News! News!

To start: our big news is that now we are not three, but four!

By the grace of God, Adam and I are now expecting another little one, to be born in the middle of March, 2006. I would like to say that I didn't even have to tell my husband what was happening, he figured it out by just looking at the grin on my face. And he grinned back even bigger. Suffice it to say, Little One, we're looking forward to meeting you and loving you and kissing you and holding you and playing with you and taking care of you.

I'm tired, but happy. Most of the time. I'd forgotten what a drain it is to build another person, but it just seems that whatever I'm doing, and however hard I'm concentrating on it, half of me is somewhere else, committed to something else. Which I suppose is true. What I do like is the peaceful, settled, almost smug feeling of pregnancy - that repose without sorrow you see in some of the Madonnas . . . not the ones later in her life, of course.

Some of the time though, it's like having a neverending case of PMS. I apologise if you're one of the people I've been untintentionally crabby to.


Unfortunately, that's about all the news I can give you on #2. Brigid, however, having been out of the womb for a whole year now, is much easier to gather information on.

This week we went up to Mammoth with my folks, my sister and brother-in-law, and my brother. We stayed in a big cabin, each family with its own room. And this last week was the week that Brigid decided this walking thing was good for more than going between Dad and Mom, or between the couch and the coffee table. All of the sudden she was walking EVERYWHERE. It's a cute sight, this little tiny girl (at a year, she's only 19 lbs., but pretty tall for her age) teeter-toddling straight across the vast living room floor.

Other accomplishments from our one-year-old:

-new words: "up", "down", "duck" and "keys". There was a pond just outside the patio doors of our cabin, and Brie and Adam spent a fair amount of time out there feeding the ducks. Brie was entranced. This also led to her second sentence, which was much like her first. The first sentence, awhile ago, was "hi Dad!". The second was, "hi duck!"
-words that she's working on, but hasn't quite mastered: "outside", "all done" and "please".
-lots and lots and lots of intonational babbling and singing (the latter usually when there's music on)
-increased comprehension. I noticed yesterday that when I said, "Where's your dolly?" she turned and looked at it, and when I said, "Bring the dolly to Mommy," she understood and did it. That's a lot of comprehension there! And that sort of thing is getting more and more frequent.
-she's learned how to make kissing noises, and she coordinates them with pressing her lips against whatever she's kissing. In that order: smack!-press. She kisses us, her dolly, her teddy bears, her books . . .
-we gave her a soft doll for her birthday, and she promptly took it, kissed it, and fed it her bottle. I was happy to see how nurturing she was toward it - gives me hope for her relationship with her sibling, and it's just cool to see something like that and know that she learned that behavior from how we treat her. Makes me think, "yes! we're getting it right!"


Actually, the whole first birthday thing is pretty triumphant. I didn't expect that, but it's a nice surprise. Adam and I look at Brigid, at a year old, and think, "wow. We did it. She's still alive, and she's learned tons and she's just beautiful and smart and cute and glorious. Hooray! Praise Jesus!" I think this birthday might belong more to the parents than the child.

Also, all day on Brie's birthday I kept thinking (and saying, as Adam will testify) things like, "a year ago we hadn't gone to the hospital yet." "a year ago now, we'd just checked in" "a year ago now, I was in a LOT of pain" "a year ago now . . ."


Our time in Mammoth was wonderful. Our cabin was right on the edge of an alpine meadow, complete with lupine and Indian paintbrush and a stream running through it. We hiked there, and we hiked around Convict Lake and went down to Mono Lake and shopped and read and watched TV and played games and ate good food and stared at the mountains. It was a great vacation. But, as with most vacations, it's kind of nice to be home again.


I've decided that in summer, there's no excuse for eating junk food - but of course, I've only decided that this morning, and it's because I'm under the influence of a very successful trip to the farmer's market, where watermelons and honeydew and cantelope and fresh corn and peaches and all sorts of other things like that are on sale.

That, and we came home to a garden full of huge cucumber, beautiful purple bell peppers, and lots of little, red, Roma tomatoes. Mmmmm! I'm glad, because I was pretty sure I'd need a lot of help kicking the junk food habit I happily picked up on vacation!



Ah . . . but I do like being pregnant. It's such a lovely, expectant, hopeful time. Being Brie's mom has been one of the best experiences of my life, and I expect it to just keep being better. I'm excited to be this new baby's mom too.

All of you who so faithfully pray for us, please pray for this new little one too. Pray that his body and brain form well these next few months, that if there is anything wrong that it would be healed, that his whole gestation period will go well and that he would even now be being prepared for a life in the Lord's service. Thank you so much.

(btw, I use the generic "he" just 'cause it's proper English and, as an English teacher once scolded us, "there's no such thing as a heshe". We don't know if it's a boy or a girl, but we do hope to find out)

Finally, here's the coolest story from this pregnancy yet:

When I went to get my arms checked for the last time, six weeks after I broke them, they didn't give me an x-ray. Every other time they had, even though I told the technician each time that my husband and I were trying for a baby, and I could be pregnant. They always did the x-ray anyway. But this last time they didn't. And when they didn't, I thought, "I bet I'm pregnant, and the Lord's protecting our baby." And I was! And He was! Isn't that cool? It makes me so glad to know that our Lord is already guarding this child. I am very thankful to Him.

-Jess