our little girl is six weeks old this week. hard to believe. but here she is...
all 10 pounds and 6.5 ounces of her.
in the last six weeks we have learned a lot about two things: humility and humor.
i feel like the two must go hand in hand, and i am sure they must be learned together in parenting.
first humility.
ryan and i have learned that we know very little and have no ability to raise this little gal on our own. thank goodness for family and friends who give wisdom and advice when asked.
but mostly we are thankful for a God who will give us grace when we do it wrong. thankful for a God who provides wisdom and guidance in His word. thankful for a God who asks us and desires that we come to him with questions, doubts and fears as well as joys and plans. thankful that we are working to raise a daughter who will know and follow Christ and who will hopefully forgive our mistakes and shortcomings as she begins to realize that we make them.
everyday we are overwhelmed by this little gal. she is wonderful and amazing and totally perfect in our eyes. but she is also totally unpredictable and stinky and desperately helpless (as she should be - she is a baby after all). since she arrived, my prayer life has changed dramatically. i find myself seeking grace, wisdom, patience and everything else under the sun. it's pretty amazing this little girl is teaching me lessons already. i have truly learned how to pray - not just for her, but for everything. i have prayed more for myself, for friends and family, and the future than i ever have before. she has taught me about my desperate need for prayer. it's pretty humbling to be taught lessons by a six week old baby, especially when i have been working on that lesson my whole life.
seriously, it's amazing how that little face will take me to my knees.
second humor.
now, i know that you guys all think i am so, so fun (which i totally am) but we've reached a whole new level of humor around here. i have a couple stories for you...
last weekend we visited Limon with the little gal - road trip.
lesson one...babies need to eat all the time and they will only eat on their time table - not mine. a six hour drive turned into a 7.5 hour drive. but over all i would call it a huge success!
lesson two...if you are going more than 30 minutes from home a mama should always bring a change of clothes. you may be thinking i mean for the baby and you are right, but in this instance, i am also talk about for the mama. so, we went to church with Nana and Papa Joe and it's around an hour from home in Castle Rock. i took little miss into the nursing mothers' room and proceeded to do just that. after a quick diaper change, she was eating away and next thing i know, i began to feel a strange sensation on my tummy. it was all warm and damp and then it was very warm and very wet! somehow this little chick proceeded to pee all over me. her diaper wasn't even remotely wet. i have no idea how that is possible, but it totally happened just that way. i was totally grossed out and summoned my hubs who was in the church service. he obviously sympathized with my plight, he informed me there wasn't much he could do to fix the problem. he didn't have an extra shirt either...
lesson three...target is my new best friend. luckily, target was just about 3 miles from church. after the service was over we just popped right over and bought me a new shirt - bonus. and some bigger diapers.
lesson four...apparently one should bump up to a bigger diaper size slightly before the recommened weight change. collection capacity is key. :)
funny story number two. church in hillsboro. (please note the white seater, the white blankets and the white burp rag.)
ryan was asked to help lead worship at the hillsboro campus of our church this past weekend. so maelle and i decided to go along.
we had to be there around 8 am but the service didn't start until 10:30. so little miss fell asleep in the car on the way there and i just hung out with her in the truck until she woke up and was ready to eat. then the plan was to change her into her church clothes and head into the service. things were going quite well. she slept quite a while, i read a book, she woke up and scarfed down her breakfast like a champion and then did her business (diaper containment was successful).
and then, as i was changing her diaper, she decided she needed to go a little more and out comes a very large and very orange amount of #2, quite forcefully, in the backseat of the pick-up (aka ryan's 2nd favorite thing). i am sure that many would have paid good money to see the look of sheer panic that must have been on my face. so like any normal person who doesn't want to wait for a 2 hour church service and a 30 minute drive to clean up a STINKY mess (and who couldn't bare telling her spouse that his daughter proceded to poop all over the backseat), i instinctively put out my bare hand and blocked the spray.
i was proud and horrified and totally disgusted all at once. and i managed to keep the seat, her clothes, my clothes and everything else totally clean. however, i do believe i should revisit lesson two as noted above. always bring a change of clothes - just in case.
these things just have to be funny. it also has to be funny that she has projectile spit up sometimes (maybe we should measure her distance and we could be in the record books) and that she pees in the bathtub and that finley thinks he needs to eat her rubber ducky. if it wasn't funny, i think we would just be angry and frustrated all the time. luckily, ryan and i are both quick to point out the humor in nearly any situation, so this lesson has come pretty naturally for us. but it can be pretty difficult to remember to laugh when you are wet and tired and smelly. :)
thank you maelle for the lessons. i'm sure you will be teaching us many more.