Bluebells and Baby Talk

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I find myself:

::noticing God's glory

Yesterday was perfectly beautiful! Sunshine and a breeze, bluebells and fairy spuds, and a body of water begging our uninhibited play. We took about 300 pictures. I asked Mary Beth to upload a few. What you see above is what she chose. And you can't even tell it's bluebell season. We began the day with a long walk around the Bluebell Trail. There were plenty of flowers there, though it's not yet peak bloom. Then, we went and plopped down at our favorite creekside spot--the one that is  fairly short walk from the parking lot so we didn't have to haul all the food and water and photo equipment down the longer trail. And we discovered that a very large swathe of bluebells and trees had been obliterated. Not sure what "progress" is planned there, but it certainly doesn't look as glorious as the tableau God created. Makes me sad. And also determined to add some flower pictures to the end of this post.

::listening to 

rain and birds outdoors and utter silence inside. Yesterday ended in sleepovers--lots of children with "fresh air poisoning" are still sleeping hard this morning.

::clothing myself in 

Capris and a T-shirt  of Mike's. The temperature is due to drop 40 degrees over the course of this day. I'm sure my summer sleepwear will gvie way to jeans and a sweatshirt before the day is finished. 

::talking with my children about these books

Bull Run Regional Park (our bluebells playground) is right next to the Bull Run Battlefield. We've punged into a Civil War reading binge for the next few weeks. In addition to Ken Burns' series and this fun book to get us going, we're reading these great books, from a previous year's Civil War study. I started to cut and paste them here, but this post already has the potential to be ridiculously long.

 

::thinking and thinking

about babies. Kristin is due any day. I love babies. I love pregnancy and childbirth and, with one exception, I really love postpartum, too. I have a million things I want to share with her. Things that beg to bubble up and over in a rush of enthusiasm. I'm sure she feels like I've shared a million things. But I haven't. Probably I've shared about a hundred. The rest I ponder in my heart. (Or mention to Mary Beth;-). 

::pondering prayerfully

"We need saints without cassocks, without veils - we need saints with jeans and
tennis shoes. We need saints that go to the movies that listen to music, that hang
out with their friends (...) We need saints that drink Coca-Cola, that eat hot dogs,
that surf the internet and that listen to their iPods. We need saints that love the
Eucharist, that are not afraid or embarrassed to eat a pizza or drink a beer with
their friends. We need saints who love the movies, dance, sports, theatre. We
need saints that are open, sociable, normal, happy companions. We need saints
who are in this world and who know how to enjoy the best in this world without
being callous or mundane. We need saints”."
– Quoted by Pope Francis at World Youth Day 2013 Or maybe not...

::carefully cultivating rhythm

These are our blubebell days. This is Holy Week. We are going to have a new baby in this family within a week. Still, there is rhythm. The days begin with deep draughts of Jesus. You should see the view from my "Bible chair." Oh, wait, I'll show you:

So, it's a little difficult to get up and get going. I'd like to just sit here all day and look at that tree and journey with Jesus to the tomb and on to Glory. But the bluebells are blooming and the greatest feast of the Christian year approaches and, well, sitting isn't really for moms. So, the rhythm of the ordinary--laundry, groceries, even some lessons--is woven into the extraordinary: bluebells, babies, and resurrection. 

This is a pretty amazing time of life.

::creating by hand

over the winter, I created a workshop. I poured heart and soul into it and I felt God's hand guiding mine as I typed. It was a pretty wonderful creative experience. The workshop is nearly over and I can honestly say I've never spent a lovelier, more Spirit-filled time online. 

And now that those words are all said, I'm turning my attention to baby sewing and baby knitting that didn't happen. Maybe, just maybe I'll get some of it finished before our granddaughter appears.

 ::learning lessons in

community

::encouraging learning 

in time management.  Mary Beth is taking classes at our local college for dual enrollment credit. I consider these classes to be such a great gem in our high school homeschool experience. I am able to guide them very practically through the acquisition of skills necessary to succeed in college. She's been a joy to work with and her classes this semester have been thoughtfully presented. Still, learning to balance un moveable deadlines is a skill that homeschoolers don't have have. Until they do;-).

::clicking around

So, I've had very little online time at all this year. I spent January and February really focused on writing the workshop. I spent March on the workshop and some very intense weeks traveling back and forth to Charlottesville. And April? April is whipping by in a blur of bluebells and (hopefully soon) baby. The full step back from the online world has yielded some unexpected perspective. 

About 4 years ago, the internet didn't seem like a very friendly place to me. I had grown wary of nearly every click. Comboxes were especially terrifying. I tried to navigate around those uneasy feelings and I kind of limped along on old paths. With this break, I've had a chance to reframe from focus, to come back and explore and discover the online world of motherhood anew. I've also broken in a new computer and it doesn't know any of the old, haunting places. I'm visiting a few, friendly, familiar places and I'm finding some new-to-me ones. I'm even venturing into comboxes and enjoying conversation in mine. Mostly though, I'm limiting myself to just a few minutes a day and I'm very intentional about spending those moments only in places that encourage me and challenge me to better live my vocation. What are some of your favorite places to visit online?

::begging prayers

for Michael and Kristin and Baby Girl.

for cancer patients and for all the people who love them. Cancer is a hideous, horrible disease and watching it devour someone you love is incredibly painful.

for all the intentions of our prayer community. (I promise to be more faithful to our weekly posts, starting this week!)

For college students, especially the ones who are lonely and feel forgotten.

::keeping house

We managed to pull off some of my lofty Lenten cleaning plans. The garage is in great shape, comparatively speaking. We've deep cleaned some cabinets and closets and Ithought I had the laundry monster under control. Last night, though, I noticed that it has reared its ugle head  yet again in the little girls' room. I think they just have way too many clothes. Or something. I'm not sure what.

::crafting in the kitchen 

I think it's a good day to come up with an Easter menu. Got any great ideas?

::loving the moments

When I can sit in the sun with a friend and watch my kids romp in the water. Love those moments so very much!

::giving thanks 

for Joy Messimer, who took my Restore Workshop ideas and made something tangible and beautiful of the words. She's such a blessing.

living the liturgy

These are very liturgically dense days. The altar serving schedule, the youth group schedule, the straddling still between two parishes and the wanting to be at the basilica downtown, but not wanting to be too far should Baby Girl decide that Easter is a great birthday--it doesn't get much richer than this, if only I see the richness and not mistake it for complicated tangles.

::planning for the week ahead

The bluebells.

Easter.

Kristin is due April 17th and they won't let her go more than a week, so... we're going to get to hold a newborn this week!

Celebrating Baby Girl Foss

Between trips to Charlottesville during the week that was, all the lovely ladies gathered to celebrate the nearly-here birth of Baby Girl Foss. It's almost time to hold her!

My sister threw an incredibly beautiful and super-sweet pink baby shower. It was lots of fun to eat, drink, and be merry as Kristin opened gifts. There weren't nearly as many handmade items from me as I'd imagined. She's not even here yet, and I'm already not the grandmother I envisioned. But I thought I'd sew all of the last three weeks and that turned out to be not the plan at all. I have several layette items cut and waiting, so I'm going to get busy. 

Karoline did make some very sweet self-binding receiving blankets. The tutorial is here. Don't believe that lady for a minute when she tells you it's a ten minute project. At least don't believe her if you're a normal, regular seamstress. Or if you're seven years old. 

Katie did a great job embellishing some cloth diapers with Anna Maria Horner ribbons. So pretty!

And, of course, there was baby's first book basket:-).

I did do quite a bit of reading this week. I listened to Bob Goff's Love Does in the car as I drove. It was nice enough to pass the time, but I don't really recommend the audio version. i think I would have liked it better if I'd just read it for myself. And, of course, I read Surprised by Motherhood. I talked about it quite a bit earlier this week. Do drop by that post and tell Kristin what how you've been surprised by motherhood. You'll be entered to win a copy of the book!

In the book basket:

Angelina Ballerina

Goodnight Moon

Pat the Bunny

Guess How Much I Love You

In the Garden with Van Gogh

Dancing with Degas

A Picnic with Monet

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom

Head, Shoulders, Knees and Toes

The Very Hungry Caterpillar 

Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What Do You See?

What have you been sewing and reading lately? Tell me all about! It's spring at last--what does that do for our needle project list?

Surprised by Motherhood

All during the Week that Was, in waiting rooms, while waiting in tiny exam rooms and wondering if we'd been forgotten, and on sunny patios while eating salad in solitary, I had a companion. In fits and spurts, and all out of order, I read Surprised by Motherhood.

A few pages in, the story was familiar. I recognized it. I heard in a lilting, lovely South African accent. Three years ago, as we sat creekside, Lisa-Jo with her brand new baby girl, and watched wild boys romp happily through the woods, I asked her to tell me this very story.

I'd just promised a mom with cancer that if she were to leave her children--if the unthinkable happened and cancer snuffed out life--I'd be there. I'd do whatever it was she wanted me to do for them. And then, I realized I had no idea what that was. So, on a glorious day, in my favorite place, Lisa-Jo and I sat and talked and talked and talked. She knew what it was. She knew it all too well. It was the familiar, often-played record of her memory. Lisa-Jo had lost her mother to cancer when she was 18. She knew exactly how it felt. She shared those memories with me and she told me something else--something I rarely heard from other mothers. She told me all about how she didn't want to be anybody's mother, how she came to motherhood much by surprise and how every day it continued to baffle, bemuse, and make beautiful her life.

Those musings are a book now and that book is lovely and lilting and lyrical as a South African mango grove. It's beautifully written and refreshingly honest. Every time I sat to read (and after the first few chapters, I read all out of order), I kept thinking that I wanted my daughter-in-love to have this book right now. Kristin is just weeks (days maybe?) from birthing her first baby. Lisa-Jo just might be the perfect doula, not so much to coach her through those hours of birth, though there are definitely words of encouragement needed there and Lisa-Jo has them, but to coach her into the new becoming that happens when that baby--naked and wrinkly and vulnerable--is laid across a woman's chest and forever embedded into her heart. A girl needs a doula for everything that happens after that moment of birth and 

Lisa-Jo Baker is doula extraordinaire. 

When we become mothers, when the first few stitches of that new person are cast on in our wombs, or in our hearts, we set our feet on a path that stretches into eternity and there is no turning back. We become for that new soul the person who will be there to feel the aches of both body and spirit, to feed the bellies and the minds, to kiss the boo-boos and hear about the front porch kiss. We walk that path with bloodied feet sometimes, stretched in ways we cannot have imagined. Head thrown back against the pillows we listen to suck and gulp in the dark of the midnight hours, baby gathering food and warmth and the very essence of unconditional love from our bodies and in that same place in the blink of an eye, we listen nearly frantic for the slam of the car door, the footsteps in the hall, the "Goodnight, Mom" whispered in a baritone hush. We are there for all of it. All of it. The glorious moments of the championship winning goals and the crushing humiliation of bad decisions. We are in it for life. 

And I remember often that spring day three years ago when Lisa-Jo let me see what life looked like if the unthinkable happens, and a mother is torn away too soon. She spoke into my fiercest fears. She poured grace, rich and honeyed, but sticky and messy, into the deepest doubts I harbor. What if? What if we don't get to mother forever? Well, then God works some crazy miracles and makes an extraordinary mother of the motherless child. Further, He uses her to mother weary mothers all over the world. This book is His gift to every woman who wondered if she really could do it--whatever the it of that mothering day was. This book is the gentle, lilting voice of a very good mother in the ear of every woman who has ever wished that someone would come along and mother her for awhile. Read this book and then pass it along to a young woman, ripe with child, who is likely to be very surprised by motherhood. 

If you just can't wait until yours arrives, you can read a digital sampler of the book here. But you're going to want your own. and you'll probably want an extra to tuck into the basket next time you deliver a meal to a new mama or a baby gift to shower. 

Would you like to win a copy? Leave a comment below. Tell Kristin what surprised you most about motherhood. Let's gather up a big, beautiful, maybe messy bouquet for the new mama. if you leave a comment, you'll be entered to win a copy of Lisa-Jo's Surprised by Motherhood.

Oh She Glows! {for Lent}

I was so excited that the new Oh She Glows cookbook arrived yesterday. Even though my fasting was made perfectly simple thanks to a stomach bug, I spent several hours in bed yesterday doing some planning with a new vegan cookbook that I'd pre-ordered sometime last year. Menu planning while fighting a stomach bug is very similar to watching hours of Food Network to distract from morning sickness. It makes no sense at all, but I've done both.  I found the Oh She Glows blog to be a treasure trove of inspiration and guidance. But really, I so prefer cookbooks to cooking blogs. I think my aversion to clicking and clicking again is especially pronounced with cooking blogs. However, I'm a bit of a cookbook addict.

This one didn't disappoint. I've put to paper three weeks worth of meal plans taken from this book. Already! I'm so excited to get started (just as soon as my digestive system catches up;-). I think it's going to be very family-friendly. I might need to toss in a chicken breast or a hamburger here and there if they start to protest about the lack of meat, but with Lent on my side and this new study to point to, I like my chances of going totally meatless more often than not. 

As far as sewing goes, you get fabric again this week--lots of surprises in the works. Some pink. Some blue. Some for Michael's baby. Some for Bobby's baby. Both Kristin and Sloane have great midwives and they're both getting serious about getting ready-- the Easter season shines bright with anticipation. And the little aunties are busy as bees in the sewing room.

What about you? Sewing plans for Easter? Reading plans for Lent? Do share!

A Baby Blanket and Some Pregnancy Books

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Last year, Kristin guest-posted and shared with us a quilt she was making. It's finished! She joins us again:

I started this blanket over a year ago, before we were expecting a baby. I was hoping to make a kantha quilt to throw on my couch. Now it’s the perfect play quilt, baby swaddler, mom’s-first-quilt-so-you-can-throw-up-on-it-but-please-don’t-rip-it-because-I-don’t-know-how-to-fix-it blanket. Truth be told, I had a baby blanket in mind from the first stitch.  

There are a few small puckers on the back that perhaps one day I’ll be able to fix. I’m still new to sewing and very, very impatient. Bad combo when creating heirlooms but we’ll see how this one weathers.

Lately, I’ve been reading about pregnancy, labor and delivery during every free moment. I have 3 books {one for each trimester} I’ve found to be comforting and helpful.

Bump It Up: Transform Your Pregnancy into the Ultimate Style Statement 
by Amy Tara Koch

This book was actually a gift from a close friend and coincidentally ended up being my first trimester bible, beating out all of the thoroughly researched and reviewed books I purchased or borrowed. As a primigravida who was not quite expecting that pink plus sign just yet, I was at a total loss when it came to pregnancy preparation. Koch has a savvy and chic way of celebrating pregnancy without asking mom to buy a new wardrobe or adopt a new lifestyle. She does not dwell on morning sickness. Instead, she explains how to cover up the appearance of being sick. I had a hard time in the first trimester, not only with nausea and dizziness, but with a thicker waste on my 5 ft body along with rashes and eczema that covered my face. Intentional meals were impossible to commit to and I found myself falling asleep before dinner. Low self-esteem and guilt does not mix well when you’re embarking on one of the biggest blessings of your life. This book helped me get out of the hole I buried myself in and enjoy the first semester. It also has advice for each trimester so I'm still reading through it today.

Active Birth: The New Approach to Giving Birth Naturally
by Janet Balaskas {Intro by Michel Odent}

During the end of my second trimester, I grew a deep curiosity for labor and delivery. Suddenly, I realized that this baby has to come out somehow! As far as labor books go, Active Birth is probably my favorite. Balaskas lays out basic information and applies common sense and simple physics to childbirth. Although the book is a bit dated, so is natural childbirth.

Even if you have no interest in natural childbirth, I think it’s important to know basic anatomy of a woman with child and how to aid labor instead of work against it. I think it will make a difference to be aware of and understand what is happening physically instead of solely trying to manage my labor pains.       

Hypnobirthing: The Mongan Method
by Marie F. Mongan

Hypnobirthing is the latest craze in the birthing world. What I love about this book is that Mongan breaks down the phases of labor slowly, detailed and deliberately. This is a great third trimester book because it feeds the part of my mind craving more information without being overwhelming or redundant. The tone of the book is also clear and decisive. For example, she writes “You will be relaxed… You will experience…” There’s no ambiguity or speculation.

Personally, I’m open to a changing birth plan and I don’t need a book or a doctor to convince me that I want this baby to have a safe birth. We, as expecting parents, are gradually gaining more confidence. I’m secure in one thing: Michael will be ready. He’s very quick in reactive situations... it must be a big brother thing. I, on the other hand, react passively and slowly. Hopefully we'll be a winning combination. 

Next on the sewing list is a receiving blanket! I guess we'll need a few of those?

What are you sewing and reading this week? I really do want to hear all about it!

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