One.

My little Carter turned a year old this summer and life has been moving in fast forward since then.  Amidst the busy, I am trying to be better about finding time to get blog posts out of my head and through to completion, which is why this post is so late.  Nevertheless, his nautical themed birthday party was such a sweet, sweet day.   To recap...

He ate lots of cake. 

He "opened" lots of presents. 

He played with lots of balloons. 

And, most importantly, he got lots and lots of love.

Here's to the fastest, most joyful, year of our journey. 

We love you, little one. 

Expectations.

When I first found out I was going to have a baby, my mind began to spin.  No one in my immediate family had had a baby yet and very few of my close friends had children either.  My husband's first time actually holding a baby, was when the doctor handed Carter to him.  I had no real recent experience with babies, nor did I know exactly how to take care of a baby- or even what babies were generally like for that matter!  I did, however, have expectations.  I read and did a little research.  I clung to my copy of "What To Expect When You're Expecting" and "On Becoming Baby-Wise."  I pestered my friends with babies to answer all my specific questions.  Ironically, after I had Carter, I forgot much of what I had studied about babies.  Something happens to your brain postpartum... I think it may be related to the state of dual exhaustion and joy that you find yourself in.  These days it's a little funny in hindsight to think about all the effort and worry I was wrapped up in with my expectations and fervent baby studying.  While some of the studying did prove to to be helpful, so many expectations I had about Carter came to be completely false.  Here are a few examples that make me laugh when I think about it.

Expectations:
1. Babies love to be swaddled all cozy.  I need to learn to swaddle!
2. I should have an assortment of breastfeeding friendly pacifiers on hand- and pacifier wipes.
3. I also need to have an assortment of breastfeeding friendly bottles on hand, of course.
4. Younger babies should have 30 minutes (at least) of tummy time a day.
5. Babies should start solid foods with rice or oatmeal baby cereals.
6. I need to have an variety of different toys that will challenge and help my baby develop certain skills.
7. I shouldn't rock my baby to sleep. It's best to lay him down drowsy, with his eyes open.
8. Babies start teething around 6-8 months and might have their front teeth by the time they are 1. Molars etc. come later.
9. Babies tend to prefer fruit to vegetables, because they are sweeter.
10. Some babies crawl.

This is what Carter thought about swaddling. 

Reality:
1. My baby hated being swaddled. We maybe tried a true swaddle on him for the first 2 days of his life.
2. My baby could not have cared less about a pacifier.  He is all about his thumb!
3. My baby never once took a full feeding from a bottle.  Never!  Thank goodness for the sippy cup.
4. My baby thought tummy time was WW3.  Hated it.  Once rolling began, I couldn't keep him on his tummy for even 5 seconds a day. 30 minutes a day... ha!
5. My baby wasn't a big fan of cereal.  Not only that, he became extremely constipated when he had any kind of cereal (sorry for the TMI).  We nixed baby cereal early on and never looked back.
6. My baby sees EVERYTHING, toy or not, mostly as something to chew on.  Now that he's almost a year old, the objects that bring him the most enjoyment aren't actually toys at all (i.e. the remote).
7. Ha! My baby would ONLY sleep if rocked first.  If we laid him down with his eyes open, he'd stare at us like we were crazy.  Sorry, we all have to sleep and rocking is the only way we're getting it! Something tells me he won't still need me to rock him when he's a teenager.  He'll be okay.
8. Carter started teething at 4 months (fun times) and had all his front 8 teeth by the time he was 8 months old.  Let's hope it stays that way for a little while longer.  For the furniture's sake.
9. My baby loves green beans.  It's on his list of favorite foods!
10. Since Carter hated tummy time I never really expected him to crawl.  But anyone who has seen my little guy do his infamous "Scoot & Pivot" knows he didn't traditionally crawl.  Believe it or not, he HAS recently started crawling a couple feet here and there.  I never thought I'd see the day he traditionally crawled!  He still prefers to scoot on his bottom though.  Comic relief.

Holding the remote = pure joy. 

Our wonderful pediatrician, who raised 5 healthy children, repeatedly calms my new-mother fears and mentions to me that great grandmothers and grandmothers and mothers are all going to have different ideas about what is right or wrong when it comes to babies.  Best practices fluctuate alongside old wives tales.  So many times he answers my questions with a disclaimer: "Now Grandma might disagree, but medically....".  I am so thankful for his objective perspective and his advice not to sweat the small stuff.  Babies are all different. What works with one baby, may or may not work with another.

We are coming up on Carter's first birthday and from here on out, I am trying my hardest not to have too many expectations.  God made Carter unique.  He will grow into who God made him to be, with or without my expectations.  This is quite a challenge for the planner in me, but, sometimes planning isn't what is important.  There is a little bit of freedom to enjoy in that realization.  I don't have to meticulously plan all my parenting endeavors.  I can, however, hope to help shape his character to be more Christlike.  That's much more important than whether or not my expectations are met.

The heart of man plans his way,
    but the Lord establishes his steps. Proverbs 16:9

Mama's Day & the long goodbye

This first Mother's Day for me I was actually feeling a little sadness mixed in with the joy of being a new mom.  The truth is I was really missing my mom's mom.  We called her Mama Mog.  She passed away just months before my wedding 4 years ago.  Now that I am a mother I just really wish she would have gotten the chance to hold Carter and see me in motherhood.  I wish we could have talked about motherhood together.  Then I read this devotional today.  Praise God that I have assurance in Christ that I will see her again, and hopefully, I will be able to tell her all about Carter while we wait on him.  I am thankful we did have a long goodbye and I am praying for the absolute longest of goodbyes to Carter. 

"I came across 3 lines from a poem by Kathleen Norris... In 'Ascension' she writes,

'Now the new mother, that leaky vessel,

Begins to nurse her child,
Beginning the long goodbye.

The little person that made me a mother.

It was the phrase "long goodbye" that hit me. It echoes what we read in scripture, the prophecy that an old man named Simeon said to Mary the mother of Jesus when he was just days old. It could be today, it could be decades from now, but you will say goodbye to your child. Someday I will lose my mother, or my mother will lose me. Someday the same will happen with my son. 

This is what you sign up for in motherhood: the long goodbye. It may come sooner; we pray it will come later. But it will come someday. And that's the heartbreak. That's where every mother knows something the greatest theologian in the world could never explain- something Mary knew to the depths of her bones- which is that suffering is part of this thing called love, and the parent suffers along with the child. And we have a God who knows this rending from the inside out." - Sarah Arthur

For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, and whosoever believes in him shall not perish, but shall have eternal life.  John 3:16

Mama Mog & I

My Mother, Carter & I

I am deeply, deeply grateful for all of the many wonderful mothers in my life and for the Lord's perfect design of parenthood and love.  May mothers everywhere slowly soak in all the moments of motherhood and make the most of their long goodbye!

Be glad in it.

I've discovered that it isn't super easy to keep up with writing regular blog posts.  For one, life is busy, especially around the holidays, and secondly... it seems silly to write unless I have something worthwhile to say.  When life is really really busy... its hard to find the time to sit down and write something at all, much less, something profound.  But now the holidays are over and therefore here is my attempt to catch up with another post about our life lately.

We celebrated Carter's first Thanksgiving, Christmas & New Years.  Sigh.  It was very special... and also very tiring.  It is such a joy to be around family but it also takes a toll on Carter to be out of the normalcy of his daily routine and staying overnight in places that are still new to him.  We managed well though, despite the travel aspects of it all.  We also had many wonderful, sweet, helping hands around us and that is always a blessed thing.

Carter is growing and growing and growing.  He will be 7 months old on Sunday.  At this point, he has changed A LOT since the tiny little newborn that I held for the first time last summer.  He is showing his personality (his laugh is the sweetest sound I have ever heard), he is much bigger (and my arms are getting toned thank you very much), he is sitting unsupported (95% of the time), he is rolling over (because he hates tummy time), he is eating solid foods (except for yucky cereal), and he has 3 teeth (ouch)!

In the beginning I could not wait for the developmental milestones to start happening with Carter.  I couldn't wait to see him sitting or rolling and would grab my phone to snap a picture the second he would do something new.  And like many new moms, I would constantly read or consult our pediatrician to make sure he was developing skills at the normal pace he should.  Now my attitude towards all of that is changing.  I will still be excited when he learns new skills but, I am okay if things just stay the way they are for a while.  I am not so much concerned with the timing of it all anymore.  Carter will learn and grow just as God sees fit and I am not worried with comparing him to all the "normal" baby charts out there.  He will walk one day, and maybe crawl, but when he does... he won't need me to carry him everywhere.  And honestly, that thought makes me a little sad.  I am not ready for things to change, although I know they inevitably will.  So for now I am just soaking up all the ways that he needs me and not wishing away new things to happen.

I

It all reminds me of the sage advice an old friend of mine gave me when I was pregnant and anxiously waiting on Carter to come.  She basically told me to cherish the time that Mitch and I have as a couple before Carter is born.   Her words are even more appreciated today for their truth than they were a year ago!  The Lord gives us such sweet blessings in the everyday moments of life.  Stages of life come and go and one day we will miss the little things that seem mundane now.  I will miss the way Carter needs me in these days just as I miss the freedom Mitch and I shared when our family was just two.  Each day is a beautiful blessing.  Carter has helped me to see that.

"There is a time for everything, and a season for every activity under the heavens... He has made everything beautiful in its time.  He has also set eternity in the human heart; yet no one can fathom what God has done from beginning to end." Ecclesiastes 3:1,11

"This is the day which the Lord hath made; we will rejoice and be glad in it." Psalm 118:24