When I read my last post, I picture some sort of super-human crazy lady, and I think, how can you be so calm! Don't worry folks, as the days have passed I have gotten more and more human and less and less patient.
I finally decided to get out of bed around 5:30 this morning. After tossing and turning about half an hour, I decided I shouldn't make it any harder for Josh to sleep. I took the four hours of sleep I managed to get and came downstairs and watched me some Turning Point on our laptop. I was able to get back to sleep around 7:00 this morning. I figured I'd get an hour's nap in before church.
Nope, Josh thought it would be helpful to turn off the alarm because I had such a hard time sleeping last night. It's past 10:30 and he's still snoozing away up there. That means a three hour nap for me, no church for us, and a bored wife trying to find something to do to pass the time! On with the blog post!
Eleven days ago my mom came down per my request to take Micah home with her. Little did she know that when she offered to come down and take him away that morning that I would talk to Josh immediately when he got up and get the okay from him for her to go ahead and do it!
At first I just LOVED having Micah gone. It's not very often that a stay at home mom ever gets to actually be home without her kids. I was NOT depressed, though some of what I did while he was first away might seem like the manic-form of a manically depressed person! Oh my goodness, did I clean! I had a three-page to-do list that I had formed and I got it all done. I did things that weren't even on my list- like clean all of the nasty keys on my piano.... I just LOVE cleaning! I love starting a cleaning project and not getting interrupted from it twenty times by a needy baby. I really enjoyed that first week of Micah being gone and waiting for New Baby...
But now all of the cleaning is done. Yesterday, I finally started to really begin to miss Micah, and when I was watching old videos of him this morning, I was really missing him!
I want to get this kid out! Micah's first birthday is in just four days, and I'm afraid I'm going to miss seeing him on it because I won't have gone into stupid labor! I know I could ask my mom to bring him back home any time and she would at the drop of the hat, but I don't really want him here. I miss him like crazy now, but it is still way too helpful having him gone. I don't have to haul his heavy butt up and down the stairs, and we don't have to worry about finding a sitter if the time ever DOES come for us to go to the hospital. (Plus, the house really does stay clean!)
But boy do I miss him. I want to hurry up and have this baby and almost all of my reasons are selfish! Maybe the only unselfish reason is because I feel so bad having Micah dumped on my mom for so long. I know she is enjoying her time with him, but let's face it. It is not easy adding a baby to your daily routine- even one as easy-going as Micah. It's not easy having him at work every day with you either.
But here are some of my selfish reasons:
1) I really want to meet this new baby! I am so excited to see her face- I can hardly stand it!
2) After laboring with no pain medication while on Pitocin when I had Micah, I do NOT want to go through the pain of being induced again!! I still want an un-medicated birth, but I know that, for me, that will not be possible while on Pitocin. (I did get the epidural for the pushing stage of Micah's birth.)
3) I am so sick of waiting! (What expectant mother isn't by and past her due date!?)
4) Oh, I want to see my Micah!! I don't want him home to have to care for before I have this new baby, so I want to hurry up and have her so that he can come home! Plus, I DON'T want to miss seeing him on his birthday.
5) The longer I wait to have this kid, the more days Josh will have to take off work. This past week he had TEN DAYS OFF in a row!! Well, he had to work one night in that run. Boy, wouldn't it have been convenient to have had this baby at the beginning of that stretch!? Well, he has to make up those days he was forced to take off, and that fun six nights of work in a row start this coming Wednesday. It is really going to suck if I go into labor Wednesday night and he has to take all those days off work. That is 72 hours. It will eat up any and all vacation he last left for this year... and it's only April!
6) I just can't wait to be able to sleep on my stomach again!
So there are my selfish, human reasons for wanting to hurry up and have this kid. I am sick of waiting. I am sick of trying to make myself enjoy my waiting. I am bored without Micah and with no cleaning to do. Okay, so there are more than six selfish reasons why I guess, but now you all know that I am no super-human who patiently endures!
When my friend, Felicia, found out I hadn't had any baby yet, she quoted me a scripture that I thought was pretty funny! "Surely I say unto you, ye shall be delivered!"
This verse made me laugh out loud and brightened my day a bit when she sent it to me, but it wasn't until now that I was looking up the scripture to post with this verse that I realized this verse is NOT in the Bible.
Great. What am I going to do now!?
Well, I guess no woman has ever just never had her baby. Some day soon it will be this baby's turn to be introduced to this beautiful world. She is such a stubborn little thing though, I hope she doesn't have to be forced to come out!!
Sunday, April 22, 2012
Thursday, April 5, 2012
Waiting For New Baby
Do you remember how agonizing waiting used to be when you were a kid? We were always waiting for something, weren't we? We were waiting until it was time to get up from our naps, waiting until we were old enough to go to school, waiting for school to get out at 3:00, waiting for the summer, waiting until we could graduate. I even had a hard time waiting until I got married!
One of the things I am extremely grateful to God for is the time he has given me to learn how to wait patiently. It was not an easy lesson to learn, and it took me over a year to understand what waiting patiently even meant... but now that I am farther along in my walk in this area than I was a few years ago, I think there is so much to be said about not only learning how to wait patiently, but also enjoying the seasons of waiting in our lives. When we live our whole lives thinking I can't wait until... you fill in the blank: how about I go on vacation... I get out of debt... I finally retire... when we go through our lives thinking this way we miss something so important. We miss today.
I think it's funny that God chose to tell us in His Word, "...do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." (Matt. 6:34)
So I am not worrying about tomorrow. I am enjoying today. If you catch me on the wrong evening I will be saying how much I want this kid out of me! Those are nights when I'm throwing up like mad and my back hurts and my hips hurt and I'm having lots of practice contractions. I am human, and I do get sick of things in the present just like everybody else.
But most of the time these last few days before my new baby is born, you will find me enjoying myself. I am so thrilled to spend these last few days with my little Micah. He has grown up so fast, and this season in my life is almost over. Lord-willing I will never only have one child alive again, so I am cherishing every waking hour I have with just Micah. (I am also pregnant, so I am also really cherishing every non-waking hour with Micah!)
In the past few days I have made to-do list after to-do list and I finished another one off today. I already have around ten things lined up in my head that I want to put on my next to-do list, and I am so thankful to God that I still have the energy and motivation (most of the time) to keep marking things off.
Here is a gimps into my life:
Tonight I wanted to cross off the last item on my to-do list: ironing the curtains for New Baby's room. Josh had already set the ironing board up for me, something I always struggle with, so all I had to do was get out the iron and heat it up. Micah was already asleep. I turned on one of my favorite cds (Ray Boltz), took down the two curtains I wanted to iron and got to work. Ironing is great. There is instant gratification. I just loved getting to see the wrinkles press out of those curtains. The smell from the hot iron filled my bathroom and it made me never want to stop! I enjoyed everything about that measly, mundane task of ironing.
If we want to look at the every-glorious, seemingly always better "someday" that this world always seems to put on a pedestal, let me tell you how I see someday: Someday my babies will be grown and gone. I will not need to be ironing curtains for their bedrooms. Someday I may not be able to afford curtains for my child's bedroom. Someday I may no longer be able to physically complete the task of ironing. Someday I may no longer be able to see to watch those wrinkles fall out under the hot iron. And so while I'm ironing I am praising God. I am thanking him for the opportunity to get to iron those silly curtains. I am thanking him for the good night's rest he allowed me to get last night and the nap I got to sneak in with my husband this afternoon so that I had the energy to iron so late in the evening. (Oh yes, 9:00 is late!) I am thanking him for getting to text back and forth with my mom telling her how much fun I'm having ironing. I am enjoying the way I am spending this particular 20 minutes in my life while I wait for New Baby to come.
So let me encourage you- if you find yourself always waiting for things in your life to get better, just stop it. They're not going to. Instead, I encourage you to look around you and find all of those wonderful things in your life that are going right RIGHT NOW and offer up some sacrifices of praise and gratitude for them. Our God is great and he cares about every flower he creates and every fly we want to smash. He cares about you too, and he wants you to enjoy whatever season he is bringing you through right now.
One of the things I am extremely grateful to God for is the time he has given me to learn how to wait patiently. It was not an easy lesson to learn, and it took me over a year to understand what waiting patiently even meant... but now that I am farther along in my walk in this area than I was a few years ago, I think there is so much to be said about not only learning how to wait patiently, but also enjoying the seasons of waiting in our lives. When we live our whole lives thinking I can't wait until... you fill in the blank: how about I go on vacation... I get out of debt... I finally retire... when we go through our lives thinking this way we miss something so important. We miss today.
I think it's funny that God chose to tell us in His Word, "...do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own." (Matt. 6:34)
So I am not worrying about tomorrow. I am enjoying today. If you catch me on the wrong evening I will be saying how much I want this kid out of me! Those are nights when I'm throwing up like mad and my back hurts and my hips hurt and I'm having lots of practice contractions. I am human, and I do get sick of things in the present just like everybody else.
But most of the time these last few days before my new baby is born, you will find me enjoying myself. I am so thrilled to spend these last few days with my little Micah. He has grown up so fast, and this season in my life is almost over. Lord-willing I will never only have one child alive again, so I am cherishing every waking hour I have with just Micah. (I am also pregnant, so I am also really cherishing every non-waking hour with Micah!)
In the past few days I have made to-do list after to-do list and I finished another one off today. I already have around ten things lined up in my head that I want to put on my next to-do list, and I am so thankful to God that I still have the energy and motivation (most of the time) to keep marking things off.
Here is a gimps into my life:
Tonight I wanted to cross off the last item on my to-do list: ironing the curtains for New Baby's room. Josh had already set the ironing board up for me, something I always struggle with, so all I had to do was get out the iron and heat it up. Micah was already asleep. I turned on one of my favorite cds (Ray Boltz), took down the two curtains I wanted to iron and got to work. Ironing is great. There is instant gratification. I just loved getting to see the wrinkles press out of those curtains. The smell from the hot iron filled my bathroom and it made me never want to stop! I enjoyed everything about that measly, mundane task of ironing.
If we want to look at the every-glorious, seemingly always better "someday" that this world always seems to put on a pedestal, let me tell you how I see someday: Someday my babies will be grown and gone. I will not need to be ironing curtains for their bedrooms. Someday I may not be able to afford curtains for my child's bedroom. Someday I may no longer be able to physically complete the task of ironing. Someday I may no longer be able to see to watch those wrinkles fall out under the hot iron. And so while I'm ironing I am praising God. I am thanking him for the opportunity to get to iron those silly curtains. I am thanking him for the good night's rest he allowed me to get last night and the nap I got to sneak in with my husband this afternoon so that I had the energy to iron so late in the evening. (Oh yes, 9:00 is late!) I am thanking him for getting to text back and forth with my mom telling her how much fun I'm having ironing. I am enjoying the way I am spending this particular 20 minutes in my life while I wait for New Baby to come.
So let me encourage you- if you find yourself always waiting for things in your life to get better, just stop it. They're not going to. Instead, I encourage you to look around you and find all of those wonderful things in your life that are going right RIGHT NOW and offer up some sacrifices of praise and gratitude for them. Our God is great and he cares about every flower he creates and every fly we want to smash. He cares about you too, and he wants you to enjoy whatever season he is bringing you through right now.
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