Amazing

I find watching Liliana grow is amazing - it is amazing to watch her curiosity just overtake her. It is amazing how much they learn in the first year! It is amazing to almost see the wheels in their brain turn as they figure things out. It is amazing that some stuff really is not taught to her - yet she does it.

I am so thankful to have been a part of God's miracle. It is just awesome to think about how God forms us...and to have been able to be a part of this process is a blessing!

Body after Baby

I am not going to talk about the physical part of my body - we just do not need to go down that road. We just don't.

I am talking about the inside body - the workings of the inside. I could talk about my heart and get all mushy, but I am not taking that route either.

I am talking about the inside body - from poop to pains to peeing.

Speaking of going pee - do you know they asked me to go pee while I was delivering Liliana!? How absurd is that? I told them I could not go. Evan said "if you're embarrassed, we'll all turn around." I kid you not - as soon as those words came out of his mouth, every body in the room turned around...even the doctor. No questions asked. No waiting for my answer. They just turned around like Evan held the highest authority in the room. Now come on, really - let's just think this through...I am giving birth, everything is out in the open - why would going pee embarrass me at this very moment? (Do not get me wrong, I appreciated the gesture and concern...but really) Needless to say, I did not pee at that time - or for some time after. About an hour after Liliana was born I sat on the toilet with the nurse standing next to me and I had to pee so bad, but my body was not hearing of it. I could not physically go pee. The nurse had to straight cath me until I could urinate on my own. Liliana was born at 6:30pm, I did not pee until 10:30pm. As I started to pee, again with the nurse standing next to me, I said "I feel like a big girl going pee on the potty!" We laughed. I peed.

It was not long after I got home that I did not feel right - down there. There was pressure when I stood up and it made me just want to cross my legs or sit down. Turns out my uterus was falling out - no kidding. I mean, it was not hanging out bad...but it was falling out. Today, my uterus is "in place" - so some ultrasound shows. I am not 100% convinced it is. However better, much better...still some small issues here and there.

Unexplainable pain. I have had ultrasounds done for this pain in my abdomen - everything is fine. I have been sent to the General Surgeon for a possible hernia - that was a no go. But be sure to note that he was going to have me come back in six weeks to re-check it and then he might do the hernia surgery anyway because there really is no good test to tell if there is a hernia or not. It is up to his discretion when he pokes and prods me and then maybe do the exploratory surgery. Money sucker. Needless to say, I have not gone back to him. The pain is less - but still there.

Pooping - ode to pooping, when you finally poop. Before I got pregnant, overall, I had no issues going poop. Then I got pregnant and it changed that part of my system. Dog gone it. There just isn't anything like taking a good poop. During my pregnancy I would get a wave of nausea - clearly different from morning (all day) sickness - and then I could poop. Strange, strange, strange. I figured that once my peanut was born, all would be good in the land of pooping - oh not so. Thankfully this does not happen ALL the time, but it happens enough...I will get very hot and sweaty and feel nauseous and just over-all really sick about 10 minutes before I poop. Ridiculous and unheard of!

I was told my body would still be changing/returning to "normal" (if there is such a thing after baby) for 9 months after delivery. Well, it is 11 months and some things are not back to what is "my normal"...

Liliana - 11 months
Havin' fun in Nana's backyard!

Liliana - 11 months
(moved to our front yard!)
There is grass stuck to my finger! :)

Biased, I know...but...cute cute cute!

A bird flew by and then up in the sky and she almost fell over looking at it!

...but...I guess, ok ok - I know Liliana is worth it all!

What do you see?

I think this is my new favorite songs.

What do you see? What do you see when you close your eyes and think of Yahweh?

I close my eyes and I see my God stooped down, arms stretched wide, a smile from ear to ear on His face, calling me to Himself, calling me by name. I see me, running towards Him. When I get to Him, He wraps His arms around me and holds onto me, even picks me up. Just like an earthly parent to their child. You know - when the baby starts to crawl or walk and you get down to their level and show all this excitement, calling them towards you. And when they get there, you embrace them and hug them and praise them and you are so happy they are there - they came to you, they are in your arms. I imagine that to be my God. So excited to have me run to Him. So happy to take care of me. So happy I chose Him. I think of being that child who got to their mom or dad and how safe they feel in their arms. I wonder why I am not always quick to run to my Father's arms.

I see His arms stretched out and nailed to the cross, it is my sin that held Him there. I see his head hung because He died for me. He died to pay the price I should be paying. He died so that I could spend eternity with Him in Heaven - the most glorious place with my glorious God.
I see an example set for me to follow; He even left me a love letter with instructions and encouragement.
I see a loving Father.
I see Him weeping when I turn away from Him.
I see Him pleading my case to His Father; telling His Father that He took my place and I am washed clean now, washed by the blood shed from His body.
I see Him watching over me.
I see a jealous God.
I see a just God.
I see Him smiling when I please Him.
I see Him raising the sun by just pointing His finger at it.
Tonight, I see my God bowling. :) When I was little and it would thunder and lighting my mom would tell me the thunder is just God bowling in Heaven.

What I see, makes me smile. It makes me love Him even more. It makes me want to strive to serve Him and glorify Him with all that I am, the best I can. It makes me want to spend time with Him.

What do you see? Just sitting for 5 minutes thinking of what you see - it could strengthen your relationship with Him. It could prepare you for a quiet time with Him. It could just change your whole attitude if you were previously completely ticked off because you might not be able to finish your child's scrapbook because of a stupid reason - in fact, I am telling you it CAN change your attitude! :)

...His banner for us is love. That is taken from Song of Solomon 2:4. He is proclaiming His love for us. How awesome!

I need to be more diligent about spending time in the Word...I think I will start my quiet times off with this song. It prepares me to seek Him - it reminds me how much my God loves me. He sings to me. He prays for me. Those are just awesome thoughts for me.

What do you see?

Jumbleness of Things

I have nothing to really say, nothing important or really worth while - but I figured I would post anyway.

Today at work was fun. Yes, I said that. When I first got up this morning (as most Friday's) I just wanted to go back to sleep and wished for 5pm for the weekend to start. I was so out of it that I did not want to do one thing this weekend. I wake up on Friday's at 6am and leave out the door with Liliana by 6:30am, not a minute later. (OH, I should tell you about my morning yesterday) Anyway...there was just a very fun, easy-going, light hearted mood today. I will not say why I think that is. I got to organize! Yeah, yeah...I am pretty lame. I got to drill some holes in the wall and hang up this contraption that helped organize the front desk - even though I sit there rarely, it looks much better. I am probably in trouble though because my boss asked me to do something and I honestly could not do it. It was to list out the things that are done at check out...I could not, i cannot do it. I can do the job, quite well...I think...but I cannot list the stuff out. I just do it. Strange. We had a rep bring us lunch today - Olive Garden. I had so much food and a huge piece of this chocolate thing for dessert and I probably could have had more! I was like a bottomless pit today.

Then tonight, I went out shopping. I went to Office Depot - I tried the other night but they close at 8pm now...dumb. I wanted to get some lamenating sheets and I did get them and I also go some cool envelopes, an eye glass repair kit (which I promptly used when I got home), and some pens. I am a pen phene. I like to write and I have certain pens I like to write with...blah blah blah.

Ok - on to the exciting part for me...sounds lame though. I have a notebook "Letters to Liliana" - I write letters to Liliana in there, duh. There have been some little things and pictures and such that I want to lamenate right onto the page...so I finally got to do that tonight. And then I wrote her a letter with one of my new pens...oh my goodness it is a nice pen. You know Papermate has Flair pens...and they are nice. Well, now I consider them alright. They have NEW Flair pens...Flair Expressions and they are not suppose to bleed through your paper. Man, are they nice!!!

ok - my morning travel yesterday. I ended up being half an hour late to work because of this - so mad. Let's just call the streets A, B, and C. (These are the main roads of which I do not want to name on the WWW) I started down A to get to B...the same route. I saw that A was backed up and knew it would be a long time before I got to B. I decided to go to C. This is not out of my way...just more side streets. I took a round about way to get to C because, well...it was round about. I FINALLY get to C and I am seconds away from B - my actual road destination - when I see that the ramp is CLOSED. I had to detour all the way BACK to A. I wanted to cry and I think if I would not have gotten into trouble and did not have a conscience...I would have called in and gone home. So I started the detour back, ended up waiting in traffic because of commuter trains and then finally ended up on B - off of the road I started on that I got off of to begin with.

Wait, to top it off - I was telling a co-worker this story and she said I could have turned left on C (instead of turning right and following the detour all the way back to A) and gotten onto B from there. But, I did not feel too bad about that because I could not have done that the way the roads worked...it just put me on the detour path. That was so dumb.

I guess I am going to bed now. Oh, I got to sleep in bed last night! I went back in the room for something and realized the dripping was not going on and so I hopped into bed and fell right to sleep! Anyway, I am tired and we have a busy weekend, sort of...busy compared to doing nothing as the norm...and my lovely husband is telling me that I am being mean to him when he is the one being mean to me - go figure.

Drip drip drip drip drip drip

Monotonous...defined as the following: 1 - lacking in variety; tediously unvarying. 2 - characterizing a sound continuing on one note. 3 - having very little inflection; limited to a narrow pitch range.

A few weeks ago Evan and I had an argument over something and then we went to bed and in the morning he found me sleeping on the couch. He asked me why I slept there and I told him it was because the air conditioner was making this noise and I could not sleep. He then says; "are you sure it isn't because you were mad at me?" WHAT DID I JUST SAY? The conversation has nothing to do with my post - it is just another thing that guys do...or do not do - listen.

Anyway - a few days later it was happening again. I turned off the air conditioner thinking (oh, we have window units) the unit was frozen or something...which has happened before. I still heard this noise. Now I did not know what was going on. Later that night Evan was looking out the window over the unit and told me it was water dripping on it. I said, it cannot be water. Yes, it was raining while he was looking out there. He tells me it is because he is watching it splash on there. And I then asked how come it makes that noise when it is not raining. So we started to brainstorm and I realized that the people who moved in upstairs put in new air conditioner units and they must have put one in the same window we have our unit, but obviously on their floor - above ours. Now it was dripping onto our unit.

Some time passed and it was no big deal. Until last night. I was like a person on TV. I was tossing and turning. I was putting the pillow over my head. I stuffed kleenex in one ear thinking that would dull the drip, drip drip, drip, drip, drip drip drip, dripping. No luck. Off to the couch I went, all bed items in tow.

Evan asked me earlier if I was sleeping on the couch tonight, I said it all depends on the dripping. I cannot handle monotonous noises, they just drive me nuts. I just cannot tolerate it. I do not know what it is about them or even out to describe how it makes me feel - needless to say, as I was changing for bed I realized the couch will be my friend tonight too.

My dear husband has offered to try to put some foam or wood on the outside to try to stop or dull the noise or undo ALL of his work that he put into putting in the unit...insulating it, cutting board to fit all around it, doing some other stuff I know nothing about, caulking it, and painting the wood white so it will look nice to move the unit to the other window. What a nice guy!

And the other annoying thing - before we left on vacation we heard this beep from the hallway every 3 minutes or so....obviously the people upstairs need to change a battery in something. We come back and not 2 minutes after walking in the door...BEEP. A WHOLE WEEK, now it will be 2 weeks later and nothing has been done about this beeping thing.

I better go to sleep now - before I hear more monotonous noises pop up.

I am...

...gloriously made...by I AM...my Glorious God.

St. Germain, Wisconsin

Sometimes things come together at the last minute - and this family vacation was one of those things. Originally, just my sister and her family were going - but like I said, at the last minute things changed and everything worked out and we ALL went to St. Germain, Wisconsin. I have been going there almost every single year since I was born. It was cool the first time Evan came with us to show him everything I did growing up...it was really cool to go back with my daughter. It will be so much fun in the years to come to show her, and have her understand that is where Mommy went on vacation all the time! We had a blast - this is all of us: Let's see if I can tell you who everyone is: 3 adults in back from left to right - my Mom, my Dad, My Aunt. Next row 3 kids from left to right - Katie, Andrew, Mary (hiding a bit) These are my nieces and nephew. Then from left to right it is mySister, my brother-in-law, me, Evan holding Liliana.

It was a great vacation - to me, we had a good mix of resting and doing things. We start off by meeting for breakfast at the Machine Shed and we always take pictures by the big John Deere Tractor.

From there, we are off. Liliana did great in the car. It is about a six hour car ride, although I think going up it was about seven because there was an accident along the way that slowed things down. Mostly Liliana just slept. Nana had bought her a travel bear at the Machine Shed and she enjoyed cuddling with it.

I took this picture from the front seat, looking at Liliana in the mirror.

And I believe this was when we stopped in St. Germain - so cute.
Far Reach

It was on Daddy's watch that he learned just how far our little one can reach. The first picture shows where Daddy left Liliana while he was fixing her food. And the next two show what happened and what Daddy found when he turned around.

Bare Bottoms

My little munchkin is getting pretty quick for me. It seems she does not like to stay still for a diaper change and got away from me a few times. The picture where she is sitting down was so funny because just as I was going to take the picture, she "covered" herself up!

Beach Bum -or- Chubs at the Beach!

We went to the beach. The first time I took Liliana in there, Evan rode over on the boat. He had to go back for a few things and I told him to bring the camera back. So Liliana and I waited in the the lake for him to get back. While he was gone, a fish kept attacking my ankle. I was just standing there. I could not believe it, I have never had that happen to me. When Evan got back, I asked him to take some pictures so I could promptly get out of the lake and he forgot to bring the camera. Leave it to a guy. I stayed in the lake all that time with that crazy fish for nothing. So a few days later we went back...it was a little warmer out and Liliana has so much fun splashing around in the water and...we got some pictures!

Boating & Fishing

We rented a motor to go on the boat and it was a lot of fun. The first picture shows me taking the boat out and the faster I went, the higher the front end of the boat went. I thought that if a good gust of wind came, I would flip right over. I did catch one fish. Yes, only one. Granted, I did not fish a lot...but I think everyone who fished, caught a fish. So that was cool.

Act of Love

There are no pictures to prove this - but it is true. I went horseback riding on Thursday, against my better judgment. I told my Aunt and Evan that I did not want to go. I told them I did not want to be sore, and I did not want to be sore for the ride home the next day. Evan would not go if I did not go and I knew he really wanted to go. So, horseback riding we went. It was about an hour ride. By the time we were entering the stables, Evan asked me how I was. I just turned around and said, "this was an act of love dear."

My ankles turned in, my knees turned out. Not a good combo. Every time the horse went into a small trot - I just got shot up and I slammed back down. It was if my ribs were being mushed together with each slam of my ass on the saddle. I was so sore Friday and into Saturday. Today I am getting better. I could barely move though. It was just plain brutal.

Other Things We Did

We went to see a water ski show. This is Liliana watching me instead of the skiers.

Liliana got a hold of Uncle John's chocolate long john:

Liliana was worn out the whole time! She slept great. All of that fresh air must have really done her in. The one time I went to check on her, this is how I found her. It is so cute when they cuddle with their stuffed animals!

Liliana got fudge from Nana...

Onion tasting:

Believe it or not, this face was made after tasting peanut butter:

Souvenirs
This is a shirt I got for Evan - well, I picked out the decal and on the back had his last name put on there. Pretty cool if you ask me.
This was a T-shirt & hat bundle. The crazy thing is that my sister did not buy it until she came home to see what I got. Then went back and got the same thing. Copy cat.
I got this blanket. You know, my sister and I never had the same taste in anything. As I was picking out the decal I was going to turn around and ask her opinion fulling expecting to see a look of disgust...but it is the same decal she would have picked out. In the end we both walked out with the same blanket, the same decal and the decal put in the same place. Again, copy cat.
This is a cool little journal book I found - it is for when your kids say something really cute that you want to remember - you can keep it all in one place!


Family & Other Pictures











Wildlife

We stopped at Wendy's on our way up, and right by the place where you order in the drive thru there was a family of chipmunks. They were so cute. (We also saw a fox up close and personal as we were driving one night after dinner...but it was the one time I did not have a camera with me. Darn)

Then one night Evan and I went out on the boat and an Eagle was soaring above us. The Eagle is my favorite animal. It is amazing to watch soar around without effort. My favorite Bible verse also has to do with Eagles - Isaiah 40:28-31. I had wished I had brought my camera, so we decided to race back in and get it. We then chased it down...let me tell you - it is VERY hard to take a picture of a flying bird, from a moving boat, with waves crashing into the boat and trying to find the bird in the camera view finder. So some of them are blurry...the last one is good. There is one picture where you can see that it is swooping down to get something off the lake. We ended up on someone's pier and I jumped out without the boat even being docked and I got a picture of the Eagle right before it flew away.
So now we are back to reality. It is always nice to be home, sleep on your own bed - Evan and I slept on this pull out bed. It was if they just put a sheet down on top of the bars of the pull out. We ended up buying an air mattress! So yes, it was nice to sleep in our own bed. I have been dead to the world when I fall asleep since we got home. It is nice to get away for a while too. To forget about everything that awaits you at home, and just relax. I am so thankful for the opportunity to have gone on vacation with my family this year. I am also thankful for the home and friends we have here.