Moments to Remember- Her Big ole Heart.

I feel like I've been gut punched and I'm in the last round of a wrestling match every time my girl shows her heart.

She is so compassionate. At one year old her soul is a well aged cheese. She cares so deeply for the hurt. She shows even concern for people hurting on the television.

She has comforted me while I was in pain. She looks at you with such concern and care, it's heart breaking. She worries like an Italian mother. 

I was having a bad day a few weeks ago, there were tears. She came over to me and pat my shoulders - perhaps she saw her dad do it to comfort me before? She gave me kisses and sat next to me. 

It's beautiful to see  her personality blooming and it's humbling to see who she is turning out to be. 

Post Christmas fall out and Science Center Visit

Christmas passed with less tears and anxiety than anticipated. It was actually a great day. It was nice in that we were able to Skype with our families for something like 6 hours of the day. But, there were times of the day where we looked at each other and felt like we lived on the moon. It was almost like watching a happy family on the television. Then there were times where we were thrilled that we were able to see everyone and be a part of their day. As expected, it was emotional and as expected... we lived.

We had made plans to go to Omaha, Nebraska today; but it snowed in the west and we weren't interested in driving for three hours through snow for no good reason. We altered the plans to head to Des Moines to the Science Center instead.

As Des Moines is only an hour and a half away, cutting the drive time in half one way felt like we were winning something. Also, we've been wanting to visit the Science Center since we moved here- it was nice to cross that off of our "to do" list.

Play kitchen in the toddler area.

Plasma ball

Toddler area. Bridge with a blue window. 

Dad helping. 

We had no idea that there would be so much for Iyla to do there. We would have gone sooner. She played so well! We kept commenting the entire time about how well she was playing and how well she was taking it all in. We were thrilled that she was so inquisitive! She was far from shy with the other children, she would walk up to other children with her hands on her belly and squeal, "HI!" at them. She played with a nice older girl in the kitchen area and she found true love on the bridge area... which her father ruthlessly pulled her away from. We found that dinosaurs were a favorite, exclamations of "wow! wow! WOW!" and "woooe!" were not in short supply.

Ryan has a big bow shoot this Friday/Sat/Sunday. It's a big deal for him.

Lee will be here on Saturday! It will help the last week fly by, I hope. :)

Today felt right. It could be that we're only 2 weeks away from home; it could be that we felt "in control" of this parenting thing for once- whatever it was.. it was the lightest either of us have felt in quite some time.

love,
m r and i

the bitter taste of Christmas

Christmas, as a rule, is the most wonderful time of year.

For our family, Christmas eve is usually spent with the Georges; watching something or another on the tube while making some kind of wonderful misery for Sam.

Early Christmas morning is spent with each other, opening presents and excited chatter about the day. Then! Our favorite part of the day is where we go over to Lee and Gina's in our jams and Gina reads THE Christmas story to us. We pray for the day, our family, our coming year. There is a feeling of family that is so intimate and indescribable that passes over me every year, during this reading and prayer time - leaves me speechless.

Then, we rush about to get dressed for the day and head over to Poppop's house for Christmas breakfast, which is really quite grander than any feast even royals have ever seen. We do presents with them and then make our ways back to Lee and Gina's where we will lay about and wish we hadn't ate so much.

There is usually a sweet lull at this time. Just the siblings and Lee and Gina. Chatter about the mornings events and whatever new game Aaron is playing.

Then the Turners trickle in. Mam and Poppi hauling loads of boxes, Brad and Pam smiles brighter than the sun. Aunt Lynda and her clan clambering in. We do presents with them and then we settle in for dinner, promising not to eat as much as we did at breakfast - and usually failing.

The evening is spent with the house in a buzz, chatter of adults and some sort of squeals from some child or another. Then games are played until we can barely keep our eyes open anymore.

We go home to bed, where we fall asleep; bellies full, hearts content.

This Christmas, with so much tradition in place, is it any wonder that I am very close to wholeheartedly hoping to just stick my head under the covers and wait for Christmas to blow over? Much of this is centered around myself but there are parts of me that don't want Iyla to be a part of a "fake" Christmas. I mean, what else could it be but fake if it's not the thing that we usually do. (cut me slack, i'm not done talking yet, quit judging me.)
{ahem}
Oh, I've been heart sick over "missing Christmas" since October. I've ached and moaned silently, not wanting to share my pain with Ryan; who must be feeling the same thing 100 times over. Making light of it, "shew! we might actually save ourselves a heart attack from not eating so much!", and talking it down, "oh, we'll be there just 12 days later!" have certainly helped the panic and restlessness over "missing Christmas".

The more I've thought and fervently prayed about this, the more I've come to realize, I just need to take it for what it's worth and be thankful for what IS (and not wallow in what is being missed-both real and imagined).

I'm a dummy. There. It's out there.

I have a darling husband and a ray of light, who poses as my daughter. What world am I living in? How could I ever consider any circumstance, where they are present, Christmas to be "fake"?! Urgh. I hate that I was so wrapped up in myself that I didn't see that at first.

And worse.

I was so wrapped up in my feelings of isolation that I totally overlooked the entire point of the holiday.

{I know! I know! Quit judging!}

I was so wrapped up in the advent of moving-  counting down and crossing dates off - that I overlooked and even hoped to skip the advent of Christ mas. 

The instant I came to this realization, it's really quite amazing how quickly my selfishness fell off me. The gravity of the "reason for the season" fell hard and fast into my heart. So much of society- the world at large- make Christmas out to be "the most wonderful time of year" a time where you just HAVE TO be happy or something is WRONG with you. There's so much pressure to be nauseatingly overjoyed, it got to me. I wanted perfect. I wanted "the usual". Christmas is such an event, it's all kinds of glittery and shiny- I thought I had to feel a certain way in order for Christmas to be "right". But I've come to see after an entire month of trying to dodge the Christmas bullet, today I see that I don't have to feed into the glitter, and I don't have to feel guilty about it.

I just need to recognize the promise of the season.

And celebrate the birth of Jesus.

Nothing more.

Nothing less.

Love you,
m

Home again, Home again, Jiggity jig

Moving is not my favorite thing to do. The packing and the unpacking… The repacking and the re-unpacking. Just when you think you know where something is, it’s gone again. {Did I give/throw [item] away or is it just in a box I have not unpacked since 2 moves ago?}

The last 2 years have felt very nomadic. If we weren’t visiting somewhere, we were getting ready to visit somewhere. It gives me a headache just thinking about it.

I love to travel, so, there is that advantage. But, I’ve found that traveling… Without a connection to a place I really felt was “home”- is really just going from one place to another. Think of it this way: you keep returning from vacations- and staying in someone else’s home- there’s no sense of homecoming or peace.

While our friends in Northern Iowa are among the dearest friends we have ever made, that house never felt like a home. I don’t think I ever once felt relaxed there. We are not town people and neither is Huck. I was always so worried about Huck getting lose and being hit by a car or someone doing something to hurt him. Being constantly “on guard” really wore on me. Ryan says he never felt the same way, but he isn’t prone to worry about much.

As for the house and location in Southern Iowa - it is everything we were missing in the north… However, we have really struggled to make and maintain strong relationships here.

When we have visited Delaware, I always felt like we were just visiting home for awhile and then we must return to our banishment when the visit was over. Even though we were only visiting, the sense of release and relaxation that came over me the second the plane would land was enough to break a heart- because the feeling could only ever last for the duration of the visit. 

So, no- moving is not my favorite thing to do. And we aren’t close to settling in for awhile, just yet; but this move is one I’m looking forward to with bells on.

This move, at least, gets us close to the people that make us feel at “home” again

moments to remember- Dancing

It takes my breath away when she dances. She shakes that tush like she's part ballerina, part Bollywood star- with a touch of Cuban club dancer. It. Is. Stunning.
She loves music and dance; she dances to everything from bluegrass to whatever music is passing on a commercial.

We were watching tv the other day and as we were flipping through the channels we paused on a PBS special of ballet dancers. Iyla was sitting on her dads lap on the couch, the second that she registered what was happening on the tv- she jumped off the couch and she ran to the tv. She stood in front of it in rapt attention for a minute and then she started to dance. She mimicked the dancers as they twirled and swayed. She held her hands up like they did and she turned around and around making herself dizzy.

We thought that when she went over to her toy box that she had lost interest in the dancers and were about to change the channel, but she grabbed her teddy and held him to her and twirled with him. Her and teddy danced until she fell over.

I, of course, couldn't keep my eyes dry through out the whole thing.

Pulled Up

 7 months pulled up on her own. 

Today: December 16

She's napping. I'm feeling all kinds of down and out. 25 days til the move. 

I had a BAD day, on the day it was 47 days left. Lots of crying, lots of feeling isolated and alone, lots of just sad stuff... for seemingly no reason. (Hormones are possible, I suppose.)

One of the things I told myself to get myself through the blues was, "It's okay to feel this way. 47 is an awful number. SO close to 50. SO far from 40. You won't keep feeling this way past 30 days. Past 30 days and you'll be in the home stretch."

So here we are. 25 days out. And I'm feeling like it's more like a 25 year jail sentence. I was told to suck it up buttercup and focus on the positives. 

SO

I'll just use my time to fill in the blanks of the last few months. Writing should be cathartic, right?

I went back to the last time I wrote- sometime near the ending of April and pulled up the pictures and videos from then. I'm glad I did. This little video of the first time Iyla pulled up put the biggest grin on my face.  

Look how proud of herself she is.

This was kind of a big "motherhood moment" for me. I was washing the dishes the first time she pulled up. I turned around to find that she was already pretty much standing up. I felt so disheartened that I had missed such a huge thing, for something as silly as the dishes. 

I have the best job in the world, watching this angel grow... and I'm missing things because I'm worried about the dishes- about the house being clean. 

It was just the wake up call I needed to play more, clean less, and focus more on holding tight to the small moments.

Band practice. 

7 months and Easter

Easter was slow as far as Easters go. Ryan was sick for a few days, he couldn't even eat the dinner I made. We are gonna be having the remnants of Easter dinner until next Easter. 12 lbs of meat is in the freezer, ready to be reheated at any moment. :)

I've tried to introduce the little girl to bubbles on several occasions, however, it appears that she doesn't trust them. We will continue to try. She cracks me up with her sense of what is "okay" and what is "totally not okay".

She grows so quickly, her personality is starting to peek through. It's a pretty exciting time. My only wish is that we had people around that could share that excitement.