6 months

Half a year has gone by.  I blinked and half a year has a gone by.  I also slept, accomplished, & showered about 65% less than I ever have before.  I do have on jeans today as I'm writing this so I consider that an accomplishment.  Apparently what I consider an accomplishment has also changed.  

I want to say that we're finally in a groove, but I think what I've learned this month is that there is no groove.  It's constantly changing.  You know that feeling when you can look back at something that once felt really daunting, challenging, and exhausting with a sense of fondness and pride because it comes so naturally to you now?  Yeah, we don't feel that way.  

We do feel happy though, really really happy.  

Ellagirl, you are once again proving to be an onery little girl.  Just this week you started acting fussy when someone else held you, enough so that I am finally confident in saying that you know me and you know your Dad.  You go to sleep so well, but you are waking us up at least twice in the early morning hours.  You also gave us your first all-nighter since you were a brand new little thing.  Maybe you're teething, who knows?  We sure don't.  But we did give you tylenol and pretend we were certain that was the problem.  Your funny shaped head it looking rounder and rounder and tummy time is becoming less and less grueling for us both.  You roll over easily and, much to our surprise, you sit up on your own and play with a toy while doing so.  You're so smart, EJ.  

This month your Daddy turned 30 and we had a fun party at the house to celebrate.  It was raining so much the week leading up to the party that we quickly realized using the backyard wasn't going to be an option.  On a whim we turned the whole garage into party central and ended up having quite a funny little house party fit with a ninja turtle table, bubbles, and beer.  I felt like such an adult, being married to someone in their thirties with our sweet baby girl and a house filled with people.  We love sharing our lives with others and it has been a joy to incorporate you into that.  I'm praying each week that you develop friendships that will be signifcant in your life like we have.  Friends you'll know for a really long time, friends who are funny, friends who are loyal, and friends who will help you make good choices as you grow.  

Now that we've had you for half a year, I can honestly say, I love you more each month that goes by.  You are hard work, but you are so much fun.  Thanks for being our little girl!

5 months

This month flew by so fast I don't even remember what's happened.  I've already thought about how next month she'll be half a year old, which makes me feel all sorts of strange emotions.  I thought babies were babies for a long time.  Nope.  

Ok what happened this month?  Hmmm....Ella started rolling over.  She started making all sorts of hilarious noises and girl-screaming.  Yes, little girl shrieks.  The first time it happened, I told Dustin it was his future to have a house filled with little girl shrieks.  She gets so excited, will lift her eyebrows, stretch her toes, and shriek.  I love it.  We started rice cereal which was, lo and behold, very anticlimactic because she was just plain not interested.  She's gotten slightly more interested only when she is sticking both of her hands in her mouth while I'm simultaneously trying to put a spoon in her mouth.  It's a fun game we play called "See How Much Cereal We Can Get Everywhere."  She also took her very first roadtrip this month to Ardmore to visit Amy, Chris, and Hayden.  I was fairly nervous about how everything would go, her first long drive, her first time sleeping in a pack n' play away from home.  She really did quite well, except for one meltdown between Purcell and Norman which ended in us feeding her in the car in the parking lot of a Pei Wei.  Ah, real life.  It was so special to meet Hayden for the first time and to be sharing this experience with my friend.  Sleep is going fairly well and we're learning how to balance what is worth trying to change and what is worth tolerating for a while.  But overall, she is a delight and we love this age.  There is nothing like waking up too early, stumbling into her room in the dark while feeling groggy and annoyed, and then being greeted by her gummy/delighted smile as she sees you for the first time that day.  It's an attitude-changer nearly 99% of the time.  

EJ, you are so much fun and we are delighted that you are our daughter.  Thanks for being patient with Mom & Dad and letting us figure this out with you!  We've known and loved you for nearly half a year!

4 months

I'm sitting on our living room floor with Ella on her play mat next to me and Charlie keeping watch close by.  Ella is 4 months old today.  

Ok full disclosure, the above paragraph was all I could write before Ella needed my attention again.  I figure documenting that will be a funny reminder one day when I can actually do things independently around the house again.  In all honesty, I love this age.  It's harder, but the reward is sweeter...her giggles and smiles, the confidence that I can soothe her when she's upset, the more predictable routine, and watching her become this little opinionated person that we love so much.  

The theme for the last four weeks has been catch up.  When Ella was first born, I felt like Dustin and I were playing catch up, trying to figure out how to care for an infant.  We read books, we created a plan, we got her on a schedule.  The schedule was my favorite because let's face it, I'm not a very flexible person by nature so I thrived on the schedule.  But alas, Ella caught up to the schedule and we've been playing catch up for a week or so.  I bought a sound machine which promptly changed our lives.  We started a little sleep training and two nights ago she slept 12 straight hours.  That's right, 12 hours.  

EJ is starting to really share her feelings about everything.  Really engaging with her favorite toys and really listening/observing when we read books.  She's also started arching her back when she's mad about something.  In fact, we battled out nap time last week and when she finally fell asleep (after 45 minutes) I decided I would just give up my afternoon and hold her to let her sleep.  I know there will be a day when she won't need me to do that and it was an exercise in being present with her when she needed me.  

March 4th marked one year since the day I found out I was pregnant.  This year I held my baby girl in her nursery and thanked God through tears in the very same space where I had prayed for a baby.  

Ellagirl, you are so precious.  Even when we have a long day and I'm so ready for you to take your nap, I am always delighted when you wake up, realize I am there, and smile out of excitement.  Being your Mom is my favorite job in the whole world.  

3 months

Wait, didn't I just write her 2 month post like yesterday?  Nope.  I just read it and I literally thought "Oh Emily, what did you know about motherhood at 2 months?"  As if these last 4 weeks really sealed the deal on my vast knowledge regarding children.  If anything, it's a testament to how full each day is with both physical and character growth.  

Ellagirl, you are a fiesty little thing.  In fact, your Nonna and I were just talking on the phone this week about how you were fiesty, about how you let us know immediately if you don't like what is happening and that no one could ever call you a meek little girl.  I love that about you.  In spite of whatever kind of foreshadowing this may be of your toddler and teenage years, I love that you are packed full of personality and I pray you use it to be passionate about Jesus and others.

This month I've been learning and re-learning that our girl is not a robot.  I'm learning that she has preferences and tendencies that, depsite my best efforts, I may never understand or be able to explain away by some deviation from our schedule.  I'm seeing that having a child is also having a relationship where all of us make sacrifices, not just Dustin and I, but Ella also.  Our new normal isn't life where we incorporate Ella into what already existed.  Our new normal is life with all three of us living in the newness of each other in a beautifully messy way.  

This month Ella slept through the night for the first time.  Oddly, I woke up panicked rather than excited, but after texting a dear friend I realized, hello this is a good thing.  Ella smiles all the time, especially in the morning after she's eaten and we bring her into our bed to snuggle.  Our mutual hatred of tummy time is gradually getting better.  She holds her head up like such a little girl, too.  We let her sit in the bumbo seat and carried her face forward in the baby bjorn this week. We're finding the balance between what can get done during the day and what needs to wait.  As someone who likes to be efficient and in control, I'm having to be intentional about slowing down, about remembering that she can't go at my pace and I just need to be present with her.  

Last Sunday we all napped on our bed together.  I wasn't sure if Ella would fall asleep laying unswaddled and on her side, but she did.  She fell asleep snuggled up next to me.  It seems simple to say this, but it was one of the most tender moments I've had with her.  I woke up delighted in this process, this process of learning to love her more.

Ellagirl, you are fiesty and strong and adorable.  Keep it up!  Also, please keep up the good sleeping.  We love loving you!

2 months

Yesterday our baby girl turned 2 months old.  At the risk of sounding like a naive first time parent, this is getting easier and better.  The first month was tough and that's speaking as someone who thinks they have a fairly easy-going baby.  This month we're growing in our confidence as parents.  We've been able to figure things out like...she's hungry, maybe we should feed her more.  Dustin and Emily for the win on that one.  We've had several sweet victories this month.  She braved her first shots like a champ, barely cried and then slept in my arms all afternoon.  She graduated to actual clothes much to my delight because frankly I love playing dress up.  We clipped the tip of her finger with the nail clippers and decided we're never clipping her nails again.  Turns out band aides are worse than shots, taking them off at least.  Today I finished some laundry and packed up some newborn clothes that don't fit her anymore.  I don't know whether to cry or laugh.  Ellagirl, you are growing so fast.

Ella is slowly letting us in on her personality.  She lets us know if she doesn't like the way we're holding her or if she's tired of playing on her farm mat.  And she lets us know in about 10 seconds...there is no gradual amping up with this child.  She has started smiling and cooing at us, too.  There is something so wonderful in the moments when she is exploring our faces, making eye contact, and beginning to grin.  I think my heart might burst with joy.  Every day I'm reminded of what a beautiful gift we have in our healthy, growing, crying, smiling girl.  I want to be intentional about remembering what a privilege it is that God gave us Ella, remembering how much I wanted to be a mother and realizing His timing was more about Ella than about me.  He orchestrated each part of this journey not just to make us parents or to give us a baby, but to bring Ella, our Ella, into the world.  Happy 2 Months, sweet girl!  

1 Month

How has it been one month since Ella came into the world?  Is it too cliche of me to say that time has flown by?  Yes, it is.  And yes, it has.  

I sit here thinking of how the process of EJ coming into our lives felt so painstakingly long.  Trying to get pregnant for 14 months, waiting for 10 months for labor to start, laboring for 25 hours.   And then there was Day 4.  If someone had asked me on Day 4 if I felt time was passing quickly, I would have laughed through tears because Day 4 felt like the longest day of my life.  Apparently, I had already forgotten about labor.  But alas, here we are.  One month in.

Last Saturday evening, we went out to dinner while Ella stayed home with her grandparents.  In the car we talked about what we had learned over the last month, what surprised us, what has been different than our expectations.  To be honest, we didn't have many expectations because until a month ago having a daughter was just an interesting concept.  We talked about love and how our love was never an instant kind of love, but rather a love that became real and deep over time.  Try 20+ years.  I think our love for Ella is a little like that.  Each day feels a little more real.  Each day we learn her a little bit more.  Her face.  Her hands.  Her cry.  Her temperment.  We love her a little bit more the deeper we get into this relationship and the more we realize that she is ours.  

She is starting to make eye contact and coo at us.  She stares intently at the Christmas tree lights.  She can go from zero to sixty in less than a minute if she's hungry.  She has a love/hate relationship with baths.  She fusses, but then becomes strangely calm.  She shakes her head frantically back and forth if you force the pacifier on her.  What can I say, the girl knows what she wants.  She has bright, beautiful eyes and wants to look over your shoulder for a while when she's done eating.  We battled the swaddling of her arms for a few weeks, but I think we've won that battle.  She has yet to notice Charlie although he has certainly noticed her.  She sleeps relatively well at night less the occasional thirty minutes of being contently wide awake for some unknown reason when we're desperate to go to sleep.  She is happy 98% of the time.

Ellagirl, you are ours.  After much consideration and a month long trial, your Dad and I have decided to keep you.  We can't wait to see you grow and change in month 2.   

Ella James Curzon

Our lives are changed forever since this tiny creature came into the world.  

There are the many practical ways life is different.  The ways we expected such as sleep deprivation.  But what I was least prepared for was how different life feels.  Neither of us was prepared for the wealth of emotions that accompanies the new title of being parents.  Beautiful, messy, strong emotions.

The first week I cried every day.  Dustin teared up over a nice work-related e-mail.  In 28 years of knowing Dustin, I have seen him tear up probably twice and once was during an episode of The Office.  Our girl has filled our lives with overwhelming joy and overwhelming responsiblity.  It's almost comical that we're surprised by how strongly we feel because it probably seems so "duh" to those that are parents.  I think it's just something that you can't know until you know.  

And now we know.  

When my grandmother was still alive, she once told me that when they placed my mother in her arms she thought: "Now I have everything I've always wanted."  Ellagirl, when I heard you cry for the first time and your Dad brought you over for me to see, I wept thinking the exact same thing.  Your entrance into the world, although painful and oh so long, is the most wonderful thing that has ever happened to us.  What joy that God has given you to us!  Our prayer is that you would grow in the knowledge of the gospel of Jesus.  That He would captivate you, challenge you, direct you, and prepare you for all the good things He has prepared in advance for you to do.  We love you so! 

We're having a baby.

We're having a baby any day now.  In fact, I'm writing this having started maternity leave yesterday.  I'm currently in my pajamas drinking a latte while watching it quietly rain through our back porch window.  A pumpkin spice candle is burning and a golden retriever is sleeping at my feet.  So far maternity leave is awesome.

I have learned so much through the process of becoming pregnant and preparing to have a baby.  I suppose this whole learning thing is going to be a predominant theme in the coming months.  Learning and not sleeping.  I found out I was pregnant the early morning of March 4, 2014.  Dustin was out of town on business, but neither of us could wait until he got home to test, so I did it on my own.  I called him immediately after, of course, which I think ended up being something like 4 AM his time.  Good morning, you're going to be a father...now try and be productive at work today.  

That morning will forever be a memory that is sealed in my brain.  I remember exactly how I felt and how I reacted and how I did nothing else the entire day except for walk around in a haze pretending to work.  We had been trying to get pregnant for over a year.  It had been very long year of wrestling with God, feeling intermittently sad, vulnerable, hopeful, angry, peaceful and resentful.  In the process I met God on my knees in what is now Ella's room.  I also had countless conversations with other women who were or still are wrestling with trying to be mothers.  Some of the bravest, most beautiful women I know.  I met God in those conversations, too.  And I entered into pregnancy with more maturity and gratitude than I would have if I'd had things my way.  God's timing is funny and wildly perfect like that.

My hope is that I will always be open to sharing our story of the year before Ella.  Other women's stories kept me going, encouraged me, and have made me feel brave enough to be vulnerable.  Also, Audrey Assad's music on repeat and Psalm 139.  Now we're ready to meet our girl.  Our girl whose face, form, and first day are known only by the God who created her and stitched her together inside of me.  There is no anticipation like the anticipation of knowing you, sweet Ella James, come soon.  

For you created my inmost being;

you knit me together in my mother's womb.

I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;

your works are wonderful,

I know that full well.

My frame was not hidden from you

when I was made in the secret place.

When I was woven together in the depths of the earth,

your eyes saw my unformed body.

All the days ordained for me

were written in your book

before one of them came to be.

Psalm 139, NIV

thoughts on David & Christmas

A few years ago I wrote this post while I was trudging through an inductive study of Isaiah.  Full disclosure, I took a break from Isaiah and I’m still not finished.  For the last several months, I’ve been working through the David study by Beth Moore.  

There is something funny about timing because I always find myself in the midst of something compelling right around Christmas.  I find myself wanting to write my thoughts out in an effort to document what God is teaching and to hopefully absorb it more fully by regurgitating it on this blog that no one reads.  D knows this well about me because after I finish a lesson that is particularly interesting to me, I spend the next twenty minutes re-explaining it to him in my true overly-detailed fashion.  God bless my patient man.

The life of David has been fascinating to me.  There are many stories about his life that I remembered from my Sunday school days, but so much of the adult content was lost on me or rather edited to the PG version since, hello, we were kids.  Let me be clear now that I’ve taken this in through adult eyes…David did not lead a PG life.  If ever you feel like your life is in shambles and you need to be reminded that God has been setting shambled lives straight since the beginning of time, David is your guy.  He is flawed, beloved, hated, strong, silent, worshipful, and deeply passionate.  

In the last week of the study, David has grown old and it says “he could not keep warm when they put covers over him.”  For the majority of his life David has been a fierce leader, but now he has grown old and is preparing for his successor.  His oldest living son Adonijah has been conjuring up ways to assume the throne, but ultimately David takes an oath that his other son Solomon will be king.  He calls upon Zadok the priest, Nathan the prophet, and Benaiah the warrior and gives them instructions to take Solomon by mule to the Gihon Spring.  He asks them to annoint Solomon with oil, blow the trumpet, and seat him on his throne.

"Then they sounded the trumpet and all the people shouted, ‘Long live King Solomon!’ And all the people went up after him, playing flutes and rejoicing greatly, so that the ground shook with the sound." - 1 Kings 1:39b-40

As is usually the case, the significance of this story is in the details.  Beth’s commentary notes that the Gihon Spring was directly east of the City of David and that ancient Hebrew people anticipated God’s glory would come from the east.  Even more, the word “Gihon" in Hebrew means "bursting forth.”  So Solomon came bursting forth from the east riding on a mule while the peopled shouted and danced as he took his place as their king.  Parallels, anyone?

What I love most about all of this is that Solomon wasn’t the obvious choice.  He wasn’t the oldest.  He was the son of Bathesheba, the woman David had an affair with and then had her husband killed.  David had several other sons that appeared to handsome, well-trained, and generally more natural choices for king.  But in a beautiful display of unpredictability, God chose Solomon as David’s successor.  Beth articulates it perfectly when she says “Solomon represented God’s divine mercy.  He was the embodiment of second chances.”

The Christmas connection for me today is that Christ made his dwelling among us a the ultimate display of God’s unpredictability.  He came as a baby.  It certainly wasn’t the grand entrance Israel had anticipated.  His life was the absolute embodiment of God’s divine mercy, paving the way for us to be reconciled to God through grace.  I love that God uses the life of David to foreshadow the life of Christ.  I also love that the timing of this study fell in the midst of the Christmas season for me.  The older I get and the more I study scripture, I’m blown away by the siginificance of things I’ve known for many years.  I see that celebrating Jesus’s birth means celebrating God’s consistent plan since the life of David and even earlier.  I see it as celebrating the sovereignty of our God who has been spelling out grace for us since the moment we fell. 

Now I don’t have any eloquent way to wrap up my thoughts on the subject.  Wrapping up thoughts is always the hardest part for me so I think I’ll defer to one of my favorite Christmas songs.  I love the lyrics and spent many years singing them without really stopping to absorb them.  I hope you’ll revel in their signficance with me this season.

Yea, Lord, we greet thee,

Born this happy morning;

Jesus to thee be all glory given!

Word of the Father now in flesh appearing!

O come let us adore Him,

O come let us adore Him,

O come let us adore Him,

Christ the Lord.

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