I often feel like Easter doesn't get enough attention, so we are hitting it early this year. I was very excited when I saw this Easter Countdown. It is a full 30 days! We started it late and so will finish just after LDS General Conference, which seemed appropriate and a good prep for hearing the Prophets words.
My mother-in-law gave us a mitten tree for Christmas. Since mitten weather is nearly over (thank goodness) we used it to hang our Easter tags. Every day me and the kids take down a tag and learn about all the different titles of Jesus Christ. So far we have covered his birth, Jehovah, and Messiah. After our study, the tag goes into our HUGE Easter Basket exploding with life and springtime energy and life.
This is our new reading corner for the kids. Lots of times baby Giddy brings me the sheepskin rug to snuggle him up while I rock him in the big rocker. He is such a cuddly stinker and I love it!
This coat rack no longer accepts stinky shoes in the bottom. It is now dedicated to a rotation of library books. It has helped keep things manageable, in view, and USED. Here's Giddy reading the Easter book we just checked out from the library.
Our Nature Easter Basket was first used as a changing table for Chloe. Nowadays, it comes out for a combined Easter Basket for the family. This year, we are celebrating Nature and the return of Spring as we countdown to Easter. Our little turtle is bedecked with springtime jewels (with hot glue, which will easily pull off should we see fit) and is slowly marching his way to the basket of plenty.
Our Nature Basket is lined with moss and filled with eggs, seashells, and our favorite Butterfly in a Jar. The kids love to pick up the shells and listen for the ocean!
I'm starting to feel like my homey Bunny doesn't fit in around here. I wish you could see the butterfly in the jar better. When you tap the lid, he flutters around and amazes all my little friends at Church Primary.
My kids were slightly disappointed that the eggs had no treats. One day they may just be surprised to find something inside.
Tonight we are learning about Jesus as Creator and will be starting our Easter Hill with Wheat Grass. Thank you wizard mother at Chocolate on my Cranium!
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When you crawl out of bed and greet yourself in the bathroom mirror; or get ready to go out and try to look skinnier and prettier than you feel; or catch a glimpse of yourself in the grocery store's window front and wonder who the raggedy-haired scrounge in front of you is...do you smile? Cringe? Avoid yourself?
I find myself watching black and white golly-gee-goodness sitcoms and see droves of people coiffed, clean, and respectable. I audibly suggest people should take more pride in their appearance, all the while being surprised at my own when I venture to the store in my garden jeans and oily braids.
But here's a lesson we got this weekend from the sweet innocence of a baby (not quite a toddler). The Mister turned the viewer to Giddy, so he caught his own reflection...and registered delight!
How does your reflection register with yourself?
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As a girl who has loved having a blog because it helps sorting out my head, the recent silence of my tapping fingers was surprising. I thought I would need to sort out my lessons and thoughts, but instead it has been a quiet period of reflection. For now I have a little perspective, and the thick summer air still holds the posts about all of the women who helped me overprepare my home, kitchen, closets, and suitcases before baby Giddy arrived two days past his due-date.
How just hours before his arrival we had a family home evening talking about when we lived with God before we came to earth, and how our new little brother was soon to make an astronaut-inspiring journey through space, time, and my birth canal. How we cradled a doll and reminded everyone how to hold a baby. And how I loved seeing the light go on in my five-year old's head as he asked about God, and how could he be his father, and his daddy's father? And how when I went to bed that night I thought "Sheesh, even my dang garage is cleaned out I've been nesting for so stinking long...and of course this kid is coming now because we had a spiritual family tune-up".
For now, those stories await a future harvest like my late plantings of garden corn. At the moment, it is enough that my baby is home, is safe, is healthy....and beautiful!
Photo Credit
Filter Photography.
I think this biological clock thing is real. With my oldest on the precipice of puberty, my last "baby" grown up and not giving me kisses, I am finally starting to understand what all those grannies have been telling me for years as I frustratingly wrangle little mutts: "Enjoy it! They will be gone before you know it!"
With a big fat baby living amongst the tiny NICU crowd, I gasped in panic at the thought that my investment of love, calories, nausea, and fatigue would be gone all the while ripping out my heart with its departure. But instead, my baby lives! I love to hold him, to squeeze him, and proclaim: You're a little person!
I love him so much that I'm even over the fact that this is the most unflattering picture of my gut. Where in the heck is my waist? But guess what, I honestly don't care right now. My garden will get it off eventually, and that joy on my face is real cause my baby lived.
Good Night Planet.
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Coming home from the NICU and with the little guy on oxygen meant that for the first 3 weeks of his life, Gideon had a tube across his face and was connected to a machine. While the weather has evolved from spring to winter, and back to spring again; while the earth has celebrated royal weddings and hunted down number one terrorists; while Japan has recovered from tsunamis and nuclear meltdowns and the American South has been blasted with tornadoes....I have heard of these major world events in passing while I personally experienced my major current event of returning the oxygen machine. I could finally rock and sway my baby while walking to another area of the house.
During these three weeks I think I was away from the house less than two hours. Indeed it has been a small world for me right now, and not in the way of seeing an old friend during your Disneyland vacation.
There's an intimacy and a reveling that occurs between a mother and her offspring. With all the investment of body, pain, and sleep, you begin to revel in the minute details of your primo current event.
The way his fingers asymmetrically curl in his little fist.
The waiting for my favorite baby trick of getting a kiss from little toesies.
How I've googled more weird things with this baby than my others. Like the times when I nurse him laying down, if:
* my right "side" is super full
* baby is lying on his left side
* his left nostril drips milk
Basically the fire hose of milk unleashes and his nose compensates for lack of esophageal drainage. p.s. it doesn't bother baby
And how his lips appear to be little blisters, or super chapped. Basically evident that he is getting a wicked latch and getting the job done at the breast.
How my kids take after The Mister of the House who has a deceptively HUGE head. Narrow in the face, but on the side it keeps going for a mile. In certain angles I stare at my kids head and start to go cross-eyed as he appears to be a cone-headed alien from SNL.
How the DNA war was won by The Mister of the House. While it's clear that this baby is related to his older brother, I feel the need to proclaim that it's apparent I have made no genetic contribution to this child.
How when I place my hands under his arms and pick him up, he gets mile-long cleavage.
This is how we grow 'em in Mrs. Olsen's garden! Yum!
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Late last night, almost a full week after delivering this little guy, we actually got to come home! While the infection in the lungs is gone, one of the resulting symptoms of the infection lingers: hypertension.
So with a prescription for oxygen to help alleviate work on his heart until the hypertension drops down, we headed home. It was the first time Rainbow Girl was able to see her brother in person. "The boys" will have to wait, since we decided our transition would be easier if they played at Grandma's house for the week.
I tell you what, every baby should have an older sister, especially one who is so excited about them.
Last Tuesday we woke Rainbow Girl up around 4 a.m., told her we were driving to Salt Lake to have the baby, and that she needed to look after the boys until Grandma came. She never went back to sleep she was so excited, and later in the morning she decorated the house for an impromptu birthday party for the baby.
One week later and the balloons have lost some gusto, but the decorations still stood.
Here's the little guy in the moses basket at the foot of my bed. Aaahhh...sooo good to be home.
Later tonight I was changing the water in some flowers that were on the table, underneath I found these little notes written by big sister.
"Whith love and peace, I hope you can care for that sweet little Gideon. I love you so much, guys! So I hope you can still have fun whith us and this busy baby. I love you sooooo much. Love, Chloe"
"Through all the things, evrything, I know you can handle this. So stop that cryin and start livin again, the only thing thats differen is the new baby. Love, Chloe"
My heart is full, even fuller than my dang chest. Thank goodness that the prayers of children are so powerful, I'm counting on her petition over the coming weeks (and months as the bills start showing up...ugh). I'm loving her cowboy sensibilities...stop that cryin and start livin again!
Good Night!
Mrs. Olsen
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