Therapy

Work wise, the month of January has been stressful. Not only does it mean tying up the end of 2015, but it is also the end of the fiscal period. So, I spent hours and hours gathering things for the CPAs, making sure everything balanced, correcting numbers that didn’t. What a relief it was to box all the papers off last Friday and Fed Ex them out of my office. I was able to breathe again!

So this week has been quite peaceful. The month is coming to a close, but while I can prepare a few things for invoicing and reporting, I can’t do a whole lot. With this breather, I decided it was finally time to pull all the dozen or so boxes of old financial records out of one of the empty offices, go through them, sort things into order and put them back in the boxes with proper labels. Quite a task, yes. One that will take hours. Maybe even a few days. But I don’t mind. Not at all.

To be honest, I find it rather therapeutic. Take disorder and make it orderly. Put things neatly into boxes. Stack the boxes around me comfortably. Lost in my own little world of numbers, and letters, and packing things away. It’s relaxing. A wonderful way to be aside all the stress of life.

Bizarre? Perhaps. Maybe I need therapy for my therapy. I don’t know. But it’s nice to end an exhausting month with a bit of “rest”. Very nice indeed.

This Week

Now weighing in at a whopping 16 pounds, 2 ounces and measuring 26 inches in length, we are back on the charts! (At least, at the bottom 3%...) And every week, Emry lights up our life with the little things she does. It’s funny how entertaining the very simplest things have become. Perhaps it is a reminder that we take life just a bit too seriously at times!

More snow! We went out to enjoy it but while she loves to watch it, she refuses to touch it.

Drinking water from our glass. She’s actually quite good at it, until she tries to stick her tongue in and lap it. Then it just ends up all down the front of us.

With our cousins – Caley, Macey and Zoey. We went to visit Grandma Camus and they stopped by, too.

We love to play with Mama’s DVDs!

 Helping Mama fold clothes. Notice both the Steelers and Patriots bibs. We want to cheer both, so we compromise: pick up the Patriots bib and wave it like a Terrible Towel!

Reading

I was certain when I gave birth to Emry that my days as an avid reader were over. But you do find ways to do what you love. And having to feed her six or so times a day for nearly a half hour to forty-five minutes at a time…well, I found lots of opportunities to read! Now she doesn’t eat as often or as for long, and she also loves to try to play with my book while she eats. So, my reading has now fallen off somewhat. Except I still love it. So…

I thought I’d try one of those reading challenges on the internet. There are probably as many options as there are books to read. Some of them were rather interesting. Others would indeed be a challenge. Still others I wouldn’t touch with a ten-foot pole (like anything with a book suggestion from Oprah!). After looking around a bit, I finally came to a conclusion that I would just make up my own this year, and I would make it simple. I will read through the alphabet – three times.

For those of you who are smart alecks, I’m sure you think that’s not a problem. How long does it really take to read the alphabet? Emry and I do it dozens of times a week. Very funny. So, what do I mean by that? Simply that I am going to read a book for every letter of the alphabet. For example, I could read Anna Karenina  for “A”, The Berenstein Bears No Girls Allowed for “B”, Caroline Saves the Day for “C”…you get the idea. And I’m going to do it three times. My rules for the challenge are simple: any books counts (even ones I read with Emry), I don’t have to read them in alphabetical order and at least 90% of them must be new reads (not old favorites I re-read nearly every year). I don’t think the letter “Q” will be a problem, but I may have to go with “X” anywhere in the title counts!

I know, I know…for those of you are wired to calculate numbers, that is 78 books. But I average about 80 to 90 books a year anyhow. I just thought doing it this way would make keeping my list a little more interesting. And, maybe, help me cross off some of my “want-to-reads” from my numerous lists, not to mention the ones on my own shelves I’ve yet to read. We’ll see how it goes. At the end of the year, I’ll let you know!

Learning, Learning, Learning

Between the holidays, and birthdays, and recent work loads, and nine month pictures, I have been a bit remiss about posting pictures of all the new things Emry is learning. It must be a fascinating life to learn something new nearly every day. But, then, half the time she doesn’t realize she’s learned something new. Or she knows how to use what she has learned to her advantage.

For instance, we have been teaching her to sign “please”. We’ve been doing this for quite some time, usually when she is in her high chair and wants more food. She doesn’t completely have it down for getting more food (she does a mixture of “please” and this butterfly movement with her hands Ed showed her when the sunlight shines on the wall above her changing table). But when she wants to be picked up and held…well, we know how to sign “please” very well then!

Other things we have been learning:

Our first snow! We had about an inch that day. She was not at all sure what this white stuff coming from the sky was and she wasn’t about to touch it. But she likes looking at it – either when we’re out or from the window.

Our new Little People house. Her cousins have outgrown it, so Aunt Sara gave it to us. She can play with this toy for HOURS!!!! It has a few buttons in it to push and make noise, and she is quite proud of the fact that she knows how to push them.

Helping Papa bring up the laundry. She also helps me “sort” it. In her terms, that means taking the socks I give her, putting them in a pile on one side of her and then moving them all to a pile on the other side of her. We do this over and over again.

Playing our new piano! Aunt Jenny sent us an elephant piano this past week, one which makes all sorts of noises besides the fact that even the black keys work on it. We practice dutifully every day as Aunt Jenny says Julliards is in our future.

 Peanut butter! It is the messiest thing Mama will give us to eat, and only on days when we are due for a bath anyhow. Just this week, we learned how to separate our bread and lick the peanut butter off. Then we push the bread aside…

My Mom

For the past nine months, not a week goes by when I don’t wonder at least two or three times: “How did my mother do it?”

I am the mother of one – not eight. My baby is nine months old – not fifteen, twelve, eight, seven, five, three, one and just born. Or twenty-three, twenty, sixteen, fifteen, thirteen, eleven, nine and eight. Or thirty-one, twenty-eight, twenty-four, twenty-three, twenty-one, nineteen, seventeen and sixteen. My daughter hasn’t started school – not homeschooling seven kids at a time. And I haven’t made one move yet with a child – let alone moving on an average of every two years, well over state lines and sometimes with a menagerie of up to one dog, two cats, six kittens and two rabbits. The truth is, I’ve hardly begun to enter motherhood.

And even with fully grown adult children, I don’t know how my mother does it. For we still carry our own set of problems to her to “fix”. Or, in some cases, leave our dogs behind in her care.  Or trust that she knows where we are and what are responsibilities are so she can remind us to accomplish them should we forget. Why? Because she’s Mom.

And now my mom is also a grandmother. A grandmother that makes it a point to be a part of her grandchildren’s lives, even from a distance, by making it a point to visit most times twice a year. Take it from someone whose grandmothers didn’t take much interest in her life…that’s HUGE. I only hope that one day Emry knows how huge.

So to a mom who is so much more than words can ever express: HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

9 Months!

Today Emry is 9 whole months old! We have had her with us as long as I carried her in the womb – and it has gone by very quickly! We seem to have grown a lot over this past month – we’re somewhere around 15 whole pounds. So, now we fit very nicely into our 6-month clothes. This past month has contained many firsts. After all, we celebrated our very first Christmas. We tried Christmas cookies, and visited Grandpa and Grandma Sturm’s and have found a new favorite food: mandarin oranges. We’re also getting a bit more selective with our food. While we will still eat green beans, and carrots, and Cheerios; we far prefer to first eat mac ‘n cheese, peaches and Chex cereal – leaving the other food until Mama or Papa simply won’t give us anymore of what we really want. There isn’t a place on our little body that isn’t ticklish – we laugh and giggle even when getting our diaper changed! Still no teeth, although we wait in expectation every day. And we don’t seem to have any interest in crawling. We manage to roll and wiggle where we need to be, or we simply don’t really want that toy anyhow. Besides, the toy we love the most (our Little People dollhouse) doesn’t go anywhere. And we are very, very proud when we find the buttons to push in the dollhouse that make sounds and music. So proud, we always have to look up at Mama or Papa and grin at our great accomplishment.

It’s so exciting to be 9 months old!

Looking off into the distance…

Ssh, Sock Monkey! What happens in our crib, stays in our crib!

9 months old.

For Grace

Six years ago my sister Grace started a journey. A journey that led her along a path of working three jobs at a time so she could pay for classes in college which she took as she could afford which led to changing colleges at one point which led to more working and more classes and more working…well, you get the idea. Some paths in life are long and arduous and there are many times that you wonder if you are getting anywhere, let alone to the goal that set you on that path in the first place. I’m sure Grace wondered many times.

But in May of last year, Grace graduated with her BA in education. And no debt. (That’s right – no student loans, no credit cards maxed out to pay for books. Plain and simple – no debt.) Now she could see her goal, but how would she get there? Where should she turn for the next step? And how long would this take? Months? Years? Actually, it took weeks. Through different people, the Lord placed Grace at the right place at the right time. And in July, she left the United States to see if her dream would be fulfilled. Three months later, she had her answer. After returning to the United States for a few months to put things in order, my sister Grace flew back to Kenya to work with a ministry called FAME (Friends of Africa Missionary Endeavor). She’ll be gone for a year, at least. After that, we’ll see what the Lord has in store.

Grace has wanted to work with orphans since she was seven or eight years old. Grace has wanted to be in Kenya since she was nineteen or twenty. Today she turns 26 years old. And she is celebrating in Kenya surrounded by orphans and other children. I am so happy for her, I’m not sure I could finds words to express that joy.

Happy Birthday, Grace! From your eldest sister who admires you determined endurance, rejoices in God’s path for you and can’t wait to see what your year holds!  

Paradoxical – or, Seemingly Absurd

Actually, my blog title may not be as accurate as it could be. I should probably just use the word “Absurd” and leave it at that. Because there isn’t anything “seemingly” about this.

If you marry your opposite, then I have married mine. Not in every way, certainly, but in many ways. One is my reading habit. I own over a thousand books. I am usually in the midst of three or four books at once. Nothing with words on it can cross my line of vision and not be read. On the other hand, I’ve never seen my husband actually finish a book he’s started. He’d rather hear something than read anything. And he probably considers all my books to simply be excess weight.

But there is one thing my husband will read from start to finish: car magazines. His uncle will give him some he might have around the house if we’re in the neighborhood. And suddenly fooling around with his phone or watching a movie takes a back seat to red sport cars and the newest thing Ford is doing. Having very little interest in cars, I would say I don’t touch those things. But since magazines by definition have words in them…well, I have skimmed an article or two.

Recently, they were giving thumbs up or down to different car-happenings of 2015. This is where the absurd comes in:

We all know Pope Francis visited the United States this past year. Apparently, as he is quite well known to be extremely humble and modest, he resisted the idea of being chauffeured around in a costly SUV. Instead, he had his personal Fiat flown over in his private Boeing jet. SUV versus Fiat –thumbs up for fuel efficiency, said the car magazine.

Now, surely I am not the only what that sees the irony here. (I mean, absurdity.) We’re all so “fuel efficient” around here, did we not think to ask how much a Fiat costs versus an SUV? Or how about how much fuel it took to fly that jet over here for the sole purpose of delivering said Fiat? Not to mention, the return flight. Modest and humble? Dear Pope Francis, modest and humble people drive sixteen year old pickup trucks that you pray start every morning until they don’t and then you don’t have money to replace it, so you now share a ten year old Hyundai Tucson with your wife. No Fiat. No Boeing jet. And yet we’re quite wealthy when compared to 75% of the people in this world. Either I no longer understand the meaning of the words humble or modest or I’m missing something…

Now I’m beginning to think I understand the Pharisees of Jesus’ day. The epitome of absurd. It is true: there is nothing new under the sun.