Eight Months

I know this is out of sequence to catching up to present day, but I wanted to write down some of Hope's milestones so I would remember.  I wasn't able to really do this before - when Hope was born at 3 weeks she had Colic and Acid Reflux till about 4.5 months and spent much of her time crying.  Those days really are a blur, you can just ask Auntie Heather.


Hope at eight months you:

*Just learned to click your tongue and are quite proud of yourself for doing so.
*You can sit up without assistance and lean forward or to the side to reach for toys and return to
  your sitting position.  Although you cannot bring yourself to the sit up position, Momma has to sit you down.
  You do not like to roll over or be on your tummy for too long.  You get very fussy about it.
*You cannot crawl yet and have no teeth.
*You weigh 17 lbs., wear size 6-9 mos and are eating three meals a day and love peas.  Whenever a
  new food is introduced you always make the same sour face and look at me like "ewww, what is this?"  But
  by the third or fourth day you are use to it and will eat it.  You are still nursing a lot, only supplemented with
  formula if I have to leave you with someone or we will be running errands during a feeding time.  You can
  hold your bottle by yourself.
*Much to my dismay you are still not on a set sleeping schedule,  napping is random and not for very long.
 You do good if your nap is an hour and a half.  You use to sleep from 9pm to 5am uninterrupted but now
  wake up at 1:00 am for a few minutes - long enough for me to give you your pacifier and rub your back.
*You love your jolly jumper and have outgrown your bouncy seat.
*Lola our bulldog loves you and you laugh when she kisses you.
*You flap your arms and legs when you get excited and  babble up a storm.
*You grab everything in reach and will grab food from our hands.
*Sometimes when looking at a person you will squint your eyes like your thinking something serious about
  them.
*You are getting much better at playing by yourself on the floor or in the play pen for a little bit so mom can
  do a household chore.
*You do not fuss as much when we are going out running errands and like the distractions of being out of the
   house.
*You are generally happy and love to get kisses and hugs, we have just started Eskimo kisses and you think
   they are funny.  Like your Daddy, you do not have any patience.  If you don't get what you want when you
   want it, look out - the whole world knows you are not happy.
*Your best time of day is first thing in the morning, you are very happy then.
*In church on Sundays, you stare at your Uncle Mark leading worship.  You are just captivated the whole
  time he is singing.  You are doing really well now when you go to nursery.  They have not had to come get
  me for awhile now.

Your Momma, Daddy, and Big Sister love you so much and are really enjoying watching you grow.  We cannot wait to experience your first Christmas!

And I Digress......

I thought I was going to be able to share what I wanted to about my testimony and get caught up to present day blogging in one blog but as my husband would say "there is no short story with you".   When I am telling a story I tend to get caught up in details, I like to give background information so you get the picture as I see it.  Again, I don't know if that is being a woman or being French or both! 

After recovering from the shock of being laid off at 3 months pregnant, we prayed about what my next move would be.  I immediately signed up for unemployment - figuring with an economy starting to crumble, the prospect of getting an office job at 3 months pregnant and already showing was going to be difficult as any employer would know my time would limited.  It is a little uneasy when a prospective employer asks you how much morning sickness do you get and how much time did I expect to take off once the child was born.  One employer declined saying that by the time I was trained, I would be leaving and it wouldn't be worth their money or time.  Which I could totally see that.  I still continued to look without much success.

The thought of impending maternity expenses started to overtake my brain.  I was let go from a $17.00/hr job down to $6.+ change which is what unemployment equals to if you divide it by 40 hrs.  I tried not to panic.  While joyous at the thought of our baby, Andrew and I kept telling ourselves, "God is not surprised by this, He knew this was going to happen before I was even pregnant.  He has a plan!"  We just didn't know what that was.  It is amazing how at the time you don't see God's hands all over it, till hindsight kicks in.   Some people may say coincidence, karma, etc...

But I don't. 

As I was starting to outgrow my clothes, my cousin who had twins the year before called me and asked if I was in need of maternity clothes. "Um Yes!!!"  She said she had 3 big bags and to come get them!  Some of them still had tags!  Thank you Jesus!

A few months later, my husband was let go from his job and I still was unemployed with an ever expanding belly.  One day as I panicking over insurance deductibles and upcoming expenses, the Lord really spoke to my heart and said "Look at all I have done so far - beginning with the maternity clothes.  One thing at a time, Michelle."  It was the first time in my life where I really had to totally depend on God to meet our needs.  I always admired people who were in the ministry and lived by "Faith".  I would see how God would provide for them and just think it must be an amazing thing to totally depend on God like that.  Ever since then it has been amazing at how He has provided. From that point forward God really worked! It amazed me how every. single. one. of our needs were met.   I look back over that time like a strand of pearls, each pearl representing a need God met.   Whenever things start to look bleak, my husband and I remind ourselves to look at that strand of pearls and say "He would not have brought us this far, if He did not have a plan."

My husband became employed two months before I was due to deliver and is still there.  Hope entered this life in April and is now going on eight months - which I have been blessed to be home for ALL eight months.  It has been a transition for me - having worked full time for the last 20+ years and now to be home with a precious gift.  Again, we have been blessed that it has worked out financially for me to stay home and pray that it can continue. 

In my womb

“Before I formed you in your mother’s womb  I chose you. .” - Jeremiah 1:5

There is a huge generation gap between my two daughters.  I had my first one when I was 18 just out of high school.  I had always wanted to have more children but it just didn't work out - till now.  My husband and I had been married for six years, together for eight when we finally decided to try.

I am a baby crazy person.  All the women in my family are.  We just love babies. I could not walk through a department store and go by the baby section without stopping and just oooing over everything.  My husband and I would talk about whether or not we should have a baby on and off for six years.  Most of the time he opposed but on an occasion he would entertain the thought.  Once and awhile he would even bring it up first.  After he became saved, he asked me if I really wanted another one this late in the game.  I said I did and that he must as well or else the conversation would.never.come.up.  Seriously, if two people didn't want a baby they wouldn't talk about it or have to reassure themselves that they really didn't.  His response was, "well, pray about it".  I just clicked my tongue and said, "Ok, but you have no idea what you are opening yourself up to" and that was the end of that.

I started to seriously pray, not "Please Lord give me a baby" but "Lord, ONLY if it is YOUR will for us, not because it is my heart's desire".  The one thing we both felt was an important issue was that I would be able to stay home and raise this child.  I did not want to have to place him/her in daycare.  So that is what we prayed.  We were at lunch one Saturday at Chili's and toward the end of our meal, out of the blue Andrew blurts out "I think we should try to have a baby".  I just stared at him in complete silence, swallowing my last bite I said, "Babe, don't mess with me about that".  He says, "Seriously, I think we should".   "When do you start up on your birth control again?"  I said, "Tomorrow."  "When we get home, throw them out."  I said, "Okaaaay".  I wasn't quite sure what to think in regards to his change of attitude.  I was a little stunned and in disbelief.  We get home and I toss the pills.  I explained to him that it will take some time for the pill to leave my system so nothing will probably happen for at least four months.  Which was fine by me, because I wanted to start running again to lose some weight as I was roughly 40 pounds overweight.

Three weeks later my husband asks me when I was due to start my cycle, I said today (which was a Friday).  He says "I think you need to take a test".  I said, "I am not even late, why waste money on a test when I am probably going to start in two days and I don't feel like I am pregnant."  He says, "No, you have been acting really strange this last week and it is not PMS, there just something off about you.  Pick up a test while on your way to get dinner" and my 23 year old agrees with him, "Yeah Mom, you have been in La La land lately - really foggy".  Which is so not like me. So I go to pick up hamburgers at Wendy's for dinner and stop at the drugstore.  I come home, give everyone their food and quietly go to the bathroom (Andy and Rachel don't know that I am going to take the test).  I wait..... I go back in the bathroom.  I stare down at it.  Positive.  WHAT??!!  It only has been three weeks!  I have been on the pill for years...I thought I had time.  I just stared at myself in the mirror and stayed in the bathroom for a few minutes knowing at that moment I was the only one who knew.  I thought of what changes this would bring to our lives. 

How it would change the dynamics of our family. 

I calmly walk out out of the bathroom with the test stick and sit beside my husband on the couch who is eating his burger and watching TV.  I set the test stick on the coffee table and sit back and say to him "Well, what do you think about that??"  He looks at the test stick and turns to me and says, "Oh, I am sorry honey, we can try next month" and goes back to eating his Baconater.  I say, "No, look again.  Pink means I am pregnant."  He looks again and drops his burger and just stares at me.  "You're  pregnant?  You just went off the pill?!"  "I know......" I said.  We both just sat there for a few minutes in silence looking at each other and then we broke out in big grins and started laughing.

We decided to not tell anyone for a day or two and just let it soak in - with the exception of his mother - he can deny it all he wants, but he is kind of a momma's boy ;)  At the time this happened, we both were employed.  I had been at my job for two years, it was going well and I made pretty good money for our area.  He was just starting a new one.   Seeing as I worked in accounting, the first thing I did was start running numbers - insurance co pays, deductibles, saving for maternity leave, etc.  I had a plan, it was all figured out.  That was the problem "I" had the plan - didn't check in with God.  It was like "Ok God, this GREAT! You gave us a baby, I will take it from here"

First thing not included in my plan was we had a benefits meeting at work and was told because of the crumbling economy (I worked in commercial roofing) our benefits were being changed - from $1,000.00 deductible to a $5,000.00 deductible that $4,000.00 difference was part of my maternity leave.  I start there numb with my little round belly, telling myself  "Don't cry, don't cry....not in front of them.  This is not their fault, they are doing what they have to do to keep their doors open."  Then a month later the next thing not part of my plan was I laid off.  I remember sitting there again - numb, just looking at them, nodding, inside my head saying "this is not happening, not happening - so not part of my plan"  I didn't feel anger, sadness, just disbelief.  I said, "Lord, I don't know what is going on, but I know you were not surprised by this and you ARE in control"  Needless to say my husband didn't have the same reaction at first.  He didn't believe me until I showed my lovely letter of recommendation of I got from my now previous employer.    Then he said, "You know we prayed that you would be able to stay home with the baby and maybe this is the first step toward that.  Maybe God knew you wouldn't be able to give them your notice."

I spent the next few days in shock and not sure what to do with myself.  I LOVED my job, I LOVED the people I worked with and for.  I would out of blue burst into tears about this - even in the middle of the grocery store.  I knew God had a plan, I just didn't know what.  And that was the hard part for me - not knowing ahead of time how all this would work out.  I suppose if we knew ahead of time then it wouldn't be called FAITH would it?