"helpppppp!"

library + screaming baby = no fun at all! especially when it happens after you've gathered all of your books, but before you've made it to the front to check out. even worse when you reaaallllly want to get the books and aren't willing to leave them on the table you've stacked them on. and the real kicker, once you make it all the way to the front of the library to check out and they take the basket away that you FINALLY found to assist you in carrying all of the books, and you are left with a baby, his diaper bag, and a stack of books almost as tall as you are with no bag or basket or buggy to carry them out with. but, the best part is when you ask desperately if the librarian has a bag (or 20) that you can use to carry your books out in and he says, "we can sell you one for $4." and you are sure he then whispers "sucker!!" under his breath... 

routine

routine has been our friend over the past 3 months with noah. it got him sleeping through the night and made him a much happier baby during the day. this past week, though, sadly enough, our routine has gotten all messed up. we have been taking care of my two youngest sisters while the rest of the family is over seas...which has meant sleeping in a different place, getting up earlier (to get the girls to drama camp), and eating at different times. none of which has worked in our favor. over the weekend, noah decided that he had had enough and has been, i'm pretty sure, the fussiest baby in the whole world. he eats, cries, sleeps, cries, and cries some more. if we put him down anywhere to play or just to hang, he freaks out. it's terrible... i'm going to try hard to get him back to our normal routine over the next few days, if i make it through. ryan is working like a mad mad this week (from about 5 am til 6 or so pm), so he won't be around to keep me grounded. :/ some days i can barely handle all of this time with noah by myself... i don't know how single moms/dads do it!! 

Top 7 Things I Miss About Being Pregnant

7. How amazing food tastes

6. The way people think you look cute with a huge belly...not so cute when you aren't preggo

5. Can you say "baby" shower? Presents are fun any time of the year, but baby presents are ESPECIALLY fun!

4. Stretchy pants

3. The hands-freeness of it all (imagine trying to carry two bags of taters with you everywhere you go...inside a huge, awkward box thing with a handle. that's me with noah most days!)

2. Daily massages-shoulders, feet, back--yes please!!

1. Having an excuse for eating anything I want...whenever I want it.

image?

"there is no ordinary man. you have never met a mere mortal."

i started reading a book recently and came across this quote. what a thought? i have been a follower of Christ almost my whole life, and a believer in the truth of the scriptures...but i'm not sure if this thought ever crossed my mind. the bible says from the start that mankind is made in the image of God. but i'm not sure i've thought about what that means in day to day life. i'm such a black and white kind of a person... usually seeing the world as either this or that, not in between. and i find myself so often seeing people as either believers or non-believers...but all people everywhere in every time have some kind of mark of God on them. something inside of them is bearing the image of God. not sure what that looks like, or what that really even means in the fullest sense. but, at the very least, i know that it should have a HUGE impact on the way i treat those around me.

silly boy

noah has successfully mastered the 3 minute power nap. just enough time for me to take a deep breath and relax...

reflections

i feel so boring these days. i was wondering as i sat here what i was doing last year on the 4th of july, so i did some back reading of the blog. i was actually quite interesting back then... not so much now. i just don't usually feel like i have a lot to talk about (on the blog, or in conversations with people day to day even). all i do all day on most days is hang out with a little guy who doesn't quite know how to talk yet. we do have funny conversations, but i don't think he understands what i'm saying...and frankly, he just talks gibberish most of the time! seems pretty normal for a convo with a man, though. ;) anyway, i get frustrated sometimes because i'm around people i like a lot, but i have nothing to talk about. i end up leaving the talk sure that whoever thinks i'm the most boring person in the world...and sure they won't be coming around any more. but some people feel bad for me (or they are stuck with me because they're related), which works out nicely for me! :)

i kept trying to spend a little time today thinking about our freedom. of course, i am mindful of the many men and women who have fought (and are fighting) for the freedom we have in america. i am so thankful to live in the land of the free...and i'm so thankful for those who have maintained that freedom for us today. i wonder what it will be like when noah grows up. will he enjoy the same liberties we do? i hope so, but i fear he will live in a very different america than we do. i'm also mindful of the One who has ultimately given us freedom. freedom from the law...freedom from our sins...freedom from ourselves really. freedom to live...not as one bound up in chains...nor as one with a huge debt to repay. i heard once, "liberty is not the freedom to do as one wishes, rather to do as one ought." i really love any quote that has a word like "ought" in it. you just don't hear that enough these days.. this sentence really struck me and has stayed with me for years, really. and i hope to somehow instill this idea in my children some day. i think the ought-to-ness comes from a heart of love maybe, something i'm a little lacking in these days....which means the ought-to's have suffered and have some how slipped in to "shoulds" instead. shoulds are bad... but oughts are not. there's a fine line between that i'm not sure i have quite figured out. so, why don't you just ponder that for a bit and get back to me when you have it figured out...

and, well, because i am a boring mommy afterall: noah is turning in to one fun kid to be around. he is starting, day by day, to be more interactive and to be a little happier baby...though, he certainly still has his moments. he spent the day yesterday with pop and bb, and they wore him out! they said he slept most of the time, but he came home sleepy and has been sleepy all day!! we all (ryan, noah and i) got up early this morning and went for a nice little jog together. we checked out the local farmer's market (a little over a mile from our house), and then headed back home, hopped in our car and headed to the REAL farmer's market downtown. i have been wanting to check out both of them for over a year, so i was super excited that we finally got to go. i love the idea of homegrown veggies and fruits and handmade items. i would have fit right in to the early 1900s! we got a great deal on some freshly picked tomatoes and peas! i can't wait to cook them. we also got some homemade pepper relish that i'm pretty jazzed up about... and, last but not least, we got some great ideas of more things to make on my handy-dandy embroidery machine. i've had fun working on it lately! and, ryan's mom is letting me borrow a book she has that tells you how to do pretty much everything with the machine...which is nice, because i have been kind of making it up as i go. as it turns out, i wasn't doing it quite right. but now, i'm a little more in the know about what needs to be going on. hopefully i can do a little more work this week....if a certain little man in my life wouldn't have some kind of 6th sense way of knowing that my full attention is directed elsewhere. i'm not sure how he knows...but he knows.

ryan and i have been having little conversations about how far we want to space our children (if it were up to us...). i read an article in "parenting" magazine that was giving suggestions, which made me think about it a little more than i had been. i noticed lots of pregnant women out today with their little kiddos...most of them seemed to have 3 or 4 year olds, which is a lot of space. so many factors to consider. what do you out there in the blog world think? what's the best space? we want them to be close...but then do we really want 2 in diapers? i can't really imagine being pregnant again in the next year or so...but then, that's how babies come..hmmm

no fear

the other evening, ryan and i decided to jump on the trampoline with my youngest sister, mollie. we all eagerly climbed up and started jumping. very quickly ryan had us bouncing all over the place...we tried to play the game "crack the egg" with me being the first egg-cracked in less than 10 seconds, and mollie being the second egg-cracked in less than 5 seconds. then ryan got down in the egg position and we could do nothing to crack him. in fact, with both mollie and i jumping with all of our might, he was barely even getting any air. it was pitiful! after a few minutes of this, he decided he would rather jump than be an egg, so he got up and started bouncing like crazy. which, after like a minute, began to scare me quite a bit. i had no control over where i was bouncing and i was afraid he was going to throw me right off the side, accidently of course...so, i sat down and held on to the side for dear life. mollie, who is 14 now, looked at me and said, "when did it happen that we started being afraid of doing things like this? why can't we just go crazy like when we were younger?" 

what a question to hear from a little sister! i laughed at first, but haven't been able to get it out of my head. when did i grow up and stop having fun? i would love to blame it on being a mom...but i'm afraid it came long before that...i want to shake loose and not be afraid again...