Bad Idea, Worse Execution

As engineers, Joe and I are on the endless quest for efficiency (and sometimes safety). Because Joe is the trained professional, and I am not very professional, I come up with ideas that are efficient but not always cost effective or safe.

I fell down the stairs three times in Daniel's first six months of life - twice with him in my arms, and I have decided to avoid carrying bundles down the stairs when possible. This includes the laundry. Initially, I started pushing the basket down the stairs. This was great until the final three stairs where a good bounce would build up and the basket would tip and fly into the wall.

This led me to cleaner method of dropping it off the banister from the second floor to the first floor on the rug. When dropped flat on its bottom, the basket remained intact and most the clothes stayed in the basket. Three weeks ago, Joe thought this method was a great idea, but dropped it on its side, causing a hairline fracture.

This morning the idea got even worse. I dropped the basked over the banister while Daniel was watching. I don't care how old or young a boy is, things that go BOOM SPLAT! are fascinating and delightful. Daniel like lightening found his pack of diapers to launch over the banister. He was too short and the bars were too tight, so his efforts were quashed.

When we went down to assess the results, the hairline fracture had become a full-blown system failure. There is no telling what new things will be found on the floor below the banister in the weeks to come. Maybe Daniel will forget the fun we had? Doubtful.

Retraction: Joe never thought it was a good idea. He was just being lazy. My apologies, Joe.

Sidewalk Chalk

Biggest Fear

Job 1:
¹² The LORD said to Satan, "Very well, then, everything he has is in your hands, but on the man himself do not lay a finger."
Then Satan went out from the presence of the LORD.

Just when I bend to the illusion of self-reliance and control, I am given a rather brutal reminder of my vulnerability and mortality. More than that, I am shown that in no way shape or form am I the giver and sustainer of the life and health of my child.

Saturday night the three of us were in the kitchen preparing dinner, when Daniel pulled a hot pot off the stove. We were both two steps from him, but completely missed his quick grab. When I heard the thud and splash, I whipped around in terror that he was doused in hot oil, only to slip and fall on my back with my leg landing over top the rim of the pot. I began shouting for Joe to help us, and I'm sure the horror in my voice and Daniel's cries will not quickly be forgotten.

Joe scooped up Daniel and put him in the kitchen sink to cool him down and assess the injuries. Praise God, the oil had not yet reached a scalding temperature and there were only two blistering burns, one on his foot and forearm, which we assume were from contact with the pot. He was wearing long pants and a t-shirt and it seemed his security blanket had taken on most the oil from the pot. The damage could have been so tragic, and by Gods grace alone, we were spared.

Still, we went to the ER just to make sure the burns were not serious, and I took Daniel to the UNC burn clinic on Monday per the doctor's recommendation. Most likely Daniel will not have any scars. The large pot ring on the back of my leg will probably scar some as it was both burned and cut, but it seems we both came out of the incident with minimal physical injury.

That night, I couldn't sleep but replayed the evening over and over - not just what happened but what could have happened. I took a blanket into Daniel's room and bundled up on the floor beside his crib, hoping his breathing would comfort me. I prayed prayers of thanksgiving. I had the feeling I would never forgive myself for this. There was absolutely no excuse for using the front eye of the stove when I had previously considered that I should start using the back because of Daniel's height and curiosity.

Sunday morning, I took off the burners and Joe stored them away for a time 18 years from now when our kids have gone to college and there are no little fingers reaching up, or rambunctious tussling barreling through the house. I wasn't able to tell our parents about the incident for several days because I dreaded their initial reaction... not of judgment but of the shared horror that was already overwhelming me. I just felt so guilty and ashamed and still frozen in the what-if. Surprisingly, that was not the response I got. Yes, they were concerned for us and upset that we had to experience this and grateful that it was not worse (and wishing I had called sooner), but the mamas also sighed in empathy and shared their own moments of fear during freak accidents and lapsed judgment.

Its seems that the biggest fear of motherhood - something happening to a child - is completely founded. Something could happen at any given moment, two feet away during a perfectly normal evening. So how does a parent not live in this paralyzing fear? I'm not sure. I'm a bit immersed in it right now. As parents, we have a charge to protect our children and give them a safe environment to explore and grow. However, we cannot be omnipresent or perfect in our attempts to protect. That pressure is too great a burden to bare.

I am brought back to the story of Job. Job lost family, friends, and wealth. None of this was done by the hand of God, but none of it was done without the permission of God. Depending on your view of God, this could be the most terrible thing ever or the most freeing thing ever. As I have said before, God loves the people I love even more than I do. His plans for them and myself are greater than my own plans. I must trust in His authority over life and health and death, because 1) He has proved Himself, and 2) In whom else could I possibly put my trust? Not me. Bob Dylan sang, "you're gonna have to serve somebody." Serve... trust... same thing. If you trust someone, you do what they ask. Yes, I just brought up that nine letter word of dread: obedience.

Does this mean I think my family is safe from physical and emotional harm just because I am trying to trust and obey God? Wow. I have to say a resounding "No."

I love the line from "The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe" where Mr. Beaver is telling Lucy about Aslan. "Safe" said Mr. Beaver; "don't you hear what Mrs. Beaver tells you? Who said anything about safe? 'Course he isn't safe. But he's good. He's the King, I tell you." In the final book of the Chronicles of Narnia, The Last Battle, the entirety of Aslan's kingdom is ushered into a new land. Before this point, there were great losses, immense pain and suffering, yet it was all oriented towards this point of redemption. "All their life in this world and all their adventures in Narnia had only been the cover and the title page: now at last they were beginning Chapter One of the Great Story which no one on earth has read: which goes on forever: in which every chapter is better than the one before." We place so much gravity on this life, and that's exactly what it is - a grave thing. Personally, I go through life trying to shut out the concept that I will not live forever. I fear the unknown.

I know this reasoning of trusting in God because He is good - despite that good and bad things happen to people, especially people who we earnestly don't see how they could ever deserve it - drives people with and without faith in Him absolutely crazy. I too wonder is brushing everything off with, "It must have been God's will", not just dismissing personal responsibility? If scripture at any point excused us from responsibility from our actions, then I'd run the other way. If anything, Scripture seems to say, because of the grace you have and will be given, because you are forgiven, because of who Christ is, step it up! - Not to earn approval or salvation but because you have already been proven and salvation is yours.

So bringing it back to this past Saturday, can I find forgiveness? I have to, otherwise I am claiming to be God or rather to be beyond His reach, or that somehow my position is greater/worse than all other people who failed their children in some way. I'm just not that big of a deal, honestly. Am I going to just let Daniel romp around freely and trust that God's will be done? Are you kidding me? I took off the burners. I am going to buy an oven latch, maybe a bumper too. However, there has to be balance. In my gratitude for second chances, I will step up my game. In my humility, I will stop thinking I can control it all. The only way to not live in the fear of injury and yes, death is to hope - hope in what's to come.

Identity Crisis of Faith

In the past 28 months, I've been pregnant for just under 50% of the time, with one healthy boy to show for it. Of the time I was not pregnant, I was sleep deprived for about 25-30% of the time. Part of that time was coupled with feeling nearly driven over the edge by insomnia. So to ask me, "are things getting back to normal?", I'd have to ask you, "normal as in sleep deprived adjusting to being a new mama normal or normal as in pre-hormonal roller coaster normal?", because I am not sure that I can ever return to normal or even know what my new normal is. The past 28 months have been anything but normal, but I am definitely settling into whatever this is.

The old normal extends back 2 1/2 years to just before I was wrapping up writing and defending my dissertation. I was all about two things really: school and pottery. Okay, maybe there was a third obsession. I was preoccupied with answering the following: How do I reconcile the implications of earning a PhD in Engineering with the implications of wanting to be a stay at home mom? In fact, throughout pregnancy I struggled with answering that question and trying to wrap my heart and head around this complete shift in how I viewed my own value as a wife and an individual. Was being a mom enough? Was folding laundry as important as doing research? Was I wasting my education? Would I ever rebound from the sudden brain loss of pregnancy? (NO. I have only lost more since!) Would I still respect myself?

Three years before this, I was struggling to reconcile my love for international missions and its abandoned path due to Joe's leaving seminary and his strong belief that we were supposed to live in Raleigh, NC. I had spent two summers in Romania before we got engaged, and Joe had entered a seminary program that would send us to China or India for two years. I thought it was our mutual desire and calling to missions that initially drew us together. It took me six months into our marriage to finally embrace that the depth of my faith and the importance of my calling was not equal to the grandeur of the actions I was taking to live it out. Rather my love of Christ was only to be deepened by the continued recognition and surrender of my own pride and recognition that a faith that cannot be lived out in the mundane ins and outs of a normal day, in a normal job, doing normal things is indeed no faith at all.

Now my normal is struggling to reconcile my ideas of what a good mother is and does with how I mother. I was a future mom of two, and now I am back to being a mom of one. I absolutely love my current place in life but desire to expand the family and am not sure I am a good enough mom to handle it. I toss around ridiculous questions. Does having two miscarriages in four months make me less of a woman? Is it bad that I am really enjoying not being pregnant and my new-found freedoms as Daniel grows? Gosh, I sure hope my performance rating as a mom is not indirectly proportional to the number of boo boos Daniel has incurred or directly proportional to the number of books we read this week. Being a student was great, I got grades for everything and I knew exactly where I stood. No one says, "B plus work, mama. Why don't you work on expanding your repertoire of daily play activities? Oh, and maybe try to ease off on the Little Debbie Brownies..." Obviously, this is a completely ridiculous train of thought. God has given me the child I need and given Daniel the mama he needs. My calling is to train him and raise him up with a proper perspective of God and his own identity so that he will be prepared to through his own life's changes, transitions and struggles and come out with a deep faith and love for Christ. The only way to assess whether or not I've succeeded is to watch his life. Proverbs 22: 6 says, "Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it." The food, books, play activities and parenting styles are important, but not what I should be centering motherhood on.

So you see, normal for me is the endless struggle, no matter what place in life I am in, to have a correct view of my identity and to understand that my value is not purely tied to gifts, abilities, and what I am doing. The deal is, I could let my identity be driven by my successes and failures and the importance of my work in the eyes of society. However, that is a frightening road to travel on. There are far more failures than successes and there are always people doing a better job. The other road is the one of surrender. I surrender my own school of thought and view of my worth for what God says about me. It does not excuse me from working my tail off at the tasks He has set before me, but now the motivation for those tasks is not achievement or praise or comparison to other people, but obedience and love. 2 John 1:6 says, "And this is love: that we walk in obedience to his commands. As you have heard from the beginning, his command is that you walk in love." I find this incredibly freeing. I thrived in school, but I was constantly living in fear and anticipation of that number on the top of the page. It's about time I quit trying to grade myself on life and placing my identity in anything but God's love for me.

Hold My Baby While I Jump

I am not one for breaking and entering, but last night was was one of breaking and exiting. My brother came in town for a short visit, so I decided to take him to Logan's, the wonderful nursery downtown. We arrived at 5:36 pm and the gate on the annual side of the store was closed, the front doors didn't have any action, but the gate on the perennial side was still open. Andy suggested maybe it was still open (neither of us bothered to read the hours on the door) so we parked and walked on in and spent our time casually browsing through herbs, pots and late season veggie plantings. We didn't see a single person, and soon realized the doors on the back were padlocked. As we rounded our way back to the gate, we realized we were locked inside!

To paint a better picture of just how funny this was, I was wearing a bikini, a wet tank top and a beach towel around my waist. Daniel was wearing a long sleeve t-shirt and a diaper. Andy was in a bathing suit and t-shirt. None of us had a cell phone. The fence and gate were 8 ft high with spikes on top. There are fancy coffee shops and restaurants with women dressed in strappy sandals and oversized shades sauntering to their expensive cars.

Fortunately Logan's excels in outdoor seating displays, and up near the brick post at the gate there were some tall stools. Andy pulled up a stool and had me climb up on top of the column and leap town, towel a-flying, bikini a-showing, landing with a thud in my flip flops when he then passed Daniel over-top. He moved the stool back to the display and climbed the post (he is a rock climber and pole vaulter and laughed at my ninny-bagging fear of jumping down) before he too was free on the other side.

We went back this morning, and I promise we were getting sideways glances. Was there a video? Did they recognize the three escape artists? Was it just that Daniel was walking around barefoot and dragging his blanket on the dirty pavement? Perhaps.

Garden Update

Still growing: tomatoes, peppers, beans, potatoes, okra, carrots, herbs. Pulled up: squash, peas, 1/3 carrots (grew with better sun). Not producing: melons, pumpkins, zucchini.

Omar's Lebanese or Dutch Pink, not sure which, but it was AMAZING!

The tomatoes finished out their first big wave of production two weeks ago, but are still producing smaller tomatoes. I think the month of no rain caused a break in pollination, so I've started jiggling flowers again and it's working... that and the rain might have something to do with it.







The peppers will be the next big harvest: Bells, Jalapenos, Anaheims, Hot Banana, Sweet Banana, Big Berthas and Pimento (no pic). Most of these are new to me. Also, I moved many of these out from under the tomatoes because there was too much shade, and they have taken off! While companion planting may have benefits, there has to be ample room for it. I over planted my boxes.

The bean vines have cut back on production, but the new plants are taking off and hopefully will give me some more beans before the season ends. I planted some okra very late, and the plants are growing, but I am unsure if they will produce.

For the most part I have given up on the pumpkins, melons and zucchinis. The ones I started from seed were planted under pine trees which makes the soil too acidic and robs the plants of nutrients and water, which I was unaware of back in the spring. I may have planted them too early as well. I moved some to better locations, but it was so late in the season when I moved them, I'm not sure there is much hope for them, even though they have responded well to the move. The watermelon vines are flowering, but there are no melons. Next year we will till and supplement with lime to raise the pH to desirable levels.

The Goldbar hybrid squash was fine being planted early in the good soil, it produced a ton of great squash but finished production early. I have moved some other small squash plants to their old spots and am hoping to get a second batch of squash from it.

My next task is to do some research on fall plantings in the area, that and to watch what my neighbor does. His garden was amazing, and all he did was till and water (and not start from seed). Sometimes it's best to ignore the blogs (mine included) and look and see what's working for the people around you.

Day 1 Back at the Wheel

Today wasn't as rocky as I was expecting. I managed to squeeze in enough time in between grocery shopping and feeding Daniel lunch to throw two pieces. The first is a small mug; the second is a serving dish. I'm not sure yet if the leaf fits, but it was fun to play.

TMI Tomatoes

Because I have no filter, I'm just going to put this out there - no apologies. I have been peeing a TON. Today I went to the doctor to submit a sample for testing in fear of a recurrence of an infection, but all was clear. The funny news is, according to my doctor, my ingestion of copious quantities of tomatoes from the garden has most likely irritated my bladder. Don't believe me? Read this from the Mayo Clinic, go about seven paragraphs down.

So let this be your charge: share your tomatoes. Don't eat them all. While you are stuffing your face in defiance of my charge, be sure to set aside the seeds of your favorites for next summer! Why buy more plants when you can start them yourself?

New Plan

There is too much to do and so little time, but there is certainly enough time if spent well. With the recent life upheavals and bouts of minor illness, I severely got off my work game. The goal is to put in an average of 10 hours a week teaching/prepping the distance courses I teach for NCSU. This past month I have been far too shy of that goal only pulling about 4 hours a week. Also, I haven't done pottery in months, and hadn't done it since pregnancy with Daniel before my last short stint. I am hoping to get back into that as well, and motivating myself with a blog ... because that's just what I do. Schedules are not my thing, but goals are. Sometimes goals demand schedules.

The new weekly goal is:

Bible Reading: mornings while Joe showers, before Daniel is up
Laundry/Chores/Straightening: Monday mornings and daily before Joe gets off work
Grocery: Monday afternoon or as needed
Courses: 2 hours a day during Daniel's nap
Pottery/Gardening: Tuesday-Friday mornings with Daniel playing close by
Playdates: Tuesday-Thursday afternoons
Blogging: Late afternoons or evenings, depending on dinner plans, or during extended naps

I may totally ditch the plan, but hopefully I can get into a rhythm that works for us.

Working Form

I took two classes from Julie Olson while at the NCSU Crafts Center. This artist is full of great ideas and is amazing at challenging students to pursue excellence. The first time we threw something decent looking, she'd have us slice it in two to look at the evenness and irregularity of the cross section to help us find our weak points.

Once piece of advice she gave me was to develop a working form - a shape from which all pieces were to be derived. The vase to the left might be my favorite piece so far. I love the glazing (thanks to the magic of gas firing at the Crafts Center), but the shape is what counts. The base is spherical and the middle is rounded almost like a pregnant belly. I can picture the bottom third developing into a nice bowl, the bottom two thirds being a great start for a pitcher and the top third being inverted to form an interesting cup or serving dish. It could be thrown and split vertically to serve as a start for an oblong serving dish. There are endless possibilities.

The challenge for me now is to get enough practice at the wheel where my skills return and I am able to throw this shape consistently enough to where it feels like second nature. Julie told me that a potter has to throw the same thing about a hundred times to reach that point. Whew!

Hello Wheel

It has been a very long time since I have thrown a pot. I believe November 2007 was about the time my belly got too big to bend over the wheel, and soon after I spent most of my time breastfeeding and changing diapers. I've made several attempts to throw again, but nothing has really stuck. Daniel seems to finally be at a stage where I could potentially get back on the wheel and let him play in the room with me. This week I am going to attempt to still work my regular job during his naps and try to put in a couple hours with him in the afternoons or mornings, depending on what the week allows. There are two shows I may apply for this fall/winter: The Handmade Market and Rock and Shop. This would give me some good motivation to get back into a hobby I seriously loved.

Late at Night While You're Sleeping, Ikea Ivy Comes A-Creepin Around

I have not delved into the Ikea craze just yet - I don't sleep on an Ikea bed, I don't have predominantly Ikea kitchen utensils or closet organizers, and most likely no single item I have purchased from there has been more $20. I have been to Ikea in the DC area twice and the Charlotte location once; the last visit was on our way back from the mountains last week. If you know me well, then you know I get a little giddy at gardening stores (Logan's being a favorite of mine) and lo and behold, Ikea sells plants (albeit only 7 or 8 varieties) and gardning pots and stands. This pot and ivy made me smile and continue to keep me smiling when I hang out in the front room. I saw on a home decorating segment that every side/coffee table needs something natural, something with color, and light. I think the evening light hitting the sage color pot and cool green ivy leaves is quite sweet.

The Garden Helper

Daniel saw me taking buckets of water from his kiddie pool to the garden and decided to do the same.

Happy Places

When life gets a little crazy, I like to be able to draw up to my memory those glimpses of external peace and natural beauty. I have several etched into my mind: lying on a sea kayak floating in on the Chickamauga Lake in Soddy Daisy, TN, a stream crossing on the Firey Gizzard trail along the Cumberland Plateau, and the blue hole at Mowbry Park and pocket wilderness outside of Chattanooga. Each of these has people and life phase and emotions attached to them and they represent a respite in the midst of turbulence, whether an emotionally charged summer of unrequited love, a really strenuous 20 mile day hike, or a break from a long semester in college. There are others, but those three are strongest in my collective. I believe this photo represents another memory that will stick.

The Little Things (Another miscarriage post)

When you think you have moved on from the loss of an unborn child, you can let your guard down and be blindsided by the little things. The jealousy that creeps up has been hardest for me to deal with - you know the kind - a friend finding out the gender of her baby, overhearing a stranger's pregnancy announcement at the table next to you in a restaurant, seeing a family with four kids all close in age (even if they are pummeling each other and yelling as they cross the parking lot). It is all very confusing. I don't feel the grief and sorrow from the first week, but instead I feel the frustration of why not me?

I don't think you have to have experienced miscarriage to relate to this. You can simply wish you were in another phase of life: married, making babies, building white picket fences, hanging out at a friend's lake house on the weekends, or taking your third major ski vacation of the year, etc. We always want what other people have, and when we have tasted it, the desire can be even more infectious. I have learned in the past couple days that fist shaking, pouting, and snide comments do not bring restoration. For instance, when Joe asks during our hike in the mountains if I am doing okay or need more water and I respond, "I'm fine. It's not like I'm pregnant or anything", I am not exactly aiding in emotional healing, even if I am only joking around.

The only thing that ever successfully combats envy is gratitude. It sounds trite, but a grateful heart has no room for envy. Sure, a grateful heart can still experience relapses of pain and sorrow and sometimes need space from the reminders of a loss, but it does not brew bitterness and disdain towards others. I have been attempting to count my blessings and genuinely be thankful for what I have been given. I believe that for many of us happiness is a choice that hinges on how we approach life and what we've been given. Joy, on the other hand, is inevitable for a heart that is grateful no matter what trials and struggles come its way.

First Attempt at Canning

Left: Ace Bush, Middle: Black Russian, Right: Aunt Ruby's German Green

I have way too many tomato plants which means I have way too many tomatoes. Friends, you are welcome to come pick some, but I am assuming most of you have plants of your own. I have been broiling some with fresh mozzarella, jalapenos, basil and balsamic vinaigrette, and Joe and I made tomato and cheddar sandwiches yesterday at the beach.

Because I can't eat them all, I decided to freeze them in jars. However, since most of the work of canning was already done in preparation for freezing, I went ahead and completed the process. I am a little nervous about how well they will be preserved since this was my first attempt and I followed this website only loosely, but I look forward to using them in chillies when football season starts, which isn't too long from now!

I used a basic seven step process:

1. Sterilize jars and lids in the dishwasher.
2. Wash and blanch the tomatoes.
3. Slip off the tomato skins and dice the tomatoes.
4. Use a funnel to fill the jar with tomatoes, packing them tightly.
5. Add lemon juice and water (or tomato juice from the really juicy kinds) to fill the spaces.
6. Screw on lids and drop into a boiling pot of water for 35 minutes (for the 1/2 and 1 pint jars).
7. Remove from the boiling water and allow to cool for a day.




Left: Black Russian, Right: Golden Sunburst and Djena Lee's Golden Girl

Red Light/Green Light - When to Try Again

It has been two weeks since my d&c. The meeting with my doctor went as well as could be expected. The pathology and my post-op exam did not show any abnormalities. My doctor said that while some doctors recommend waiting until after the first cycle before trying to get pregnant for time to heal but primarily to be able to determine the due date, he was of the mindset that the body is ready when it's ready (and won't allow a pregnancy until it is ready), and he wasn't too concerned about being able to determine the due date. This was a surprise to me as I was expecting to be told to wait three cycles or one cycle at the very least.

When to try - that is the question. I wish I had not miscarried but currently do not wish to be pregnant. This may sound like a contradiction but not when you think of it in terms of the baby and the condition of being pregnant as two separate entities. I am sad to have lost my baby, but I do not long for pregnancy again just for the sake of being pregnant. It is a little strange after a miscarriage to say, "I lost the pregnancy." Really, I lost a baby. Saying, "I lost the pregnancy" makes it feel like less of a loss to me. Were I to get pregnant again, I would certainly be excited about the new child. Can the two really be separated like that? I'm not sure that they can, but it's working for me right now and may completely change tomorrow.

Anyhow, I am not pregnant and do not currently wish to be pregnant (today at least), but I do not feel like we should actively try to prevent another child from entering our lives. See my previous post on faith, fertility, and motherhood for more discussion. I have read that three months is the normal period for mourning over the loss of a baby before 20 weeks (aka a miscarriage), and I have a fear of getting my heart hurt again by another loss. I am struggling to see where trusting in God intersects with taking physical measures to care of my body and emotional health, so I guess Joe and I are left with prayer and seeking His wisdom.

This does not mean I am going to trust God to give me a healthy pregnancy or to temporarily prevent a pregnancy. There are several women in the Bible that God does promise babies to; I however, have not been made such a promise yet - about my pregnancy with Daniel, the two miscarriages, or about the next one. I am not going to trust God to work out my own wishes and desires. Plainly and simply - I am going to trust God. I trusted God with the last one, and though I lost the baby, I still can say and believe that God is good and He is working the miscarriage for good. I believe that God has better plans for my future than I could even dream to invent, and Christ has already died for me out of his love and desire to reconcile me to God, which is proof enough that He deserves my trust.

High Five

Our fifth anniversary was a good one. On Saturday, we loaded up the Jeep and drove to Shelby to stay with Joe's parents for two nights before heading off to Brevard, NC sans baby. We watched the King's Mountain fireworks that evening and the next day lounged around, ate a delicious home cooked lunch and took a short walk before Joe's grandparents came in for a visit.



Monday we drove to Brevard and had several hours to explore before we were able to check in to the B&B. We drove around the Brevard Music Center and to the Pisgah Ranger Station, played in the river, went to Sliding Rock and hiked to Moore Falls.



After checking in and showering, we went to Dugan's for Irish nachos and drinks. Our sweet tooth(s) demanded that we stop at Food Lion for some Bachelorette snacks. After checking out, Joe pulled out two ones and bought each of us a scratch seven card. Guess who one seven dollars? Me. That was a five dollar profit for each year of marriage. That was pretty great, but the evening was topped off when Wes, the snake, finally got sent home from the Bachelorette. Joe will fuss at me for saying it, but he was quite giddy and even did a little arm pump in the air. The next day I caught him smirking and he confided that he was just thinking about how glad he was that Wes got sent home.

Wednesday we did about several miles of hiking and climbed to John Rock, saw Looking Glass Falls, Triple Falls, Hooker Falls, and Connestee Falls. Triple Falls and Hooker Falls are in DuPont State Forest. I had read several years ago about how the state of NC had used its power of eminent domain to protect the land and shut out a sale to developers, and I was pretty excited to get to visit. My legs berated me for making them do anything more that walk the aisles of our local Walmart, but they will one day thank me. When we were finished hiking, we went on a white squirrel hunt and found several frolicking and munching on peanuts at Brevard College.



Dinner at Hobnob was phenomenal. We both had dill crusted trout and Sangrias and shared a free desert - warm center chocolate cake with strawberries, whipped cream, and a scoop of vanilla icecrem. We looked like a pair of ravenous wolves hunkered down over that cake and giggled our way through each bite.

Yesterday when we picked up Daniel, he laughed so hard when he first saw us. His face got all red and he was shaking in laughter. It was a great site. On the way home, we stopped at Ikea where Daniel ate nearly an entire piece of chocolate cake himself, and then cried through the rest of the store. He was so tired from not getting a good nap in the car. We hustled around like bats who accidentally flew into the wrong cave, trying to locate a couple items we liked and trying to ward off the intense desire to buy things we didn't need, and made it back to the car fairly unscathed but with a little boy who was done.

Being back home is good. The three of us dallied around Ace Hardware and Logan's over at Seaboard before Daniel's nap and gardening. This afternoon I have my two week post-op doctor visit and hopefully will get some answers about this last miscarriage, but most likely will just be given the how-to-precede-from-here talk.

Hello, hello, hello.....

On top of John Rock with a view of Looking Glass Rock.

In Brevard

We just left the wee one with grandma Dee Dee and have arrived in Brevard. This is where we will be staying!

In the Great Green Room

In the great green room was a telephone and a RED BALLOON...



This little boy is such a blessing in my life, and I know that having a miscarriage would have been a completely different experience not having him keep me on my toes. Today we went to the library for story time and then to Krispy Kreme for doughnuts. It was like getting to take Daniel out on a date. I loved how he was completely silent as he shoved the doughnut in his mouth and then was covered with so much flaky sugar that I had to take him outside to brush him off.

The library was teaming with impregnated women and strollers with chubby sleeping babies and kids all spaced a perfect two years apart. While it would be so easy to resent other women and families simply because they remind me of my loss, I can't live there. I feel like God has so richly blessed my life and he has given Joe and I exactly what we need. It is impossible to look at a woman and know the pain and long suffering she has endured to have the child or pregnancy she does. Many of my friends have experienced miscarriage, infertility, having to wait for the right timing or finances, the loss of a child, etc.

Joe and I were talking about how living in close community with friends can be a double edged sword at times. Community provides an amazing source of support. They mourn with you and celebrate with you and lift you up in prayer. The downside is that it can also be a source of pressure to conform to a timing and plan than may not coincide with God's timing and plan for your life. I feel a twinge of desperation to play catch up and make sure that second child comes along soon and that I am not left with only one kid before friends get started on round three. How childish and selfish it that? It just blows me away. I also am terrified of having another miscarriage, so that leaves me wishing I could not think about it at all.

As far as moving on and dealing with grief, I feel that whatever loss I have felt has been answered by gain in Christ. Whether it's through notes from family and friends saying they have been praying or through spending time in scripture, I feel strengthened and encouraged. Don't get me wrong... it still feels wrong not being pregnant anymore and I still think about it all the time. I imagine that won't change anytime soon.

Garden Tomato Sauce

In the pot from the garden: Golden sunburst tomatoes, Djena Lee's golden girl tomatoes, Black Russian tomato, Omar's Lebanese tomato, Ace Bush tomato, garlic, carrots, banana peppers (sweet and hot), yellow onion, basil, thyme and oregano. From the counter: olive oil, red wine, and a pinch of sugar and salt.