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No Sacrifice

Mar 24th, 2009 by

We sang this in church on Sunday:

No Sacrifice

To You I give my life,

Not just the parts I want to.

To You I sacrifice

These dreams that I hold on to.

Your thoughts are higher than mine.

Your words are deeper than mine.

Your love is stronger than mine.

This is no sacrifice:  Here’s my life.

To You I give the gifts

Your love has given me.

How can I hoard the treasures

That You designed for free?

To You I give my future,

As long as it may last.

To You I give my present.

To You I give my past.

Your thoughts are higher than mine.

Your words are deeper than mine.

Your love is stronger than mine.

This is no sacrifice: Here’s my life.

This song reduced me to tears when we sang it our first Sunday at HTC, and I got really choked up again on Sunday–it’s hard to really mean what I’m saying when these words remind me that God has taken a significant part of my future out of my hands in a way that I wasn’t planning on.  As we close in on our third child’s duedate, I’m reliving a lot of the hopes and dreams I had while pregnant at this time last year.  Alone for good portions of the past six weeks and every Sunday, I’ve had a lot of time to think and hash things out with God.  The words of this song really are true, though I don’t want to sing them.  I need to relinquish my children–the sick one sleeping next door, the one already worshiping before the Throne, and the one kicking around inside of me–to the Father whose love is stronger than Derek’s and mine.  My anxiety accomplishes nothing; He has a perfect plan for each of them.  I only think it’s a sacrifice when I forget Who gave me the treasures in my life to begin with.  Though it’s a hard reminder, I’m glad that our worship leader picked this song to close our service this week.

Posted in Proverbs 31 | Comments Off

Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad News

Mar 23rd, 2009 by

Well, I got the bad news today…our hard drive is so damaged that it would be thousands to pay technicians to try to recover data, and they can’t even guarantee that they could get anything, let alone everything.  Eight days and counting without our hard drive, I’m seriously bummed.  I keep thinking of something I want to access for class or an address I need to look up or something that needs to be sent out to my Bible study, and I’m reminded again that the info is gone.  All of Tommy’s pictures since August except the ones I’ve posted here or facebook are lost forever.  Backing them up was always down on the list of things to do but got preempted by sleep, laundry, or grocery shopping.  Lots of other stuff, too…  In case my readers haven’t acted on my recommendation of last week, please back up your pictures.  Now.

To make matters worse, this is Tommy’s second day in a row where he’s still in his room talking after getting put down for a nap two and a half hours ago.  His sleep schedule got seriously messed up with travelling to Detroit and back last week, and he’s only had one decent nap in the past week.  Three no-nap days in a week makes Mommy nervous…I am really not ready for him to drop his naps already!

I was up ’til midnight last night trying to catch up on grading students’ research papers (a task I was unable to do without a computer), and in my current sleep-deprived state, I’m not sure which is worse…losing all of our records, pictures, and videos from the past 8 months, or facing having a new baby with a toddler who no longer naps.  Since I’m already feeling blue, I think I’ll go fight with our insurance company about pregnancy-related charges that have been pending since September.  If you’re having a rough day, you might as well get all the nasty phone calls out of the way at once.

So that this post isn’t a total downer, my physical therapist sees good improvement in my SI joint, the baby is moving nicely, and Derek is in his last week in Montana!

Posted in Musings | 3 Comments »

In Detroit

Mar 17th, 2009 by

Tommy and I are in Detroit for the week.  After the emotional turmoil of the weekend, I decided not to worry about bringing the potty chair here.  So I’m pretty sure we’ll be back to square one with potty training when we get home this weekend.  We tried to put Tommy in the big boy bed here, but that was a disaster (I’ll get a picture of his black eye later today), and he spent the first half of the night back in the pack-n-play and the second half laying widthways in my bed.  So I am going on 5 hours of sleep, and he’s going on about 7 plus only a cat nap yesterday.  Usually he gets 11 at night and 3 during the afternoon.  I am feeling like a complete and total failure, though–killing our computer, letting down my students (I was supposed to edit papers for them this week), giving up on potty training, and making the big boy bed traumatic, all within 48 hours…good thing Mom M is here to take care of Tommy so that I can try to get some more sleep and hopefully start working on my sanity again!

We’ll try to post some pictures as we do fun stuff here…but blogging will be at a standstill back home until Dell sends us a new hard drive…

Posted in Family, Tommy | Comments Off

RIP, hard drive

Mar 17th, 2009 by

Well, just hours after Derek left for Montana Sun morning, I returned from church to find an error message on the computer.  After trying to get ahold of Derek and spending an hour of tech support with a nice Indian man for Dell, I accepted that our hard drive is, indeed fried.

The good news–it is still under warranty so we get a free replacement.

The bad news–I didn’t learn my lesson from when our last computer died this summer, and none of our pictures from at least the past three months are backed up. Nor are a lot of other, less-important things.  (Thank the Lord I backed up all my class stuff just a couple weeks ago–but I wish I’d done it again after updating my website last week!  I literally was planning on doing it on Sunday when I went in and saw the error message…)

Best Buy tried to strip our drive for us yesterday, but they’re going to have to send it to some special vacuum-sealed site somewhere because it is mechanically damaged.   Let’s just put it this way…we could have ordered Carbonite for 10 years and still come out ahead of what this is going to cost us.

So my advice…please, please back up all your pictures on your computer today, right after you read this.  Lost files are a bummer, but losing months of documentation of your kiddo’s life?  Let me just say that I don’t want anyone to cry as hard as I was on Sunday.  If the super high-tech people can’t recover our pictures, the low-grade pictures here on the blog are all we have of Tommy since my last back-up in the fall.  Take the time and back up your pictures!

Posted in Musings | 1 Comment »

Big Boy Bed?

Mar 13th, 2009 by

Now that we have a complete twin bed set (and cool robot sheets), Tommy has been really interested in the big boy bed.  We thought we’d wait to transfer him until he started climbing out of the crib (which he hasn’t), but now I’m starting to wonder if he’s ready for the real thing now.  Would it be better to go through the change now, before the baby comes?  (The baby will be in the mini-crib for the first 4 months, so there’s no rush for crib space…)  Readers whose kids have gone to big kid beds, do you have any thoughts on whether it’s easier before or after?  Any insights would be appreciated!
bed.jpg

Posted in Elizabeth, Tommy | 1 Comment »

Another Potty Training Update

Mar 12th, 2009 by

morningplay.jpgTommy has been going in spurts with his interest in the potty chair, but I think he’s really gotten into it ever since his friend Susan was here.  Maybe he just needed to see another kid using it!  He’s used it once or twice every day for over a week, and he’s even asked me to “pee-pee potty” once!  (Usually I just offer it to him after his nap/before bed.)  He also is telling me the moment he has a dirty diaper.  We haven’t gotten that you can do that in the potty, too, but I think it’s easier to shake out a dirty diaper into the toilet than clean out a dirty potty chair, so I’m not rushing that.  I was kindof thinking we’d take it really easy until after the baby comes, but if he continues to go on his own twice a day, I might get the book and do the intense weekend thing when Daddy gets home before the baby comes.  I’m totally not ready to do it by myself!

 Or I’m very aware that this could all be another spurt that fades away for another month…maybe I will have two in diapers, after all…

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Carrot-Applesauce Muffins

Mar 11th, 2009 by

I think I’ve become addicted to chocolate.  Don’t laugh–I’m serious!  I think about it all day long, I eat huge quantities of it whenever it’s available, and I get grumpy if I don’t have any.  I wake up and go to bed thinking about it.  (Wish I could be addicted like that to, oh, say, the Bible, right?)  It was this point of the pregnancy with Tommy that I had Christmas with my in-laws and gained 10 pounds in two weeks.  yep.  I don’t want that to happen again, so I am desperately trying to replace chocolate with a better alternative.  I bought another 10 lb bag of carrots from Costco this weekend, but somehow carrot sticks don’t sound right when I’m thinking about chocolate.  So I decided to look around for a good carrot muffin recipe so that I could feel like I was satisfying my sweet tooth but with a lot more health benefits than a bag of Reeces peanut butter cups.  Here’s what worked yesterday:

Carrot-applesauce Muffinsmuffins-002.jpg

3/4 c. all-purpose flour

1/2 c. whole wheat flour

1 tsp. baking powder

1 tsp. baking soda

1/4 tsp. salt

1 tsp. ground cinnamon

1/2 tsp. grated nutmeg

1 large (or two medium) egg

1/4 c. brown sugar

1 tsp. vanilla extract

3 Tbsp. vegetable oil

1 cup applesauce

1 1/2 cups grated carrots (about 3 large carrots)

 Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.  Lightly spray muffin cups or muffin tin.

 In a large bowl, combine flour, whole wheat flour, baking powder, soda, salt, cinnamon, and nutmeg.  In a medium bowl, combine the eggs, brown sugar, and vanilla, mixing well.  Stir in the oil, applesauce and carrots.  Add to the flour and mix just until incorporated.  Pour into the prepared muffin tins and bake until a toothpick comes out clean, about 20 minutes.

Makes 18 muffins.

I made the mistake of giving Tommy one when he woke up from his nap yesterday, and he chanted “Muttin!  Muttin!” the rest of the afternoon.  Clearly they were a hit with him!

 NB: I usually use unsweetened applesauce, but I only happened to have the Aldi sweetened variety on hand this week.  These muffins are very moist, but not super sweet.  I thought they tasted healthy without being too healthy.  I’m not one of those girls who substitutes whole wheat for normal flour without blinking…I need a bit of sweetness to counteract the heartiness of the whole wheat!  I cut down the sugar a little from the original recipe, but I might add in a bit more if I were to use unsweetened applesauce.  If I used all white flour, I probably wouldn’t add the sugar in at all.

to try next time:  adding in flaxseed, ginger (recommendations in other carrot muffin recipes I perused yesterday)

Posted in Recipes | 8 Comments »

Getting Back into the 6 AM Club

Mar 10th, 2009 by

I have been off and on the bandwagon with the 5 AM Club for a year or so now.  The idea that women aspiring to the Proverbs 31 ideal should get up while it is still dark is a tough one, but one that always bears fruit in my life.  With pregnancy, sleep=feeling better, so I’ve modified my goals for 2009 and agreed with my former roommate to call each other at 6 AM Monday-Friday for accountability that we are indeed up and starting our days.  We figured we’ve seen each other at our grouchiest first thing in the morning, so neither of us is offended if the other sounds really woozy on the phone. =)  It’s kindof unfair to M, since she lives in Eastern Time and just knows that we’ll be talking an hour after she’s supposed to get up, but I do try to call her at 5 my time if I ever happen to wake up early.  Anyway, this great accountability has sortof broken down in the past few weeks…I was at my mom’s for a week and tried to sleep in as much as possible when someone else was getting Tommy up and doing all the cooking and cleaning, we’ve been sick, and then the darned time change threw everything off this weekend.  We sheepishly admitted to each other Monday afternoon that our alarms had gone off at 6 that morning but that both of us had immediately rolled over and gone back to sleep.  Well, we both got up at 6 today, and though it’s just after 7, I’ve already read my Bible, prayed, done my physical therapy stretches and exercises, attended to laundry, emailed a student’s parents, and am blogging before jumping in the shower.  Tommy is still asleep, and I’ll hopefully have been productive enough by the time he wakes up that I won’t feel distracted from just playing with him for a while this morning.  I have a long list of things to do today, but a lot of them can be accomplished by breakfast time if I am diligent!

This post has two purposes–to encourage fellow moms who might have been toying with getting up earlier that it really is worth it (I’m so much more productive for an extra hour in the morning than after 10 at night) and to ask for some additional accountability.  If I tell everyone what I’m doing, I’ll feel guiltier if I roll over tomorrow morning and go back to sleep.=)  So if it occurs to you, please ask me how I’m doing with the 6 AM thing.  (NB–once the baby comes, I’ll be retiring from the club until we’re all sleeping through the night again!)

Posted in Friends, Proverbs 31 | 1 Comment »

Of interest to a two year old…

Mar 9th, 2009 by

We haven’t had a video of Tommy on the blog for awhile…here’s one from this weekend!

Posted in Movies, Tommy | Comments Off

Becoming Picky

Mar 6th, 2009 by

While I record all of Tommy’s positive developments here on the blog, I feel that I need to be honest about some not-so-great ones.  There was a time that I could proudly say that Tommy would eat anything I gave him except eggplant.  (He just doesn’t like the texture…and I think it’s an acquired taste, anyway.)  Well, times are changing, and some nights I discover that he’s added something else to his picky list that was totally okay a few weeks before.  He’s been uninterested in green beans for a while (though he loved them pureed) because, I think, they’re hard to chew, but I always put a couple on his plate just in case he changes his mind.  Tonight I made stir-fry, and he actually spit out a mouthful because it had some broccoli in it.  This is the kid who would eat a whole head of steamed broccoli (if we let him) last summer.  He picked out all the rice and chicken and garlic and just left the broccoli in his bowl.  He’s also taken to picking the black olives off of homemade pizza.  I am still struggling to overcome my pickiness at the age of 26 (though a few bad experiences during the first pregnancy mean seafood and mushrooms are pretty much never going to be okay with me), and I’m so bummed that Tommy is becoming picky at TWO! =(

Posted in Tommy | Comments Off

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