Email me
2008-04-05 - 12.20am previous entry next entry
Leaning on God, loving my littlies, and photos!
It's late so hopefully a short entry, but you know how I am with that kind of thing?! ;)
I'm relieved that the last cold was a "normal" one for us. The boys were actually fine during the day except for the odd sniffle, and kind of miserable for 2 nights (better after Calpol though), and that was pretty much it. We didn't have to wade through the snot-trenches or anything, and my version didn't progress beyond the sore throat (I heart my new bottle of mega-dose Ester Vitamin C!). Nathan hasn't seemed to have much more than a slightly congested night and a little extra fussiness. I'm sooooo glad. The cold before that was horrible and it made me worried, the next time we caught one! But it was fine after all :)
But, both Arthur and Matthew are having alternating constipation and diarrhoea - what is up with that? For weeks now, really. They are both constipated (with some drama and difficulty) so we are trying to really focus on their diet to help them with that. Problem is, they are both SO PICKY with food at the moment. Arthur, as you know, always has been. Matthew has always been a great eater, but has recently started being really picky, as bad as Arthur lately. Which is probably just an age thing for him (I hope!). Anyway that won't help the constipation issue. Arthur is having diarrhoea now and again, and Matthew isn't so much - I would say he is having "teething poo" rather than constipation. Talking of which! AT LAST, alllll this teething and the many bottles (!!) of Calpol he's been through over the past few months - finally I see his first two canines about to break through! I'm soooooooooooo relieved! It actually looks like he's going to get all four together, but two of them are slightly ahead. They are both on the same side of his mouth, on the right side (looking at him). The top one is going to come through first, I think. It looks pretty close. Both my boys have had the teeth on that side break through first, before the other side.
Anyway, yay! Productive teething at last! Not all that long now before we start it all over again with Nathan! Arthur and Matthew both started miserably teething (needing us to help them bite on cooled teethers, etc) from about 11/12 weeks old. Nathan is 12 weeks old tomorrow, but he's 4-5 weeks behind because he came that early. No signs yet!
Matthew's canines will quite change his smile. I am so used to his four top and four bottom teeth filling his smile, with that characteristic gap either side where the canines are missing. I am excited to see those gaps filled in and a more "grown up little boy" smile as a result, but sort of sad to see the end of this stage that will never come again! I am enjoying my children so much at the moment. I cherish it all!
I am SO thankful to God for blessing me with my husband home all the time - never mind the complete and utter lack of money (and did I mention roughly �30,000 of credit card debt (should I say that online??) as a result?!), I am just so glad and grateful for our situation all the same. We are in some serious financial poo, but completely and utterly trusting God. I KNOW he has the right job planned for Neil, at the right time. He is also our Provider, so we will not be in want.
The other day Neil and I were praying together after the boys were in bed, and feeling slightly desperate about the total lack of jobs presenting themselves when Neil searches, and the scary money situation, and oh! I wanted to write about it at the time it happened! I just remembered that. Oh well. I had a really vivid "vision" running through my mind as Neil was praying, and it was sooooo awesome and encouraging. It's long and drawn out, and quite personal (revolving around me), but basically it pointed us to God, and ONLY God. To forget the "world" and what it represents. I had to get into ORBIT in my little vision, in order to get away from the "worldly" view of things, seriously! I look through worldly eyes too easily. The sun represented God in my mind. Staring right at it (in orbit, no less!) should burn my eyes right out, but it didn't. Everything else paled in significance against the sun, the source of power and heat to everything around me. The sheer incredible size, and the intensity of the light and heat. Still, even despite that, I kept on looking over my shoulder at the earth when thinking about our situation. I felt that I heard God say to me to keep looking at Him until I don't even know if it's day or night, such is my focus on him. That really challenged me. It's so hard to maintain that kind of focus! I said, "But Lord, what about the fact that life is knocking my body and mind about, all the while I'm trying to focus on looking at you?! It's distracting me!" and instantly saw myself (in my mind's eye) suspended in orbit, my eyes fixed on the sun. A meteorite came whizzing in and WHACKED my body. I still kept my eyes fixed. Another came from the other side and broke my body (like in those horrible slow-motion safety videos where dummies get hit by something at 60mph). Then my body fell off me! It just fell right out of the picture, and I still remained. And I "felt" God's simple reply to my question - even if life's blows break my body, it doesn't change who I am in God. That part of life is fleeting anyway (the bit with the body around me, that is!). Living it for God is so important. There's nothing else anywhere NEAR as important. I have to keep that perspective.
Right after we prayed and I shared the vision in my mind with Neil, I just felt my heart SWELL with joy and thanksgiving and praise to God. I just thought - we have SO MUCH!!! We lack for absolutely nothing. Nothing, nothing, nothing. All we really need is to feed, clothe and shelter our children, and ourselves. We have food practically at the click of our fingers - failing that, a car and fuel in order to transport us the incredibly short distance to the local supermarket, which is just groaning with a million foods to sustain and nourish us. God blesses us through my wonderful parents, who are currently paying for ALL of our grocery shopping. Thank you, Mummy and Daddy. Thank you God! We have a home. It's smaller than we would LIKE it to be now that we have all these tiny energetic male persons around the place, but oh how blessed we are! It's a warm, comfortable, happy home! A shelter is constantly over our heads, and we have warmth all the time, no matter the weather outside. We have special rooms to sleep in, cook in, and get clean in. We live in absolute luxury! We are so over-run with clothing for the five of us, that it is really time we downsized and decluttered a bit. I buy almost everything second-hand, and we lack for nothing.
We lack. For NOTHING. Because we are so very blessed. We have HUGE-O debt. But we have such a faithful God, and I know he will provide an income for us again. He knows what is best for us FAR better than we can know, so what good is it to strive and worry, and think we can figure out a better way that will fix things quicker. No, God knows best. I just pray I can keep this attitude through the rest of life's trials! I feel like maybe it's easy enough for me to have faith over something like our financial situation (is it?!), but maybe I would TOTALLY stink at holding the same faith in God if my children were deathly ill or something. With all my heart, I would WANT to hold firm to God without wavering, but I am anxious that I won't. Well, I will just pray, and I know God will help me, because I surely cannot do it in my own strength.
After Neil has a job, we will be making a debt relief plan, and turning the whole thing over to God (we already are, really, but we can't do anything to our debt without an income, yet). I know he'll help us climb out of it.
We ended up realising that we just have soooooo much to be grateful for - yes, RIGHT NOW! The rest paled into insignificance. We are still praying for a job for Neil soon though! There's no harm in that! He is waiting to hear back on a job (which has been soooo long coming that it's probably not going to amount to anything), and has just heard of a new opportunity in the company he LEFT last summer! The one he'd been working for these last 10 years, and finally escaped from to the new (sucky) job that didn't last. It's different from what he was doing, and at a different location (central London, urgh), but he's interested. And it would pay well.... and he knows he can do it, and so do the company. So, I think he is going to apply. God is in control.
Lately I have also been joyfully praying about the six children that I'm longing to have. Every time I think about it, my heart just leaps for joy. I absolutely beam from ear to ear as I pray about it, and God knows my heart. I begin to wonder if my desire to have six children (and I will so gladly take more if he chooses to bless me that way!) is possibly something God has actually put on my heart, to be lived out? It's just that I have never, ever, had such a huge pressing desire in my heart for anything. It's not a number I chose, or a number I necessarily intend to stick to. It's just THERE. I clearly remember being six years old and having some time to myself just thinking about what I wanted to be/do when I grew up. I just wanted to have six children. But I really thought about it. And I've been referring to that moment all my life, to other people. I remember telling my family and they just laughed and said I would see, when I really did have children - I would NOT want six! I remember being in my teens and thinking about having all those children soooo often. My desire increased and I wondered if I would actually prefer to have 8 children even more than having 6. I remember talking to friends at school about it and getting severely laughed at once again! Everyone said I was nuts - affectionately so, but still!
I didn't stop thinking about it and dwelling on the dream happily, after leaving school. Since it was ALL I wanted to do, I discovered I did not want to do a single other thing, which led to some serious depression and lack of direction for a while, till I became a Christian. And met my husband, hehe! At that stage it seemed like a dream of having six kids was just crazy imagination, and not rooted in reality at all, so although I still dreamed about it in the back of my mind, at the forefront, all I wanted to do was just "have kids". My husband said he only wanted 2 or 3 anyway.
Now I'm having the kids, ohhhh how I'm longing for more. My desire for the bunch of kids I always dreamed of is increasing all the time! In fact, I am not sure how I will ever be comfortable with STOPPING having babies! I'm sure God will enable me to be at peace about that, once I have had the number of children he has planned for me to have, though. As we trust him for our every need, I think God is relaxing Neil over the issue. I'm so excited about the now quite REAL possibility that maybe I will really and truly get to have the six children I have always longed for in my heart. I'm excited at the thought that maybe I could even have more than six! But I guess time would not be favourable for that (I'm 32 now, with 3 kids, and expecting to be pre- or peri-menopausal by the age of 40, like my mum (and her mum) was).
Every time I gaze at my new baby and praise God for him, I just FILL with the most incredible joy! When I think about my THREE little boys.... when I say thank you to God for my three precious babies, I find myself always saying, "Oh for three more, God!" and my heart about bursts with excitement! I don't know why. It just makes me wonder if this is a sort of "God-calling", rather than a personal desire that I thought up originally, or something, you know?
Wow, I'm rambly tonight! ;) It's been ages since I have really rambled aimlessly like this in my diary. I miss it! I'm a rambler by nature :)
I have a few photos to post! First, here's one of Matthew and Nathan that is a video about 1 second long, haha! Matthew asks to "die dow, Ninny" ("lie down with Nathan" - see how fast his speech is suddenly improving?! I had expected as much, when he was ready to do it!) a million times a day at the moment. He lies down on the sofa and says the above phrase, and then I am supposed to lie Nathan next to him. He isn't pleased if I don't! As SOON as I lie Nathan down next to him, Matthew says, "teeeez", hehe! He completely expects me to produce a camera and snap a photo of them, hehehe! You KNOW I do it, don't you?! Any opportunity I get :) So, I took what I thought was a photo, but the camera was still set to video, and so I got a 1 second clip of my littlest boys! If it had been a photo I would have reeeally wanted to post it, so I'm posting the "video" anyway. I love it as a photo!
Here are a few photos of my beautiful boys, from the last few days:
Those are like just the TIP of the iceburg, when it comes to all the gazillions of photos I've taken this week of the three boys together! Now that Nathan is able to be put down with them for a bit longer at a time (like on his playmat, lying down with them, etc), I'm snapping photos like crazy! The boys move so much that at least one or two of them is blurry in about half the photos I take! I just snap and snap, because if I take enough pictures, I will eventually get a few good ones. I hope! So I have a ton more to post from various little photo sessions, but not tonight. I have only uploaded a few of my favourites tonight, to cut time.
Here's a photo of Mathie - I love this one of him under a towel! It's totally blurry but that's half the charm of the photo if you ask me, hehe! He was playing "boo" under the towel. Neil was whipping it up and putting his own head inside to say "boo!" to Matthew, who LOVED the game! One time he popped his head inside, he took the camera with him :)
Here are a couple of sleepy photos - Matthew sleeping after he'd fallen out of bed on two different nights (top half on Neil's mattress on the floor in the first photo, as he had obviously fallen out of his own bed and found the nearest comfy spot to lay his sweet little head!) - he does fall out quite a bit, but we have a folded duvet on the floor next to his bed. He rarely wakes from falling out of bed, and he isn't falling out quite so much as he did at first, now. And then a photo of Arthur sleeping late in the evening, because, well, Matthew was getting all the photo attention!...
Last but not least, I have a rare video to post (gasp!)!! I remembered a good long while ago, that Andrea (and somebody else, I can't remember who!) asked me to post a video clip of Arthur talking (something about a cute accent, which only seems normal and flat to me!). I really haven't been able to get much on video of Arthur talking clearly enough, but today (or was it yesterday?) I took a little video clip (on the camera) of Arthur lying with Nathan on the playmat. It's only about 45 seconds long, because the camera video clips are HUGE files and take forever to upload, so I'm trying to keep them short. So here's just a little tiny sample of my chatty boy doing what he loves best! ;)
There are ENDLESS things I keep wanting to update about, that Arthur has said. I often want to just log into Diaryland and write out a conversation we just had, or some sentence he said that made me chuckle, right there and then when he's just said it. But I don't, and so I forget. I don't want to forget the things he says! I will try to do that once in a while, to preserve my memories a bit.
Today at bedtime (we often have quite profound conversations at bedtime!), he said that when he grows up he will have breasties and then he will need to wear a bra! I told him that only girls have breasties (for some reason this is what we call them - it came about earlier in our breastfeeding relationship, I know not quite how) and he is a BOY, and so he will never have breasties or wear a bra. He has one of my old nursing bras in bed with him to snuggle (aww!) which he has named "Snuggly" :) So I think that's where the conversation arose from. But anyway. He said, "Okay, so when I grow up to be a GIRL, I will have breasties and wear a bra." I said, "Um, no. You will grow up to be a MAN because you're a boy." He said, "Well, some boys grow up to be a girl and have breasties...." (!!!!!!). I told him that only very RARELY does that happen, but that it isn't how God meant it to be!
He is also thinking a LOT about the concept of birth (conception even - existance versus non-existance) and death lately. A lot of our bedtime discussions are about this. Some of his questions are SO hard to answer! Even if I think I may actually know the answer to one or two of them (!), it's so hard to figure out how to word it and explain it in a way that he can relate to and understand.
Also, this boy's memory continues to astound me. He has such a long-term memory of random things! Yesterday he randomly said, "You know... We used to have a diesel car, didn't we?" I had to think about that one! Yes, we did, briefly. It's the one Neil was driving when he was involved in a big car crash on the motorway, driving up north to his dad's funeral. The car was totalled. I'm still so thankful Neil wasn't even injured! Anyway, so I said to Arthur that, yes, we DID use to have a diesel car. He mused, "Yeees... But we haven't got it any more because Daddy crashed it." He was only 16 months old at the time!!!! Neil says he thinks he has talked about that car and what happened to it since then, but not for many many months now. But to remember that it took diesel fuel?!?! Mind you, Arthur is very into anything vehicular. He refers to cars on the road by their names, like "Look Mummy! There's a Chrysler!" etc.
At bedtime I now breastfeed Matthew with the lights out. We all sit on Neil's floor mattress. Matthew nurses, and I have the other breast ready too, in case Arthur wants to nurse. He is anxious that it will make him sick, bless his heart. So he often declines milky at bedtime now. I can see in his eyes how much he wants to, but he keeps on saying that it might make him sick :( It breaks my heart. I cheerfully tell him that it won't, and suggest he has a tiny bit if he's worried about having a lot. I always tell him it's okay if he doesn't have milky any more. I don't think he feels ready to stop though, and I'm sad that anxiety and vomiting turns out to be the deciding factor in our 3+ beautiful years of breastfeeding!! He still asks to nurse at least 3 times during the day, and I will let him one or two of those times, depending on what the other little boys are needing from me. I have added a snuggle time with Arthur at bedtime, just me and him. He LOVES it. I am hoping it's enough to replace the closeness of our bedtime milky. He lies next to me and beams continually, gazing into my eyes and saying softly, "I love snuggling with you!... I love spending time with you!... I love you so much!!" and other heart-melting things like that :) He's so gorgeous!
So at bedtime I nurse Matthew with Arthur close by. I pray aloud as usual for the boys. Then I tell them I am going to sing a worship song now. I like to expose them to our worship to God in the home, not just at church. I want them to SEE us loving God and living for him. I want to be a good example for my little loves. I want them to WANT to choose God too, for themselves. I can't decide that for them, but it means so incredibly much to me that they DO, so I want to encourage them and be an example to them. Also, I am finding that I love to worship God with my little ones gathered close to me! It's so precious. A couple of nights ago, one worship song turned into four, and as I nursed my sweetie boy with Arthur curled up at my side, I really did just PRAISE God. I sang the songs that were the simplest in terms of their words, for the children to understand what I mean when I sing to God. And partway through singing, I just wanted to raise my hands to God in worship. I don't think I ever have with the boys, at home. At church, but not at home. So I did. They were so quiet, watching and listening. I felt a little hand gently touch the palm of one of my outstretched hands, and then disappear again. After I sang that song, I asked Arthur if he would like me to sing another worship song. He said, "Yes, please sing about What a Faithful God You Have." I loved hearing him suggest a song, because it had to mean something to him for him to suggest it. I haven't sung that one (What a Faithful God Have I) in ages, but I did so for him. I like that he thoughtfully remembers certain lines from it, like, "Lord of mercy, you have heard my cry", and he talks about the part where God is there for us in the storms of life. There is nobody in the world who I LONG to be a light for Jesus to, more than my own children. I just love them so!
Well, it's getting incredibly late again, so I must finish this and go to bed. Is it weekend again already? I can't keep track - the days and weeks are just zipping by! I have more photos (and endless flotsam in my head!) so I'm sure to be back again soon :)
Recent entries.....
Moving time... - 2009-01-04
Christmas Eve! - 2008-12-24
Long-overdue update, a few Nathey pics and a video clip :) - 2008-12-01
Lots of news! - 2008-11-03
Nathan at 8 months... - 2008-10-12