Mother's Day Weekend Pictures

Updates All Around

1. We just got back from the "maiden voyage" of my parents' travel trailer in Prescott, which was awesome. We stayed at a campground at Lynx Lake, but it was the farthest thing from camping I've ever done in a campground! It was posh. Beds and couches, sinks and stoves posh. Definitely my favorite way to camp with an infant. And Jeff and I left said infant with my parents for about 4 hours yesterday while we went into Prescott and had a banana split. Then we went to Goodwill where I scored a cute shirt and a fabulous pair of jeans. Lilia did well during the day, but her nights were a little rough. So, all told, we're glad to be home. Pictures to follow.

2. Our offer on the house was accepted! We're on our way! WOOT!

Things from my childood I want for Lilia...

--A foundation of love for the Lord
--"The Baptism of Jesse Taylor"
--A sister :)
--Spontaneity
--A love of learning
--Books. Everywhere.
--Parents who care to hear about the friends, crushes, and general drama of Jr. High.
--Disneyland
--Deep discussions
--Shared adventures
--Camping
--Grandpa's Special
--"Front Seat, Back Seat"
--Reading aloud together
--Singing together (especially in the car)
--Cheesy Elvis movies
--Frito Pie
--Birthday breakfast
--The Best Christmas Pageant Ever
--Laughing loud
--Board games
--Deep community
--Love for a good story
--Inside jokes
--Church musicals
--Peanut butter pancakes
--The ability to figure it out for herself
--Old friends
--A treehouse
--Lots of animals
--Woods

Book Review -- When the Game is Over, it All Goes Back in the Box

Jeff and I actually listened to this book on CD on our California trip, so I don't have the pages in front of me to flip through as I review it.

First, John Ortberg. I love him. We both love him. Jeff and I read his book The Life You've Always Wanted and it totally changed our lives. It was like having a spiritual formation mentor who is absolutely amazing. His style is clear and comfortable and his self-deprecating humor is absolutely hilarious. The book doesn't just inspire change, it makes you really want to have coffee with John Ortberg.

I liked this book, but not as well as that one. To me, that one is the gold mine because that's the one that describes the spiritual formation process, which to me is the meaning of life. So where do you go from there?

When the Game is Over is essentially a book about priorities, about what Ortberg calls "regret-proofing" your life. Again the clarity and humility in the writing are outstanding and the concept is piercing. He has a way of making you examine yourself to the point that it makes you uncomfortable, which I think is difficult for a book to do. In general books allow a person to stand at a distance from themselves, but Ortberg's brutal honesty with himself leaves the reader with no option but to examine herself deeply. Which is painful.

Example: Ortberg refers to a discussion he had with some pastors at a conference. One guy asked "How's your church going?" He explains that that's pastor-speak for "How big is your church?" which is pastor-speak for "How important are you?" He goes on to discuss how tempted he was to lie in that situation to inflate his own importance. Painful? Yes. True? Absolutely. It's impossible not to relate when you realize that even famous pastors are tempted to inflate their own importance!

My favorite thing about non-fiction (do we call them self-help?) books is the aftertaste -- the thoughts that stick with you. In this case, the thought of regret-proofing my life has stuck with me. It provides a clarity that is extremely helpful to me at a stage where I'm navigating a whole new normal in my life.

The Alyssa Review gives this one 4 out of 5 stars, and I recommend reading it as soon as you're done with The Life You've Always Wanted, which has earned a place in my top 5 books of all time. :)

Midwives and Houses and Teeth, Oh My!

Three basically unrelated updates today:

1. Went to the International Midwives' Day Celebration at Papago Park yesterday. It was lovely and sweet and hippie all over. The best part was seeing Sue, our amazing midwife, and finally getting a picture of her holding Lilia. She has the sweetest, most calming spirit. That's definitely a good thing in labor!

2. We saw and made an offer on a house this morning. We love the area, we love the floor plan, we love the front and back yards. We don't love the super 70's kitchen but these things can be updated in time. We're learning not to get our hopes up with each offer in this market. We could end up getting many offers rejected before someone accepts one. This house already has one other offer in, so they're looking for our "highest and best." We gave it to them according to our budget. So here's hoping!

3. A wonderful Bradley friend, Liz, e-mailed and suggested that Lilia's recent craziness could be due to teething/preteething. (Interestingly, our amazing midwife, Sue had suggested that she might be teething when we were going through something a little while ago, but it had gone away on its own so I didn't think much of it.) I looked in our fabulous Dr. Sears bible of babies and sure enough it seemed that Lilia is showing many signs of teething. So I called the pediatrician to ask what they recommend doing to help her with the pain and help her sleep. I left a message with the triage nurse. Well, I got a call back saying I needed to take her in today! The nurse even asked how far we live from the office and made an appointment in like 30 minutes. It scared the heck out of me and I actually cried on the way to the doctor. Of course it was in the afternoon so I was flying solo.

Well we got to the office and our pediatrician basically confirmed what I thought -- teething a little early. Nothing to be worried about at all. I posted on Facebook asking for advice and many folks recommended Hylands teething tablets, which are homeopathic and said to work wonders. I went right out to Target and got some, used them tonight and Lilia is sleeping peacefully as I write. Thank you Lord, and thank you to all those who suggested Hylands!

Now I'm going to go sleep peacefully. :)

Update -- Becoming human again! Thank you, JEFFREY!!!

Well, let me just start by saying that my husband Jeff is the most wonderful person in the world. I married him mostly to get a closer look because I really want to be like him when I grow up. Most of the time I seriously think he should give some kind of class or something about being the best husband in the world. This is just one more in a long series of examples of his incredible ability to love and serve others (not just me and Lilia).

I'm just about ready to declare myself okay again, thank goodness. I really was starting to lose it, but Jeff has been amazing. He basically did everything possible to take 100% charge of Lilia and give me a break. He even gave her one of her night feedings so I could try to sleep (yes, she's still eating every 2 hours). And today he was absolutely fabulous as we went house hunting again.

And then I got a massage.

And then he took the baby and went to Bible study (after -- I'm not making this up -- baking pies for the potluck!) , instructing me to go to sleep so I can catch up a little.

So I'm going to hit the hay and get some sleep while I can. Thanks so much, Baby!!!

Exhaustion

The good news: Miss Lilia has really settled in to a routine during the day and is napping well. This is good because we need to be house hunting pretty much every day and she can generally just sleep in the car.

The bad news: She's back to eating every two hours all night and I am losing it. Jeff has come home and rescued me a couple of times, but I'm worried about him losing sleep because he has to go to work. The problem, however, is that I just feel like a 24-hour Denny's. And then to make matters worse there's some issue that is causing her to cry when she eats or after (we're still doing detective work and trying to figure out what that is!). So last night Jeff came home at about 11:30, when he used to find us happily asleep in bed, to Lilia screaming in pain and me near tears after trying to get sleep and failing since 6pm. He graciously took her and walked her while I cried in bed. The first couple of nights of this were okay, but I'm not going to survive if it keeps going!

It is very hard to keep any kind of perspective at all when you don't get a certain minimal amount of sleep, but I'm trying to hang on to some. Lord, keep me sane!

Pictures!

Brian and Fujiko and the girls with Lilia and Grandma Dowty.
Lilia and Sana in conversation.
Jeff and Sana cooking.
Me and the girls, with my girl sort of starting to fall off the end.
Bridgett and Lilia in the church nursery!

Good times. :)

Oh Blog, Where Art Thou?

In the words of Ferris Beuller, "Life moves pretty fast." (And so does this blog post because I have like 5 minutes. No editing, no overthinking!)

My life has, in fact, moved so fast that it's been very difficult to keep up with. Much less keep up with and reflect on.

First, big news. We decided to buy a house. I know my Dave Ramsey friends might hate me for moving our student loans into Baby Step 6, but at least listen to how it happened first, okay? Okay. ;)

For nearly three years we've been telling ourselves no, no no on buying a house. No matter what the market, we have debt and we've been following the Dave Ramsey baby steps which say no house until you're debt free with an emergency fund. Throughout those 3 years we've made great progress on our debt, paying off all of our credit cards, loans from family members and our car. We've also made the transition from two incomes to one pretty easily. But our student loans are huge and will take us several years to pay off.

Three things happened at once to finally change our minds about buying a house: First, our apartment complex raised our rent again. Second, we discovered that a mortgage on a house in the area we want to live, with a yard and three bedrooms, would be somewhere in the neighborhood of $150-200 cheaper per month than our new rent (which is very competitive for the area), including tax, title and insurance. Finally, we learned of an $8,000 tax credit for first-time homeowners (hello emergency fund!) and a generous family member offered to pay most of our down payment. With all of these in mind I called two wonderful wise friends who are on Dave's plan and told them two things: We don't want to do something stupid and we also don't want to follow the plan like it's a religion. Talking to them confirmed our decision for us and we went looking for houses. We have an offer in on one and are waiting impatiently to hear whether it will be accepted. So bring on the wet noodles, but we really feel we've made the right decision for us.

So, that was craziness #1. Craziness #2 is that we took little Miss Lilia Joy on her first road trip. We went to California to Jeff's parents' house to see them and Jeff's brother and his family, and also saw about a million friends and family members while we were there. It was fantastic to see everyone, but very difficult to travel for poor Lilia. She was so out-of-sorts the whole time! Poor Papa and Meme seemed to get the brunt of it, but they were absolutely sweet about the whole thing. They didn't give a word of advice, but sympathized and reassured us that babies cry and it doesn't mean a thing about us as parents. We were reminded how much we want to be like them when we grow up....

Lilia's cousins were so much fun, and loved her so much. It was wonderful to watch! And of course there were the doting grandparents and aunt and uncle, and great-aunt and great-uncle, and Meme and Papa, and our old Gang from the 'ville, and a million others. I'll post pictures as soon as I get a minute!

My head is in so many places that my blog needs to catch up. So hopefully another post tomorrow.

In the meantime, head over to my husband's new blog!

Fabulous!

Jeff and I went to the library on Monday to get a movie (or 5) to watch together on our day off. On the way out, I noticed signs for a "Culture Pass," which is pretty much the best program I've ever seen.

Here's the deal:

• Each branch of the library gets a certain number of culture passes to each museum or site (Phoenix Zoo, Phoenix Art Museum, Arizona Science Center, Phoenix Children's Museum, many others).
• Each pass gives 4 free entries to the site.
• Each pass can be checked out for 7 days, nonrenewable.
• Each patron can only check out one pass every 7 days.

So we got the one to the Heard Museum West in Surprise so I can go there with my mom this week. FUN!

More big brownie points for the city of Phoenix!

The Sexiest Man Alive

Need I say more?

MOVIE review: "Amazing Grace"

I rarely review movies, but this one warranted it (by the way, if you're wondering why I like everything, it's because I prefer not to review books that I didn't like!).

The basic story of this movie is one of those truth-is-better-than-fiction stories. As I understand it, John Newton, the man who wrote the hymn "Amazing Grace," was a former captain of a ship that transported slaves from Africa. After his conversion to Christianity he eventually renounced the slave trade. When William Wilberforce came to him for advice as to whether he should continue a career in politics or enter full-time ministry, Newton advised him to do the work of God where he was, in politics, and he also helped Wilberforce in his successful 20-year campaign to end the slave trade.

This story is so beautiful and the movie does a fantastic job of telling it. The script and acting are outstanding -- not overly sentimental, but not too "documentary-like."

This is a must-see movie!

Did you call yet?

I urge anybody who reads this blog to educate themselves on the genocide that is currently happening in Darfur and to call their representatives by calling (800)GENOCIDE today.

Lilia

If they lined up all the babies, in all the world, I would choose you every time. You are my favorite baby. I love you because you're mine.

Book Review: The Macho Paradox

After reading this review in the journal of Christians for Biblical Equality, I had to go straight to the library and get this book. In the end, I was not disappointed. I've tried to write this review several times and failed because it's difficult to narrow down what I would like to say about this book. The whole of this book blew my mind. The pieces it connected were so familiar to me that I couldn't believe I'd missed the whole picture. And now the pieces are many and the whole picture is... difficult to describe.

One of my favorite quotes is from the movie "Anna and the King." Jodi Foster's character is teaching school and she says, "Most people don't see the world as it is. They see it as they are." Unfortunately I don't think I can describe this book as it is, so I will have to describe it as I am.

Most people know that I was in a verbally/emotionally/sexually abusive relationship before I married Jeff. Because of my past, women regularly share their stories of abuse with me. And because of their sharing I have begun to realize the scope of the effects of men's violence against women. When I was younger I thought that physical violence against partners, molestation, incest and rape were rare. Now I know better. (To give you an idea of the scope, you probably know more victims and perpetrators of men's violence than you do left-handed people.)

I've also long known about the vast pornography industry, which is often referenced as "bigger than Hollywood." I had no idea, however, that pornography is mostly violent and getting more so all the time. Apparently what sells in porn is not simply sex, but men's sexual violence against women.

Finally, I've had years of experience with subtle sexism -- objectifying women, ignoring women, and "keeping women in their place" in and out of the church. I've been told my many a well-meaning Christian about how women are equal-but-not-equal, and as such are intended to have less decision-making power than men in church and at home. And media portrayals of women don't help the situation at all.

I had never put these three things -- men's violence against women, pornography, and subtle discrimination against women-- together. It makes sense, doesn't it? What do they all have in common? A low view of women. A view that women are essentially different than men in that they don't want or deserve respect and will willingly give it up to gain approval. A view that women exist for the benefit of men. In fact, statistically, men who believe in "traditional gender roles" are far more likely to view pornography on a regular basis, to believe rape myths such as "Every woman secretly wants to be raped" and "When a woman says no she really means yes," and to physically abuse their wives.

In The Macho Paradox, Jackson Katz puts together a clear and convincing picture of a society that subtly and not-so-subtly promotes men's violence against women. He demonstrates how our culture defines masculinity as inherrently violent and femininity as "less than" and weak. Is it any wonder that the United States is more dangerous for women than any other industrialized nation in the world?

The Alyssa Review gives The Macho Paradox five stars for opening my world to a reality I'd never recognized, and I give Jackson Katz all the kudos in the world for being a man brave enough to stand up for equality for women.

Definitely a must-read.