Apparently, it’s supposed to snow all week! The high is only supposed to be 23 on Thursday! This is after 2-3 days of sunny 65+ degree weather. Oh, Dallas, make up your mind!
On the plus side, the day it’s for SURE supposed to snow is my birthday! Snow flurries for my birthday? I’ll take them.
Last February's snow
I’m pretty convinced. Jesse and I made a BEAUTIFUL baby.
I don’t know how it happened.
I mean, I know how he got here. But I can’t really explain the good looking part.
I was always afraid that we would have really ugly, scary looking children. A few years ago, I used one of those online “face-mixing” programs to “see” what our children would look like. I was completely traumatized. The baby that was produced looked like Frankenstein meeting Hannibal Lector’s darkest fantasy.
Needless to say, I am overjoyed at the relief over having beautiful offspring. Even if the rest of our kids are ugly, we got one that we can marry off to some duchess in Wales (hey, don’t judge I bet YOUR retirement plans are WAY more realistic…)
Here is a link to the complete album of photos. And now, for a few more of my favorites!
Crazy Eyes
This is Jesse's baptismal outfit from 28 years ago!
I love this face
He's BEAUTIFUL!
Love the light!
My precious baby
His laughter makes anything better...
Finally. I never thought that I would rejoice over an hour to do housework, but here I am. I did 2 loads of laundry, cleaned the kitchen and did the dishes, tidied the living room. I love that I am now relaxing in a clean house. And G is STILL asleep.
One of the reasons I am so happy that he finally let himself sleep is because we had a terrible night. I think I was awake with him every hour. Something was really bothering him, and I think it has to do with the fact that I drank some milk yesterday. I figured out a few months ago that he gets TONS of gas when I drink milk, so I’ve given up my 2 bowls of cereal every morning in favor of oatmeal or almond milk. I only drank normal milk because we were out of both of the above.
So that could’ve been it. Or it could’ve been that he’s teething (although I don’t see any nubs yet!). Whatever it is, combined with the sinus headache I’ve had going for 3 days straight, I was a GRUMP this morning! Even though I didn’t ask kindly, Jesse took G out into the living room for an hour or two, seeing as he was so fussy he wouldn’t let himself sleep. The poor kid is used to getting at least a 6 hour chunk of sleep every night– I don’t think he slept longer than 3 total. So I guess we were BOTH kinda grumpy 🙂
But not even Jesse could get him to sleep. So what did he do? Read Plato out loud. I guess he figured that he could at least get some studying done, while hoping to bore G into slumber.
Didn’t work.
But now, at 1:30pm, G is finally halfway through his first nap of the day. I basically fed him, gave him his pacifier, sat him in his swing and walked away. He fussed for about 1/2 hour, but I refused to come back. No play time for cranky over-tired babies!!! Thank God it worked– I don’t know what I would have done!
Now that the house is clean, I am reading my Happy Baby Organic Guide to Food for the First 24 months book once more. Seeing as G is 3.5 months old, we will soon be commencing the “Solid Foods Adventure”. Tess bought me some baby food storage cubes for Christmas and I have a food processor. Now, all I need to do is arm myself with the right “how-tos”!
Melissa, the gal who did some photos for Baby G whilst we were home, posted a few more pics on her site. She just finished editing the cd and it’s in the mail, so I should have a few more favorites in a couple days! In the meantime, you can go to her blog for a few more.
Doing crunches in his sleep 🙂
Peaceful
Up until this point, I have not bought a single toy for G. We received a small handful as presents, but I figured I would wait on the rest until he started noticing/using them. That day has definitely arrived! It’s a ton of fun to watch him discover noises and textures! He’s also very good about playing by himself, which gives me time to get stuff done around the house.
So, all of you moms out there– PLEASE chime in. What was your baby’s favorite toy? I don’t want to buy lots of useless things that will clutter up our apartment. Also, as I’ve mentioned before on this blog, Jesse has banned all toys that make electronic noise 🙂 Granted, I still use the “tunes” on his swing and bouncers, but ONLY when Jesse is gone…Wood/organic toys are definitely a plus!
Here are a few of my ideas:
Exersaucer Triple Fun–3 in 1, so it will grow with him
Playmat Gym— I pretty much just like this one for the color scheme. Something really bothers me about crazy neon colors!
Prop n’ Play gym— Seems like a genius idea. Perhaps unnecessary?
Ikea Play Mat— Cheap!
SkipHop Playspot— Something soft that I can clean! There was just a big recall in Europe over this type of foam floor tile (the formaldehyde?)– someone else have articles/details, written in English instead of French?
“May my last sigh be not for this world, but for the world that is to come.”- Bishop Nikolai (Velimirovic)
Tummy Time
"Standing"
Sitting
Lovin on Mr. Elephant
Passed out while momma was uploading pictures 🙂
Hard at play again. Notice how the toys are blurry 🙂
Whew! That was a lot of work!
Yesterday, whilst in the car on the way to church, I turned on the radio in order to press the “Aux” cable button that connects to Jesse’s phone. This way, we can listen to Jesse’s latest Itunes downloads, instead of the trash that dominates the radio stations.
What blared out at us was Britney Spears’ newest song. All about lust and living just for the moment.
While being a)musically disgusting and b)lyrically challenged to the “ength degree”, the song got me thinking. There is a sort of virtue to this type of hedonistic paganism. We are supposed to always being living in the moment, enjoying what God has given us this day instead of only looking forward to the future. As Christians, we’re supposed to be living our lives for Christ, but I think it’s so essential to our happiness to realize that we don’t have to wait for Heaven– the Kingdom of God is here and now. To “wait for death” in order to experience Christ is to miss Him completely.
This virtue of being able to live day by day, completely in the moment, seems counter-intuitive for me. I want to be planning ahead. I’m always afraid of being short-sighted and of simply slapping a quick fix bandaid on a problem. I hate regret, and so I often live in fear of making the wrong choice, doing everything I can to have an (over) informed opinion about everything in my life.
But that’s not what we’re called to do. It’s a constant battle for me, which is why I chose the patron saint that I did when we joined the Orthodox church nearly 4 years ago. Martha was running around, preparing for the future– Mary stopped and experienced a relationship with her Lord and Savior. For some people, this comes naturally. For others, like me, we have to really work hard at it, banishing thoughts of the future that only lead to resentment. As Fr. Joe told me in confession last night, “bitterness really boils down to resentment. Resentment is one of those sins that we actually have a lot of control over. It’s a choice, not something we are doomed to.” He went on to explain that the more we live in the moment, the less we resent. There isn’t room for resentment when you are busy enjoying the day that God created for you. There are enough people to serve, enough people to love, enough tasks to be done, right before us. When we miss all of these opportunities because we are worrying about tomorrow, we miss Christ.
Once again, Fr. Joe was right on. Even when I go back and re-read my post from a few days ago, the words “bitterness” and “plans” were virtually inseparable. I’ve been making myself miserable over things that haven’t even happened yet! I’ve been disregarding the beautiful things of the here and now in favor of misery over the future. Because we are finite beings, we only live in the here and now, and thus, can only be ministered to in the here and now. When I choose to occupy my thoughts with fear over the “what-ifs”, I am also choosing to ignore the comfort God has given me in the here and now. I already have an “overarching” trajectory for my life– love God, love my neighbor. Why make it more complicated than that?
Yesterday, as we were enjoying our Saturday afternoon together, Jesse put on a podcast of Fr. John Braun (co-founder of St. Barnabas) speaking on the liturgy. One of the parts that really stood out to me went something like this (in crass summation–I’m not great with exact quotations off-hand): “If the divine liturgy isn’t really divine– that is, if we aren’t actually singing with the angels, actually experiencing the heavenly mysteries, right then and there, then the whole thing is really rather silly and ridiculous! Priests, running around in elaborate heavy robes, smoke everywhere, no instruments to be found, lots of fuss and attention over bread and wine. No– it is because we truly believe that we are in heaven, worshipping with all of heaven, that we can make such bold claims.”
I love that it’s so polarized. We are either worshipping with the angels, or we are making utter fools of ourselves. So many things in Christianity are like this. He was the Son of God, or a fool. The tomb is empty, or it isn’t. It’s the Body and Blood, essential to nourishing our life, or it’s blasphemy. I love that Christianity is not about being safe and making lukewarm claims.
Everything in the divine liturgy is meant to help us experience Christ here and now, not just “intellectually” through a sermon, but with every human sense that God gave us. The Eucharist isn’t just a visual aid “reminding” us, it’s the bold proclamation that He is here, wanting to live within and transform us now. To only prepare ourselves for some future encounter on judgment day would be very “Martha-like” indeed.
It’s really too bad that Jesse has to work in the mornings, because that’s where all the fun is around here. G and I wake up and commence in at least an hour of playtime. It basically consists of him making loud screech/squawking noises and me imitating him. He LOVES it. Then we finish with a round of giggling as his “Piggy Toes” touch his noise, over and over. I read that repetition is really good for their brain development at this age.
He also loves this stuffed elephant we have with rubber feet and a belly that makes a crackling sound like paper when you scrunch it. He chomps down on the feet (hmm, teething soon? yikes!) and “makes out” with the nose…kinda inappropriate, if you ask me.
After that, I place him in his bouncy seat with the toy bar hooked on in front. While I eat breakfast and check my email, he ferociously bats and punches at those things for another 45 minutes, hardly stopping to catch his breath. Hysterical. I don’t even dare to put his pacifier in at this time, because he will stop, look right at me, grab it right around the handle, and then THROW it across the room. He’s cleared at least a few feet with that thing!
Then he goes right back to punching…until I see his eyelids begin to droop. I reinsert his pacifier. He punches slower and slower, until, all of a sudden, he’s out like a light, asleep. Plays hard, sleeps hard.
I seriously love this kid 🙂
Less than 5 min. ago, he was awake!
Just found this cool store in Fullerton through a friend. If you live in the area, you should definitely check it out!
Slow For The Cone Zone 