now it takes two hands

My baby boy is turning six in about two hours, and as always on his birthday I am wallowing in the strange fact that I have a son. I thought the newness would have worn off by now, but I am begining to realize maybe it never will. There is never a moment in any day when I don't have the ever present knowledge that I am a mom. That I belong heart and soul to a living creature who demands all of my love time and patience. That withought my care.. he would die. I'm sure Oprah would be telling me to go have an aha moment and focus on myself, but the reality is I do not belong to myself. Not since I became a mom. I love being a mother but there are days like yesterday when I feel so overwhelmed, so entirely small compared to his gigantic needs. Even though he can feed himself, entertain himself and keep himself clean for the most part, I am still faced with the gigantic task of raising him from child to man. Thank God (literally) that I don't have to do it on my own. Because if that was the case... lets not think about that. I have found myself learning over the years that being a parent hurts. From morning sickness and labor pains to middle of the night feedings to next day exhaustion to sitting in the ER at midnight because your two year old tried to cut a bouncy ball in half and instead almost cut off his thumb and now you have to explain yourself and how your two year old got hold of the wedding gift table knife that was capeable of cutting so deeply to every nurse doctor social worker in the hospital to sitting in filthy wic offices and clinics to get the food and medical care necessary to missing his first Easter egg hunt because your job is to watch other children go on their first easter egg hunt to holding you sobbing three year old because he doesnt understand that it was your actions and choices that make him have families in two different states to defending your kindergartner against teachers who dont love him and therefore dont care to see past his inability to sit still in a chair for eight hours in a day to having him look you in the face and ask you "Why" when there simply is no answer and you've given him the best you can, to looking down the road and knowing his poor little heart will have to suffer because we live in a scary broken Godless world and we are scary broken people. Being a parent hurts. And I wonder what our Father feels. This Creation he made... so far from him. My son is turning six tomorrow. And even though I'm sure he will reject the gifts we've purchased him, as he has rejected the birthday party ideas I gave him, I will love him. And when he sasses me and is ungrateful, I will love him. And when he rejects me to go play with his friends I will love him. Because at the end of the day I know whats coming. I know the story, because I know him. At the end of the day, no matter how hard he pushes me away in his attempts to grow up, my six year old will still want me to tuck him in. He will still want that kiss and hug and snuggle. I'm so glad to know that our Father knows the ending too, and that one day we will get that goodnight kiss and snuggle. No matter how hard we push away. No matter how much we try to grow up.

Time for Vay-Cay

hmmm... my post just got deleted. anyways. Were off for a week and a hjakf to the cold north! Wont be blogging! Bye!

Bedrooms, babies, picnics and books and baking

I'm a lame blogger, I've said that before so here is a quick.. sorta.. update on everything we've been doing. Ayden spent a week in Colorado two weeks ago. While he was gone we redecorated his and B's room. We dropped him off at the airport, delivering him into Ehren's care and then headed directly to Ikea. I will admit my husband was more excited than I was. We were easily pursuaded to buy a loft style bunk bed, thats mid height so as not to be too scary should Ayden fall. I had seen this in the catalougue and never thought to put a bed under it, but thats how Ikea had it set up and voila. Perfect for my two small boys to get a great nights sleep. As for mattresses they are on air mattresses for the moment. We'll deal with that later. We then bought new cheap bookshelves at walmart and I painted the cardboard backing on them to match my awesome finds at Ross. We had no twin bedding so we had to go get sheets and blankets. Ross happened to have two matching Eric Carle sets, YAY! So my idea to bring some COLOR into their room fell into place perfectly. After some painted letters and rearanging we have this:

Babies: I have become a bit focused on reading blogs about sick babies. I'm not sure what to do with that. I'm thinking a prayer blog may be in the works. I've prayed for Stellan and Jonah for two weeks now. Along with thousands of others. It gets me thinking... these two are like celebrity babies now.. what about the hundreds of other babies. Maybe babies whos mamas dont have the blogging bug. They need to be prayed for too. They need their financial needs met as well. Typing my thoughts.. maybe March of Dimes would be a good place to start. For now. Keep Praying for these two.
Pic-nics: We went to a church picnic this Sunday with our new Friends at Grace. We are so excited to be developing relationships. Lucas went to lunch with someone yesterday and is playing ultimate frisbee tonight. I'll ne joinging a ladies book study group soon when they start their next book. We are still going to our old small group and are perfectly happy with that! We love being able to meet once a week without our kids with grownups for dinner and conversation prayer and a peek into the Word.
Books: I was talked into reading the Twilight "saga". While on one hand I feel I am completely wasting my time.. on the other I'm quite interested. but still annoyed. Vampires. Seriously?
Baking: I made my first Challah. Lucas wants to keep Kosher, somewhat at least, for Passover starting next week so I pulled out my Jewish cookbook. (Which I bought back in college to have on hand to impress him...) Ayden and I made bagels.. turned out ok.. a bit doughy and I made my first loaves of Challah. The first one was too big and split in the middle and seemed really dry. The second two (i split the dough in half) turned out better. I used honey in the egg wash at the end instead of sugar and on one I put sweet spices like rosemary and lots of kosher salt. Yum. We had homeade chicken parmesean in the sandra lee semi-homeade style and our yummy hot Challah. I learned a lesson about God while I was baking, but that's another post! Here are some other recent pictures since I have been hiding from my blog...