My Three Month Old?

This afternoon I opened my neglected email inbox and saw an email from BabyCenter that read “Your Three Month Old: Week 1”. WHAAAAAA???

Cecelia is 3 months old today!

I knew it was coming and all; it’s just hard to see it in print like that. It’s so…official.

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Cecelia is doing exceptionally well. She is such a delight! I am astonished daily by just how peaceful and sweet she is. Currently, she has a bit of a cold. Chase and I have been passing it back and forth this month. I washed my hands like an OCD fiend, but alas, she still got the sniffles. It’s very sad to see a baby sick. Green boogers dribbling down her face when she sneezes, coughing and sometimes choking on mucus as it slides down her throat.

Ick! (Being human is amazingly gross.)

But despite struggling to breathe through her tiny little stuffed up nose when she nurses and getting frustrated, even while sick she has maintained her demeanor. Have I mentioned that I love, love, love this little girl?

In the last three months Cecelia has learned to: laugh, to smile, to coo, to hold and lift her head and turn it side to side, to suck her thumb, and she has just started to notice her hands! She concentrates VERY hard when she sees one of them and she has been practicing opening her hands rather than keeping them clenched all the time. She has started to try to grab at things close to her too. It’s not coordinated and she’s seldom successful, but it’s cute nonetheless! She has been practicing punching the monkey on her play mat too. She smiles at herself when she sees her reflection and she’ll talk and talk to that baby in the mirror. Just this week she started to do the “superman” move on her tummy where she pushes up with her hands and holds her head up with her legs up too. It’s so cute!

Now, you must be nice to me when I tell you that Cecelia has been sleeping through the night for a while now. In fact, it was about one week after I got back from Seattle (back in June) that she was doing it consistently. Her cold did set her back a few times last week. She wasn’t eating as much and was waking up around 3 am. It’s VERY hard to go back to getting up to nurse a baby after you just accomplished sleeping through the night. I was so tired last week!

Cecelia is still loving her brothers and her Daddy very much. In fact, Daddy and Chase seem to be her favorite people these days. (Though Mommy and Cooper are still quite high in the rankings.) She gets so excited when she sees one of us or even hears our voices; she kicks her legs and squirms and wiggles and smiles. It’s just down right melty to your heart! I must say that a lot too because the boys have taken to saying “Oh my heart!” and pretending to fall on the floor in oozy gooeyiness. He he he he he…they are so funny.

I mastered the Moby wrap finally! It’s so great too! One of my good friends told me that when I finally get the hang of it, I will wish it legal to drive with it on. So TRUE! It can be quite a hassle to put on even though it is wonderful once you get it all situated.

Cecelia weighed in at 13 lbs this month at her well-baby visit! She handled her immunizations well too. I know it is a small thing, but whenever the boys had their immunizations as babies, they would look right at my face while the nurse was sticking them with needles as if to say “how could you let this woman hurt me like this mom?!” and I always hated it. Cried every time. I was not looking forward to Cecelia looking at me like that. But to my surprise, the poor baby turned her head as if she was trying to hide from the whole world when she was getting her shots. Poor sweet girl! I immediately put her in the Moby wrap when she was done and she fell asleep. I felt so sorry for my little girl. Shots suck, no matter how you slice it.

Her eyes are still the clearest and brightest of blues. I’m hoping they stay, but Chase had blue eyes until he was around 18 months. (Though, his were what I called “stormy” blue and almost grey.) Her hair hasn’t really fallen out and though I wished for a red-head, it looks like she shall remain a brunette (with highlights).

I can’t believe how fast this is all moving! But we are having a good time. Daily fashion shows and all.

Celebrating Summer Lovin’

This Friday, Jeremy and I will celebrate 10 years of marriage! I know a lot of my friends’ blogs have discussed love frequently of late, but hey, I can’t not mention 10 years! In fact, I’ll just mention my friend Nicole’s blog post about dating her husband this year and my friend Kelli’s blog post about her 12 year anniversary (and her celebration of subsequent anniversaries) and tell you that they make some excellent points about love and marriage.

I can’t help but think of the vacation we had planned to go on with our best friends, the Metcalfe’s to celebrate these 10 years. We wanted it to be BIG! I could have been cruising the Carribean this summer with my love…but we have Cecelia instead. Despite my sadness at just a date night instead of vacation, I am extremely grateful for our daughter. God knew we needed her even when we didn’t. She is such a blessing. She’s worth the loss of my cruise and much more. I know there will be time for cruising later.

On Sunday this past weekend, Jeremy and I were invited to a discussion panel of military families for the topic of Reintegration after deployment. We were the husband/wife, soldier/spouse with kiddos perspective on things. Many times people asked us a question about how we handled certain issues that popped up and our answer was based off an explanation of how we do things in our marriage.  Explaining the way we work as a couple was actually really encouraging to us and reminded me so much how blessed we have been to receive such excellent counseling and examples in our lives of what a good marriage looks like and how it works. (I know it’s nerdy, but at the bottom of this post are some of my favorite books on marriage.)

After the meeting, a lady came up to me and asked me a weird question. She asked, “What percentage do each of you give in your marriage? How do you split things up?” I said to her, “100-100. Because it takes both of us giving 100% to be successful in our marriage. We both are all in.” She was taken aback by my comment. The look on her face told me she had never heard that perspective before. (That or she just thought that I suck at math…which, I do.) Another lady at the meeting told me that she and her husband just celebrated 41 years of marriage in June. I rejoiced with her. Because you know what? It IS something to celebrate. Especially today in this world where it seems like everyone is struggling so hard in their marriages.

I’m not saying that Jeremy and I are perfect or that we have it all together. But I am saying we are blessed to have the tools to struggle well together. Ultimately, that is a gigantic chunk of marriage. It will always be a struggle because we are both imperfect beings attempting to live in the same home and striving towards things in our life equipped with different strengths and weaknesses and bents. We aren’t always going to get it right, but if we can at least struggle well together and fight for our marriage and our relationship, then we win!

One of my most favorite pictures of me and Jeremy, freshly back from Hawaii. Ahhhh…vacation looks good on us.

Our big anniversary has made me pensive. It has made me think about the legacy we are building in our home and the example we are setting to our boys (and eventually to Cecelia too). I have a joke that I tease Jeremy about often. I tell him that I do certain things and teach our boys those same things “for their wives someday”. I know it sounds funny, but I truly do think about those women and soon I’ll think about the man who will be in my daughter’s life.  I want my kids to choose a spouse with wisdom, but even more so I want them to be a good spouse. I know that starts with Jeremy and I and what we show our boys and Cecelia right now.

I also know that when our little birdies do finally fly away, I want to be in a place to bless them and send them off with great joy. I want to be able to eagerly turn to Jeremy and relish our new relationship afresh. I want to rejoice in our marriage then as I do now.

So, we celebrate. This is a season of our life where the day-to-day is a crazy mixed up bag of tricks. We laugh so much and we move so fast. I’ve been advised to drink deeply of these moments and cherish them close to my heart. I love to watch my husband as a Dad, as a man working so hard for his family. We have a lot of fun around here and that’s important. Not just for us to have fun altogether, but for Jeremy and I to even have fun alone. We have newly been talking about going to six flags for a “day-time date” and getting a sitter or even just doing a St. Louis themed day date around town one Saturday without the kiddos. We want to make memories of just us together too. And we all need a new and fresh supply of inside jokes to have together.

Here’s to the next 10 years Jeremy Nevil! May Jesus continue to bind our hearts together more and more as we grow each day. I love you!

My Favorite Books on Marriage:

Love and War by Jon and Stasi Eldredge
Intimate Allies by Dan Allender
Love and Respect by Emerson Eggrichs

Responding to the Culture of Today

The news of the horrific attack in Aurora, Colorado this week really made me think about the world around me in a fresh way. It wasn’t new, just fresh, just brought to the surface of my mind.

I’ve always thought that our culture is violent and growing more so all the time. I think it goes unnoticed, under the radar. We expect it, we don’t really interact with it. We turn a blind eye to it. We are just “used” to it. Desensitized. As a Christian and a parent, this deeply concerns me and how I’ll introduce and protect myself and my children from the violence our culture just accepts, me included.

An ABC news story I read said, “The number of casualties makes the incident the largest mass shooting in U.S. history.” “Witnesses in the movie theater said they saw smoke and heard gunshots that they thought were part of the movie until they saw Holmes standing in front of the screen, after entering from an emergency exit. Holmes methodically stalked the aisles of the theater, shooting people at random, as panicked movie-watchers in the packed auditorium tried to escape, witnesses said. At one point the shooter exited the theater only to wait outside the doors and pick off patrons as they tried to exit, witness Jennifer Seeger told “Good Afternoon America.”

It was so disturbing to hear people interviewed saying that they didn’t engage with what was happening right away. They thought it was part of the show. They sat there, just watching this violence happening in real life completely unaware it was real. Then, as they finally realized what was going on, they all tried to get away. Patrons said that there was an eery silence in between shots. No one spoke. The gunman never said anything. The people never said anything. It was just silence filled with gunshots and screams in between.

I think it is interesting that no one tried to take this guy out, no one said “STOP IT!” or spoke to him or called him out. Especially in the light of post-911 America, where it seemed to me that people did not want to be attacked and had a new-found sense of protecting one another. Not so here though. People had to be filled with insurmountable fear and this man was clearly deranged. He was aiming. He was going slowly. People tried to help those who were wounded and then left them because their own fear was so great. The news reports today are saying that many of the injuries incurred were from the people trying to escape hurting one another, trampling each other.

I am disturbed by all this and to the point that I question what I watch. Am I encouraging this? Am I feeding into this culture of violence? I know movies are false and just stories, but they have become so violent and it is clearly seeping into real life like an oozing sludge.

I remember when I first saw the movie “Man on Fire”. I left the theater DEEPLY disturbed. I remember being completely shaken by the emotions I was feeling and the depths of the violence I had just watched. I told my husband, “that was the most violent movie I have ever watched”.  And I say violent with intent on violence. I mean war movies aside, this is murderous.

I admit that I like action movies. Not the action or the violence itself, but I like seeing people rescued. I like knowing that in dark times there is light. I need to know in my soul that there is light. But the dark times keep getting darker and story is becoming reality.

How do we respond to this as a culture? Do we just sit back and write on our blogs about how horrible this is and keep on watching these movies? Or do we start thinking about the violence we are already desensitized to? Do we start questioning what we put before ourselves and our families? Can we take a stand? Can we call it murderous?

The thing that tugs at me the most, is that I could have been there. In fact, I could have been there with my baby on a date with my husband. One such family was. A little baby, about the age of my baby daughter, was at this showing guys. The baby is ok by the way. But still, this could have happened to any of us.

This shakes me up. I’m not sure how to respond frankly. I want to run away like those people in the theater. But realistically, how long will the fear and the shock that I feel keep me from the violence?

I have a feeling females will feel much differently about this than males. Boycotting a Batman movie will lead to many a heated discussion between husbands and wives. I don’t think that’s sexist and I hope it isn’t taken as such. I just think this will be an interesting point of contention in my home and many others as we struggle as men and women to answer the question we all should be asking ourselves: how will we choose to respond in the face of such horror? It will be a different answer by gender I imagine.

I hope I’m not the only person who is thinking afresh about such things. How are you responding?

He’s Seven?!

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Today marks a special day in our home: Cooper is seven years old! AHHHH! I cherish this little boy so very much. When he was born, things did not go as I planned. I ended up having an unplanned c-section after 20 hours of labor. I was so disappointed and so sad. But He was my prize. It was the first lesson I learned as a new mother; that my control over things is very limited. That things will NOT go as I planned. That what I want is not necessarily what I will get. And that in the end, I still need to celebrate what is good, what is beautiful, what is right and true and pure.

Cooper, your sensitive spirit reminds me to watch my words. I am quick-tongued and you have taught me to guard my mouth so that I will guard your heart. I know I have more to learn, but I am grateful to be aware of it. You love everyone you meet. Even our mean neighbor kid who calls you names, who is unkind to you and who is not so great a friend. You are a good friend to him. You forgive instantly, you never hold a grudge. You are extremely joyful. You wake up every day eager to meet whatever is ahead. You are always ready for an adventure. You love to laugh and you laugh LOUD. (That’s my favorite thing about you.) Your curiosity can get on my nerves sometimes, but I love it when you tilt your head and call me out when I’m irritated. You say, “Mom, I’m just really curious!”. Yes my son, yes you are.

You are precious to me. You are so beautiful and you are so amazing. I am a better person because of you and I pray that my heart will always be willing to hear you, to see you and to uphold how wonderfully and fearfully you have been made by God.

What a gift you are my son.

Happy Birthday