Nothing But My Version of Ordinary

I've had writer's block for a little bit now. Maybe it's the fact that we're moving in less than two weeks and that I went back to work, so things are just a wee bit crazy around here. Maybe it's because I just don't have anything interesting to say. Who knows. Anyway, this is my attempt to get past my writer's block and put up a blog.



We'll start with the cutest member of my household. Grant is saying "mama", "dada", and "whoa" for sure. We're not positive, but we think that "goodbye" is also on the list. He's mastered the art of furniture creeping and has started letting go with one or both hands. I'm thinking he's going to be walking in the next few weeks or so. He's 9 months old, which means his first birthday is coming up very soon. I'm thinking we might do dragons as his party theme, just because my sister-in-law is awesome at cake decorating and a dragon cake would be really cool. For the time being, though, he's been going around the house making this face and blowing raspberries:







Work is okay. My principal leans towards the micro-managing side of things, but she tries hard to be reasonable, so no real complaints there. The advantage to being at this school for my 5th year is that most of the kids know me pretty well and know my expectations. It also means that I've gotten most of them to trust me, which means that I can now plan more interesting activities because I can usually get the kids to buy in to what I'm doing. We've gotten all sorts of cool technology toys to play with, so that makes life easier on a lot of things.



The major downside to working in an elementary school, especially one that is housed in a 50 year old building, is that you work in a germ factory. I try to keep my hands clean and use hand sanitizer often, but little kids are wonderful for doing things like sneezing directly in your face or picking their noses before coming up to give you a hug. We just finished up the first week, and I already have an ear full of fluid, a sore throat, and a baby with croup. Yippee! Croup is usually viral, so Grant has to stay home from the sitter on Monday. Jacob and I haven't decided yet which one of us will be taking off of work to be home with him, but I'm thinking it'll be Jacob. I'm already going to have to take several days off for house stuff, so Jacob wins the extra day off this time around.



As usual, I miss Kenneth like crazy. I packed up the plaster casts of his hands and feet last week and lost it for a few hours afterwards. It's funny how little things will come out of the blue and slap you with grief. I never would have thought I'd still have bad days like that this far out from April of '07, but I guess I learn new things every day. I find myself wishing that he were here for me to chase after and be exasperated with, since he'd be two now. I guess at every stage of what should have been his life, I'll have those moments.



I feel like an lunatic for saying this, but I'm already starting to get baby fever again. I really don't want our kids as close together as they would be if I had another right now, though, so we wait. My sister just recently found out she's pregnant again, so I guess I'll live vicariously through her for now. Hopefully that'll stave off the baby cravings instead of exacerbating them.

Starting to have the baby bug again means I've been thinking a lot about the number of kids we'll have. We're buying this awesome 4-bedroom house with lots of space, but we're only talking about having one more baby at this point. Logically, I know that we really shouldn't take the risk of having another heart baby more than once more, but emotionally, I don't feel like I'd be "done" with just two kids at home. Maybe I'll feel differently once the next one comes along and I actually DO have two kids at home, who knows. Maybe we'll eventually adopt, but I'm honestly a bit gun shy about adoption after watching some of the things my parents have gone through as adoptive parents. I then feel guilty for feeling that way, because there are so many kids out there that need good, stable, loving homes. I guess I should just put those thoughts aside for now, since there are too many "what-ifs" to make any good decisions at this point.



I guess I managed to break my writer's block, since I just wrote a short novel instead of a blog.

A friend of mine works as a Juvenile Corrections Officer. Her kids are, by and large, hardcore kids convicted of crimes. She told me a story about what she did at work last week that really touched me.

Apparently, her boss wanted her to try a Music Therapy group with her kids. They'd had a few sessions, and this week she decided to bring in songs that had impacted her life in some way. The kids were to listen to the song, decide what they thought it was about/how it might have impacted someone, write those thoughts down, and then they'd discuss as a group. They did that with several songs, having a short conversation about each one when they were done.

The last song that she picked to play for them was "Godspeed" by the Dixie Chicks. This was one of the songs that I chose to play at Kenneth's funeral.

The kids listened to the song, and wrote about it as instructed. My friend told me that the emotional response to the song was huge, even before she told them why the song had impacted her. She told them Kenneth's story, and they talked for over 20 minutes about it. Some of her boys were in tears-- hardcore kids with criminal records, crying over my son's story.

Later that night, one of her boys stopped her. "Ma'am, tell your friends that maybe sometimes things happen so that something else can happen. Maybe they wouldn't have had another baby so soon if that hadn't happend. Tell your friends that I'll pray for them".

It amazes me that a tiny little baby who didn't live more than a few weeks can still have such a profound impact on people that have never even met him, over two years after he went to heaven. It touches me in immeasurable ways that my Kenneth mattered, still matters, and is remembered by more than just Jacob and I. He may not have ever left the hospital, but he can help a hardened kid let down his walls and feel empathy for someone else.

That's pretty huge, if you ask me.

We've ben really busy over the past few weeks. Our house is under contract, so we've spent a lot of time consumed with house-hunting and mortgage applications and all of that good stuff. The good news is that we got a really good offer on our house, and we've put earnest money down on the new house. The bad news is that I'm going to have to move at the beginning of the school year. It's going to be well worth it, though.

We just got our inspection report in with the list of things that they want us to fix in our current house. The first item is having our HVAC serviced. No big deal. The second one annoys me, though. The dishwasher was running when the inspector showed up. It was on the "pots and pans" cycle. The inspector wanted to see if it would switch cycles, so he pressed the "normal" button and it didn't switch cycles. Umm, yeah. That would be because it was already in the middle of a cycle, so if you want it to change cycles you'd have to press "cancel" and then "normal". The buyers now want me to get an appliance repair person out to fix a dishwasher that isn't broken. It switches cycles just fine if you know how to use the dishwasher-- I just checked. Annoying! The good news is that those are the only two things on our repair list, so I guess I can't be too upset.

The new place is 2225 square feet, 4/2.5/2 with a game room and a HUGE yard. It's got stone on all 4 sides, established trees in the back yard, and the builder put in some nice upgrades and incentives like a sprinkler system and a free front-loading washer and dryer. It's about a half block away from the community playground, which will be so awesome once Grant is big enough for it. We talked them down $17,000 from their original asking price, so I'm happy about that, too. Once we get through the stress of moving, I think it's going to be awesome.

A friend of mine asked me if we were planning on having more kids to fill up all of the bedrooms at our new house. The answer to that is "yes and no". We're planning one more baby and will probably try again when Grant is about 2ish, so that's the "yes" part. The "no" part is that we probably won't have more than one more (unless, God forbid, I end up with twins or something). It makes me a little sad to think that I'll only be raising two kids, but Jacob and I are both in agreement that the odds of having another baby with a left-sided heart defect are just a little too high for us to be comfortable with taking the risk more than once more. Why a 4 bedroom house if we're only planning one more kid? We figure we'll have one bedroom for each child and a guest room.

Grant hit several major milestones in the past week. He's now pulling himself all the way up to standing, furniture creeping, and can climb up onto the landing of my stairwell. He's decided that he's too big for baby food and will only allow you to feed him if you put something on the high chair tray that he can feed to himself and give him spoonfuls in between bites. He's also all of a sudden turned into a major momma's boy and will bury his head in my shoulder if someone he doesn't know talks to him. And, my favorite development of this week: he's been making a roaring noise when he plays that just cracks me up. I have no idea where it came from, but it's adorable.

That's about all that's going on here. It's back to work for me on Monday, so I'm sure I'll have more to say soon :).

I mentioned on my other blog that we're in the process of selling our house so that we can buy a bigger one that will hopefully be the one that we stay in for the next 20-odd years or so. We're looking at pretty nice homes, because 1) we can afford it and 2) we want to be someplace we're reasonably sure will hold value or gain value over time. This brings up interesting comments from my mom.

I love my mom very much. She and I talk about once a day or more. Sometimes, though, I wonder if she knows me at all. While we're talking about house stuff, she made yet another comment that Jacob likes the prestige of having nice things. This confirmed something that Jacob and I have talked about more than once-- that my family sees beeing broke as a sort of badge of honor, and that since Jacob and I earn decent money (that we work very hard for, mind you), we are no longer in the club so to speak. I explained to mom that prestige has nothing to do with it. We work hard, we earn enough money, and we can afford nice things. It would be one thing if we were sinking ourselves into massive debt to pay for nice things, or if we spent money just for the sake of spending money, but I think we manage our money fairly well.

What it boils down to is that my mother disagrees with me working. She thinks that we could make it on just Jacob's salary. It doesn't matter how many times I show her bills vs. income, and that while we could *barely* make our bills on just Jacob's salary, it would allow for absolutely no saving whatsoever and no health insurance. If I work, though, not only can we pay all of our bills, have good benefits and save, but we can also afford nice things and give Grant (and his future sibling) a college fund. She thinks we're being materialistic by making the choice to have me keep working. We think we're being prudent. After Kenneth, I refuse to be without health insurance if I can in any way prevent it. As for savings, well, we all know that expenses pop up when you least expect them.

What kind of hurts about this is the continuing insinuation on the part of my family that we're materialistic. Materialistic people place great importance on things rather than on people. We enjoy having nice things, but if something happened and we lost them, it wouldn't be the end of the world. I don't buy name-brand things unless they're on clearance. I don't get my nails done. I don't carry a Coach purse or wear $300 jeans. We do have 3 vehicles, but 2 of them are paid off, 2 them are 8 years old, and one of them is 5 years old. We'd just have 2, but Jacob's car was given to him outright by his parents, he loves that thing, and he wanted a truck for hauling household things and such, so rather than trade in his car we kept it and bought a 2001 single-cab used truck. My car is a stripped-down Toyota Corolla with over 100,000 miles on it, and it's the car I use for commuting back and forth to work. You wouldn't believe how much flack we get for having three vehicles. It'd be one thing if we had three brand-new vehicles, or even if we had two brand-new vehicles....but we don't.

Jacob and I are trying to make sure that Grant has a good start in life, and that we don't end up in our retirement years with absolutely nothing. My parents are 51 and 49, and they have no savings whatsoever. I'm not faulting them for that-- most of the reasons that they're without savings are things that were completely beyond their control. I just would like to do my best to keep Jacob and I out of the same position. If we save and invest now, with any luck we'll have enough set back to carry us through emergencies and retirement alike. A house is an investment, not just a place to live. If Jacob and I work hard, there's nothing wrong with also having nice things and a nice place to live. I wish my mom would see it that way too.

Maybe it's my perspective that's off here?? Tell me honestly, guys-- are we materialistic?

Yesterday was our fourth anniversary. My grandpa is in Austin (he lives in Michigan with my uncle) for the next week, so we decided to combine the two and make a day of it. We picked up my sister and my nephew and then drove out to my mom's house for the afternoon. Grant got to meet his great-grandpa, and then my mom watched Grant so that Jacob and I could go have a nice meal together for our anniversary.

We ended up going to a local restaurant called Gumbo's, which turned out to be exremely good. After that, we went to Half-Price Books and cleaned out their clearance children's books. We then went back to my mom's for a few hours to visit with my Grandpa. All in all, it was a very nice day.

Since Grant got into bed late last night, he slept in for us a bit this morning. Right now I'm watching him crawl around the living room floor, playing with his toys. He looked up at me a minute ago, gave me a big grin, and went back to his toys.

It's moments like that that make me feel like I'm the most blessed person in the world.

If you've been reading my blogs for a while, you know that one thing I've consistently struggled with since Kenneth's illness and death has been my faith. I thought I'd get more into that discussion today.

I was brought up by my mom, who was a single mother due to divorcing my psychotic father when I was 7. When I was little, I was taught to believe in God but not taken to church on a regular basis. After the divorce, Mom became increasingly more religious and as a result started taking us to church regularly. Over the years we attended churches of several different denominations: Methodist, Lutheran, another Lutheran, and finally a non-denominational fundamentalist Bible church with decidedly Baptist leanings.

I don't remember much about the Methodist church, other than I liked the children's church activities and it had red carpet.

At the first Lutheran church, my best friend and I got to serve as acolytes on many Sundays, which I loved doing. The pastor of that church, Pastor Bill, was also a used car salesman. He sold my mom a car that turned out to be a major lemon and screwed her over on the warranty, teaching me religion lesson number 1: Just because someone claims to be a Christian, doesn't mean they act like one.

The second Lutheran church was one we went to for most of my early adolescence. We were very involved there, with me being in the youth and the adult choir, the handbell choir, and youth group. My mom was active in the singles group. The other kids were horrible, though. I can remember being in youth group one night, and a group of girls were taunting one girl mercilessly. They called her a lesbian over and over again, loudly, and had her in tears. The youth group leader watched it happen and didn't do a thing about it. Incidents like that happened fairly often, so I stopped going to youth functions and limited my involvement to the adult choir and helping with the 3 year old Sunday School class. I helped with the 3 year olds until one mother pulled me aside and berated me for wearing a "slutty" dress. I was 12. I'd grown since the last time I'd worn that dress and it had gotten a little too short for me. The woman screamed at me and told me to stay away from her daughter. I was reduced to tears, told my mother, and that ended my involvement with helping the 3 year old class.

After we left that church, we were all pretty jaded by our experience with a big church, so we decided as a family to try a small one. We visited Manchaca Bible Fellowship and liked it, so we stayed for the remainder of my high school years. In the beginning, it was a good place. Their mission statement was "Rightly Dividing the Word of the Lord", and their main focus was on teaching theology. Sermons were an academic affair, with the Pastor teaching complex theological points and the adults taking notes. There were quite a few homeschooling families, which my mom liked because she'd decided to homeschool my brother and sister by that point. AWANA was big in that church, and my younger brother and sister both got very involved with that. I was much less involved with anything youth related, partly because I'd been turned off of youth groups by the last church and partly because I wasn't homeschooled like my brother and sister were.

Good things came out of that church. My mom met my stepdad there, and my sister met her husband there. Bad things came out of it too, though. My brother was introduced to drugs and alcohol by kids from the youth group, and stolen from by those same kids. My sister was ostracized by the youth group leader. The pastor's teaching changed from simply being Bible teaching into teaching about things like "unity". It started to become cultish. I graduated from high school and started refusing to go. The rest of my family stopped going somewhere around a year or so later.

From that point on, I haven't attended any church regularly. I still count myself as a Christian, but I've been burned too many times by church-goers to be interested in regularly attending a church. I've found exceptions to that rule. The church that we chose to get married in wasn't chosen for any reason other than the price was right and it was a beautiful building, but the pastor of that church turned out to be a wonderful person. If it wasn't such a long drive from my house, I might consider going to that church from time to time. Even after all of the things that happened in the churches we went to growing up, I still kept my faith. I figured that people would dissapoint you every time, but God never would.

At least, I felt that way until Kenneth.

I've been over the anger and disappointment I've felt with God, so I won't go into it again here. Praying for my son to be allowed to stay with me, only to have him taken away, has shaken my faith. I want to believe, I do. I can't help doubting now, though. All of the standard Christian answers to the question of "Why does God allow suffering?" seemed sufficient to me before I had such an intimate aquaintance with watching someone I loved more than life suffer. Now, they seem like empty platitudes. I don't think that Christians understand why God allows suffering ay more than the rest of the world does. Maybe it has to do with living in a world that has sin, but that seems to be a farcical answer when you're talking about the suffering of a newborn baby.

So on the one hand, I now have doubts. Big doubts. On the other, I cling to hope. Hope that my faith is real, hope that everything I've ever believed isn't just a big lie made up by men in order to feel better about their existence. Hope that even though my son is gone from this earth, that he still exists in spirit somewhere. Hope that I'll get to see him again when I'm done with life here. Hope that Grant will get to meet his big brother someday. I have a sense of wonder as I watch Grant meet his milestones, and I know that the miracle that is his life can't be anything but the result of a Creator. How is it possible to have such conflicting views about my faith all at the same time?

As it says in Mark 9:24 "...Lord, I believe. Help my unbelief."

I've made an executive decision to discontinue my MySpace blog and move over here. Hopefully y'all will keep commenting and such on my disjointed thoughts.

I've been struggling with what to put in my blog. For a long time it was my vehicle for expressing my grief over Kenneth. I still grieve, but I'm to the point now where I have more good days than bad. Moreover, I now have a reason to move forward with life rather than constantly looking back to death: my second blessing, Grant.

I'm constantly amazed by him. I'm sure most moms feel the same way about their children, but it doesn't stop me from feeling awed at the gift I've been given. I am responsible for shaping a little life. If I stop to think about it too much, it's almost overwhelming. My parenting choices will help to mold him into the man he's going to be. I find myself praying a lot while I nurse him in the evening before bed. I pray that I'll be able to be a good mother to him, that I can teach him right from wrong and help him to be a good man. I find myself praying that his life will be easier than mine has been, that I can keep him safe from the bad things in this world.

I hope that God is listening to those prayers more than He listened to my prayers for Kenneth.

In any case, any blogging suggestions would be welcome.