(And All My) Work Be Praise

If ever there was a year when I ought to have written a Christmas letter, this was it. In its place: a picture year-in-review. January Toby turned two within the cozy but getting-ever-smaller walls of our little rental house.  Unbeknownst to everyone else, I also got pregnant in January, which we announced in . . .  February Also in February, we found a suitable and very reasonably-priced house and left the aformentioned rental behind. The walls are much bigger here . . . as are the cupboards: Master bathroom closet, where at least four children could sleep comfortable. Moving actually isn't very fun at all. March We escaped for a long weekend to Lake Beauty Bible Camp with two other families, old friends from Isaac's seminary days. It was incredibly refreshing to relax, play games, worship (pictured below), and stay up late chatting with people we'd known for more than four months. We were treated by friends from church to o...

For background information, or just to relive the first four with me:  Levi's birth story , Owen's birth story , Silas's birth story , Toby's birth story What I wanted more than anything, in this my third planned homebirth, was (as my new midwife, Maureen, coined it) a no-drama birth. No panicking over low heart tones, no paramedics, no ambulances, no cord issues. I'm honestly not sure if I got what I wanted. With respect to myself, this pregnancy was a million times healthier than the last two. My blood pressure stayed low the entire 41 weeks, minimal swelling and that not till the last week, no need for herbal tinctures or intense hip massage (see Silas's birth story, linked above). As with the last two, baby measured quite big (at least two weeks ahead of schedule) from about 36 weeks on, but inasmuch as I have demonstrated my ability to birth big babies, I wasn't worried. No-drama birth ahead indeed. I was, however, naive enough to think that thi...

My dear Levi, Meeting the Mississippi River for the first time at age 6. This has been an incredible year for you. Together we set goals, some driven by me, some by you, and you achieved them all. You finished elementary school math. You read the entire Bible in exactly one year (and we celebrated with rainbow pancakes at Perkins). You completed Mensa's Excellence in Reading K-3rd grade reading list, plus a host of other classics besides. Over the course of three months in the spring, you made a list of twenty piano pieces you could play from memory at a moment's notice. Then your piano teacher moved away, and you spent the next two weeks transposing The Happy Farmer into every key imaginable, major and minor. You have made individual friends here in Minnesota, something we hadn't quite managed in Ohio, where all of our time with friends was done as as a family. You learned cursive and got your own library card and proved yourself a worthy opponent in both  Settlers...