Lux et umbra vicissum…

Alexis was such a sweet baby. She was really quite easy to deal with. I told people I would have loved to freeze her from the time she was about 5 months old till she turned about 11 months old and started walking. Then she started getting into more things and life got a little more difficult. But those few months were like gold. So I should expect the same kind of wonderful time with Branwen, right?

Wrong.

Branwen was much happier when she couldn’t move around. Once she started being able to get around a bit (which was fairly early), she found that she could chase me. And if she got anywhere near me, how dare I not pick her up!! Even when I hold her, she’s not always happy. It’s almost always impossible to tell what exactly is wrong. She has a heck of a temper (can’t imagine where she gets that from… ahem), and she knows exactly what she wants, though she doesn’t always communicate it to us very well. Anyway, all I can say is I can’t wait for this phase to end. 😛 She’s cute, but she’d be cuter if I could wear earplugs all day.

At this point, she’s walking easily when holding on to things, and she lets go occasionally to balance for a few seconds before falling or grabbing something again. (Not bad for 8 1/2 months old.) She’ll walk early… it’s just a question of how early. She’s also climbing stairs (still have to figure out a way to block them) and biting a lot. She has five teeth and three more on the way in. Crazy. She’s actually crawling right all the time now, too. No more of this half-army-crawl thing. Her favorite toy seems to be the little jingle ball that we have for the cats. At least it’s a hard rubberish toy instead of something cloth that she could get pieces off of.

Alexis is actually doing quite well with the potty training now. She’s telling us sometimes when she has to go, and we’re reminding her other times. Either way, she hasn’t had an accident in about a week now other than at sleep times. I still put a pull-up on her for nap and bed, so those are often wet when she gets up. We’ll get there eventually. Oh, she won’t poop in the potty yet, either. She either waits till she has the pull-up on or makes herself constipated. *sigh* I guess that will work out eventually, too. I have some different methods to try to see if I can help her out, just haven’t had much of a chance to try them yet.

I don’t think we have much other news for now. Things have been busy, but it’s been a fairly normal busy. We went to NJ to see some of Joel’s family not long ago, and then they were up in our area for Memorial Day. It was good that the girls could visit with them. They don’t see their grandparents on Joel’s side nearly as often as they see my parents. The trip to NJ was interesting, of course. It was much longer than anticipated, but the girls did pretty well. The visit was easier than I thought it might be. It’s always frightening to go to stay in a non-babyproofed house, but Alexis was a very good girl while we were there. She got plenty of attention, so I’m sure that helped. 🙂

Well, I should go. I have some things to do before the girls wake up. Actually, I don’t know that Alexis has fallen asleep yet. 😛 Anyway, time to force myself to get a few things done. 🙂

First I have to show off my babies once more. 🙂 These were their separate Easter pictures, taken two days after Easter. The one of Alexis is pretty, and I love the one of Branwen. 🙂

In other news, I have reached true mother-of-multiplehood. Last week, Joel and I went to a Honda dealership, and we bought ourselves a minivan. 🙂 We traded in my much-loved ’98 Nissan Pathfinder and got a 2001 Honda Odyssey.

Now I must say, if you gotta have a minivan, this is certainly a nice one. It’s an LX (we couldn’t manage the EX since it runs several thou more in general), so it doesn’t have quite as much equipment, but most of that I won’t miss. I would have liked the power sliding doors, but… oh well. It does have keyless entry, which is nice. I had gotten used to that with my Pathfinder, and it certainly comes in handy, especially in the rain when carrying children and assorted other goods. Of course, the minivan has a feature the Pathfinder didn’t where the keyless entry is concerned. It has a nice security feature that relocks the doors 30 seconds after you unlock them if they haven’t yet been opened. So I unlock the doors from my front door, struggle to get both children and whatever else I’m carrying to the van, reach for the handle and… click. *sigh* Well, I’ll figure out the timing eventually, I guess.

A couple of quick baby notes… We went to a farm yesterday and Alexis had a blast. The thing she seemed to enjoy most was running up and down a wooden ramp with her friend, Emma. 😛

Branwen yesterday morning, after pulling up on me, decided she wanted to get my friend’s dog and started walking towards her while holding my hands. I can’t believe she’s doing this at 7 1/2 months old! I need to babyproof more…

I just heard Joel come out of the shower, and I should be getting to bed. We’re dedicating Branwen in church tomorrow, so it would be good if we all look at least moderately rested. 🙂

My grandfather definitely has lung cancer. The tumor is about 3cm, and they did a PET scan yesterday morning to see if there was any anywhere else in his body. We hope to hear the results tomorrow.

In other news, Branwen has started eating applesauce in the morning, so she’s only nursing three times a day now with occasional night nursings. (Hallelujah!) I’ve also started her on a sippy cup, though I have to hold it for her yet. She hasn’t figured out how to tip it and suck on it at the same time. She gets really mad whenever she tries. 🙂 She’s managing to get herself into a sitting position now, too, so I don’t have to keep sitting her up. She’s also pulling up onto her knees, so we’re having to babyproof a bit more. She managed to get herself three quarters of the way onto the landing at the bottom of the steps today before I caught her and relocated her. 🙂 We’ll have to put gates up post haste.

So, my question for the day… Is it unethical to eat your 2 year old’s Easter candy if she, by every indication, has forgotten about it? I mean, we let her eat the stuff that we gave her (consisting of precisely five mini chocolate eggs which she ate on five separate days), but she also got candy in Sunday School and at an aunt’s house. She’s eaten some of it, but we dole it out slowly and she really doesn’t seem to remember it at this point. Some of it she’s not getting anyway because it’s not really the types of candy she can manage (some of the hard, flat-style lollypops, for instance), but other things she could manage if I gave them to her. I just don’t feel like having them sit on my fridge forever. And no, I would not consider giving her more at a time. She’s got enough energy as it is. I don’t think I could do “Mousercise” more than once a day. 😛

Maybe I shouldn’t eat her chocolate or I may have to Mousercise more. 😛

A little over a week ago, a mass was dicovered on my grandfather’s right lung. He went in for a biopsy this past Monday at which point his lung collapsed. They were able to reinflate it, but they didn’t get a large enough sample, so they were redoing the biopsy this afternoon. The doctors seem to think that it is malignant, and if they’re right there will be all kinds of other things to deal with. They would want to do surgery in which they’d remove the upper lobe of his right lung (a very extensive surgery with long recovery time), but they have to make sure his heart can stand it first. Chemotherapy and radiation would also most likely enter the picture at some point. My grandfather is 80 years old and has not been in the best health for a while though he’s been managing ok.

I only saw my grandparents once or twice a year as I was growing up. I know that’s more than some people get to see their relatives, and I’m grateful for the visits we had, but I still didn’t get to know my extended family as well as I would have liked to. Now I may very well be facing the loss of my grandfather (my other grandparents are still alive), and my heart is breaking… not just because of the loss that I and the rest of my family will experience, but because of something he said to my cousin the other day.

My cousin was visiting him in the hospital yesterday morning, and, as she wrote in her email to the family, “He said that the preacher from Grandma’s church had already been in to see him this morning. Then he said, ‘I don’t know why he’d come to see me. I don’t go to church. It’s kind of like I’m unworthy, but I guess those guys don’t see it that way.'”

Unworthy. Unworthy to attend church. Unworthy to be loved by God. Unworthy.

Is he unworthy? Well, let’s see… Isaiah 64:6 says, “For all of us have become like one who is unclean, and all our righteous deeds are like a filthy garment; and all of us wither like a leaf, and our iniquities, like the wind, take us away.” (All references I give will be from the New American Standard Bible.) Note the reference in that passage to righteous deeds. That basically says you don’t get to heaven by being good. Perhaps a better known passage that makes that same point is Matthew 5:20, “For I say to you, that unless your righteousness surpasses that of the scribes and Pharisees, you shall not enter the kingdom of heaven.” Do you know how righteous the Pharisees were? They were the ones who wouldn’t walk more than a certain number of steps on the Sabbath because they were afraid if they did they wouldn’t be keeping it holy. They kept every law on the books. You want outwardly righteous, they could give it to you. Problem was, they didn’t realize their “goodness” wasn’t going to save them. Again, Romans 3:23 says, “For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God…” Unworthy? Absolutely! We all are. Every last one of us. So where’s the hope in that?

The hope comes in the very next verse in that Romans passage. Romans 3:24 continues, “… being justified as a gift by His grace through the redemption which is in Christ Jesus.” (emphasis mine) The answer is grace! I read a really good distinction recently between mercy and grace, both of which God extends to us. Mercy is defined as not giving us what we deserve. Grace, on the other hand, is giving us bountifully of blessings we don’t deserve. An example in Steve McVey’s book Grace Rules is of a time when he was pulled over for speeding. The officer had opened his ticket book to write out the ticket, and Mr. McVey stopped him and asked if he wouldn’t extend mercy towards him this time. The officer stopped what he was doing, looked at him, closed the ticket book, and told him ok, just drive a little slower, please. That was an example of mercy. An example of grace, says Mr. McVey, would have been if the officer had then pulled out his wallet, handed over $100, and told him to have a nice day. Mercy was not giving him the deserved ticket. Grace would have been giving him undeserved blessing.

So, how does grace work? Well, God had to make a way for us to somehow become perfect, because if we’re not perfect, we can’t meet with a holy God. God extended grace to us — gave us the chance to be perfect — by providing His Son as a sacrifice for our “unworthiness”. Acts 13:38-39, after speaking of how God raised up Jesus and how Jesus did not undergo decay (he rose from the dead), says, “Therefore let it be known to you, brethren, that through Him forgiveness of sins is proclaimed to you, and through Him everyone who believes is freed from all things, from which you could not be freed through the Law of Moses.” Know what that means? It means that because Jesus died on the cross and rose again, we have the chance to be worthy! Worthy! Our worth doesn’t come from what we do or even who we are; it comes from one thing and one thing only… the fact that Jesus, the ultimate and only worthy one, lives in us. When we choose to accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, His Spirit, the Holy Spirit, comes and lives inside of us. Romans 8:10 says, “And if Christ is in you, though the body is dead because of sin, yet the spirit is alive because of righteousness.” Do you know what that means??? I’m alive!!! I received a spirit transplant! When I accepted Christ as my Savior, God took my old dead spirit, and He replaced it with His very own living Spirit, the Holy Spirit! My old spirit couldn’t do anything… a dead thing can’t, after all. But the Holy Spirit… it has no limits! And best of all, it’s pure, righteous, holy… worthy. Know what that means about me? Even if I mess up sometimes, I too am pure, righteous, holy, and worthy. First Corinthians 3:16-17 says, “Do you not know that you are a temple of God, and that the Spirit of God dwells in you? If any man destroys the temple of God, God will destroy him, for the temple of God is holy, and that is what you are.” And so an unworthy person is made worthy.

Grace is perhaps the most beautiful thing in the Bible. John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.” We often think of that “eternal life” as being a future thing, but grace allows for both present and future. Yes, that holiness and worthiness I spoke of will allow us into heaven when we die, but perhaps more importantly, it will allow us to live here and now. We have a living Spirit who takes all of our burdens and cares, who guides and directs us, who teaches us and does great works through us (often despite us!). Grace means we don’t have to struggle anymore. It means that God wants to take our struggles and give us back love, acceptance, value, security, and adequacy. He gives us all we need if we just turn to Him.

I’m still learning how to give all of my burdens over to Him, but I know that He’s released me of several over the years. The upcoming burden of losing a grandparent will be a biggy, but I know that God will carry this one for me, too. After all, He promised me He would in his Word, and He always keeps His promises. I just wish there was some way I could tell my grandfather how very much God loves Him… enough to pay a large price to make sure that he could be worthy.

If anyone wants to do further research on what the Bible has to say on any of these topics, you can even do it online at several sites. The one I’ve used most often is Crosswalk.com’s Bible Study Tools. If you go to their concordances, you can type in a word and see which passages contain it, or go to Nave’s Topical Bible and look things up by topic.

The girls and I are all sick again, so we won’t be attending church tomorrow. The kicker is it’s once again my nursery day. I coordinate in our church nursery once a month, which basically means I’m the one standing at the desk receiving children, making sure everyone has security bracelets, pagers, etc., marking down attendence, getting snacks for the various rooms… We have a large church, so it’s a bit of a hectic job. Anyway, the girls are sick so often that it seems like I’ve rarely actually done nursery duty on my Sunday. I keep having to switch with someone for another week. This month, however, none of the Sundays are very good, so…. Joel agreed to do the job for me.

Now, Joel usually helps me, but he’s usually in the background a bit. He gets the snacks ready for me, loads the dishwasher in the nursery kitchen, that sort of thing. Not that he can’t do the rest of the stuff. He does sometimes work in one of the four nursery rooms when we need extra people (other men work in the rooms, too, so he’s not the only one), but there aren’t any male coordinators out there. Standing out at the front counter and dealing with all of the parents, not to mention the workers, isn’t really his thing. It strikes me as being similar to holding your wife’s purse when she has to use the bathroom in a store, only worse. He hasn’t said that, though. He’s just nervous because he isn’t generally big on dealing with people he doesn’t know that well, and he doesn’t want to have to make any nursery decisions, not to mention he’s never had to use the attendance book, a rather formidible looking large white binder with lots of tabs sticking out. Joel’s not the complaining type, but I can see he’s a little tense about this assignment.

Well, I’ll make sure to let him know that the nursery director probably won’t mind if he doesn’t wear one of the big blue regulation aprons we coordinators usually wear. I’m sure that will ease his mind. 🙂

Now that Branwen is army crawling really well, she stays happy on the floor longer than she did. Makes sense… she can actually get to the toys that she, in her mad joy over holding them, flings across the room. Since she stays happy longer, I feel like I should be able to get some more things done. Hm. Not exactly. Since she’s getting around better, I also have to keep more of an eye on her. We’re getting a little better with Alexis’ toys (especially since Alexis has started noticing that Branwen is getting them and putting them in her mouth), but there’s still the random cat toy, the old Reader’s Digest that Alexis was looking at, the shoes that someone left on the mat by the door, not to mention the edge of the area rug by the front door which apparently is rather tasty. 😛 So I can’t figure out if I’m getting the same amount of things done as before, a few more things since I’m not holding her quite as much, or less things, but with more exercise. 😛 Well, I guess if I count picking up the aforementioned articles to get them out of her reach as cleaning, then I can say I’m getting more cleaning done. 🙂

The squash didn’t go over well at first. It was a different consistency than the rice cereal (we grind our own baby food to save cost and not have to worry about preservatives and such), and it made her gag. She caught on pretty quickly when we started mixing it with the rice cereal, though. After the first couple of nights, she was eating it just fine. We’ve taken her off of it for now, though. She got a terrible diaper rash from something and a bit of constipation (poor baby! her bottom was bleeding the rash was so bad!), and though it seemed like too long after the squash for that to have been the cause, it just seemed prudent to take a break. We’re back to just rice cereal until the rash clears up. Next, we’ll try spinach, I think.

Potty training is going great, as long as great can be defined as “not happening quite like I would like it to, but kind-of progressing a little bit.” I push it more some days than others based on our moods and energy levels. 🙂 She has had a few times recently when she said she needed to use the potty and then did, so that’s good. However, there have been more times when we “tried” to use the potty, didn’t do it, and had a wet diaper 15 minutes later. 😛 Oh well. This is one situation where I think it’s almost a hindrance that she’s so laid back. I have a feeling Branwen will potty train easier when the time comes because things generally bother her more. We’ll see. 🙂

We’ve all got colds again (though Joel only has a tiny bit of drainage, so his might just be the weather systems). I’m kind-of glad we have them now, because that means the girls will miss church this Sunday, but they might be well for Easter. Here’s hoping!

It sounds like Alexis finally settled down, so I think I’m going to go and try to take a nap myself. I’ll have to see if the cats will let me sleep. 🙂

We started Branwen on the rice cereal almost a week ago, and it’s still upsetting her. Only now she’s upset because we won’t spoon it in fast enough. 😛 We can’t win! Tonight, we ended up going back and mixing up more of it for her three times! She ate a total of 6 ounces of formula mixed with who knows how much rice cereal (I don’t mix it according to directions… I just mix it until it’s the consistency I want). She’s a bottomless pit! Seems to me I thought that about Alexis when she was on the rice cereal, too. I’ll be able to start her on veggies soon. I bought some squash to start with. We’ll see how she does with that.

I forgot to mention in my toothsome post that Branwen has also started army crawling pretty well, so she can actually move forward now. She doesn’t move quickly; I can still get things out of her path that I don’t want her to have if I see them, but I don’t always see them. 😛 Need to work on the “clean up” part of playing with Alexis a bit more. She’s great about putting away her books… now we need to work on putting away her other toys.

Time for bed, I hope. Tomorrow is another day of potty training. *sigh* It makes me exhausted thinking about it. At least my babies are far enough apart in age that I should have a little break in between potty training episodes. 🙂

Very sweet, and complete with two teeth! First one cut through Monday, the next one was in by Tuesday. She doesn’t like it when I try to see them, though. 😛 It makes her really mad. Her sister never minded that sort of thing. I could poke at her all I wanted. She also didn’t mind having her face wiped, her nose suctioned, medicine given to her, etc. I’ve been told that I now have a normal baby. 😛

In other news, potty training is, as they say, for the birds. Though I don’t think you can potty train birds. As far as I’m concerned, you can’t potty train toddlers, either. 😛 At least she gets concerned when her training pants are wet. She doesn’t even notice if her diaper (or disposable trainers) are. Well, hopefully we’ll have this settled by college. She did tell me the other day why it is we sit on the potty. According to her, it’s “because we have butts.”

Time to go and get something to munch on before the girls wake up and want some, too. 🙂

Btw, here are my gorgeous girls. 🙂 Alexis often has the funky hairdo due to ultra fine hair and a tendency to twirl it.

Alexis	Branwen

Ok, cheesy title… but this has to be a quick entry. Joel and I are both dead tired and we really need to get to bed.

Branwen turned 6 months old today. That seems so crazy! Anyway, her 6 month appointment went well and, as we did with Alexis on her 6 month day, we started Branwen on rice cereal this evening. At least, we tried to. Alexis took to solid foods like a fish to water. She didn’t really seem to have trouble with them at all, and she was always, even when she first started, a fairly neat kid. Branwen, on the other hand, really did not think that having a spoon stuffed in her mouth was very funny at all. She proceded to jerk her head to either side, scream, grab at the spoon (which she managed to catch a couple of times), and blow upset raspberries at us, promptly showering us and the room at large with rice cereal. By the time we were done, there was cereal on the floor, on the high chair, all over Branwen, and sprinkling my face, arms, etc. Score one for Branwen, zero for her parents.

I’ve heard that if they don’t take to solids right away, it can sometimes help to feed them when they’re not quite as hungry. We’ll be trying that tomorrow. Tonight we just settled for nursing and taking a nice, cleansing bath. 🙂