Thoughts

It is weird staying up past 10 now that we have a child.

It is also weird to have a baby monitor to remember to listen to.

Having to add diapers, wipes, and formula to a grocery list makes life expensive.

Having a baby changes a lot.

It's officially the weekend.

There is so much more to accomplish before Art leaves again.

STRESS, STRESS, STRESS.

A Week of Normalcy

Art is home!!! The weeks that he is here, it feels like my life is almost normal. I love it.

On the agenda for this week:

• Go to pet stores with Trae. Seriously, we do stuff like this in our free time. Art and I love going to pet stores. We love animals. We would buy them all if we had the money and if I was willing to clean up after all of them. We already have two cats, a dog, two huge fish aquariums, and my trusty beta, Zim. We want Trae to love animals too. We plan on getting him his own fish aquarium for his room at our new house, so he can pick out his own fish when he gets big enough to understand.
• Watch movies. Hello, Netflix! For Valentines Day, I finally signed Art up for Netflix. He had been wanting a subscription forever, but we had just been putting it off because we have a hard time justifying adding any other monthly payments to our lives. Believe me... Maybe sometime I will talk about the over $5,000 of hospital bills we have to pay. Oh, goodness, life. However, we now have that subscription and we are enjoying watching movies anytime we want.
• See old friends. Art's friend Phil is coming over for dinner this week. This is pretty exciting stuff because we never get to see people our age. Phil was in our wedding, and I have actually only met him that one time, but I am looking forward to opening up our little home and having company over.

Sorry if the posts are a little more sparse until Art goes back to work. It is not often that I get to see my husband. Wah wah.

So Blessed

Seriously, guys, I just can't believe that Art and I have been blessed with such a perfect child. He is beautiful (Art would rather me say handsome, though). He is healthy. He is such a picture of the blessings of God.

Call me skeptical, but my whole pregnancy, I just kept thinking that something was going to go wrong. These thoughts stemmed from unknowingly living in a home filled with mold for the first (very important) months of pregnancy, several asthma problems (caused by that wonderful moldy home), frequent trips to the hospital for asthma attacks, and the millions of allergy/asthma medicines I was on daily.

Art got the video camera out right after Trae was born. As he filmed Trae laying on top of me, he captured me counting all his fingers and toes. They were all there! The child was one hundred percent perfect. What a blessing! I still can't believe it. God is so good. I am still just so in awe of how a baby develops from just two cells. It is so miraculous. It baffles me that anyone could look at a baby and not believe in God.

I seriously could spend hours just looking at this child thinking he is the greatest thing in the world. I'm such a proud mom, okay...

Trae Will Be One Cool Kid

Trae finally got big enough to wear the Beatles shirt I have been itching to get on him since day one. He obviously loves it.

I have some really great memories of being young. A lot of those memories focus around riding in the car with my dad listening to music from the 60s and 70s. Of course, when my mom had her way, I listened to the typical kid music (I really don't think Trae will ever listen to kid music. I can't stand it, and there is just so much more great music that I want him to be introduced to at an early age.), but when I was with my dad, we always listened to oldies. I could sing (and still can) every word of almost any old song. This was a little bit different than the other people my age. I clearly remember asking one of my friends who/what NSync was. I love this quirk about me. I still don't know anything about popular music, but if you want to know who sang what in the 60s or 70s, I am your girl. Since Trae spends most of his time with me (lucky child!), I think he will be the same way. So far, he has been introduced to The Beatles, Mumford and Sons, The Killers, and Weezer. I know he can't understand yet, but one day he is going to ask to listen to The Beatles when everyone else is listening to something as terrible as Justin Bieber... and one day (maybe when he is much older), he will thank me.

Sounds Like Life

I consider myself to be somewhat of a music snob... This meaning, that generally, I am going to think your taste in music is less superior to mine, unless you listen to the same music I do. This being said, I am NOT a country listener, at all... except for this one song. (Can I please also take this opportunity to say that I do not like Taylor Swift. Not now, not ever.) Anyhow, shortly after Art and I got married, I heard this song while at my nanny job (I have had some random jobs. Nannying is not my forte.) It's not the actual music in this song I enjoy, but rather the lyrics. This is my suck-it-up song. I have some really random things happen to me. For instance, a few months ago, we were forced to move out of the apartment we were living in because we found mold. We moved into a brand new apartment and within three days, the toilet broke three times, the third time of which, sewage flooded our bathroom. Then the dog got sick and pooped all over the whole apartment. Then, my car battery died in the WalMart parking lot in 100 degree weather, while I was five months pregnant (which also melted the Twix bar I bought for myself. I am obviously scarred.). Things like this always tend to happen when Art is gone. Nothing would ever dare to go wrong when my husband is actually home to take care of it. Anyway, back to the song... It reminds me that life is just like that. It's unpredictable and sometimes it just sucks, but that doesn't mean you have an excuse to feel sorry for yourself.

Now, from what I can tell, the day is beautiful, and I am dying to try out the Bjorne carrier we have for Trae, so I think it is time to go for a walk.

The Journey from Then to Now

As I sit here looking at Trae, I can't help but think how lucky I am and how much my life has changed in the last few years. Art and I met our first day of college. However, we weren't even friends for a few years after that. I guess I had to do some growing up, and I am SURE he did too. Haha. I remember the process of finding myself and becoming happy with the person I had become. This process was long and painful. It included many ups and downs, giving my heart away far too easily, finding what I thought was fun in all the wrong places, and a terrible fear of being alone. The summer that Art and I started dating, I spent a lot of time listening to my favorite band, The Killers, painting, and smoking cloves on my back porch. Coincidentally, this was also the summer that I decided to buy a ferret... then get rid of a ferret. Friends, don't get a ferret ever. They are evil little animals.

One night I discovered something incredibly crucial. I needed to be content being by myself. I think that I had gotten in such a habit of avoiding my thoughts, that when I was left alone with them, it was really scary. Slowly, I began to work through those thoughts. I settled things with myself, and I settled things with God. It should have gone in the reverse order, with God being first, but I just wasn't there yet. I think that's why my relationship with God is so awesome and special to me now. I ran for a long time, and He was so patient with me. God' love is powerful and His grace is truly amazing (Good thing they wrote the song, eh?). As I sorted out the things in my mind, I came to the conclusion that it was alright to be by myself and that my mind wasn't something to be scared of. It was then that I realized I had been trying to find completeness in so many places, and the only place I would find it was in God.

Ironically, soon after I decided that I was okay with being alone, I found a person who did not complete me at all. Instead, he perfectly complemented me. This person was my wonderful husband, Art. It is hard to believe that one person could be so wonderful, but he really is. I love that man. He is an awesome spiritual leader, he is a provider, he is quickly showing me that he is a great father, and he is my best friend.

Life has a funny way of dealing cards that will bring you to a certain place. A few years ago, I would have never thought I would end up where I am now. I always told my friends that I wanted to wait a long time to get married and an even longer time to have children. I especially never thought that life would take me away from my friends and family and the great state of Oklahoma, but it did. Sometimes I am still trying to figure out why, but I do know that I am happy where life has taken me, and I am one hundred percent sure that this is exactly where God wants me to be.

A Birth Story and Such

Oooh my goodness, friends, it has been a long while! I have a legitimate excuse in the form of a wonderful baby boy who has kept me very busy. However, it is time to get back into the swing of things, which also means blogging much, much more often.

Well, where should I begin with my updates? January 25th, I was induced. What an exciting day. I called Art the night before and told him to come home because we were going to have a baby the next day. He was, of course, more than happy to leave the boat and come home to me. We spent the rest of the night playing Wii Fit. I have never played Wii Fit that hard before. I beat all my previous records from the days when I wasn't pregnant. Haha. My hopes were to go into labor naturally, as I was planning on a very natural birth, but no amount of Wii Fitting worked. However, I am still pretty impressed with myself.

We had to be at the hospital at 5:30 AM the next day. I capitalized the AM because that is way too early for my liking. However, we got there, early none-the-less. After four attempts to start an IV in my swollen extremities, we were good to go. I made the nurses promise not to increase my pitocin drip too quickly so the contractions wouldn't get too crazy, but apparently they had a listening problem (or, I am not a doctor so they ignored me) because holy hell.

Now, I didn't know a whole lot about child birth before I got pregnant, so without being too gory or graphic, I will explain a few things. Here is your anatomy lesson. I am sorry for all the weird female words. In order to get a baby out, your uterus has to contract (very hard, might I add) in order to push the baby's head down against the cervix, which in turn has to dilate to ten centimeters before a baby has room to make its way out of you. I'm sure you can figure out the rest. So, this pitocin I spoke of gave me the most awful contractions in the world. I cannot even explain pain like this. Since I was planning on having an un-medicated birth, I gritted my teeth and went with it for the first seven-ish hours. By the last hour, the pitocin was turned up so high, I dilated from a four to a seven in an hour. This shouldn't really happen. In general, it should be about a centimeter an hour. However, like I said, too much medicine, lots of pain, etc...

So, that last painful hour was spent with me crying hysterically... probably more than I have ever cried EVER. I did not know pain could be that terrible. I broke down and got an epidural. I just don't think I could have enjoyed the rest of the birth any other way. Thank you, Jesus... Other than making me a paraplegic who was unable to move any part of the lower half of my body, it was nice. The next five hours went by somewhat smoothly. Then it was finally time to push.

One thing I learned about nurses in labor and delivery is that they are not overly encouraging. The nurse came in and said that it would take me an hour and a half to three hours to push the baby out, since it was my first time and I had an epidural. Being myself, who had promised I would not push for longer than thirty minutes, I was determined to prove her wrong. Twenty minutes later, Trae was here. Take that, nurse.

Recovery was awful. In fact, it was probably worse than being pregnant for all that time. It made me think that the whole childbirth process, although miraculous, is over-rated. Adopt your babies, friends! All that being said, Trae is wonderful and so perfect. 6 pounds, 12 ounces of tiny goodness. Here he is!