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- Details
- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Life
Happy New Year! While this is often a time of year to set resolutions and dream of all our hopes for the year to come, my transition from 2013 to 2014 was a reminder that even the best-laid plans are never a sure thing. Goals are great, but so can be going with the flow. We all know that flexibility and patience are easiest to come by when you don't really need them, but when everything is going wrong, resigning yourself to your fate sometimes looks close enough. Let me explain...
Matt and I spent Christmas and the week following with his family on the East Coast. We had a fabulous trip with just the right mix of catching up, fun with family, delicious food, quality time together (mostly hours and hours of driving, which is often when we have our best conversations!), and finally some rest as we spent a lazy day at his parents' house before flying home. Except the night before our flight Matt started throwing up, and it was clear by morning that we were not going anywhere, much less driving an hour to the airport and flying two and a half hours home.
I cancelled our flight and did my best to enjoy our extra day with Matt's family. Torre played happily, chased the cats and pulled CDs off their shelves. I did a load of laundry, called my parents, slept and visited in between checking on Matt who was doing his best to keep some liquids down and catch some sleep. Instead of playing board games with friends and counting down to midnight, we lay on an air mattress in the dark and prayed it wasn't a huge mistake to re-book our flight for Jan. 1 - the day with the lowest price and most available seats, but also a gamble whether Matt would be able to travel so soon.
- Details
- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Life
- Details
- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Life
It really feels like Christmas is around the corner now that our tree is up and decorated, we have snow on the ground, and cards are starting to arrive in the mail.
It is fun to have presents under the tree already, since I think last year we had a pretty bare floor for the first half of December. Torre enjoys swatting the little red ornaments at every opportunity and got very excited when he realized one wrapped present makes noises every time he bumps it. That present lives in the middle of the tree now, for my sanity and so the wrapping lasts until Christmas :)
Matt bought these window decals last night, which are SO cute, and I think it will be fun for Torre to decorate the windows in future years. We sure had fun putting them up, and then whaddaya know it snowed!
One innovation I'm pleased with myself over this year is the idea of putting Christmas cards in our window blinds! We definitely don't have enough clear surfaces that are out of reach from Torre's hands (and therefore mouth), and even before we had a baby I always wished we had a better way to display the beautiful cards we receive. At night the candy canes shine through the blinds, and I think it looks pretty cheery from the outside too!
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- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Life
It has been a very busy last few days for our family, and I have been grateful for Torre's flexibility and resilience as we kept him up late away from home several nights in a row. Last night was a show for Stay Golden, a performing arts ministry Matt leads that gives young artists a stage, and as always it was inspiring to hear testimonies and see the passion that high school students and young adults bring through spoken word, song, and dance. I signed up for the open mic part of the show and had so much fun presenting a spoken word piece I wrote this Fall - I'm hoping to post the video before long.
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- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Life
Movember was on my mind today since I saw this comic earlier in the morning, so I was on the ball to capture this picture at lunch time.. You might think that Torre is too young to participate in Movember, but in fact he has inherited a great passion for prostate health awareness, as well as the colour orange from his grandfather. Today, with the help of some carrot soup, he combined these passions.
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- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Life
Marriage is more than four bare legs in a bed. ~Hoshang N. Akhtar
I'm thinking about marriage today, grateful for the husband I have and the life we are building together, and reflecting on how I've changed and am changing as a wife. All in all it's for the better! But like rocks being polished in a tumbler, married life feels gritty sometimes. I worry about aspects of myself that I'm losing or things I know Matt has sacrificed for us, and I freak out that it's too much to ask.
My friend Brett wrote a great little rant on how our culture treats marriage (Marriage Sucks). He searched the internets for an inspirational quote to include in a love letter for his wife and got mostly one-liners about marriage that are thinly veiled put-downs. He says,
"Marriage does not have the greatest track record at the moment. It is in desperate need of people who will champion it, who will speak life into it and cheer it on from the sides [as other married couples and as single or dating people] – we need all the help we can get."
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- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Life
This morning got off to a terrible start. Terrible. It was a rough night and early start to the day, and all in all I could not imagine feeling any worse.
I texted a friend, wallowed in self-pity, then cooked myself the most delicious breakfast possible.
Torre's favourite thing lately is to pull himself up to stand against a chair or a table and then call me to help him down or help him walk to somewhere. As bacon sizzled in the kitchen, I tried to explain to him that he had used up all of me during the night, that it was just a sad shell of me lying on the carpet unable to help him. He mostly just stood there yelling. At one point he crawled over and bit me on the leg.
Finally breakfast was ready, and Torre warmed my heart by eating some banana and some egg. Feeding him is an area that I feel almost as helpless in as getting him to sleep. Like, babies come with no skills at all, and I just don't know how to teach the basic necessities of life. Part of me knows it will all work out, but a tiny, panicky part of my brain insists after every wakeful night and every rejected meal that I will still be waking up in the night to nurse my 12 year old because all he ever eats is rice crackers. So with some real food in both our bellies, my dejection began to ease, and I grabbed my Bible to read a bit while Torre played on the floor.
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- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Life
How much sleep does an eight month old baby need? Apparently the average is 16 hours, which only means the range is 12-20 hours per day. New babies get all the sleep they need because they simply take it, brains shutting down to rest whenever and wherever. As babies get older, however, they gain the ability to keep themselves awake. If they are in unfamiliar surroundings, or if it seems like lots of fun is happening, babies can opt to resist their own tiredness and stay alert to the world, taking in all the information they can.
This is a good thing, but as with all developmental milestones it is hitting me as a parent as a mixed blessing. Growing up isn't sad, after all, and I would never wish my child to be narcoleptic, but now that his body won't simply take whatever sleep it needs, my responsibility as a parent has expanded. And it's stressful.
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- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Life
Before I jump in to this post, let me offer full disclosure: we used disposables on our two week mission trip to Bathurst, New Brunswick, and it was almost the undoing of us and cloth diapers. Disposables are amazingly convenient - no rinsing, washing, or hanging to dry; they take up hardly any space in the diaper bag; it is easy to know when to change them because you can see when they're full. They're not even that expensive. Truth be told, I changed fewer diapers throughout the day when Torre was in disposables compared to cloth as well because they could absorb so much more.
But.
Now that we've been home for a few weeks, I am happily back in the swing of cloth diapering, even having just completed a week of day camp at our church. I have been meaning to write this post for a while because our apartment-dweller status was one of the biggest concerns I had researching whether cloth diapers would be a good choice for our family. Would we really save money if we have to pay per load of laundry? Would the diapers really come clean with only limited washer settings to choose from?
This is not meant to be a comprehensive post on cloth diapers, but a peek at the system I've developed that works for me. Cloth diapering is not for every family, but I don't think that living in an apartment is a reason to give up on it, so here's what works for us.
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- Written by: Alyssa
- Category: Life
Today after VBS some of the staff stayed late to share a devo time of worship and prayer. It was great to check in and share the highs and lows we have experienced this week, and it is hard to believe that tomorrow will be our last day of camp! VBS is a really multi-faceted ministry because there is an obvious focus on teaching kids about God's love, but there are also aspects of discipleship for the student leaders and outreach to the families who send their kids to us.
It is hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that each kid running rambunctiously through the snack area not only represents a future adult but also represents a family in our community. Some of these families have health concerns, financial worries, emotional problems, and/or spiritual struggles, and for five days we get to walk alongside them by modelling God's love to their children.