Jodilightful!

(Incidentally, it wasn’t one of the girls…)

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I think I must be pregnant or something.  Every day when Pippa goes into her playroom for her quiet time, I sit down at my computer to check on the necessaries (e-mail, eBay, Mommy websites, you know), and then I think, ‘Okay, time to share something useful and meaningful with my loyal blog readership.  Useful and meaningful… useful and meaningful… uhhh…’

Imagine you are working at a carnival serving the cotton candy, and you go in with the paper cone thingy to sweep around for some yummy pink goodness, but instead you come out with a big fluffy bundle of dryer lint.  That is my brain right now.

(Fortunately for you, if you have been missing the deep thoughts from my blog lately, there has been no such shortage over on Trevor’s blog.  He’s been Mr. Prolific over there lately.  Go check it out!)

As much as I want to put it down to the effect my delicate condition is having on my brain cell count, or the fog that I’ve been in for the past few days with a cold that’s making it take even longer than usual to get to sleep each night, I know there is another factor at play: my poor brain (and my heart as a result) has been a little undernourished these days.

My bedtime reading lately has been a steady diet of baby name books, all of which contain exactly the same uninspiring boys names they had in them the last time I read them (surely this means we’re having another girl?!)   Meanwhile my Bible study books have been collecting dust until the night before (or day of!) the study when I rush to get it finished in time and often don’t.  My mind is dull, and I know it’s in large part because I’ve been feeding it dull stuff.

This verse came up in our study a couple weeks ago, and has convicted me once again of the need to feed my mind with the things of God.

Finally, brothers, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is commendable, if there is any excellence, if there is anything worthy of praise, think about these things.

Philippians 4:8

And as if that weren’t enough, the Lord threw this one at me as well.

I will ponder the way that is blameless. Oh when will you come to me? I will walk with integrity of heart within my house; 3 I will not set before my eyes anything that is worthless.

Psalm 101:2-3a

I’m sure last time I read this verse it said “I will not set before my eyes anything that is evil“, or “anything that is harmful“, but nothing “worthless“?  Yikes, that’s a tall order!

I may still suffer under the effects of preggo-brain and congestion-y sleep deprivation, but  I can at least make a more concerted effort to be feeding my mind things that will left my eyes up to the Lord and cause my heart to worship Him.  Things that have worth.  In the long run, it will almost certainly be of greater benefit to this kid than a fabulous name anyway.

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Yesterday was the 19th of January, and our first decent snowfall of the 2008-2009 season.  It’s funny, because I was sure we were in for a good dumping on this year when we got our first light dusting way back in October.  We were dreaming of white Halloweens and Thanksgivings, and then… nothing.

I’m not complaining, don’t get me wrong.  I always thought when we lived in Scotland that I missed the snow.  I did miss the snow.  I missed the snow of childhood and adolescence.  I missed snow that meant a day off from school and sledding and hot chocolate and apple juice snow cones (what, you didn’t make those?)   I moved to Scotland twenty-two and newly married, so what I did not know about snow was that: 1. when you own a home you have to shovel snow, even if you’re pregnant, if you want to be able to  drive anywhere.  2.  jobs don’t give snow days as freely as school districts do, so Trevor still has to go to work, and still insists on riding his bike because he is a crazy person, so on top of everything else I have to worry about him skidding off his bike while crossing the railroad tracks and losing his travel mug, all of which he did today!  (He’s totally fine, not a bruise on him, so he tells me.)  3.  it takes a crazy long time to gets hats, mittens, snowsuits and boots on three small children, and they have very short attention spans once they do get outside.  They mostly just want the hot chocolate.

So, I’m a bit more of a snow realist than I used to be, but I was still a little sad for the girls that so much of this winter passed snowlessly.  Today, waking up to still-enough-of-yesterday’s-snow-to-play-in brought back some of the wonder for me, and we had a lovely day morning twenty minutes or so enjoying our backyard winter wonderland.

Here’s how the big girls spent their snowy morning.

Sledding. (5 minutes.) Snow Angels. (About 30 seconds.)

Making this spectacular snowman…  … and then eating his face as soon as the picture was taken. (5 minutes.)

Being adorable and loving each other. (All morning.)

Enjoying the rewards of a cold, hard day. (15 minutes.)

This little muchkin napped through the fun, but we let her snack with us anyway.

Hope you’re keeping warm and enjoying God’s beautiful wintery creation, too, wherever you are!

First meeting, December 2004

Over dinner last weekend, Trevor and Pippa had the following conversation. I wrote it down word-for-word immediately after she said it all so I wouldn’t forget.  I promise it was exactly like this.

Him: Pippa, who are you going to marry?  (Why does he ask her this?  I don’t know.  Maybe just to get deep insights like the following.)

Her: I don’t know, because boys have to ask.   (Atta girl!)

(Long pause.)

Maybe William.   (She actually asked him last time we visited in September, but he wasn’t ready to commit.  That’s when she learned the important lesson above.)

September 2006

And everyone would say “Who is that boy?”,  and I will say, “William.”

(Another pause.)

If he marries me.

***

We wholeheartedly endorse her choice, by the way, and can’t wait to see Willie and his family as well as Megan again in a few weeks!

(And for the record, Romilly’s first choice was “Daddy” followed by “Pippa” when we explained that Daddy was already married.  Clearly we’ve still got some training work to do in the subtle nuances of dating and courtship.)

(*Ahem. That is, of the second half of the month. Sorry for the delay, and thanks to my lovely husband for noticing that I had totally forgotten to post a birth story on New Year’s Day.)

I suppose a big part of Romilly’s birth story revolves around her *not* coming. That is, not at all when we expected her to. We had had a few friends of mine from college visiting us in Scotland and staying with us until about a week before my due date of January 28th. They knew they were taking a chance, and were even prepared to watch Pippa for us if I went into labor while they were there.  Still, it wouldn’t have been ideal.

I guess all that willing her to stay put until the due date worked a little too well, since January 28th (indeed all of January along with the first week of February) came and went and no baby. I wasn’t particularly uncomfortable, just bored of being on high alert for contractions and treating every day as if it might be my last with just Pippa. I occupied my mind by coming up with reasons why each date on the calendar would be the perfect one for her arrival. My favorite that she was *not* born on was Groundhog Day, which would have been the perfect answer to Pippa’s Labor Day arrival, but it wasn’t meant to be.

Instead, early on the morning of Wednesday, February 8th, I began to feel the twinges that I knew meant things were getting started. I had an appointment with my midwife that morning anyway, which I made it to, though I didn’t walk there as I might have otherwise. Trevor went to work, since we didn’t know how long a process we might be in for and wanted to save as much paternity leave as possible for after baby’s arrival.  At my appointment, my midwife offered to “strip my membranes” (if you don’t know what that means, then you probably don’t need to), and I took her up on it. Officially, if I were to go one more day past my due date, I would be recommended to be induced, or at least to go in for monitoring to make sure baby was still happy in there. That was scheduled for the following morning.

Romilly with Ian and Sarah

I got home and spent most of the day happily timing manageable contractions and getting ready to meet my new little one. That evening, we had invited dear friends over for dinner. Since things were still seeming pretty manageable when Trevor got home from work, and since these were the sort of friends you could be in labor with (and really, how many friends can one say that about? We are truly blessed!), we told them to come anyway to help pass the time. Sarah helped cook dinner, and Ian tried his best to act normal as I winced through each contraction at the dinner table, bless him.

By the time dinner was over, it was becoming clear that we would need to set the Pippa-babysitter-rota into action for that night, so Trevor drove her to a little friend’s house to spend the night (Kiri and Maya, if you’re reading, thank you and we miss you!).  By the time he got back at about 9 o’clock, I was digging my nails into the sofa pretty hard with each contraction, and Ian and Sarah headed home shortly after.

Once they left, I took a bath, and Trevor decided to go to bed at about 10:30, anticipating an early start the next morning. So far the labor had had similar timings to my labor with Pippa. Both started early in the morning and were feeling pretty intense by that night. With Pippa we had gone to the hospital at 2 AM, and she didn’t arrive until late the following afternoon, so both of us were trying to be more sensible this time and not jump the gun.

At around 1 or 1:30 AM, I ran another bath to help with the contractions. The bath definitely helped, but while I was in there, I felt the familiar (if slightly scary, when at home in the bathtub) urge to push. I woke Trevor up, and with a bit of persuading, talked him into getting me to the hospital. Legend has it that I said very calmly, “It’s time”, which has since become a bit of a catch phrase for us where labors are concerned.

The car ride was not as bad as I had worried it would be (i.e. I didn’t give birth during it), and the contractions didn’t feel quite as “push-y” as they had at home. We arrived at the hospital (St. John’s in Livingston again) at a little before 2 AM – almost exactly the same time we had arrived there for Pippa’s birth. Naturally, we both thought, in spite of the more urgent circumstances, that we may still have a long road ahead.

The nurses strapped me to a monitor to check baby’s vitals and my contraction patterns before checking me for dilation, which, in hindsight, was probably not the best plan. Then they left Trevor and me alone in the room for twenty minutes with the monitors strapped on with the intructions to push the buzzer if we needed anything. By the time the twenty minutes were up and they were *not* back in the room yet, I said to Trevor, “You need to push the buzzer. This baby is coming.”   He took some persuading again, but eventually complied, and in the midwife and nurses rushed.

I said to the midwife, “I feel like I need to push,” to which she replied, “You *look* like you need to push!” Off came my sweatpants for the first and only glimpse anyone had of how dilated I was. Immediately, my water broke and baby was coming out. Then I had this dialog with the nurse, definitely the most memorable exchange of the delivery:

Me: I need something for the pain.
Her: Sorry. It’s too late.
Me: (And I was being completely earnest) Then I don’t want to do this right now.

They gave me nitrous oxide (a.k.a. gas and air) to breathe (like at the dentist. I wish they had this for giving birth in America!), which calmed me down some but also made me a little dizzy and faint. It was possibly the most terrifying minute or two of my life. The pain was like nothing I could even describe, and worse because it was my own body pushing me into it, and yet I had absolutely no control. And then, in an instant, it was over, and I was holding a baby. It was incredible all over again.

Trevor and I just stared at each other in disbelief.  Just about a half an hour earlier we had arrived at the hospital uncertain of whether we might be sent home or have a whole day of laboring ahead of us, and instead we had blinked and we were holding our new daughter. There was much laughter and “Did you see the looks on their faces?” and “I wonder if we have to cancel my induction appointment…”, but there was also plenty of studying this new girl (whom we had both thought would probably be a boy) to find out who she might be.

Her name was more or less chosen beforehand. I asked Trevor, “Is she Romilly?” and I remember he answered, “I don’t know.” Apparently he had never known a Romilly (neither had I), so was a little more reluctant to commit than he had been to Pippa’s name. Once I figured out he wasn’t really having second thoughts about it, I was happy to be the one to seal the deal.

If the great surprise of Pippa was that she looked nothing like me as a baby, then the great surprise of Romilly was that she looked nothing like Pippa. Trevor says to this day that I didn’t like her at first. In truth, it did take me a little bit longer to bond with her. She was 9lb 2.5 oz at birth, so it was unsettling to be holding what felt to me like a 6-week-old baby. Her face was slightly swollen and bruised at first, but mostly, she just wasn’t the little Pippa-clone that I had expected, and I was a little thrown. God, in His grace, was to give me some intense bonding time with Romilly in her early weeks, but you can go back read about that here.  Needless to say, I was very quickly head-over-heels in love with her.

Thanks to my “easy delivery” and in spite of needing stitches for some tearing again, the midwife felt I was a good candidate for the “six-hour discharge”.  Though it ended up being more like 8 hours after her birth by the time we were  discharged, it still felt crazy to us to arrive home just 9 hours after setting out for the hospital.  As Trevor put it, “Just like going to work for the day.”

Romilly with Lindsay

Hard to believe Pippa is a month younger than Beatrix in this picture!

We arrived home with our new bundle at about 11 AM on her birthday February 9th, and Pippa arrived home from Lindsay’s (not the same friend she’d spent the night with, but the second shift of the babysitting rota) a little after lunch.  And thus began our happy little life as a family of four.

If you missed Pippa’s birth story last month, you can go back and read it here.  If you have a birth story to share, I’d love to read it (why do pregnant women love birth stories so much?  It’s a little sick.)  Share it on your blog or in the comments!

I was just talking to a friend yesterday at church about how we’ve never really cut any of the girls’ hair.  Pippa had a slight trim at the back by me when she was two, and many bang trimmings, but never anything professional or dramatic.  Romilly: nothing ever, but let’s face it, she hasn’t really needed it.  Apparently I’ve inspired my friend to let her newly two-year-old daughter’s hair go au naturale, too.  But today I defected a little.

The girls were telling me over lunch that on Oswald today someone got a haircut and then a lollipop (thanks a lot, Noggin).  Suddenly Pippa, who has been saying for months that she never ever wants to get her hair cut ever and that she wants it long enough to sit on it, wants to go and get a haircut, and a short one at that.  Like Rosie’s.  And all for a lollipop.

(Rosie.  Just for reference.  And it’s even shorter now.)

Romilly quickly jumped on the I-want-a-haircut bandwagon (and I had been thinking she’s been looking a little uneven at the back, as you will see – I blame the pigtails.)  Before I knew it, on a total whim that even my husband will not know about until he gets home tonight or reads this post, I was setting up a salon in my kitchen and giving both the big girls a trim.  And a lollipop.

Here are the before and afters:

(Doesn’t Romilly look so sad waiting her turn?) Pippa’s enthusiastic comment afterwards was: “It’s just like Rosie’s!” (See photo.) Poor kid, I didn’t have the heart to tell her.

Then Romilly got her chance to sit in the chair.  See her bizarre little long pieces at the sides?  Bye-bye.  And I resisted the urge to trim her little wispy bangs just to keep them out of her eyes.  Learned that lesson the hard way last time.

And here they are sharing the spoils afterwards.  It was quite the highlight of the day for only taking about fifteen minutes from start to finish.

Now I just need to get their Daddy in that chair sometime soon.  He’s needing a trim worse than either of them did, and there’s no throwing his hair in pigtails when it’s looking a little shaggy.

No, it’s not me.  Are you kidding?  I have three children four and under.  Until the artistic and crafty community start wanting to buy stuff like this:

(and really, aren’t they fools not to?), I’m out of the game.

But if your stuck for a gift idea or just want to spoil yourself a little, you really must go check out my mom’s brand new Etsy shop, SoQSilver.  She makes beautiful jewelry like this:

And the best part is the name of her shop.  ”So Q” was our own little nickname for South Queensferry, the town in Edinburgh that we lived in for most of our time in Scotland (you know, like SoHo, aren’t we clever?)  There, on one of her many visits, my mom first had the idea to start learning to make jewelry while combing the beaches of the Firth of Forth  for sea glass.  She plunged right in with a couple classes as soon as she got home, and has never really looked back.

So, head on over to her shop, and if you tell  her I sent you… well, I don’t know what will happen, but it will probably earn me some brownie points anyway.

I’m two days late, but I couldn’t let Beatrix’s one-and-a-halfth birthday pass without a little bit of much-deserved fanfare.

More than with either of her sisters by this age, it still feels like we just got this girl.  Doesn’t it?  It’s so hard to believe that it’s been eighteen months.  It’s even harder to believe that she is the first of our girls not to be a big sister yet by this age, but maybe that’s part of why she still seems very much like our little baby.

Yet, if we look at our baby objectively, we know she has lost so much of her baby-ness and blossomed into such a delight of a little girl.  She loves to hand me spoons from the dishwasher as I unload it or put a piece of scrap paper in the trash can for me, and I can only hope to nurture this helpful spirit as she grows.

She is full of words and expressions now.  Her favorites (and clearest) are still the very appropriately used “Uh-oh” when something falls and “Whoa!” when she loses her balance, and they still make us smile every time.  But she now also has ‘real’ words like “na-na” for banana, hi, bye-bye, and she can say both Pippa and Ro-Ro quite clearly (though she definitely favors the latter – so much fun to say!)  We never know what she’ll come out with next, and she keeps us laughing all the time.

Though she was late to find her feet, she now toddles around the place like a pro, easily changing direction and bending to pick things up.  She  very much wants to be doing whatever her sisters are doing, and lately has been delighted just to sit on the sofa with them while they play, since she can finally be trusted to climb down sensibly and *not* head first.

Though we won’t officially know her growth stats until next week’s check-up, I’m fairly certain she’s stayed on track with her shortish, average weight, giant noggin status.  (Big brain, clearly.)   She currently has the role of  ”finisher” at the dinner table, meaning that whatever is left of the big girls’ meals gets passed her way after she’s finished her own, since she is almost always searching the table for “More, more!”.  Each of the girls has gone through a similar period of increased appetite at this age, but it is still funny to watch.

I count myself incredibly blessed to be this sweet girl’s mother.  Each time I get her up in the morning or after a nap, I am captivated by her precious face and expressions.  She is a joy to us, and we can’t imagine our family without her.  I look forward to watching her face the challenge of big-sisterhood in the months to come, and to continuing to watch this little person grow into the little girl, young lady and ultimately woman that God has made her to be.

Happy half birthday, sweet Bea.

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