it's the hormones!

Tuesday, July 23, 2013

i do not cry in movies. i just do not. ask my friend, dianne, with whom i watched, i am sam. and while she sniffled next to me, i looked at her derisively, and said, "it's a movie. it's not real. this would never happen in real life." [i just got a blindingly bright revelation, i am my mom, because that is word for word, what my mom says to me every time we have watched pretty woman.]

ask my husband. i tease him all the time. you know those sport movies about overcoming racism and going all season undefeated, like remember the titans or glory road, the husband always tears up at the end. husband teared up at the end of the most recent les miserables movie. i am just that hard hearted. stone cold grace is my name. 

so i knew something was up when last friday, as friends gathered around our dining table, and we started to talk about charlotte's web (how did we even get there?) and all i could see in my head is the very last scene, when charlotte dies and wilbur is screaming, "charlotte! charlotte! charlotte!" in that adorable and hauntingly grieving animated pig way of his, and then all her babies but about three of them fly away once they hatch, with wilbur sort of chasing them saying something like, "wait! wait! don't go! don't go." and then i felt it so necessary to reenact this scene (myself starring as wilbur of course, all the while narrating the baby spiders flying away). 

ok all of you out there, you can pretend not to remember this scene, but please, this is one of those scenes from childhood that is burned into forever memory. and out of nowhere, i started to tear up (mid reenactment), much to my embarrassment, and husband's extreme surprise. actually, it was more than tearing up, i started to cry, cause hello, charlotte died!!! and the cute animated pig is heartbroken. i straight up started using my cloth napkin to calm down the waterworks, and for at least five minutes after that, i had to force myself to stop thinking about it, otherwise, the tears would have started to flow again. it just does not happen to me. i turned and looked at husband, and we simultaneously said, "what is going on? must be the hormones!"

so when i set out to write this post, i had every intention of finding the scene, a la youtube, where charlotte dies, and wilbur is desperately trying to keep her with him, but i just could not find it. this is the best i could find. 


but let's be honest, you all remember what happens next and that scene is playing in your head now. happy tuesday night!

finding the "ade" when given a lemon

Friday, July 19, 2013

as some of you know, husband and i have really been going through it with the house remodel and the crook of a contractor we hired. i have been going to bed angry, and waking up with clenched teeth, wondering to myself, "where is justice and righteousness in this world? and might it be ok if i carried out my own form of righteous punishment??"

but this week, as repairs and redos continued, we had fresh concrete poured in for new steps and a new driveway. progress! no more mud piles (for now)! husband had the brilliant idea to make our imprint and mark this momentous occasion/create a semi-permanent reminder of the h-e-l-l we have been going through.

so our little family marched out in the hot virginia sun, fyi, we have been going through a pretty killer heat wave. i feel that you must know this fact in order to appreciate how dedicated we were to turning a lemon of a situation into something more akin to lemonade.




**papa getting alexander's hands nice and moist to optimize hand imprint**



**papa unfurling little hands. surprisingly hard**



**and because it is so hard to unfurl those tiny hands and you can't exactly mash baby hands into mostly dry concrete, the finished product only displays alexander's knuckles. but isn't it the cutest knuckle print you ever did lay your eyes on? just say yes. **

and now, something totally not related. i had a special visitor at work yesterday. i think my boss thought i was kidding when i said i was going to go home with him. but i wasn't. but oddly enough, alexander went home and i had to stay at work.




**this little visitor definitely turned the lemon of working into more of a lemonade kind of day.**

words

Tuesday, July 09, 2013

it seems silly, trite almost, that at the end of a life, all we have are words - apparently useless words - when what we want is to have that life back, to hold that life, to feel that life. 

i learned, via facebook, of the passing of a friend of a friend, a dear believer of the Lord, after battling an aggressive cancer for about a year. you can read her story here.


to be honest, i did not know her very much, only as an acquaintance at best. but as i read her own account of her illness and treatments, i uttered to my husband, "life's not fair. why would the Lord allow the wicked to prosper while one of His own suffers?" (aside: i think, this must be the question of all those out there whose faith have been shaken, or all those out there who cannot quite let themselves believe in a God who permits such things. such seeming injustices. such suffering. i still grapple with this one.)


i wept for her - for someone i barely know. i wept for her husband. i wept for her mother. for her sister. i wept because i long to have the kind of faith that she had - to love the Lord and hope in the Lord even in the midst of intense, unimaginable suffering. i wept because i do not have this faith. i wept because through her, i had a fresh longing and prayer to the Lord that my life would be lived to love Him.  and i wept simply because sometimes words are not enough. in the space between words, there were tears. tears of sorrow, tears of repentance, tears of longing. 

so tonight, while i nursed alexander, i sang him this dear believer's favorite hymn, offering it up to the Lord as a remembrance of her, and more as a prayer for myself and for my son. 

there are no words to adequately end this post so i will conclude by leaving you with the lyrics of her favorite hymn. 

Lord You love me so immensely;
I would love You more intensely.
Every day and every moment,
O Lord, capture me.
Let my goal and my life's theme be,
Lord, to love You more supremely;
With all my heart, Lord Jesus,
Keep me faithful unto Thee.
Draw me, Lord, each day.
Take my veils away.
With a pure heart will I see You;
Lord I just love You.
Nothing else I seek;
No one else for me.
I would fully and absolutely
Give my whole being unto Thee.




a life lesson for this otherwise ordinary tuesday

Tuesday, July 02, 2013

dear readers, 

today i am going to give you a valuable life lesson. i will title it: sleep with your pants on or sleep with pants next to your bed. and a shirt for that matter.

at the risk of venturing into tmi territory, i will just say this, i tend to get warm when i sleep, so i like to sleep just in my undies, so that i can stick my leg out from under the covers. it's my own little self devised air-conditioning/venting system (patent pending). it's really great. supreme comfort.

but when the fire alarm starts shrieking "WARNING FIRE" at two forty five a.m., and you and your husband shoot out of bed...and when husband runs down the stairs in just his boxers, all heroically like the imaginary firefighter that he is, all the while screaming, "GRAB THE BABY!!!" and you run into the baby's room, scoop him up, and bound down the stairs, prepared to dash out of the house while husband tries to find the source of the fire or smoke, you really don't have time to consider the fact that you are still only in your underwears, and what a sight that will be. 

yes this is a true story. yes this happened last night. no there was not a fire. thankfully we did not have to go outside in our undies. but yes, i hovered around our front door, comforting a startled baby, and yes we were both without pants. and yes, we were terrified, especially since i had read the article about the 18 elite firemen who died fighting the wildfire in arizona right before going to sleep. it took a while to calm back down and fall asleep, as we lay in bed, conjuring up phantom smoke smells, and as my imagination ran wild, like anne of green gables wild, analyzing all the different possibilities and how we would get alexander out of the house if the fire had been such and such a way. i wish this on nobody.

but tonight, i will lay a pair of pajama pants next to each side of the bed so that we are prepared next time. tuck this away for your emergency preparedness box. this is something FEMA doesn't tell you about, but i have lived it. if and when you flee for your life, you will want to have pants on. 

and that is tuesday's life lesson.

the (not so) deep, dark secrets of new motherhood

Monday, July 01, 2013


whenever there is a sad face such as this, i catch myself, daily, as i make every silly attempt to turn that frown upside down, including cooing to alexander, making ridiculous faces at him, or massaging his belly to get his poops and gas out, thinking, i am overqualified for this gig. i have a law degree afterall! (forget the fact that i wasn't even using my law degree pre-ADC). and then i feel terribly, sickly guilty for thinking this, because the truth is, i am hardly qualified. it's much easier to worry about whether he has pooped today, how many times he has pooped and peed, and examining the color of his poop, than to really delve into and worry about my qualifications to be a mother. to be his mother.

as you all know or have come to know (hopefully/hopefully not), though i am not certifiably, in need of medication crazy, i am definitely vice mayor of crazy town. it's much scarier to think about all my shortcomings, all my flaws that i will inevitably pass on to my perfect baby. (side note, as one who use to think babies were annoying, needy, dispensers of disgusting bodily fluids, and social-life ruiners, trust me when i say that my baby is perfect. for instance, he has spit up exactly twice in his twelve weeks and two days of life. he has been sleeping through the night and goes down each night without a fight. not to brag or anything, but yes to brag. my baby is perfect). but in all seriousness, or more seriousness, because i was quite serious about my baby being perfect, it's terrifying to think that husband and i, all our imperfections, the obvious ones and the dark hidden ones, will be manifested in one way or another, on this mostly blank slate of a baby.

lately, when alexander gets frustrated, he has begun to exhibit a baby temper in reaction. he raises his left arm and slams it down in frustration. this usually happens when papa is playing with him when he is hungry. alexander is done with play time. he wants it to be eating time, and so he grunts in protestation and begins the aforementioned display of frustration and temper. it's sort of cute now, but having quite the vile temper myself, i can honestly say, this kind of temper, manifested out of frustration, looks, quite frankly, psychotic in an adult. and as much as i like to say, "oh he gets that from daddy," i am not fooling anyone - least of all myself.

so i return to my original point, it's much easier to worry about whether or not he is getting enough tummy time, and therefore whether or not he will ever have the strength to hold up his neck for a sustained period of time (and thus think, i am wasting my education!) than it is to come to grips with the truth: husband and i are grossly under-qualified to be parents. even though failure is not an option on project alexander, failure is most certainly around the corner. i know, when we meet failure face to face, i'm sure any day now, it will look eerily familiar, and, as if on cue, husband and i will turn, face each other and point - "he gets that from you!" we'll say in unison. and then we'll laugh, because that's how we do. but secretly, not so deep down inside, we'll both be terrified that he is, in fact, turning into one of us, if not both. the horror! seriously.

until that day, we take each moment, step-by-step, with so much joy, and so much trepidation, and by the grace of God, he won't turn into a serial killer. like how i set the bar real low? success = my son not being a serial killer (reference above point about being vice mayor of crazy town). but really, if only ted bundy's parents had had this small, but very appreciable aspiration.