Mental Picture

I have been so tired this week. I took a job subbing at the school I used to work at, just for half days for 7 days (last Thursday through this Friday). We knew it would be a hard week and it has been! The main thing is that I work through naptime so I miss my chance to catch up on the sleep I'm losing at night. Jeff has to get up earlier in the morning so he's also missing out on sleep.

But tonight I packed up the kids when they woke up from their nap and went to the library. It was such a wonderful evening.

I excused myself from worrying about not having made dinner. I excused myself from worrying about the messy house and company coming next week. I excused myself from pretty much everything except enjoying my 2 beautiful kids. After the library we went next door to watch the sun set over the lake at the Riparian preserve.

Lilia loved reading at the library, especially sitting in the perfectly sized chairs. She LOVED the lake (Wa! Wa!!! Fishies!), she sang along with the radio in the car.

I think I will excuse myself more often. :)

Testing

There are certain people who do things just to say they did them. Or to test themselves. Or whatever it is that causes people to climb this or hike that or fly to the moon.

I am not one of those people.

I like my comfort. I like hotels and nice cars and manicured lawns and that kind of thing.

But it turns out that parenting is one of those things that shows you what you're made of, that becomes an Everest or a marathon or an English Channel. It's a mission, a calling, a challenge, a test, whatever.

And, weirdly, it turns out that I'm grateful for that.

Evan and His Dude, Lilia and Her Songs

Evan has made a friend. We call him "Evan's Dude." He's basically a smiley face with a bunch of funny arms. Evan is captivated. I'm starting to suspect that Evan is the Brooks-Dowty family's third extravert. Poor Jeff will never get a word in edgewise or a moment to himself with all these social butterflies flitting around! Evan loves people so much already. It's really fun to see. Sometimes he literally cries just because he wants to socialize. Not eat or sleep or even be held, but socialize. He has things to say.

Anyway, Evan has whole conversations with his dude. They laugh, they cry. We think that if he could talk he would say, "I love you, man!" Because he does.

Lilia, on the other hand, has finally moved past talking and into singing. She will even sing on cue on some occasions. It's no surprise that her favorite song is "I Need Thee Every Hour." (At what age is it appropriate to tell her the reason I sang that to her so much is because I desperately needed God's help when she was a newborn?) She also attempts the ABC's (DEDDD LMNO Daipitty, YZ, All done!) and counting, which is generally one, two five.

We went on a walk to the park this evening and it was so awesome to wear Evan and hear Lilia's perspective on everything from airplanes to rocks and leaves. She wanted to knock on all the rock walls. I would love to have an explanation of everything that goes on in her head!

Ferris Beuller wasn't kidding. Life moves pretty fast.

It's simpler this way.

Sadly, I've been reflecting a lot on politics lately. It's not a bright spot for me in Arizona right now, but I feel obliged to think about it to be a good citizen.

I am really starting to get depressed about the whole thing.

In the ideal world in my head, every citizen would do three things:
1. Care
2. Think
3. Be kind

This world is so far from ideal.

The problem, as I see it, is that people start by caring very little. They care enough to listen to a "public figure" (usually famous for being hateful and rude) give his or her opinion but not enough to dig into the complex underlying factors in nearly every issue. Especially if those complex underlying factors challenge their ideas or those of their chosen hateful commentator.

This brings us to the lack of thinking. Most people don't look deep enough to be challenged on an issue, so they don't give the issues much thought.

Then, since they've chosen their side (red or blue) and they see the issues in simple black and white it's easy for them to decide that the people on the other side are stupid or evil and treat them accordingly, leading to a lack of kindness.

I don't have television so I haven't seen any campaign ads this cycle, but the signs are enough to drive me to drink. I saw one today that simply suggested we vote against someone because he's an incumbent. Really? Yes. Because it's a lot easier to say "screw them all. I'm going to vote 'em all out!" than it is to investigate the issues that are important to you and choose a candidate who agrees with you on those issues.

I guess it's simpler this way.

Infant Sleep Books: a Review of My Experience

I'm afraid to write this. Seriously.

If you're a parent you know that you never bring up where or how you get your child to sleep with anyone but your nearest and dearest. Because the amount of judgment on this subject in the world at large is overwhelming.

I'm writing this post, though, because I have been the mom who is so desperate for sleep that she reads everything she can find on the subject like it's a part-time job. Wanting ideas, not unrequested advice. I know there are more of those moms out there now and they are worth risking judgment from those who seem to know it all.

For you, Desperate Moms, I will write my experience and what worked for me. In case you've never tried it and you might want to and it might work for you. That's all I mean by it. I promise. It's a long post. Read at your own risk.

So, 20 months ago I became a basket case. I mean that in the nicest, warm and fuzziest way possible. I need sleep and when I didn't get it I became desperate. And furthermore, Lilia was getting desperate for sleep herself. She was crying every night in our arms and pretty much needed to be on my person or Jeff's to sleep at all.

I was all about kind and gentle methods. Lilia slept in our bed and we really enjoyed the bonding time with her, so we wanted to keep going with that if we could. So we started with The No Cry Sleep Solution. We tried to gradually stop her from nursing to sleep, we tried nearly every method listed in the book. She got worse. In fact, she cried more than she ever had, despite all our efforts to the contrary.

Next, we tried The Secrets of the Baby Whisperer. The basic methods in that book are the EASY (this is one of the many places you'll find the "eat, wake, sleep" pattern recommended), and the "pick up put down." This is basically a method where you pick the baby up whenever she fusses and then put her back down when she's calm. We had some success with this one and I think it might have worked really well if we'd started it from the get-go. Eat, wake, sleep was a great thing for Lilia, but "pick up put down" really, really upset her. She hated it every time we did it and it made her cry harder because it was frustrating to her.

At some point around 7 months we had to switch to formula and she slept through the night on her own, but still had a *terrible* time going to sleep. It was so sad! She would cry and cry. One night at 11pm when we were driving her to get her to go to sleep I realized we needed to do something different. I googled something like "infant sleep expert" to try to find someone with more qualifications than just personal experience as a nurse or mom and was pleased to find Dr. Jodi Mindell, a psychologist with over 30 years' experience in the field of pediatric sleep disorders. Bingo!

We ordered her book, Sleeping Through the Night and I read it immediately. Now, her book is a little different in that there's more theory involved. There is an "official method" in there, but it's really only about 4 pages of the book. I felt that, in reading this book, I learned a whole lot about sleep in general and how it works. In fact, Jeff and I now sometimes use these methods to help ourselves get more sleep!

Her basic ideas are creating a routine that is reliable every single sleep time (she actually makes a great case for routines in the rest of your child's day as well!), and making sure that your child's environment the moment he falls asleep is identical to the environment he will experience at 2am. So basically if you don't want to have to be in the room at 2am getting him to sleep, dont be in the room when he first falls asleep in the evening either.

It's not really a "cry-it-out" method because you can go in the room and comfort them as frequently as you want (we did every 5 minutes with Lilia, every 3 with Evan because we started him younger). You just can't help them go to sleep. You also don't worry at all about night wakings -- you can nurse them down, pat them, sing to them, whatever it takes to get them back to sleep. We found that a lot less stressful than the idea of letting them cry in the middle of the night!

This method worked like magic for us. Lilia cried less than she had in months starting the very first night (I think she only cried 20 minutes) and completely stopped crying at sleep times after about 3 days. In the weeks that followed she started asking to go to bed when she was tired. We felt it was a miracle.

We've used the same method with Evan (she recommends starting between 6 weeks and 3 months) and it has worked well with him also.

That's an experiment of 2, which is not a very large control group. But there, our experience is out there in case anyone else can use it. Hope it helps someone.

Snapshot of Today

Some days we wake up and Lilia is older. Folks with no kids may argue that they get a tiny bit older every night, but as near as I can tell that's a lie.

Because this morning Lilia was much older. Jeff and I both noticed it. She looks bigger and she just seems older today. Examples:

• Her words for "Grandma" and "Mama" both sounded exactly the same until today. Today she looked at my phone and said, "Gramma."
  
• She put on her own shoes today!
• I said, "Shall we give Evan some tummy time now?" and she said, "Yup." She proceeded to go get his little play mat and set it up on the floor.
• I asked if she wanted to give her dolly some tummy time and she said yes. I put her dolly on the mat and she said, "nigh nigh." I asked if she wanted to sing to her dolly and she did! "I Nee" ("I Need Thee Every Hour"). That was the first time!
• She built a tower with her duplo blocks. Usually she just takes them out and/or dumps them on the floor.

It's shocking how fast all of this is going.

Evan's doing it too. I was convinced this was way too early for his personality to come out, that this was tons earlier than Lilia. He's doing so much smiling and cooing and all of that, I was sure it was too early. But I looked back at Lilia's pics and she was about the same. The truth is that the time has just gone by tons faster.

I still love watching them together, though. She leans down and kisses him probably 15 times a day. She'll say, "Evan! Kisses!" That means, "I have kisses for Evan." She also reaches out her arms to him and says, "Hode!" which means "May I hold him please?" He just stares at her and tries to talk when she holds him, and he smiles like crazy, and he tries to kiss her back.

I Could Be a Motivational Speaker

I've always hoped for my life to be shaped into 3 callings: first being a music teacher, then being a stay-at-home-mom and finally being a marriage and family therapist.

The first one happened already, the second one is happening now. Great, right? The problem has been that I haven't been able to see how to get to the third one from here.

Because my philosophy of how marriages and families work is basically 100% shaped by my faith, I have always really wanted to go to a Christian university or seminary to earn my degree. That's the part that presents a problem because the best schools for that (including my dream school, Fuller) are located in Southern California and we don't want to disrupt our family by moving there. So this dream of mine has been on hold and I've wondered whether I'll ever achieve it.

A few weeks ago Jeff and I went to a (wonderful!) meeting for Christians for Biblical Equality that was held at Fuller Seminary's Southwest campus. We had a great time listening to a fabulous speaker, but for me the most life-changing moment of the evening happened after she was done.

Fuller Southwest's admissions counselor overheard me and told me that they are hoping to have their MFT program at this campus in 2 years! Can you believe it? Please jump up and down with me!

The weird thing is that now that several logistical obstacles look like they will be cleared out of the way, I've discovered an internal obstacle that I didn't expect. It's like this invisible line in my head that delineates my capacity for success.

Apparently becoming a marriage and family therapist is above that line.

It's a strange obstacle to overcome but I've been working on visualization. I'm not a big believer in supernatural powers associated with visualization so I've never given it much thought. Now, however, I can see that I have to know where I'm going. God is calling me to this and I've known it for years, so I need to "own" that calling.

So I picture myself in classes, soaking up lectures. I picture a degree on my wall. I picture myself walking with a couple through a crisis in their marriage. I pray through all of it and hear God reassuring me that I am the Beloved and this is my calling.

And the picture is getting clearer. Again, jump up and down with me!

Prayers for My Children

Borrowing children from God is a huge responsibility. Little immortal seedlings entrusted to your care really make you think about what's important. I wrote about what I wanted for Lilia before she was born but now I think about it, in some form, every day. What do I want for my kids?

When I pray for them at night, I pray that God will pursue them relentlessly for the rest of their lives so that His grace will be behind every door and around every corner no matter where they go or what they do. I pray that we can create a home that is founded in His grace. I pray that they put their whole lives in His hands, that they marry the right person or stay single according to His calling, and that they live a life that is truly their calling, the purpose that they are created for.

I've been reminded a lot lately that there are no guarantees about how long we will have them or what we can do for them. But there are two guarantees that give me a lot of peace: First, there us a God who loves my kids more than I do, and second He listens to our prayers.

I am filled with gratitude.

Shoosh!

First, I thought I should memorialize the fact that I put Lilia's hair in pigtails today. I don't believe I've ever successfully done that before. How did the pigtail pictures come about, then? Daddy. His patience appears to be endless.

In fairness, I have been pregnant since Lilia has been in the pigtail stage, and I have even less patience pregnant than I have normally. So maybe I'll keep doing them, now that I'm not pregnant anymore.

But the main thing I want to memorialize is that Lilia "lost" her hair today. I put it in pigtails and was quite proud of myself, and she ran her hand up to where her hair usually is.

She started tearing up immediately, with this shocked and sad look on her little face, and said, "SHOOSH!" which is her word for hair. (No, we have NO idea where that came from!) I reassured her that she still had hair but she remained pretty nervous about the whole thing until we Skyped Grandma and she saw it in the picture.

Then she felt pretty cute in her pigtails.

Last thing: She now has a word for, and regularly requests, "Skype."

I love our kids so much!

Before I Forget!

As I write this, my babies are 20 months and 2 months. I can hardly believe it.

When I imagine their future as 5-year-olds, 15-year-olds, 30-year-olds, the picture is misty and vague. But I know that when those days are real it will be this one that seems misty and vague.

So here are a few more things I *love* about today.

• Evan's pout is the CUTEST pouty face I've ever seen. You can see the worry start to creep over his tiny little face. His brow starts to furrow, and he looks at you pleadingly, and the corners of his mouth turn down perfectly. Perfectly.
• Lilia adores computers and has made up her own word and sign for them. We can't figure out where it came from, but computer is "Boku" and for the sign she puts both hands under her chin and wiggles her fingers.
• Every time Lilia says Evan's name she says it with complete delight. "Evan!" Literally every time.
• Until this morning when she said eggs it sounded like "ice." Today, though, it was correct. I grieved a little bit.
• More of my favorite Lilia words: "holp" = help, "efont" = elephant, "Baba" = Grandpa, "Aca" = Erica (auntie), "Baboo" = Badger (uncle)
• Evan looks dead serious when you burp him. Like, "I have a job to do here, and I'm going to do it." But in between he tries to cuddle us.

There's so much more, but this is enough for today. Thanks for indulging me!

Beloved, Part 2

Tonight I took a walk. I love walking. I think when I walk, I connect with people when I walk (either in person or on the phone), I pray when I walk. Early in our marriage we used to joke that one of Jeff's chores was to "walk the wife." Seriously. I go nuts if I don't walk on a regular basis.

So tonight, after a very long afternoon, Jeff graciously took both babies and I got to go on a walk and clear my head.

I heard that Voice so clearly tonight that I wished I could just curl up inside it. You are The Beloved. You are The Beloved. I thought of ways to improve myself: losing weight, buying nicer clothes, getting a haircut, planning my days better, etc., etc. I prayed about it. You are The Beloved. I made goals in my head and thought about writing them on posters on my wall. Prayed again. You are the Beloved.

Finally I had a moment of clarity and I heard a challenge in my head: Can you entertain the possibility, for a minute, that God adores you? That He wants good things for you, loves you just the way you are, is proud of you?

I thought of the way I feel when I look at my kids. I just want to infuse love into them. My greatest fear would be that they grow up unaware of how loved they are! I tell them at least a hundred times a day that I love them. I hold them, kiss them, play with them, sing with them, stare into their eyes, anything to convey to them how loved they are.

What if God is the same way with us? Whispered I love yous around every corner, hugs and kisses every day, a deep desire to convey how loved we are.

I am The Beloved! You are The Beloved! Did you hear the Voice today?

A Few of My Favorite Things

--Lilia's words: Moomie = smoothie or movie, Nugoo = snuggle, Yup/Nope = Yes/No, Yupoo/Nopoo = YES/NO!, Inee = "I Need Thee Every Hour", Daippity = Diaper

--Evan gets these HUGE flash smiles after he eats, like "Ah, that was good."

--Lilia gets up on the couch and looks out the window to find Dada when she knows he's coming home from work.

--Everyone under 10 is "baby," everyone with salt-and-pepper hair and/or glasses is "Baba!" or "Mama" (Grandma) and everyone with white hair is "PapapapapaMeme!"

Beloved

"Let me start by telling you that many of the people that I live with hear voices that tell them that they are no good, that they are a problem, that they are a burden, that they are a failure. They hear a voice that keeps saying, 'If you want to be loved, you had better prove that you are worth loving. You must show it.'

But what I would like to say is that the spiritual life is a life in which you gradually learn to listen to a voice that says something else, that says, 'You are the beloved and on you my favor rests.'"

--Henri Nouwen

Jeff and I read an article by Henri Nouwen as a part of a class at our church a few months ago and I have never forgotten it. In the article he said that spiritual disciplines just boil down to making space to hear God's voice telling you that you are the beloved. Sounds so wonderful to bask in the glow of God's love like that, doesn't it?

You would think that would be easier than it is.

This week, I'm sorry to report, hasn't been all about basking. In addition to the glorious moments spent hearing God's voice calling me "Beloved," I've spent a lot of moments hearing voices that call me, "Exhausted," "Utilitarian," and (at my worst), "Worthless." Those voices can become such a spiral because when I feel worthless and that my only value is in what I do (as in, "Just shut up and make dinner."), I don't make room for the most important voice.

It's a loving whisper amid the demanding shouts of, "Prove that you are worth it."

But this morning, I heard it.

Evan Isaiah

I look at this picture, and I still just can't believe you're mine. And I think I should've written this post earlier because you've already taught me so much that I don't even know where to begin.

You were a blessing from the very first moment. We had just lost a baby and we were so sad, but we prayed and our friends and family prayed and God gave us you!

When we were looking for names for you, I remember telling Daddy that what I really wanted was a name that would reflect the great flood of blessings we have had in our life together. Somehow I wanted to show that you were the fulfillment of a beautiful movement of God in our lives. First he brought us to Himself, then to each other. Then He gave us a life and a marriage better than either of us had imagined or ever thought we deserved. Then He gave us Lilia, and we knew in our hearts that there was another blessing He had for us. That blessing was you, Evan Isaiah. And our hearts have overflowed!

Evan means, "God's grace" and Isaiah means, "the Lord helps me."

You have taught me so much about grace and about God's help. I remember being so scared of labor and delivery, scared that I wouldn't be up for the challenge of two babies, scared that I would be too tired, scared that you would have trouble nursing, scared of what the future might hold in every new way.

But you brought with you a whole new movement of God's grace, like a breeze from Heaven, for me. (That part reminded me so much of what your father has brought to my life!) My pregnancy with you was much easier than I thought, the birth was much easier than I thought, you were a great eater from the beginning and you were a great sleeper from the beginning! Silly Mommy for worrying so much, right?

I learned to breathe, pray, take one day at a time. I learned to have faith in God, faith in Daddy, and faith in our family. I learned that almost nothing is as bad as I thought.

And I learned to take time to revel in the glow of all the relationships in our little family. I relish my snuggles with you, and Daddy's too. But I adore the relationship you are building with Lilia. You already love each other so much.

Whenever you cry, Lilia says, "Uh oh! Crying! Baby! Sad! Binky!" If you're crying in your swing she will go to the swing, carefully put your binky back in your mouth, and then give you a little push to get the swing started. When you're happy, she stretches her arms out to you and says, "Hold! Evan!" She loves you so much, and you have big smiles reserved just for her.

We thank God every day for our family, and we can't imagine it without you in it. I love you so much, Son, and every time I look at you I know I have more than I ever thought possible.

Pearls and Swine and Who I Really Am

Okay, so I haven't blogged in a while. Or a long while. What gives?

I've taken a bit of time off to think about what I put "out there." In general I'm a completely open book. (I would be terrible in politics!) But I never really thought about the negative side of my openness until it was brought to my attention via my least favorite way to learn: pain. I put some things out there, someone judged me, my feelings were hurt.

But I love blogging. It keeps me writing. It keeps me thinking. It provides a fabulous record of my kids' babyhood at a time when writing in a baby book can seem overwhelming.

So, as my dear friend Charity reminds me on a regular basis, "What other people think of you is none of your business."

I shall blog on. I have many beautiful blessings to share!