Babysitting a 4 month old and other ramblings....

So I haven’t journaled in a while… let me bring you up to speed on our life… we’ve been doing a lot of home improvement projects. I finally finished painting my living room “prairie gold” as Jimmie calls the color. It’s actually nacho chip… sort of an ecru color… I love this color… anyway… the fireplace wall had remained the hunter green that the living room once was and I toyed with the idea of leaving it green as an accent wall (laziness) but I love the way red looks with the new color so I wanted to convert all my accessories (curtains, rug etc) to red. In order for it not to look funny, the green wall had to get painted so I did that. And a few weeks ago when my dad was down for a quick help-Jimmie trip, Jimmie and dad put in a full length window where we had a water leak a few years ago. You may or may not remember that… it was a few days before Thanksgiving at our house and a wall in our living room became a water fountain… there used to be a door there and it was raining so much that to roof sprung a leak and we had a wall size water fountain in our living room… now there is a huge window there and it is beautiful!

Anyway blah blah blah… I could babble on about what sort of fun things we’re doing to our house but I’m thinking that makes for boring journal reading… needless to say, we’re on a home improvement spree at our house… and also Jimmie is working out of town a lot right now which stinks cuz I miss him!

Umm we’ve both sprung leaks in our eyes… it hits at the weirdest times too… like the other day, I got out some marshmallows to put in my hot chocolate (by the way… if you sprinkle a little cinnamon in your hot chocolate, it’ll be the best cup of hot choco you ever tasted!) and I had a flashback to many many times when me, Jimmie and Mayce would be sitting around the fire pit at night and she’d ask for marshmallows… leaky eyes… or the word shoe… flash back to one of Aniya’s first words… leaky eyes… or channel flipping… Sponge Bob… Hannah Montana… so many little things spark memories of our girls and we just lose it… There is this hole in our hearts… we miss the girls so stinkin much… some days are better than others and some days are worse than others.

On the way home from church yesterday, Jimmie was having a particularly hard time… during children’s church, they had the kids who had been bringing their Bibles to church regularly stand up and then each kid got to say their favorite memory verse… and it just reminded us both of Mayce because she got a lot of stickers for bringing her Bible every week and we had been working on memory verses when she left. So on the way home, Jimmie’s eyes were leaking and I was thinking and I shared this with him… ya know, God has a plan and I don’t think He would have brought us in to this experience just to break our hearts… it feels like it right now a lot of the time… but at least we know the girls are happy and healthy and with family that loves them.

On Friday, here in Kentucky, a man was put to death for killing two children and yesterday morning on the local radio program that I listen to while I’m getting ready for church, the radio host was talking about how the news stories on Friday focused on the man being put to death and his last meal etc. but the host said, what about the victims… what about this mother who has had to deal with losing two of her children… what about the living sibling, who will never have back his brother and sister… and I thought of that mother and I thought of how we’re sort of grieving the loss of our girls and I just felt humbled that my grief and pain, as real as it is, pales in comparison to what that woman has had to go through and my grief and pain is but a glimpse of what an hour or a second of her pain might be. It really put things in to perspective…

Ya know what else put things in to perspective… babysitting a 4 month old… that was a very valuable learning experience. I don’t think I like that age – cute as he was… very needy… cute as a button and so sweet… but just not my most comfortable age I’ve dealt with… I mean, I did fine… and he was actually a very happy baby… it was just the having to feed him and change him every 4 hours (he would actually start getting cranky around every 3 hours) that was annoying… but as I say, we did fine until Sunday morning.

I had taken a shower to get ready for church when I got hit by a bus… ok not a literal bus… but it felt like I was hit by a literal bus. I couldn’t move… it hurt to even think about moving and I just needed to be sick. I felt like I would have felt better if I could just get sick. Problem is, after I got sick, I didn’t feel better… I felt worse… and it was kind of scarey too because (I’m sorry if this is too graphic) my stomach and intestines were cramping and it hurt. I had a fever, I couldn’t move. Jim was home but he apparently wasn’t kidding about his phobia of tiny babies. Bless his heart. He did eventually step up and help take care of the little guy and I willed myself to move enough to do the things he couldn’t do. He actually did end up helping a lot more than he was comfortable doing. By Monday afternoon I finally started feeling human again… it was an awful virus and I don’t wish it on anyone… I was really worried that the baby would get sick but his foster mommy and daddy says he hasn’t gotten sick so that’s good…

But anyway… that was a valuable lesson… I think we’re definitely more comfortable with children over the age of 1. I’m sure it’d be different if we gave birth to one but as far as becoming instant parents… we’re going to try to stick to above 1 year old.

Well I better get some work done… Happy Turkey Week to you and yours!