Coffee Chat (Baby Gender Revealed)

A few years back, my sister who lives across the country was taking a few years off of her career as she had little babes at home.  We talked nearly every day.  We’d have each other on speaker as we did our chores and took care of our little ones.  When she went back to her job, it was honestly really hard on me, as selfish as that sounds.  It actually effected my marriage.  At one point Knut said, “I know you miss your sister, but I can’t be your husband and your sister.  Seriously, get some friends.”  Her life got crazy busy, and not only was it hard to get ahold of her, I felt guilty when I even tried, because I was keenly aware of all that was on her plate, and how precious her moments at home were to her.  So our nearly daily phone conversations turned into months between calls.

And everyone of those calls started like this: “I HAVE SO MUCH TO TELL YOU!!!”

That’s kind of how I feel about writing this blog post.  I unintentionally took a little break from writing, so it’s been scarce to none, if you couldn’t tell.  Friends, I HAVE SO MUCH TO TELL YOU!!

I have weeks of blog posts built up in my brain.  I’ve often wondered if the blog distracted me from my family, or enhanced my ability to be a mother by providing an outlet.  A couple of years back, I was speaking with a mentor of mine, and she was just telling me that she always prays in the morning that God would help her to see what He intended her to do that day, and give her the wisdom to see what He didn’t intend for her that day, so that she might leave the good things that weren’t for her, and be able to have a spirit-led prioritizing that would change from day to day.

I’ve been doing that ever since then.  “God, if you have knitting for me to do today, then give me the time.  If my writing is preventing me from doing something you would have me do, then help me to leave it.”  It’s taken the burden off of that balancing struggle.  When it should get done, it will.  When I need a rest, I’ll take it.  When something else needs me, I’ll do that.  It wasn’t really intentional to take a break.  I just had a long string of days where God put other things in front of me to do.

For brevity sake, I’ll just make a quick list of all the things that I’ve done in this internet silence, and if something is particularly curious to you, feel free to leave in the comments some sort of question, and I’ll try to write up a proper post about that one subject in the future if it’s interesting.

 

1. I’ve had this cold that I have not been able to shake.  Stuffy nose, watery eyes, sinus pressure, the whole deal.  I keep saying it’s almost done, because I honestly believe that, but I’ve been saying it for over a week now.

2. I took all 5 of my kids on a 3 hour each way trip to the Minnesota Zoo for the day all by myself.  It was like a crazy moment for me as a mother, but I was itching for an adventure, and I was sick of waiting for the right time.  Plus, I felt like a day out like this was so needed for all of my kids as well as myself, and the relationship between us.  It might have been my favorite day as a mother ever.  I’m such an introvert, and such a homebody, and never venture out unless provoked or forced.  I came up with this idea from the beginning and I pushed it through and I don’t know why, but we just needed it.  It went insanely well, and we are already talking about doing it again.  We just had so much fun.

3. I faltered, or hit a scary spot with my oldest child.  Just like when your toddler hits their first tantrum, and you start reading books like crazy, and ask your mother and grandmother what in the world you do, and start to wonder if you are cut out for this, and if you’re absolutely certain of anything, you know you are screwing up your child?  Yeah.  Apparently I relived that as my oldest daughter is in the thick of adolescence.  I had this dream of what I wanted this phase to look like, and what I expected it to look like and it ended up being 100 times harder and feeling 1,000 times worse.  And unlike with toddlers, you can’t talk to everyone about it.  It’s like the part of parenting where there is silent pain and doubt.

It isn’t all bad.  It’s more like a roller coaster.  I sort of shut down so many parts of my life and just focused on my relationship with her.  This last year has been just a dramatic year for my family as our 2nd child, David, has received multiple medical diagnosis’s, and his whole diet changed, and our whole schedule changed.  I was feeling so good that we were finally making some progress.

That whole time, my oldest child just stuffed so much of her hurt, her normal feelings, stuff what felt like neglect, and as she saw her younger brother start to stabilize, it’s like all that stuff she was stuffing this last year just all came out.  Life just isn’t fair, and no amount of time I give her will make it fair, but I am determined to walk with her through it all.

The hardest part has been knowing how to discipline her during this phase, how to have healthy boundaries, how to reach her heart and help her find her footing again, and how to determine the exact right amount of freedom in some areas when she and I have totally opposite ideas of what reasonable is.  I maybe freaked out a bit as I saw our relationship start to tumble.  I’ve found a great woman at my church who has taken on mentoring me through this phase of mothering, and it’s been so helpful.  She restores my confidence to trust my instincts and is teaching me how to enjoy this phase as well.

I’ve learned that this phase of parenting doesn’t require books or Google or Facebook venting.  You need a person on the ground guiding you through this.  Find an older mom who has a great relationship with her adult kids and latch on to her wisdom.

It’s just been busy.  And emotional.  Lots and lots of emotions at this house these days.

Last night, after week of struggles, improvements, and resignations, Silje and I had our weekly Bible study that I instituted during this time so she and I had a planned time of no interruption each week to just study God’s work and think big thoughts together without any agenda.  (We are going through the Bible study You are Loved together, which could not be a more perfect book for us right now.)  We read the chapter, discussed the verses, and ate a chocolate mousse cake I picked up at a bakery when I was in the city last and hid it for our special date up in her room.  We ended up laughing like crazy.  Seriously, I’m on a high still for how much fun we had.  We talked about trust vs. love.  She vented her annoyances at our rules, and I shared my heart.  It was so good to talk for once without arguing.  I have learned this peace may be short lived.  But I’m determined to restart once a week like this.

Sorry, that point wasn’t so quick.  I’ll move on.

4. I got a new china hutch for my birthday, and I’ve been repainting it for my dining room.  It was a huge project, and it’s finally done.  I’ve been wanting for 8 years now (since we bought this house) to get parts of this house together, and after sharing with my husband this last winter how frustrated I’ve been to be in this constant holding pattern, as he oftentimes doesn’t want to buy anything unless it is top quality (which we can rarely afford), and isn’t really into the shabby antique look as I am.  Anyway, her got me this china hutch that I picked off of a local used furniture website.  I painted the whole thing, and this last weekend, I moved all of my grandma’s china out of storage and into the hutch.

Plus our wedding crystal, and all my pretty things that I love are coming out and I’m just beyond delighted about it.  I just walk past it so many times a day and smile.  I still have some styling to do inside, but I think that will be a gradual process, and change seasonally like I do the fireplace mantel.  It might take me a few years to build up a rhythm of how I like to do it.

5. On the day that I finished the hutch, Knut finished a project he has been working on for me for quite some time.  It’s an old antique bed that I found at a garage sale last summer.  I was just going to paint it and let us finally have a finished bedroom, from all the pieces of furniture I restored.  Knut loved the bed I picked, but wanted to totally rebuild it to be better than just a paint job.  He wanted to make it stunning.  So I tentatively unleashed his perfectionist tendencies on this headboard, as it so inspired him in his woodworking hobby.

Just like I expected, the project drove him nuts, and the old pieces weren’t flush with the new pieces, and he expected perfection at every turn to make it a true heritage piece.  I think sometimes when he went to the wood shop to work on it, he just glared at it in anger.  When he was about 90% of the way done, I was asking him what was taking so long, and I guess there were 2 pieces that weren’t even visible when the bed had a mattress in it, and they was still an 1/8″ gap in a spot he wanted sitting flush, and he couldn’t make it work.  I just had to tell him that I really didn’t care about the 1/8″ gap in the spot that no one will ever see and for heaven’s sake: wrap this project up already.

So he finished the headboard, not entirely happy with his work, but I’m completely thrilled about it.  It’s so much nicer than I would have done it.  It’s just so perfect now.  I have to paint that next, I guess, as staining would prove to be a multi-colored effect with the old and new woods in play.  But it could not be more perfect, or more what I wanted.  I just wish I could have spared him some of the agony he went through to get it to this point.

2 pieces of furniture in 1 year that I’ve been wanting for close to a decade?  I’m just ridiculously excited about it.

6. I’ve been forcing myself to rest and read.  And I got Larkrise to Candleford with my birthday money from family, and I’ve been watching 1 episode a day during nap time for awhile.  It’s so fun.  It’s just been needed, and I have no other explanation for that.

7. I’ve been going  through baby things.  I’ve been emptying closets.  Trips to the consignment shops, charity shops, and the dump are weekly visits these days.  Having KonMari’d my house last year, I have no idea why I still have some of these things.  I guess I considered so many baby things off limits.  But now that we know the gender of our baby…

wait.  I haven’t told you yet, though it was out on Instagram.

We are having a boy!!!!

Wow, I’m so behind on hanging out with you all.  I need to tell you about the ultrasound sometime.  It was so much fun!

Anyway, without going into to many private discussions on this very public blog, we have decided that I can get rid of all the baby girl things now, because there’s a chance this will be our last, and if by chance this is not our last, and we do have more, I have permission to just go to the used clothing store and pick up what I need should that ever come to pass.  Right now I desperately need closet space for my other kids, and I just can’t store tubs and tubs of baby clothes anymore.  Space is just our biggest need right now.  Space and sanity.  They are oddly connected.

So I have gotten rid of all the baby girl clothes that Ingrid has grown out of now that she is 3.  (Oh, going through those precious things is a post in itself.)  I did keep most of the handmade items, and special momentous for my memory cabinet.  I thought I would feel sad.  I thought it would be emotional.  What surprised me was that I was overwhelmed with a feeling of gratitude through the whole process.

I’m so grateful for each one of these kids.  I’m just so grateful to be their Mom.  I’m so grateful for each one of these memories and each stage.  It was a very joy filling journey of gratitude, not sadness.

So to sum up:

My relationship with my daughter needed attention, I finally have closet space, my pretty things out of storage, and my house feels like it’s finally coming together after all these years, and we went on a crazy adventure to the zoo far away and had an absolute blast.

Oh, and our dog Lena had surgery.  And our puppy Nanny is getting enormous.  We sheered the sheep, and a little bit after that we butchered our ram named “Mutten”, and he is now in my freezer.  Good riddance.  People ask me if it’s hard to raise animals we know will be meat.  Honestly, the animals we raise for meat are often the meanest animals, and we are normally relieved when we don’t have to feed and handle them anymore.  Our hens are lovely.  Butchering them would break our hearts.  The roosters we raise…well they get mean and it’s usually good to have them gone.  The same goes for the ram.

Silje’s just so extremely excited that the ram is gone.  We love the ewes.  The ewes will not make it to the stew pot.  They will hopefully be our friends for years to come.  We may even get them a boyfriend to visit them this next Fall.

I have to figure out how to wash and card their fleeces.  Maybe I’ll show you what I learn in blog posts to come.

I hope I’m “back” now.  I have so many things I want to write about that I think I cannot possibly put off writing anymore than I already have.  The break was good.  But it feels good to be back.