Ben and I have had an interesting week. So far, it's included two plane trips, walking about 25 miles, watching sunrise over the Atlantic at a beach, tasting seven or eight different olive oils (hey, for those of us who don't do wine tastings...), having another double birthday celebration (Kim and I have birthdays only four days apart), and having our baby finally tip out in front. I went from looking a little pregnant at the beginning of the week to looking VERY pregnant by the end of it. My ribs are eternally grateful - on Tuesday they were so sore they were driving me crazy, which tells me the baby had grown up just about as far as he possibly could and since he had to go somewhere, now he's growing out instead.
On the downside, now when I look in the mirror I wonder where that fat girl came from and why she's wearing my clothes. Ben said, "Maybe a little too much pasta." We've enjoyed pretty much every minute of our trip to Florida, even when we opted out of going through the body scanner at the airport and submitted ourselves to the full pat-down instead. Turns out it wasn't nearly as bad as I expected; but whatever it was, we weren't interested in taking the baby through the scanner. We haven't even made free use of a Doppler heart monitor because we were reading about what the sound waves can do to a developing baby's cells...why bombard him with whatever super-rays are used in those big body scanners? Pat downs are much safer. Our plane trips were a lot of fun for us - we enjoy doing everything together and plane rides were no exception. We had one little hop from Detroit to Atlanta and then another little hop from Atlanta to Jacksonville, where we walked off the plane to a beautiful Florida autumn day complete with a breeze that smelled like salt water. It hasn't been particularly hot here, but we certainly aren't going to complain at 70 - 75 degree temps and sunshine after 40 and rainy had become the norm back home. It feels pretty good. We got some good advice on the plane ride from Atlanta to Jacksonville, too. In a bland professional voice, the flight attendant advised that "in the event that our flight should become a cruise", we should stop screaming and clutching our neighbor's leg and don the life jacket located under the seat in front of us. "If you're traveling with a child or someone acting like a child, be sure you prepare yourself before helping them," she continued. "And if you're traveling with multiple children, this would be the time to pick your favorite." I'm guessing she's had to make that safety announcement one too many times. But at least she made it interesting. Stephen and Kim have a beautiful home in the suburbs of Jacksonville and we've agreed they have a very nice guest room bed. We have been very relaxed about the schedule of things and have basically eaten our meals peacefully, taken a lot of very long walks, done what we could to keep Emma's naptimes and bedtimes as secure and uninterrupted as possible, and enjoyed Kim and Stephen's company a lot. Stephen was unexpectedly able to be home for the week since Hurricane Sandy closed the airport he would normally fly into during business hours to do his business - which turns out to be setting up IT for very large companies. I didn't realize I was marrying into a family of computer guys, but the definite upside to this is they are very keen on new gadgets and it's a lot of fun to see all kinds of new stuff in action. Ben has gotten hooked on another new iPad game and says there is absolutely no way we can ever get an iPad. He would be much too addicted to playing on it. And the truth is, now I've been playing the games with him so we'd both be hooked. Our bed would never get made and we'd be eating TV dinners. As for Hurricane Sandy, as Mrs. G. always said..."It's an ill wind that blows no good." Out of all the mess and mayhem, the good in this instance was extra time with the Man of the Izzo Household. Who ran twenty miles this morning instead of the fourteen he was planning on. I just can't imagine being able to run that far - it was a major accomplishment to me when I reached ONE mile! On Thursday, Ben and I went out to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory for my birthday, which was a present from Kim and Stephen. We sat outside since 75 felt plenty warm enough to us for eating outside and the rest of the clientele seemed to think it was too cold, so it was quiet in the outdoor dining room. Ben proposed again, which he pretty much does every time we go out to eat. As I get more pregnant, this either gets funnier or more embarrassing depending on how you look at it. We've noticed that we make decisions very decisively as a team, too - there were about two dozen different cheesecakes on the menu for dessert and it took us about five minutes to pick one. Typically, I find three or four that I like the sounds of and Ben casts the deciding vote. In this instance, I said, "I think the Banana Cream, the Wild Blueberry, or the Coconut cheesecakes sound really good." Ben said, "Blueberry it is, then." He very rarely says, "Hm....none of them," though that does happen on occasion. Friday we went out to dinner at Maggiano's with Kim and Stephen, which Kim was excited about because she said it was like a double date. That was fun; and we came home with so many leftovers we had enough for dinner last night too. (This is where Ben's comment about my suddenly much-expanded belly being due to too much pasta came from.) Yesterday morning, we got up relatively early and drove out to Jax Beach to watch the sunrise, since it's not often we have the opportunity to see sunrise over the Atlantic and it's not even like we had to get up all that early to do so. The sun came over the horizon at 7:42 and it was only about a 10 - 15 minute ride to the beach. We left at 7:15 and got there in plenty of time. We'd already been out to the beach on Thursday afternoon and discovered it's pretty quiet out there this time of the year. Not to mention no one seems interested in wearing bikinis, which is a plus. The interesting thing I've noticed about Florida beaches before is that there's a huge percentage of the female population present in bikinis; and the percentage of women who could even think of looking reasonably un-ridiculous in a bikini is a lot lower than that. Modesty issues aside, sometimes I wonder if maybe people don't look closely in the mirror before heading out the door. But coming to Jacksonville in November mitigates this particular issue. In fact, most people who were out even in the warm afternoon were wearing sweaters (not necessary to our Michigan way of thinking) and at sunrise, folks were out in their pants and jackets. We drank coffee and hot chocolate respectively and walked a ways down the beach keeping an eye out for some of the nice big waves that came in now and then. I haven't been up that early on a Saturday morning in years and it was absolutely worth it. In the afternoon we went to visit Stephen's mom (his dad is out of town - and planning to visit the Jordan River today, to give you an indication of how far out of town he actually is) and had lunch with her. They've just finished some fairly major renovation on their house and it was fun to see all the results. I got some very good ideas for our kitchen in the process - I've been trying to figure out if we should try to get cupboards that go up to the ceiling to make the ceiling appear taller or if that would just be kind of pointless, but after looking at the Izzo's new kitchen it looks to me like having the cupboards go up like that really does give the sense of the ceiling being higher than it is. I also liked that Mrs. Izzo picked out an island that was stained/painted a color (a beautiful blue, in this instance) rather than using the same cabinets. I'm not positive we can do this easily in our kitchen, but I have considered what would happen if I over-finished the cabinets at the island to get this effect and I really like it, so even if we don't do it now it might be a project for the future some day. Mrs. Izzo also told us some really good stories about things like the politics of becoming a general's wife (in the military, the capability of a wife to support her husband and take good care of other military wives and keep order in their home is actually one of the things that weighs into her husband's eventual promotion, something I found really intriguing because it reminds me of Paul talking to Timothy about choosing deacons to lead a church) and living in Germany at the time Stephen was born. She said she had to quit before we got bored. We were a long way from being bored. Speaking of our addition, Mom told me today that she'd called MISDIG and our yard is now full of little colored flags. Ben and I picked up the building permit the day before we left for Florida, so it sounds like when we get home we're going to be heading straight into addition-building. I'm relieved and excited that things are underway, but I expect these next few months are going to be some very super-busy ones. Sometimes it's hard to believe that by this time next year we'll have a totally different house and a baby who's starting to talk! I should probably wrap this up and go find out if we've figured out what to do today. We've been playing our days very much by ear, which means we probably aren't seeing all kinds of things there are to see...but that's okay with us. Getting to spend every day together is quite a special thing for us all by itself, and getting to spend the time with Kim and Stephen and Emma is icing on the cake. The warm weather just puts everything over the top! We're pretty glad we're the ones that came out in November and Grandma went out in September, though. While we think the weather's lovely, it's a little cool for swimming and I think Grandma would still think it was cold. Ben talked to her on the phone yesterday and she doesn't really believe him that it's only in the early 70s, but I can see her out here sitting on the patio in a jacket and blanket while I'm barefoot and in summer clothes. So long for now...and in my next post, perhaps there'll be something new and exciting about house preparations to talk about. You know we're going to really get to it eventually! Twenty-five years ago tonight - at ten minutes before midnight the day before my fifth birthday - my sister Elaina died.
I know. It probably seems a morbid way to begin a blog post; and this is not going to be about still grieving the loss of a baby sister who's been gone almost as long as I've been alive. It's more about a pivotal point in my family's history and in my own philosophy. It's amazing how much a five year old can absorb and how much some big event that happens when a person is five can really change their thinking. I was actually four when Elaina was born and in my world, babies were just a matter-of-fact event. Mom would be pregnant and eventually a new baby would come home to live with us. That's what had happened with Elizabeth and I could still remember that pretty clearly. I was much more excited for this new baby than I was for Elizabeth, though, and I was shocked and unable to grasp why my parents would've come home from the hospital without Elaina. It took a little while for it to dawn on me what was meant when they told me the new baby was very sick. Again, in my world babies didn't get sick, much less die. I still had no comprehension that Elaina might die, though I did pray very earnestly all summer for her to be healed so she could come home and live with us. I had every confidence that she would and I looked forward to it, partly because life was so topsy-turvy that summer that I couldn't wait for us all to be home and be a proper quiet family again instead of having me and Elizabeth staying with family and friends while our parents were at the hospital with Elaina. It was during this time that I first became very suspicious of hospitals and doctors. Unfairly, to a great extent, though I did learn that when a person is in the hospital it's almost impossible to defy the rules, no matter what those rules are. In our case, children were never allowed in the NICU to visit babies. So at first, Elizabeth and I weren't even allowed in the family waiting room connected to the NICU, which meant we didn't get to see the new baby at all. Eventually, when it became obvious Elaina's genetic condition was so severe that she was probably never going to make it out of the hospital, the administration bent the rules to allow me and Elizabeth to visit. It was a rare and massive concession and it must've made everyone nervous because little kids bring illnesses with them and there were a lot of other babies in that NICU not separated from Elaina by much. I didn't understand that at four years old, though, and as far as I was concerned, hospital rules and doctors inexplicably forbid us from seeing our baby sister and then made some weird rule that we could only see her for half an hour on Sunday afternoon after we'd asked permission. Everyone's heard the phrase "falling in love" and I'm usually hesitant to use it. But when I finally saw Elaina, I did fall in love as much as a young child can. I wanted so fiercely for her to get better. I wanted to touch and hold her and kiss her fuzzy funny-shaped little head. Considering how fragile she was, I marvel that I was allowed to touch her and kiss her head; but I did and there are pictures to prove it. To this day, when some family members don't like to look at pictures of Elaina because it's clear how deformed she was, I still feel a surge of defensive protectiveness. I didn't care then and I don't care now that she was funny looking. I remember what she looked like and how she smelled and how I considered her my baby too. She was just Elaina, and funny-looking went with the territory. Same went for Jonathan about eighteen years later. The strange thing is that as much as I loved her, when she died I was sad but not in any way inconsolable. It must've had something to do with how my parents responded. A good friend remembers my dad calling up the morning of my birthday - the day after Elaina died - to tell him what had happened. As they were talking, Dad heard the garbage truck turn onto the street and ended the conversation by saying, "Oh, I'd better go. Time to get the garbage out." I learned from that. I learned that the baby can die and the garbage still has to go out. And that's a good thing. Life doesn't stop because someone dies. Life didn't stop here when Joshua died. I knew it wouldn't when we lost him. I knew because I remembered. That's quite a gift of preparation, when you think about it. It's one thing to have the philosophy that God is good and grief isn't something that should ever take away from the peace and joy that comes from his Spirit, and if I hadn't had that preparation the philosophy would've comforted me. But I also had memories. I had memories of how exactly a year later, Mom had a beautiful, healthy baby boy who's grown into my wonderful brother Aaron and where we had been sad one year on my birthday, the next year we were waiting for there to be a new baby born at any minute. Babies die; and new babies are born; and God is good. I also learned to treasure life in a way I'm not sure I would've otherwise. Many people do treasure life deeply without losing someone - this is just how I learned. I never, ever took the birth of a healthy sibling (or even an unhealthy one, in Jonathan's case!) for granted. Looking back, the love I felt for each of them was the same love I first experienced when I saw Elaina that first time in the hospital. I don't think I experienced the same thing when Elizabeth was born, probably because I was quite a bit younger and because I didn't have the same understanding that not every baby comes home, and when they do it's something to be deeply glad of. This year, carrying my own child and having lost one, remembering Elaina's death is a little different than it usually is. If anything, I have greater respect for my parents and how they handled the whole thing. There's a statistic with some fantastically high number indicating how many parents divorce after the death of a child, and my parents' marriage not only survived, but they had many more children afterward and continued to love each other deeply. They were not paralyzed by grief but went about having a funeral and actually comforting many people who attended with a calmness that I've taken for granted before when I think back on it. I remember they read the passage of the Bible that speaks of David when his son with Bathsheba was taken sick and died as a consequence of his terrible sin - David laid before the Lord for three days and nights and wouldn't eat or drink as he pleaded for God to heal the baby. But when he learned the baby had died, he got up and washed his face and put on clean clothes and ate a meal. His aides didn't understand him at all, but he explained to them that while the baby lived, he thought perhaps God might have mercy and heal him. When the baby died, David said, "I will go to him, but he can never return to me." And then he went to the tabernacle and worshiped the Lord. Only someone who believes God is good can behave that way. And my parents did. To the point that I still remember how they behaved twenty-five years later and I remember that while today was a sad day, it was also a good day. It's a good day today, not one to look back on with any kind of unhappiness. If it's any indication of how our family regarded Elaina's death, we finally got a headstone for her this year just because it seemed like after twenty-five years we should probably stop remarking every year that we should mark her grave. It's odd because if you look at the baby section of the cemetery people really go all-out in decorating baby graves, even putting little Halloween decorations out and constantly putting flowers on the headstones and so on. We never did that. We just said, "What's there in the cemetery isn't really Elaina and we'll see her again someday." I look forward to seeing Elaina again someday. In the meantime, I think I'm going to call Mom.
Mom Turner even bought the cookie cutter sometime last October and I remember Jenny describing to me then how she really wanted different colors so the cookies would look like real Autumn leaves on the tables. One of the things about projects like this is I always wonder ahead of time if I'll really be able to pull off such specific requests. Technically, I know it's doable because you see artsy people doing things like that all the time; but I don't feel particularly artistic and often have to think really hard about how to get something to work. Thankfully, I had a few basic elements in place: I knew what recipes to use to get the job done. Soft Sugar Cookies, Royal Icing, Almond Chocolate Chiffon Cake, Wedding Buttercream and some very tasty purchased raspberry filling from Miles Cake and Candy Store. After that, I just needed to work out how many batches we'd need and how long it was going to take me to complete.
I've made cookies for two other weddings now and I've made one other wedding cake. Not a ton of experience, but enough to know that I needed to block off way more time than you might think for each task. If you've ever baked and decorated sugar cookies, you know they're always way more time-consuming than you might think at the outset. The average batch of sugar cookies yields about two dozen and takes all afternoon to finish; multiply that by six and you've got the requirements for this particular baking project. I figured for the cookies it would take one afternoon to mix the dough, one to roll and bake the cookies, one to do all the glazing, one to do the decorating, and one to wrap and finish. For the cake, it was going to take a day to mix and bake, one to fill and first-coat frost, and a third to finish-frost and assemble. That all turned out to be pretty much accurate, except that so many other things came up this last week that it took me all my "project time" (time in the afternoon after usual morning chores) from Monday to Friday to finish the cake. Looking at the calender, I decided the cookies needed to be completely finished by October 6 (one week before the wedding). When I was thinking this over in August I didn't know I was making a cake, but I did remember from other weddings that some big project usually crops up during that last week and I didn't want to be tied up making cookies at that point. Knowing this was the case, I field tested some cookies in September by leaving them out on the counter for three weeks, tasting them about once a week. By the third week, they were getting a little stale but were still fairly good, so I knew it was safe to have them finished a week ahead of time and still have them taste good for wedding guests. What I hadn't counted on was that pregnancy really has slowed me down...and how many people on both sides of my family were ready to lend a hand and fill in that energy gap for me! My sisters and mom helped me bake all those cookies - and Leah and Benjamin lent us the kitchen and the freezer for that stage, which I realized about halfway through the baking process would've presented a huge challenge to me in our current kitchen. And Ben single-handedly rolled and cut at least half of the cookie dough. He got so covered in flour and he just kept going like a champ for four or five hours that Sunday afternoon. Kim and Jenny and Grandma and Mom and Jenny's mother-in-law Chris wrapped up and tied them all. Then there was the cake. Some fun moments: when Jenny showed up unexpectedly as I was putting the cakes in the oven so she got to taste the batter; Katherine coming over for the day and helping me put all the layers together; cutting the center dowel through the layers with a big pair of branch clippers; and getting the cake finally all set up and with it's decorative flowers on it just as Jenny came into the reception room to see it for the first time. When we got to the reception room yesterday and I saw it all decorated and got the cake assembled, I was very content with how everything came out, especially when I saw Jenny's reaction. I think she and Ken very much enjoyed their wedding yesterday and we got to be a part of making the details work. Grandma brought her cookie carefully home from the reception and told me today she's not sure she wants to eat it. "Because they're so beautiful and especially I know how much work they were," she said. "Lots of people worked on them. It seems a shame to eat them so soon." That's a very pleasant compliment. I'm glad the projects are successfully over, but I've definitely enjoyed all the company it's brought me and being part of getting this big event all ready. It's going to seem pretty quiet around here the next few weeks! Because last night was the beginning of the Feast of Booths (or Tabernacles), we slept in a tent in the back yard.
I've never slept in a tent before. And it rained. But it was fun anyway. Though I'll be the first to say it turns out that sleeping on the ground while pregnant is quite a bit different then while not pregnant. I'm not sure if the baby protested by moving all night or if he's been moving all night anyway and I'm just usually much too soundly asleep to feel him rolling around in there. Ben has wanted to go camping since I first met him. His family used to go quite a bit when he was younger and he greatly enjoyed it. He's not your average "outdoor guy" in that he's not into hunting and likes going fishing only if someone he knows and loves wants to take him along (*cough*...Dad...*cough*) and his preferred clothing doesn't happen to be jeans and flannel shirts (khakis and polos, more like it). But his family used to go camping together and spend that time without the distractions of other friends or outside influences and that's what he loved. I think my experiences growing up were a lot different because of not going to school, but I do understand why it's so special to him. What's funny is that I only went camping once or twice with my grandparents because neither of my parents liked camping at all. My dad thinks camping is staying in hotel room with a broken TV and Mom doesn't want anything to do with a tent in the rain. Probably why I found it amusing that we slept in a tent on a night when it rained pretty much all night. At any rate, Ben's been looking forward to this for weeks. Last night he was so excited setting everything up I don't think he stopped grinning the whole evening. Grandma was pretty skeptical. I explained but I don't think she quite realizes that this is something Ben really, really enjoys and it's something he's more or less given up for a time because taking care of Grandma and going camping are not compatible. At any rate, we built a campfire in the metal firepit and roasted some marshmallows and carried out all our fleecy blankets and it wasn't nearly as cold out as I was expecting, in spite of the rain. We spent a lot of evenings sitting outside on the glider last summer and it was a little nostalgic to do so last night also. And a couple nice features about camping in the back yard are still having access to the bathroom and to Netflix on the Internet. Though I did learn a few things: keeping a towel for wiping wet feet is important, and you might be dry IN the tent, but that doesn't mean you should let anything touch the SIDES of the tent while it's raining. Great dampness will definitely ensue. The technician's diagnosis: "You're definitely pregnant."
With an acrobat, apparently. You would not believe the maneuvers we watched this peanut do. Flips, somersaults, and a lot of kicking and waving. The age by measurement is about 10 weeks, 6 days. Technically, we're only at 10 weeks 3 days, so this is good news. There were no signs in the preliminary reading of anything unusual or abnormal. My bloodwork has all come back with excellent reports, we've picked up the baby's heartbeat three times, and now we have some nice black and white pictures. We're being told repeatedly, "Looks like a nice normal pregnancy. Have a nice day!" All of which means...the little weird things that happened were just little weird things and no indication this time of an impending miscarriage. God has not only blessed us with a strong little peanut, but given us overwhelming evidence to prove he has. Hospital policy is to exclude everyone from the ultrasound room except the patient and that was making me pretty uneasy. I really didn't want to do the ultrasound without Ben there, but hospitals have a way of sticking to policies even when you beg. When they called me in and told Ben to stay behind, I broke from my usual meek habit of following the rules and said, "Isn't there any way he can come in too?" "I'm sorry, that's the policy," the nurse said. "You can talk to the technician, but we don't let anyone in and for now you'll have to go wait in the other waiting room." So there I sat, off in a little waiting room while Ben was left in the main room. I was pretty nervous by then (not a good combination with morning sickness and a stomach full of water...) and when I looked around for something to distract me, I was surprised and thrilled to discover and current copy of Cooking Light sitting on the table. Nothing distracts me quite as well as indulging my recipe habit. I found a few good ones and began copying them down on a piece of paper I found in my purse. As a distraction, it worked pretty well because I got a lot less nervous; something I was very thankful for a little while later when the imaging center's manager beckoned me out into the hall for a conversation. "I hear you have some family you would really like to bring in for the ultrasound," he said. He was an older man, and he seemed kind of nervous to be talking to me. "Yes - I was really hoping my husband could come in too," I said. "I've had some bad experiences with ultrasounds and I'd feel much better if he were there." "Would it make any difference if he just sat outside?" he said. "Because we really don't like anyone else to be in the room while the technician is doing measurements." "It would be better than nothing," I said. I kind of brightened up, because Ben sitting just outside the curtain was a lot better than Ben in a waiting room across the building. At least he'd be right there. "Now, the reason we have the policy," he explained, "is because sometimes...when family is there...and the technician might make some kind of facial expression or the family member might not understand what's being measured or what's being looked at...things can get kind of unpleasant and people get scared and I would hate for you to have a worse experience than before." It was funny, but right about then, I knew I could convince him to let Ben in. All I had to do was be very calm and very reasonable. So I looked him in the eye and said, "Well, what's happened before is I was present for an ultrasound where my youngest brother was found to have a genetic problem and it was thought at the time he might not even have a brain. Then with our last baby, we had two ultrasounds where we knew the baby was dead even though no one told us as much. We were together for those and we were okay for them, but it makes this ultrasound kind of hard for me to do." He looked at me for a second and said, "I think in this case, we're going to make an exception from the policy." I think I almost cried. I said, "Thank you so much. That is really, really kind of you and I appreciate it." Later, Ben was waiting for me to use the bathroom (64 ounces of water at once?!! Yikes!!) and the manager came by. Ben said, "Thank you so much for letting me be there. It looks like everything is fine and the baby is healthy." The manager shook his hand and said. "Good. God bless you." I'm not sure which was the bigger blessing for the day: another diagnosis of "everything is fine" or meeting a man with enough kindness and common sense to let Ben stay with me through the ultrasound. I was very glad he was there. And we tried two of the recipes for dinner. They were both 5-star-keep-in-the-recipe-book ones...though I should probably write them on something more permanent than a two-month-old shopping list. Last Monday - well, two Mondays ago, now - we had a very productive day. Ben and I spent about six hours out in the yard weeding, cleaning, pruning, and planting (3 flats of impatiens, all under the Kanzan cherry in the front yard). We also spent a while working on the big project we've been working on with Dad Turner over the past few weeks. I didn't think much of it - there was a lot to get done and we were just tackling it like usual.
Then Tuesday morning, I began doing the laundry which had been put off by a day because of all our outdoor work. I was carrying laundry baskets downstairs when I felt something I hadn't felt for a while and had sort of forgotten about: a sort of tugging in my stomach muscles that was just on the edge of uncomfortable, like when you've worked the muscles in your legs too much and they keep threatening to cramp. I was standing downstairs sorting clothes and thinking about the feeling and started to do a little simple math. That's when I got suspicious. I came upstairs and said to Ben, "I think it's time to buy a test now." "What?" he said. "Well, we can wait a few weeks like last time," I said. "But I think we're expecting again." By that evening, I was practically sure of it. We went over to Leah's family's house for dinner and I was helping make hamburgers when the uncomfortable feeling got strong enough that I finally sat down and then put my feet up for good measure. Instant relief. Yep, I thought. Something is definitely going on. I'm not the kind of girl who sits around with her feet up very often, especially when there's a lot going on in the kitchen. Leah's mother-in-law looked at me and said, "How long ago did you miscarry?" "Late February," I said. "Hm," she said. "I know. I'm suspicious too," I said. Last time around we were a lot more secretive for a lot longer. This time I pretty much gave up. Everyone we know already knows that we were expecting a baby before and it was only a matter of time before we were again. It took us until Thursday to get around buying a test. And I woke Ben out of a sound sleep Friday morning to inform him that it was very definitely positive. At which point, we promptly began spilling the beans to our family just as fast as we possibly could. If you would've asked me a year ago if I'd be the kind of person who would tell the whole world she was expecting as soon as she knew about it or if I would be the kind of person who would just keep it to herself (well, herself, her husband, and their parents/siblings...) for a few months, I would definitely have picked the latter. The problem is, we did that last time and we found out something: Joshua's life was something to take joy in and most people barely knew of his existence before he was gone. We told everyone and then immediately had to turn around and tell everyone of his death. This does not mean that I think everyone should know our private business all the time. But life is very precious, even life that's a baby only the size of a sesame seed. It is something to treasure and rejoice in for the miracle and the gift that it is, a gift God gave us just as certainly if we possess it for one day or three million. I treasure every day this baby is continuing to live and grow, every day that brings on a little greater loss of energy and all the other symptoms that are making me lose ambition to get other projects around here done again. I suppose I would be lying if I said I have perfect unshaken confidence this baby will join our family as a newborn at the end of January: it's sometimes a moment-by-moment thing to keep my mind on being at peace and not being afraid. There is just such a long way to go and so many things that could happen. It even makes me feel quite vulnerable to tell everyone about this baby so soon, as if he's a secret I'd like to hold onto for a while just to make sure he's really real. In a way, boldly telling everyone of his existence is a gesture of faith, at least on my part, because it's flat out claiming, "Yes, we are having a new baby!" Not "maybe", not "if everything goes well", not "well, we hope..." Those things are all true, of course, but at the point you announce, "We're expecting again" it's an unqualified statement. It's a statement of hope. As much as my doubts want to take over, as much as I want to hold back and do the pessimistic "wait and see", I am joyfully saying, "We're expecting again!" We named our last baby Joshua because it was a declaration that this child was ours and had a place and was known to God; we also named him Hope because we wanted to remind ourselves that it was something we still had even if we could not keep the child himself. Joshua's death was not the death of hope. This baby's life is something entirely new and distinct and different, and we are full of hope - also translated "expectation" - that we will hold this child in our arms and raise him (or her!) to Godly adulthood. And that is our very wonderful news for this week. If anyone was wondering where I've been for the past week, I've been outside. My time on the computer has been limited to keeping up my calorie count log (hey, I gained TEN pounds from being pregnant only three months...if I don't get that under control, I'm going to get really fat next time around!), but all the other spare time has been devoted to breaking the sod out of the garden, shaking off the dirt, bagging it all up, getting rid of the bags...and getting the dirt ready to plant.
I know I've posted a few times about the garden before, but this time I get to report that the garden bed has been prepared and we have herbs, tomatoes, green beans, and cucumbers planted. Hopefully this weekend I'll add some peppers, four more tomato plants, and a zucchini plant. You'll notice it's only one zucchini plant. I think that's pretty much all I can keep up with: as Garrison Keilor notes, if you want decent-sized zucchini, you have to reach for the blossom. If you're any later than that, you end up with a monster thing that resembles a watermelon more than a squash. As I was out prepping the bed for planting seeds, I realized that this is the biggest vegetable garden I've ever been able to plant. It's the first one big enough to need proper furrows. It's the first one I might be able to grow a whole variety of things I've never had room for before like potatoes and carrots. In the back of my brain, I remember how much work it's going to be to keep this garden up - weed it, make sure the ground stays at the proper moisture level, trouble-shoot whatever bugs or diseases pop up, harvest the vegetables at the right time, preserve whatever we can't eat - but at the moment I'm getting ready to plant the seeds I'm unusually extravagant. Sure, I'll get myself into this: because it's so exciting to see all those vegetable seedlings going into the ground and I'm looking forward to the crop. It helps that Dad Turner is more excited than I am. He's bringing in plants faster than I can get the spots ready for planting and between him and Ben it's difficult not to get enthusiastic about the summer vegetable crop. Gotta go. Our beautiful warm sunshine is drying out the dirt and if we want those seeds to sprout, I'd better go water them. In my family, it's not all that unusual for a person to simply decide to become an expert in something and suddenly begin researching it. "I'd like to make our own cider press," someone might announce; or, "You know, I've been watching these stop-motion videos and I'm going to make a Lego stop motion movie." On the surface of it, the things we decide to do may occasionally seem random, perhaps not entirely productive, and sometimes downright nuts. I remember one sibling checking out every book the library had on becoming a paramedic and taking all the self tests until they could begin passing them, simply out of curiosity. Not because they really wanted to become a paramedic, but because they were just interested. I know other families who do this on a much grander scale than we do. "I want to put the slate roof on Oma's house," one teenager told his father; and proceeded to do so. "I think we should get a back-hoe," another said; that family is now expert at building even tricky foundations.
So yesterday when Ben turned around from his computer while I was making dinner and said, "I want to make dandelion wine," I did not bat an eyelash. "Okay," I said. Grandma said, "Oh sure. How are you going to do that?" "Well, here's a recipe," Ben said. "You start by picking two quarts of flowers and soaking them for two days." I reached into the cupboard and brought out our large glass measuring pitcher. "Here's two quarts," I said. "Looks like we have plenty of flowers behind the garage." And off Ben went to gather two quarts of dandelion flowers. "You don't think he's really going to try to make wine, do you?" Grandma said to me. "Sure," I said. "He's got a recipe. We've got all the ingredients. Why not?" "Because that's just..." She waved a hand and started laughing. "Nuts." Okay, yes, it is. A little bit. But Ben's had a curiosity about dandelion wine for a long time and if he decides to make it...well, who knows? Besides settling his curiosity, he might also discover something new and interesting to be used in future endeavors. Some people have wondered before if I'm just not a very curious person when I'm content to let things happen without my involvement. That's gotten me wondering if I'm not really a very curious person; but I've come to the conclusion that my brand of curiosity involves pursuing things that you find fascinating without bothering about that fact that normal people do not go pick all the dandelion flowers in their yard to make wine out of them. Ben is even more curious than I am. If something catches his attention, he does not let go of it until he has satisfied his curiosity about it; and he is curious about many, many things I take for granted. That's why he wasn't content to keep on not knowing if he believed in God or not but set out to determine..."Does God exist and should I believe in him?" You would not believe the library he acquired in the meantime. We'll have to see how the dandelion wine goes. It'll be done next May sometime. And yes, I promised Ben that if he makes it, I will taste it with him. Yesterday we planted the first piece of landscaping we've added to our new yard.
It's not much to look at right now: a little tiny stick with a few roots at one end. Roots which are now buried in soil so all you can see is the stick. If it weren't for a small piece of paper labeling the stick, no one would have any incentive to drop it in the ground at all, let alone take the care I took of it. It would probably wind up at the curb with all the other winter tree debris we've cleaned out of the yard in the past weeks. It's not even close to the biggest branch we've got. But that piece of paper is really important. It names the tree and tells us where it comes from, and that makes all the difference between it and the bundled-up rogue saplings waiting for the garbage truck. The label says "Peach Tree, Dwarf 'Contender'". Where you come from and what you are is important. In this case, the tree was specially chosen as a gift with our yard in mind. It's a dwarf tree, meaning it'll never get much bigger than 8 or 10 feet tall - it'll fit in a nice neat corner without hitting the overhead power lines. It's especially cold hardy and resists frosts well, an important attribute for a fruit tree in a Michigan climate. It bears a lot of fruit for a little tree, medium-to-large sized freestone peaches with golden un-streaked flesh (Red Havens, another favorite, have red streaks in the flesh of the peaches - these apparently do not). Freestone peaches are great because it's easy to can or bake with them while the non-freestone variety are really only good for eating fresh - and what would be the good of having a whole fruit tree you can't make pies from or preserve the fruit for later in the winter? How do I know all these things about this featureless chopped-off stick I buried in the ground yesterday? It's simple: the stick has a name and the name means something. It's a heritage, a prediction...a prophecy of sorts. It allows me to know all these things about what this apparently dead and useless little stick could become if cared for properly, because this little stick will take on all the attributes of the parent tree it came from. Literally came from, because it's a grafted tree. A small piece of a mature tree was cut off and spliced into the root system of a hardier tree so the result would be an exact replica of the parent, with no deviations that sometimes come from reproducing a plant by it's seeds. It's a clone of the mature tree it came from. This is why I've always found gardening such a fascinating thing to do. The parallels between plants and people are numerous, obvious, and amazing. Take our little sapling, for example. It's like a newborn baby. All newborn babies look very much the same. It's pretty hard to tell what features and characteristics they're going to display as adults; and if you didn't know what an adult Human looks like or is capable of, you probably would be pretty shocked by the potential wrapped up in the wrinkled, weak, red little body that is your average newborn. When I see a newborn, I have the same weakness anyone else does for this small helpless person; but what I see in them is not so much the value they have right this moment (because to be honest, they really don't have a lot of value as newborns) but the potential of what they are going to become. This tiny baby girl is someone's grandmother. That miniature baby boy is a really only a few years away from being a wise man who will care for an entire family. When you're raising and training a baby, you're doing so because you have an eye on the kind of tree they are and the kind of fruit you fully intend to harvest as soon as he or she is mature enough. Our peach tree won't even start bearing fruit for another five years, but I'll be caring for it very particularly even when it doesn't show a single peach year after year: because I know someday, given enough time and water and fertilizer and judicious pruning, it will. Because it's a peach tree and that's what peach trees do. A child is the same way. You raise them with great care even when they only show hints of the men or women they're going to become, because you know that even though this little one-year-old can barely walk, someday they'll be strong enough to be supporting you. That's what people do. So that's why we're excited about our not-very-exciting stick marooned out in the corner of the back yard: because someday we expect to be harvesting peaches from it, no matter how unlikely that may seem at the moment. And that will be pretty special. Our Big Computer Project is going live tomorrow. It's a private website, so I can't send anyone there...but for those customers it was intended for, it will be accepting real registrations and orders. This is a pretty major accomplishment.
Looking back, in some ways I find it hard to believe we've only been working on it for only a couple of months: to put it in perspective, we began work on it right before our wedding (we were glad there was a break in the action long enough to give us a week off right after our wedding with only minor pangs of conscience). We realized we were expecting Joshua right in the middle of a very busy week in which we were spending all day at the office and then visiting with Grandma every evening so we could learn how to do important things like transfer her from bed to chair and back. The week we lost Joshua was probably the worst week Ben could've been tied up going to doctor's appointments and staying up all night at the hospital because there was a big deadline the next week that a lot of stuff needed to be finished for. All in all, it appears to have been successful, though. In a nutshell, the project was to build a customized shopping cart - inserting products in the database and all - for a very large company to send it's contractors to do purchasing for their construction projects. Originally, Ben was supposed to find a coder who could do a lot of the programming work on the shopping cart since Ben had never built anything like it; but as time passed and deadlines loomed and there was no one applying for the position, Ben began learning the skills needed himself. We discussed it a lot and realized that by the time Ben interviewed and found someone for the position, that person would then need to be brought up to speed on what was needed and integrated into the project. In that same amount of time, Ben could learn and implement what needed to be done to build the cart himself - giving him a new skill that could then be turned around and used for other customers interested in a similar feature on their websites. So rather than giving the work away to someone else nominally working under him, Ben took on the work himself. I'm very proud of him, because every time a problem came up where the customer wanted some odd and unusual feature that Ben had never had any experience building before, he figured out what to do to take care of it and make the website work. I'm also proud of him for displaying his usual calm spirit when other people were panicking and sometimes making unreasonable demands. There was one conversation where if it'd been me instead of Ben involved, I would've been very tempted to tell the individual involved to go away and let people who knew what they were doing handle the situation. To listen to Ben's response, you'd never know the other person was being unreasonable, foolish, and unnecessarily harsh. When I'm actually in a conversation like that I'm much more diplomatic than when I'm on the sidelines listening to someone berate my husband for doing something much wiser than what the berator wants done. At any rate, the next few weeks will probably be full of lots of little (and maybe not-so-little) fire-stamping activities, but the initial big part of the job is now successfully done. Did I mention that I'm very proud of my wonderful husband? |
Author: LaurenWife of Benjamin and mother to two wonderful little girls who are getting bigger every day. Enjoys writing down thoughts and discussions we are having within the family and sharing them with whoever is interested in reading. CommentPlease don't be shy! If you're reading the blog updates, we'd like to hear what you think. Click on the "comments" link to send us a note.
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