(And All My) Work Be Praise

Now that I'm on my fourth pregnancy, I'm finding it easy to look back and give each one a theme. Without any further introduction: Levi was The Vomiting & Swelling Pregnancy. That was back before I knew just how easy it is for me to avoid "morning" sickness: a minimum of 80 grams of protein a day, spread out through the day but especially first thing in the morning and in the mid-afternoon, and I'm totally fine. That was also the summer I couldn't believe just how huge I could be. (That was, of course, before I was pregnant with Silas, when I found out that my carrying-Levi self could have passed for a runway model in comparison.) Owen was The Easy Pregnancy. No sickness, no swelling, a much more manageable weight gain, and he was an easy baby to boot. He is, naturally, making up for all of his early easiness by his incredible two-year-old-ness. Silas was The Hard Pregnancy. Or The Fear of Pre-ecclampsia Pregnancy. Or The Super-Fat Pregnancy. Or any ...

A friend of mine posted a link to this blog post on Facebook, and I thought it was beautiful, so I'm passing it along. Six Words You Should Say Today by Hands-Free Mama Disclaimer: though I have clicked through to this blog a few times from other places, I have not investigated it whatsoever. I can't promise anything about her content or beliefs. I just really, really liked this particular post.

Six or so years ago, not long at all after we met, Isaac and I went to a dinner party hosted by some friends. Conversation around the table quickly settled into a sort of game: we went around the table, one person at a time, and everyone else at the table got to ask the person of the moment any question (with some veto power allotted to the person in the hot seat, of course). When it was my turn to answer, one of the guys there asked what my favorite thing about Isaac was. I had no hesitation whatsoever: "he washes my dishes." When I met Isaac, I had 50+ piano students, driving 500+ miles each week to teach in their homes. I was out of my apartment a lot. I ate a lot  of fast food. When I did eat at home, it could easily be days before I washed dishes. I grew up with a dishwasher, I've never had to wash dishes, I hate doing it. Almost from the very beginning, Isaac took over the job. He'd come over in the evenings, after my lessons, and pop straight into the kitch...

The days are feeling long to me right now. I had big plans to schedule regular outings for the summer, so I wouldn't feel this way (and in fact I have a post half-written, dedicated to that very subject, which may or may not ever get finished), but the exhaustion of first trimester has me limping along in survival mode instead. I find myself in a mental cycle: Morning, day 1: We should do something fun tomorrow instead of staying around the house all day. Afternoon, day 1: I spend all of nap time researching fun things to do around town. Evening, day 1: I'm exhausted. It's too hard to take three children anywhere. Plus Silas might need a nap. Forget it, we're not going anywhere. Morning, day 2: We should do something fun . . . And so it is that I went back and forth on whether to go strawberry picking for days, until this morning Isaac finally said, "oh, just go. You'll have fun. I'll stick around to help you get out the door." Perhaps th...

As you've heard me say repeatedly, from September to May, the kids and I all attend Bible Study Fellowship . I can't say enough good things about it, for myself and for the children. Go check out the website, and make plans to attend a welcome class the second week of September in whatever city you reside! (Just note that you can't take your kids the first time you go.) While it's nice to have a few months off from getting somewhere at 9am with all of the children reasonably well-dressed (other than church), the schedule does  leave me without any set Bible study plan for the summer. In various past years, I've used this devotional  of Psalms, Proverbs, and the New Testament, usually choosing a book or two at random to read slowly over the summer months. A few weeks ago, I stumbled upon this Bible reading plan , the Gospel of John, broken up into sections appropriate for elementary-aged children. Levi reads at about a third-grade level at least (we think),...

So, about this whole baby announcement . I'm due December 26, making me ten weeks along today. I'm feeling about like most women do at ten weeks: tired, not great, but most likely on my way out of it as second trimester approaches. I have learned a lot from carrying three babies, and I know that as long as I get 90-100 grams of protein a day, spaced out throughout the day, I'll be fine. That sounds like a lot, but since I was shooting for 150g/day at the end of my pregnancy with Silas, it's been pretty easy so far. There are a great number of reasons to be happy about being pregnant right now (and I'm keeping a list in a journal I bought just a few weeks ago, when the emotions of early pregnancy threatened to overwhelm). I lost all of my Silas weight before I got pregnant. Since I've been in the habit of watching what I eat for months, it's been relatively easy to keep doing the same -- I'm just watching the protein number instead of the calorie num...

Before Isaac and I had kids, we occasionally pulled out the bed in our sleeper-sofa and slept in the living room. We don't have a TV in our room, and very, very rarely stay in hotels, so to me it feels like the ultimate luxury to be able to watch a movie while lying in bed. I knew May would be busy, and that our primary babysitter (Isaac's mom) would be out of town for half the month, and therefore getting in an out-of-the-house date night would be tricky. So, I invited Isaac to sleepover in our living room ! (The linked idea is from the Dating Divas , but I merely used the printable invitation and did not do the other things she did.) I included a $10 Kroger gift card in the envelope (leftover from a previous P&G diaper study ) so that we could stock up on snacks without hurting the grocery budget. On Friday afternoon, we stopped by Kroger on our way to a graduation party and picked out our snacks. Back at home, I set up the sleeper couch while he put the boys to bed. ...