

i have found that in life, there is the shortcut and there is the long way.

i wondered why i chose this long way home, why i wanted to make things harder than i needed to. i've done that before, many times. like i have something to prove to my self, that i have perseverance and character. that i can push and sweat and put one foot in front of the other and keep going when i could have just easily crossed the road and gone home.

why does it have to be so hard? i remember caleb asking me just a few days ago, while he cried and wanted answers.

because God knows what we're capable of, i said. and had to explain to him what i meant.

sometimes we're put us on this long road whether we want to be there or not. life is hard enough as it is, on its own. our hearts have enough to handle just by what is given to it. there is loss and sadness and pain that comes in waves without our choosing. we are pushed out of our comfort to feel un-comfortable. the defining moments where we are stretching and growing and learning and becoming.

but sometimes we add more to our already grieving plates, picking up anger and resentment, fear and bitterness or self-deprecation or jealousy. we take the long way by choice, and sweat and struggle to breathe as the blazing sun hovers over our every step and we wonder how we got there in the first place. and why we were crazy enough to choose it.

not only had i picked the long way home on our walk, but it was also the side of the road that didn't have any shade provided by trees. i squinted my eyes, looking across to the other side. of course it was full of shadows and shade that would have provided some sort of relief. i checked on the baby, making sure that she was completely covered from the sun's rays while still being able to breathe. my lower back was aching, my legs were starting to feel like jelly.

pep talk time.

left foot, right foot, left foot, look ahead! look how far you've already gone!

i'm hard on myself, i know i am. i set the bar of expectations high, much higher than i do for others in my life. i'm getting less hard on myself, but still. i have a ways to go. but in the past, instead of taking it with the intent to build character, sometimes i chose the hard road because i felt that it's what i deserved. it was a form of self-torture at times. that is the unhealthiness i am walking away from.

my water bottle was empty and my mouth was dry. i was finally getting to our street, and my mind drifted to the thought of the cool air of my home and the shower that was waiting for me. i picked up my pace, knowing i had almost made it.

i'm much happier now, much more at peace with who i am and the path i am on. i don't know if that's what happens in your 30's, but if it is then i have kissed my 20's good-bye without even a glance back in its direction.

i also feel like i can now sense when others are in this same place in life, past the shallowness of looks and focusing instead on what is underneath the skin. these are who i search for, to be my friends. to let into my inner circle. those who have been through hard things, have felt the sun beating down on them and have let the heat of their trials melt them and mold them but have not let it defeat them. letting go and surrendering, but not giving up. they own their mistakes, their hardships, their battles. and are courageous enough to face them, even when they are afraid. and as strange as it sounds, i feel that as much as i am searching for them, they are also searching for me.

leah is now singing a song in the stroller. i smile at the sound of her sweet little voice, with her pink sunglasses on, kicking her legs up and down, up and down. dancing her stuffed hippo as she sings.

"YOOK MAMA, YOOK! IT'S OUR HOUSE!" she yells, and sometimes she still says her "L"'s with the "Y" sound.

"it is our house, leah! it's so good to be home!"

the blast of the air conditioner immediately cools my skin. i unwrap the baby, lay her on the bed. lift leah out of the stroller.

turn on the shower, step into it and feel relief.

the long walk home is over.

this week,

2011-09-17T23:05:00.000-07:00

because of her,

and him,

i was able to go and see her,

and him,

with her.

and ohmygoodness it was such a fun time.

i'm grateful for generous and thoughtful friends, 

an unselfish husband,

amazing music,

a best friend who makes me laugh so hard 

i go into my crazy non-stop giggle/tears streaming down my face simultaneously,

and a spontaneous night out.

how this morning went.

2011-09-13T13:01:00.000-07:00

compliments of leah.

well okay, i put the diaper on the monkey.  

but she put me up to it.

this is what i would look like if i were cast in a movie as shrek's sister.

2011-09-12T12:31:00.000-07:00

{in the hospital, ben took some hilarious pictures looking through the warped plastic of june's little hospital bed. then i said i looked like shrek, so we tinted it green to give it the full effect}

just thought you would like to see it.

if this doesn't brighten your monday,

or at least make you feel a little bit better about yourself,

i really don't know what will.

to my first grader, who is both wicked and sick.

2011-09-10T06:07:00.000-07:00

{i started this letter almost a month ago, and am just now finishing it.}

first day of first grade

dear caleb,

the other day, i opened your door in the morning to ask you a question. as i peeked in, i saw you kneeling down, saying your morning prayer. and for some reason, catching you praying on your own made my heart so full and my eyes fill up with tears.

overnight you seem to have changed, you've grown up and not just because there is a baby around now and that always seems to age children next to them. but you've matured in the way you think, in your taste, and how you talk.

you have always spoken and thought like a mini-adult, which i didn't realize until it was continually pointed out to me that it was unusual. i had no other children before you to compare you to, but on more often than not, as i've picked you up from playdates, the parents of your friends have said things to me like, "i just love listening to him talk" or "his vocabulary and the way he analyzes situations is amazing" and i realize that you might be just a little unusual, but in a good way.

but the depth that has come recently, just before you started school, was something that i wasn't expecting to come so quickly. i figured this year you would change, but it has already started happening. you are aware of more, perceptive of more. this has been both good and bad {mainly because of a little attitude that has cropped up every now and then}, but mostly good.

going to pick out school clothes with you was both hilarious and shocking. you've never been too particular about what you wear, but this time was different. you informed me before we left that you wanted shirts that were either "wicked" or "sick." where in the world did you learn that street lingo? it made me laugh so hard. and i would hold up shirts for you, thinking they were "sick" enough, but you would in form me that no, in fact they weren't. so we went to find shirts that were still "wicked" without pictures of satan on them. because i have to have limits, you know. the mom veto will always be there, so you may as well just get used to it.

you want to wear your hair in a mohawk, and again, i have no idea where this idea came from, but i love that you want to be an individual. i'll try to relax and just let it happen. except at church. no mohawks at church, and in fact now that i'm thinking about it, no wicked shirts either.

buddy, you have really started noticing the physical difference between you and your friends. the gap has started widening even more.

you've been really hard on yourself lately, and the way that you talk about yourself when it comes to your physical abilities. which is why your dad and i made the decision to tell you tonight that you have cerebral palsy.

we knew we would eventually, but were waiting for the right time. we wanted to make sure you were mature enough for us to explain it to you, but young enough that it wouldn't weigh too heavily. we also wanted you to know that there are some things that you can control, and some things that you can't. hoping that it would help you ease up on the pressure you put on yourself to do more than what might be physically possible, but still believing in yourself that you can overcome and do anything you want to.

we hope we made the right decision, to tell you tonight. you cried for quite a while, and your dad held you. we talked about all of the blessings that you have, and that everyone struggles in one way or another. some struggles are on the outside, some on the inside.

we talked about all of the gifts that you've been given to overcome this challenge.

your fighting spirit, which was evident by just the mere fact that you survived to be born, when the odds were against you. and you continued fighting, through pain and seizures and physical therapy, orthopedic casts and continual testing.

2 weeks ago, MRI #6

i would love to tell you that it is over, that things will be easier. but i don't know.

to be honest, life is never going to just be easy. but it will be more pleasant to go through if you choose to be happy no matter what comes your way.

other gifts are your willpower, and courage. your love for others, and how this challenge will help you feel even more empathy for those struggling because of what you've been through yourself.

your friendliness, self-confidence and honest love of life will all be things that help you face anything with optimism if you choose it.

i know that this has been hard for you to hear, and i know that there may be more that you have to overcome, but i also know how blessed you are. there are many others who face physical challenges that make yours look miniscule.

caleb, i will always look at you as one who provided the biggest turning point in my life. you brought a new perspective to me, and have been a daily reminder of just how lucky i am. being your mother has made so many things so much less important than i had thought that they were, while at the same time also made so many things so much more important. that doesn't make sense to you now, but one day you will have a child of your own and you will know what i mean.

your dad and i talk daily about how grateful we are for you, about what a good boy you are. you are good from the inside-out and we are so proud of who you are already becoming.

so, my 6 year old strong, brave, hilarious, intelligent, loving, wicked {of course in the best way possible}, kind, sick {in the healthiest way of course}, and soft-hearted boy,

thank you for being who you are,
and i can't wait to see who you become.

i love you.

love, mom

little nugget, 6 weeks.

2011-09-09T07:28:00.000-07:00

caleb was little mister.

leah was sweet pie.

madame june is little nugget. or for short, i call her "nug."

you know, i get it now when others say that the newborn stage flies by. with my other two, i wanted time to fly by.

specifically with caleb. after 5 months of what felt like the longest consecutive days of my life, the older he got, the easier he became. his issues ran deeper and he never became an easy or even really content baby. but i have to say, he was a pretty great toddler and is now an even better kid. so you know, it comes in waves i guess. it all evens out.

with leah, i was on a countdown for that 3 month mark when i was praying that her colic would subside. and thankfully, it did and she turned into a happy baby and a content and happy toddler.

but ohmygoodness, with june.....things are different. she is snuggly, and sleeps best when she's being held, but also sleeps pretty great on her own. specifically at night, she has been mostly awesome. i hate saying this because i remember feeling bitter when others would say that their baby slept through the night without training, after alllll of the rigamarole {yes i just used that word and dated myself back to around 1820} i went through with my first two. i burned out a hair dryer with caleb, because i got so desperate for him to sleep and when i would turn it on he would finally zonk out. i also burned out a vacuum with him, for the same reason. i remember a shocked ben coming out of our bedroom, finding me asleep on the couch with caleb on my chest, a vacuum running right next to my face. desperate times, folks.

june burps on her own and poops on her own. on! her! own! what the heck? babies can do this?? it blows my mind and i pretty much throw a celebratory party for her each time it happens. and tell her how proud i am of her, like she's accomplished something so fantastic. but to me, she has. after the hours and hours of coercing burps out of leah so she could relax for a few minutes, and daily q-tip/ky jelly suppositories with both of them to work out gas and what was behind it, this new realm of june being somewhat self-sufficient in this area is refreshing . the only time she really cries or gets uncomfortable is when she has a bubble that needs to be worked out. and it lasts only a few minutes, and then she's calm again.

initially i thought she was going to look like a carbon copy of caleb. but as her cheeks have filled out & the newborn fuzziness has worn off, i'm seeing a whole lot of similarities between what leah looked like as a baby. so who knows who she'll end up looking like?

she has amazingly long eyelashes, but right now they're blonde. if they darken though, watch out world!

the kids are both still great with her. my mornings with my two girls are so fun. just yesterday, leah introduced june to a very important friend:

she's talking now, saying the adorable "ah-goo" sound. her baby zits are finally clearing up, and we work daily on growing her some hair on the top of her little noggin.

other than that, she is a content, sweet baby. who started smiling this week, and her smile melts my heart.

so as a mother for the third time, i find myself for the first time wanting to slow down the clock, and for my newborn to stay little.

what i have learned in therapy.

2011-09-08T00:08:00.000-07:00

with leah, june 2009

a couple of weeks ago, i went to my last meeting of group therapy.

i've been seeing a therapist since february of 2010, and then stopped doing monthly one-on-one visits, and switched to a weekly group therapy in june of 2010. i didn't really want to stop group therapy, we were just getting started into the trauma work which i had been wanting to do for months. so it was a sad time for me to stop, but because of a new baby and ben's school schedule, i decided that at least a break was needed for now.

sometimes, i look at who i was back in february of 2010, the super-intimidated girl who was sitting on the couch and not knowing who she really was, and i can't recognize her. other times, i feel like that same girl until i hear those closest to me say, "wow you've really changed" {in a good way} or "i can't believe you did that! you've really come a long way!" and i'm reminded that i am different.

i know there's a stigma. i know that some people think that therapy is crap. that you're just going to lay on a couch and ramble on about your childhood and bring up old things that don't matter. or that others think that therapists want to tell you everything that's wrong with you so you'll keep coming back to them to fix you & put money in their pockets so they can pay back all of those student loans they accrued. and there may be some therapists out there who do that, i don't know. i can't vouch for all of them. what i do know was that wasn't my experience whatsoever.

and it's my belief that those who say those things about therapy have either never gone, or have gone when they weren't ready to really work. it isn't easy to look at unhealthy or ugly pieces of yourself, or of your family or of your past. it can be embarrassing or humiliating, or shameful, or scary, or just uncomfortable. and those that i have been around who have not been ready to see those things yet and change them, always seem to blame somethings....or someone else, and stop going. or never take that step to go in the first place.

it was scary to take that first step.

i went into therapy already knowing what was wrong with me, i didn't need someone else to tell me. i had some anxiety, i had a low self-worth, i had trouble with boundaries and saying no to people, i let others treat me unkindly and would take it over and over again because i thought it was the "right" thing to do. i allowed myself to be guilted into a lot of unhealthy things. i felt that anger was bad and so i rarely allowed myself to feel angry over anything and instead i stuffed it down and didn't deal with it. i had experienced trauma, and had never acknowledged it or talked about it. and there some things that happened in my childhood that i did need to work through. we are products of where we have come from, so if i had issues, i wanted to dig them out from their beginning source and process them.

i knew my issues, but just didn't know how to work them out completely by myself. i knew what to do on nights when i couldn't sleep because my mind just kept spinning and spinning, going through what lay ahead the next day, or worrying about caleb's health problems or our student debt or relationships with others that were getting rocky.

i could distract myself by reading a book, or watching t.v. or something like that. i just didn't want to have to do that anymore. i wanted the anxiety to be gone, or at least less frequent, and i didn't want to take medication for it. i hadn't taken any yet, and am not against medication if it's needed. but i wanted to get to down to the cause of why i couldn't sleep, couldn't let go, couldn't relax. and work on those things so that i hopefully didn't need medication. i was worried that if i found a medication that could just help me sleep and put a band-aid on the cause of my insomnia, that i would use it as a crutch and never work things out or change my pattern. and that i would have to rely on it for the rest of my life. {like i said though, i'm not against medication if it's needed. but i do believe that those who use medication for these purposes should also be seeing a therapist to see if they can be working on the things that have caused the need for medication in the first place.}

anyway, once i started therapy, it was like i couldn't get enough of it. i felt an immediate change inside of me. my friend andrea described it perfectly by saying that for her, it was like she had been in a dark room and someone turned a light on. that's exactly how i felt. but once one light had been turned on, i wanted more light. i literally felt my spirit hungry for it.

i came to a lot of realizations and some were not so much fun to see. i wrote about one, {the lies that bind us, part 1} and poured my heart out while writing. i vowed to never go back to being that person again. one that could not admit my fears or faults or even recognize them until it was almost too late. i'm not grateful that i had that experience, but i am grateful for what i learned through it.

as i went through a few months of shedding layers, my therapist suggested moving to a group therapy. her belief was that group therapy speeds up the process of moving and changing. because you are with others who not only see good things in you, but that can sometimes bring out the worst in you. and it's hard, but it causes you to then have to work again.

once i got in the group therapy, i never looked back. i've written several times about my experiences in there. not a lot, but just little pieces that i was learning. it was scary {again} that first day. i was shy, {which i know is a shocker, coming from someone who blogs a little TMI quite often} and pulled back. i didn't know how to trust these 11 or 12 other women. i thought that i had problems and they probably didn't so much. i was scared to open up, and to trust them. but i kept going, and kept learning.

we were given different assignments to work on. dealing with anger, or losses, or trauma. i worked on these assignments even if i didn't want to. where there is emotional resistance, there is something underneath it. so i pushed myself to do these assignments with my whole self.

we would each take turns getting up to describe our assignments. i hate hate hate speaking in front of other people like that, or being put on the spot. i don't like an assigned spotlight. but i also knew again, that standing there vulnerable in front of others would push me. so i did it.

and one day, during one assignment, something happened to me. i won't go into detail here, but as i stood in front of those near-strangers who were becoming my friends...i made a decision to be honest. 100%, all-ugly truth honest. i talked about things that only ben, myself and God knew at this point. and i cried. the cry where you can't talk because it literally hurts for the words to come out of your throat. tears streamed down my face and yet i stood up there, and finished what i needed to say.

after i was done, my therapist had me sit in a chair and let the other women gather around me and say things to me that were kind, and honest. i'm hard on myself, especially hard on myself when it comes to my faults. and hearing others say the good things that they saw in me even after i had told them the worst things....well that day, for me, the healing really began.

and that was when i wrote these:

my last lecture, if i had one.

in my garden.

the art of building up walls.

putting myself to the test, and my resolve for 2011

i started to see the good in myself outweigh the bad, for once. i became more honest than i ever had been in my life. and i was no longer ashamed of my mistakes or my faults, or my weaknesses. i began to allow myself to believe that i'm beautiful, no matter what size i am or what my skin currently looks like.

my relationships were changing with everyone around me. most of them for the better. my therapist had said that as i really began to dig out the unhealthy, i would start attracting more healthy relationships, and the unhealthy ones would either change or most likely end, and i really found that to be true. there was some sadness along the way, and loss. it hasn't just been easy or fun or happiness and rainbows. but the benefits have definitely outweighed the negatives. the relationships that i do have are based on trust, and love, and kindness, and respect. being able to say hard things to each other in kind ways, and hear hard things from others. work through those things, forgive and keep trying.

my relationship with God has changed, deepened, and i am coming to a place where i truly know that he loves me. not just believe it, but know it. and more importantly for me, know that i deserve that love, just by merely existing.

i believe that therapy literally changed the course of my life. i could keep going the way i was going, and struggle sometimes, but be just fine. but i don't want to be 'just fine' anymore, i want to be great. and at peace with myself, and take care of myself. and it's not just for me, but for my husband and my children, my family and my friends.

i'm going to keep going when i can, doing trauma work through one-on-one appointments with a therapist. and honestly, if anyone is even considering going, and wanting to change.... my advice is to just do it. if you go once and hate it, then change therapists and go back. and keep going back until you stop hating it.

it's so worth it.

at least it was for me.

p.s. no, i was not compensated in any way by my soon-to-be therapist husband. i know you're thinking he put me up to this as a plug for his impending future. :)

before we were 5.

2011-08-30T00:59:00.000-07:00

here are some events that occurred before junebug came to be.

my last date with my handsome pre-doctor:

featuring a night of raisinettes, wizards, snakes and the end of an era.  

good-bye harry p.  

someday i will read the books about you.

my last official pregnancy picture, 9 days before labor:

celebrating my birthday with my little family:

featuring blueberry pancakes, balloon hats, princess jewelry, a slap bracelet, a rubber chicken {not kidding}, and the usual birthday dinner at the kid-friendly red robin.

more fun with balloons:

celebrating my birthday with this beautiful friend of mine:

featuring a delicious dinner, an awful movie {because i talked her into it}, and then some amazing gifts with a capital A.  then, because she's the only person i will take crazy pictures with/for, here are some fun ones:  {the last one of me looking less-than attractive is again for 
"those" who have "voiced" that i only allow "flattering" pictures of myself on here}

trying to find leah in her bed after each nap:  {don't worry, we always uncover her face & clean out her bed daily.}

trying out the baby's swing:

and that's a wrap.

caleb and june.

2011-08-26T23:01:00.000-07:00

i knew that he would be disappointed when we found out we were having another girl.

he had wanted a brother so badly.

probably because his other sister thrives on driving him crazy.

{and let's just say for the record, it's the combination of 

leah's love of a reaction

and how easily caleb is provoked}

so when we broke the news to him after the gender-revealing ultrasound,

i told him that another little girl was coming to our family,

because he had been such a good big brother to our first one,

and God knew he could trust him to love and protect another one.

i took a deep breath, wondering if that explanation would be enough for him.

and he smiled, and sat up a little straighter,

and said, "okay."

i don't know what God's plan is for our family,

or if that is the real reason that june was sent to us.

but since she has been born,

i've listened to the way he has talked to her,

and how careful he is when he holds her,

and the way he has taught leah to be soft with her, 

and i think that maybe the explanation i gave to him

was the right one. 