Job title

I'm 100% happy with my decision to stay home full-time with Anna.  I don't feel that I personally could do a good job at balancing parenting with a full-time job (kudos to those who can!), not to mention all the other home stuff that I need/want to get done.  I'm thankful that this arrangement is possible for us.

I do have to admit, that every time I have to fill out a form with "occupation" it gets me.  I have a love-hate relationship with my title, I suppose.  I mean, I have a whole blog devoted to making our home, so I'm obviously excited about being a "homemaker."  There's just something, though, about being reduced to that single word that can be a bit grating, and in a bureaucratic form-filling way, makes me feel like I'm not worth a whole lot.  [Side note: now that I think about it, even when I was a "consultant," which sounds much fancier & more important than "homemaker" I didn't like being just that.  Perhaps the problem is more with being reduced to just one title.  Anyway.]  When I'm not filling out government forms, I like to refer to myself as COO (Chief Operating Officer) of our family, a role which includes all of the responsibilities of the homemaker, plus the power suits (loosely interpreted here to mean sweat pants).

All of that was a lot of rambling as an introduction to my point for the day.  I was writing an email to a friend, and elaborating on Anna's recent mobility.  After I typed the paragraph, I realized I liked the way I told it (you may disagree), and I also thought this was a snapshot of our lives I'd most likely want to remember.  

Anna is in fact rolling, and only a few days (we suspect) from crawling.  This mobility has added an important job duty to my daily life: furniture licking police.  Apparently Anna is developmentally primed to discover the world with her tongue.  Including the legs of all furniture she can roll towards (and man, is she fast).  We're trying to baby-proof the house as best we can, but there's only so much we can do (and she still likes to lick the baseboards).  Sometimes I just have to stop and laugh at myself for the number of times in the day I say, "we don't lick ____" and "_____ isn't for eating!" and move her back to the center of the room.

The practicality of this house with a rolling/licking/soon-to-be-crawling baby is the one of the only consolations to the fact that we'll most likely be moving next year when Justin finishes his degree.  I have a lot to say (and a lot of tears to cry) about leaving Ithaca and this house, but I can save that for another day.  For now, I try to be content in knowing that we'll be able to make another home somewhere.  After all, making homes is what I do.  That, and policing the furniture licking.

Stepping it up

Every time I get back on a blog kick, I realize the many things that I never took the time to post.  This is particularly evident if you look at the House Tour page, which still sports a healthy number of "coming soon" lines in regards to the current photos.  Actually, many of the "current" photos make me cringe, too, because we've come a long way from there.  Now that I've resolved myself that the blog is more for us to remember than for any external audience (although you guys are great, too!), I wanted to make sure things are a bit more up to date.

I'm going to start stepping up my act with...the stairwell.  As renovations go, it wasn't that exciting.  There's not a whole lot you can do with stairs (particularly steep, narrow ones like ours), and there's not furnishings or even a lot of decor to put in the "after."

Here's how it looked when we bought the house:

Then I got the brilliant idea that we should refinish the wood stairs instead of redoing the carpet.  I owe my sister big time for the amount of time she spent scraping those steps.

Eventually, I came to my senses, and we had it carpeted along with the rest of the upstairs.  We painted the walls & ceilings and painted the hand rail.  Some of the paint is chipping on the railing, so I'd like to redo it in some of the darker brown we have left from the front door.  When I originally did it, I used the chocolate brown from the den, as I didn't find it worth buying new paint for such a small job!

Given Anna's super-rolling talents, we now also have a gate at the top of the stairs.  I'm very happy with it thus far, as you don't need a mechanical engineering degree to get it open, and there's no bar at the bottom to make you trip.

The picture at the bottom of the stairs says "My home will have no windows, doors, or floors, nor bricks or mortar.  My only home is in your arms and no where else."

In other stair news, as I mentioned I'm working (when not derailed by leaking ceilings) on finishing the basement stairwell to make it less ugly and a bit more functional.  Here's how it looked when we moved in - and it's not much different now (except that there's a bunch of our stuff haphazardly stuck there!)

Stay tuned for that update...

"Lack of ongoing renovation," she says wryly

Yesterday, when I said that we didn't have much ongoing renovation, I wasn't TRYING to look for more projects.  The "luck of the Irish" expired though, and when I came downstairs, our good friends (who spent the night with us since their house is currently being packed for their move) said "...hate to be the bearer of bad news, but did you know you had a leak in the ceiling?"

I immediately thought of the rough patch of drywall that still needs to be finished, and hoped that maybe (despite the 50+ times they'd seen it before) they somehow confused that with a leak.

Nope.

(It didn't look quite as bad initially; this is after Justin cut a bit away to help with the drainage of the puddle in the ceiling)

A few lessons:

1) Don't announce on the Internet that you don't have any renovation projects left to do

2) Two years of renovation can immensely improve your reaction to discovering leaking ceilings at 8 AM.

3) Two years of renovation can immensely improve your relationship & ability to civilly discuss a leaking ceiling at 8 AM.

4) If you own a bumGenius diaper sprayer to spray your daughter's dirty cloth diapers, do NOT under any circumstances ignore the written warnings about turning it off when not in use.  Do NOT forget which way is off on the handle.  Do NOT leave pressure in the hose.  Do NOT give your husband any room to gently point out the number of times he gave you the aforementioned reminders!

On another note, at least I'll have a bigger reason to finally fix the ceiling & we won't have the other rough patch any longer!  

Luck of the Irish

For any die-hard fans left (I think maybe even my parents jumped ship after this 3 month absence...) hoping I'd post on the blog, today is your lucky day!  As I've written before, I gave up on letting the blog stress me out, and I don't have any expectations for myself in terms of when or how often I post.  I'd pretty much given up on things since we don't have a lot of renovations going on (or even left to do - yay!) and I wasn't sure if I wanted to totally change the blog topic.  I also - on a kick of reading about saints and their writings - wasn't sure that the only written documentation I wanted to create was about the purely material things like what color we painted rooms!

Then, last night, I happened to click over and read my old posts.  I had forgotten about so many things I talked about, and I loved being drawn into different moments in our life - finding out Anna was a girl, waiting for her to be born, reflecting on life with a newborn.  Although I've been decent (not great) at keeping her photo album and baby book updated, there were little things I remembered last night that I would have completely forgotten if it hadn't been for the blog.  So, I decided that I want to post little things (perhaps frequently, perhaps not) - if for no other reason than to remember them ourselves.

Given the aforementioned lack of ongoing renovation (although I am currently painting the yucky basement stairwell!), there may not be a lot of "finding former glory" in terms of the house, but I feel that in some way we're still "finding former glory" of authentic, simple family life.  Our culture is too busy and in so many sad cases, too broken to enjoy the simple celebrations together with family.  The modern world devalues the traditional family - and I don't just mean a political argument.  It's not "cool" to enjoy hanging out with your family.  Justin and I are intentionally trying to build a home that bucks that culture, so that our kids grow up enjoying joys here at home that satisfy them in ways that prevents them seeking fulfillment in the world's empty promises.  This doesn't mean to say we want to isolate ourselves from the world - just build a strong foundation that borrows the good things from our culture and resists the negative.  Granted, we certainly don't have it all together.  That's why we're still finding former glory - haven't reached it yet.

This weekend, my family visited from Pennsylvania, and we decided to have a St. Patrick's Day party!  In addition to my parents & siblings, my aunt & cousins drove up for the day.  We all sported as much green as we could find, and I made an Irish-inspired meal with a roast, cabbage mashed potatoes, carrots, and salad - and green lemonade!  My mom brought shamrocks for everyone to wear, and made delicious Irish soda bread.  Pandora radio (and my brother's talent on the recorder) provided the Irish jigs.

Home

While researching some quotes for a Church project I'm working on tonight, I found this one that spoke to my heart about the peaceful & loving home we are striving to create for Anna.

Try to put in the hearts of your children a love for home. Make them long to be with their families. So much sin could be avoided if our people really loved their homes.  - Mother Teresa

My brain is a little too tired to offer much comment on this quote {thankfully my little girl has a sleep schedule that lets Mom sleep in after late nights of computer time!} but I wanted to share it.  I hope everyone reading has a lovely, comfortable, and warm place tonight - surrounded by those who love you and by reminders of the One who loves you most.

Morning ramblings

Well, hello, world!  Given that my last post was the announcement of the arrival of sweet baby Anna, most readers (if there are any left) are most likely assuming that I have fallen into the black pit of new motherhood.  I am thrilled to announce that it is far from the truth.  Certainly, I have been spending an extensive amount of time feeding, holding, and changing my little girl, I've also managed to (mostly) resist the tornado-came-through-the-house look, sew a few gifts, welcome dinner & overnight guests, and host our annual Halloween party (in homemade costumes for the three of us).

Here's my magician and his rabbit-in-a-hat.  I was a playing card, but don't have any pictures, since I kept it on for about 5 minutes.   (This may or may not be related to the practicality of maneuvering through a small house filled with 20 people while wearing 2 pieces of poster board)

  I should clarify to say that I am far from super-woman, but have been blessed with an extremely easy baby who is already able to sleep 8 or 9 hours at a stretch, and, after the first few weeks of loud protest at being anywhere but in my arms, is now content to be in her bouncy chair/swing/blanket on the floor while I use the bathroom or other I-didn't-realize-the-five-minutes-for-this-was-a-luxury tasks.  So, I'm genuinely extremely thankful for my baby and my husband, yet admittedly struggling a little bit with pride over how well things are going.  Case in point, when we forgot about a church meeting we were supposed to attend, I had to bite my tongue from a defensive reply when one of the committee members said "isn't parenthood fun!?" (We were actually quite well rested, and attending a dinner at a friend's house with a happy baby in tow, having brought brownies made from scratch).  Whoops.  And now, instead of bragging just to that one woman, I'm bragging to the whole internet.  Double whoops.

I maintain that 99% of my success is an easy baby, and 1% is my motivation and ability to operate on very little sleep.  And 100% of both of those are God-given, so really none of it is about me!  Needless to say, I'm really into the whole thankfulness theme right now!

This should be no surprise, since my blogging pre-baby was also extremely sporadic, but I don't know what my plans are for here.  Some days I think I'll do a full revival, and other days I'm pretty content with just leaving it until random inspiration strikes.  Justin and I aren't really fans of having tons of Anna's pictures posted online, so it won't be going the "family blog" direction (although that's certainly not a judgement on those who do that, just not what will work for us!), and yet I feel guilty spending time writing about some little house project when there's something far more important in my life!  So, stay tuned for whatever it is that will come :)

Here's one close-up of Anna, since it would be a tease to not include anything besides her Halloween get-up.

Happy Thanksgiving!

P.S. Since I don't write much these days, tide yourselves over with my favorite blogger in one of her favorite pieces.  Perhaps the reason I'm such a fan is that it's called "Moms of Young Children, The Time to Thrive is Now."

P.P.S. I wanted to note that my baby apparently thinks she's a teenager.  She regularly won't go to bed until well past 11 pm, and I've had to wake her up on more than one occasion for a noon engagement.  :)  Needless to say she's still asleep this morning!

Introducing...

Anna Rose

Our little blessing was born last Monday, September 3 at 1:35 pm - Labor Day! - after an uncomplicated & natural labor.  She weighed 9 pounds, 13 ounces, and measured 20 inches long.  Although I'm very proud of myself for accomplishing the natural birth, I was more amazed by God's creation of the human body and its natural process, not to mention the miracle of her tiny body.  Justin and I were in awe throughout the delivery, and continue to be amazed whenever we look at her sweet face!

Anna is an incredibly sweet, calm baby.  I keep joking that I'm not sure how two type-A people managed to produce a type-B one.  She thankfully soothes easily, and takes a long time to escalate when there's something that she needs.  She does more squeaking than crying - sometimes to tell us she wants something, other times involuntarily (like now, while she's sleeping).  I've taken to calling her Little Squeaks; Justin's favorite nickname is Anna Rosebud (since she's tiny).  

As for me, I feel fantastic.  While I was pregnant, I thought that I felt pretty good - because each pound and symptom came on slowly over the course of 9 months.  Marginally, each day I didn't feel that much worse.  The past week's changes have been much quicker, and therefore demonstrate just how big of a difference there was!  Thankfully, I've had a great recovery thus far, and even the postpartum discomforts do not overshadow how great it feels to be without 25 extra pounds.  Don't worry, I still have plenty to loose (remember how big I was?), but I've been impressed how much of it was water weight that came off nearly instantaneously. 

Granted, not everything is roses and butterflies.  I certainly have my new mom moments, but I do have to admit that there have been far fewer than I ever anticipated.  We are thankful for all of the prayers that were offered for our family throughout the pregnancy and delivery - we have felt a tangible presence of God's graces as a result.  The last week has been the most incredible week of our lives.  We're so excited for all that is to come with our sweet baby girl.