Someday...

     Someday I would love to make my house look pretty again. To have everything properly wiped down, dusted, mopped, swept, and shined. All at the same time.

     Someday I would love to have a nice healthy supper, and Noah's favorite apple pie fresh from the oven to let him know that I really do still love him. 

     Some day I want to have a clutter-free house. No box of papers or stashed away things in funny corners that nobody else can see. At home, these things would have gone to live in Mom and Dad's room for them to take care of. Now that's my room, and its perplexing. 

     Someday, I want to be able to decorate my own house. Not everybody else's where I need to use the nails that somebody else put up for their things that are completely in the wrong spots for mine. I want to bang my own holes in the walls and not have it matter. (I'm not complaining, Danae :))

     Someday I want to know what the problem is every time Kathryn cries, and keep a better handle on my own attitude when she decides its jolly well playtime after her 5:00 a.m. feeding. 

     Someday I want to get over this fear that if I take Kathryn outside, she will get deathly ill and die and it will all be my fault. 

     Someday I want to be able to actually study for Sunday School. Not read the email that lists 15 passages, laugh out loud at the thought of actually getting anything profound to share. Actually to read them, study them, and do my own thinking. 

So it is Christmas

 Its December. Did you know that? I'm finding it a little hard to comprehend. Maybe its because I did most of my Christmas decorating in November, even before Thanksgiving.  Some of my family came down for a visit two weeks before Thanksgiving and helped put up the tree. We put it in front of the living room window, where it drove me crazy because it took up half the space. So one evening, Noah invited Lance for supper, and they moved the tree and rearranged the couches while I stood and directed the show. I'm much happier with these results.

Last weekend, Noah and I went Christmas shopping in Duluth, and got everything on our list. We went to the Texas Roadhouse for an early supper with Lance, Amy, Kristine, Ben, Benny, and Chadwick. The place is super noisy. We were gonna go to Bentleyville that evening to see the lights, but we got stuck in traffic up on I-35 and it would have taken long to get in, and Kathryn had had it with her car seat. Some other time, I guess.

In three weeks we are planning to go to Canada for Christmas. It'll be the first trip up since we got married. I am dreading the drive, but looking forward to being up there and seeing everybody. Last weekend we did a sort of 'trial' trip by going to Noah's parents place for the weekend. Kathryn did wonderfully. I was so proud of her. On the way home I told Noah that it would be OK if she cried for the whole next day, cause she had been so good. The problem was that God heard that.

In the last few weeks, Kathryn has smiled real smiles, and is paying much more attention to life. She gets completely mesmerized by the lights on the tree. Its so much fun to watch her:) We started putting 3-6 month clothes on her, and the poor baby is only 7 weeks old. She's growing fast!

Diapers and More

     For those of you who didn't get the news yet, Noah and I became parents just over 2 weeks ago, on October 15. We had a healthy baby girl, who we named Kathryn Grace.
   
     Since then, our schedule became full of yucky diapers, monstrous burps, some teary eyes, and of course the almost endless feedings. The latest addition to our life has been a very congested, snotty nose. Those green suction thingamajigs they send home from the hospital with you are really nice! For the mom, at least. The baby doesn't really like it. So far this morning, we have had 3 tremendous outbursts of sheer fury when that thing came close to her nose.

     But now she is sleeping peacefully. Except I did a terrible thing by putting her down on her tummy to sleep. I feel almost guilty, but not enough because she has been in that position for about 10 min now, and she is still sleeping! Every single time I put her down in her crib, she is for sure gonna be up in less than 5 min. The SIDS stats say that since babies no longer should sleep on their tummys, the death rates went down 50%. What they usually don't tell you, except I found it on some for site, is that deaths from asphyxiation and choking, and other such things have increased since then. So why is it more okay for babies to die one way than the other? And one more thing. (I'm not doubting my faith here, just wondering). God has everything all pre planned. All those babies who died from SIDS over the years, would they have died then anyway from other causes if not SIDS?

     On to other happier things. I have learned to get up early in the mornings since Kathryn was born. Really early. That goes against my grain. I like to stay up late at night and make up for it in the morning. Kathryn works the same way, except she takes naps all day long. One day when I get smart, I'm gonna post some pictures on here to make things more interesting, and so you can see my baby.

      I like to hold my baby when she sleeps. Did any of you moms do that too? Forget about folding the laundry, just lean back in your chair and cuddle your baby a little closer? They smell so babyish, and their hair is so soft. O and for your information, I am a very possessive mother. Kinda like Rapunzel's mother. At least thats who Noah compares me too :) Maybe its just one of my quirks, but it takes some getting used to going somewhere and knowing that the people there all want to have a turn holding my baby. Sometimes I will say no, not for any other reason than that I want to hold her yet too, thank you. Is that going overboard? I don't know. Ask me again though when she is a few months old, or when the next baby comes around.

Getting Started

   I decided to try my brain at blogging, and see how I like it.

     I'm sitting at my kitchen table with the sunshine pouring in through the patio door onto my needs-to-be-washed floor and smelling apple cobbler baking. Mmmm. I like fall. I like walking out the door and wishing just a little bit that I had the sense to put a sweater or something more on. I like driving around and looking at people's yards to see what they do to welcome fall. I like seeing whole pumpkins as decorations (not the gross Halloween looking ones) on porches, or in the windows. My poor pumpkin got put on the deck railing a while ago and has lived there ever since. I'll rescue it one of these days by turning it into pie or muffins or cake or anything else that I decide.

     Yesterday I packed my go-to-the-hospital bag. It was so much fun to put two tiny little outfits in there, knowing full well that getting arms in those sleeves is gonna be tricky for this first time Mommy. :)  And then comes the best part: an outfit for me that isn't quite as big as the ones I now require. I keep wondering if my praying for the baby to come early is as selfish as I sometimes think it is, or if its ok. Noah has started to inform me that my belly is really big, as if I didn't know that already from when I try to wash the dishes. We finally got a boy name picked out this morning. We had a girls name a while ago, and that ended up getting changed a little bit too. So now I feel like we can actually have a boy baby and be ok.

      We are gonna have another lovely evening at home again tonight. This wife has been needing those extra much lately. In September Noah was so busy with his regular day job, and then doing training for dispatch three nights a week, that our time together was mostly non-existent. That was hard. God came through again though, when I was sure I couldn't do it anymore. The evening shifts dropped down to almost nothing, and my husband tuned in again. His life had consisted of work, work, eat a bit, then sleep as fast as he could so that he could be up and at it again in a few hours. We both needed this break.

Thats all for this time! Tell me what you think.