10 posts tagged “baby”
When I put Miles in this sling the other day, Rayna immediately said she needed one for her doll, Jelly. And as we were fashioning one for her out of a pillowcase, Colsen declared he needed one for his dog, Cos-Cos. (Where do the kids get these names?) Strider was watching all the proceedings so I asked him if he was going to want one, too.
"Mom!" he said, in obvious disdain, "I'm a BOY!" So he didn't want one apparently, but he did take this picture for us.
Is this something I should be concerned about?
Colsen loves to play with Miles... He always uses his high-pitched voice and says things like, "Hi, Baby Miles. I want to kiss him. He's so cute. He's so little..." etc. But several times now he's also thrown this in: "I I love his head. I want to take his head off." And in case I don't quite get his meaning, he adds, "I want to take him apart."
So, we'll just file this under, "More Reasons to Not Leave Colsen and Miles Alone Together."
Meanwhile, Cole's had his own concerns to deal with...
The first few times he saw us change Miles' diaper, he was very alarmed to see the umbilical cord/belly button on him. He kept pointing at it and asking in a distressed voice, "What's THAT?!" We tried to explain it to him, but he was never very satisfied with our explanations.
Then, the other day I had to change Colsen's diaper, and decided to just change him downstairs since I had a box of wipes we were using for Miles there anyway. Colsen started freaking out about it though, saying, "Don't use Miles' wipes! Don't use his wipes!"
I couldn't figure out what the big deal was -- wipes are wipes, right? -- until he said, "I don't have a Bilical Cord! I don't have a Bilical Cord!"... and apparently he was afraid they were contagious or something!
Poor little guy... so much to figure out in this world.
Colsen apparently thought Miles needed this... I found it later when I went to check on him.
This isn't just a sword either... According to Colsen it's a leaf blower, and he carries it with him all the time, blowing the leaves out of the living room, kitchen, bedrooms, etc. I'm not sure which is scarier -- that he gave Miles a sword, or a leaf blower.
James very kindly came over on Saturday to get some newborn shots of Miles. He had some creative ideas, as you can see here! We have never done this with any of our other kids, but since they all look so much alike, I figure we'll just slip some of these shots in each of their baby books and tell them the pictures are really of them. We'll see if they buy that. Anyway, here are some of my favorites!
In case you were wondering (a few have asked), here is how we arrived at his name…
First of all, the name Miles means “merciful.”
Last year, Pete designated 2008 as a “Year of Mercy” for our family, with the basic intent that we would be intentional about trying to show mercy to others consistently throughout the year. I can’t say we were tremendously successful at that in terms of our actual actions, but perhaps this child, conceived in that year, will show the world great Mercy in future years.
Although I originally was not a fan of the name…. see my initial thoughts, back in October, here: I have gradually come around to like it. But the clincher for me was when we were having a verbal tug-of-war over 2 different names, and Pete said, “I don’t know… it’s just when I put my hand on your belly and feel him, I just think his name is Miles.” How could I argue with THAT?? So within 12 hours after hearing that comment, I was on-board.
And because I like themes and patterns and consistency throughout things, I immediately set to work to try and figure out how Miles would fit in with our other children. I told Pete I had come up with this sentence to tie us all together:
Striding along, under the Rays of the sun, through seasons of hot and Cold, we journey through the Miles of life, and for Pete’s sake, we try to be Amiable.
Pete said I was pushing it too much. I don’t care, though… I’m sticking with it. ("Corny" should be my middle name.) If anyone can come up with a better sentence, I would definitely love to hear it! (Don't let me down, Mom!)
And, to keep up with our other patterns, Quentin was the ideal middle name. First of all, it’s the name of a character from a trilogy of books from one of my favorite authors, Stephen Lawhead. Quentin, similar to the characters our other boys are named after, starts off as a humble boy, but ends up as a king in the end, after a long journey of Truth searching and character testing. (And Quentin starts with Q, so we kept the pattern of “S,R, Q, P” (alphabetical letters backwards) with the 4 kids (first or middle names), as was one of my goals in our initial name search).
So, that was the thought progression. Oh- -- and it was pretty unanimous among the kids, too. Every time we tried to suggest a different boy name, we kept hearing, "No! We want Miles!" And I have to say it's pretty darn cute hearing Colsen call him "Baby Miles" all the time...
As it turned out, last week was a lot of fun, full of gatherings and celebrations. Since I know that our social engagements are going to come to a grinding halt for awhile, probably in the next few weeks, I am soaking up as much time with other people as possible right now!
On Tuesday, some women from church very graciously had a little shower for me, which I thoroughly enjoyed. Some of the girls had planned a few fun games which kept it lively, and I was very thankful for the time of prayer/blessings -- as well as all the diapers, wipes, and other gifts! One very cool gift was a whole theme about "almonds" because they knew that's how I felt about this baby (see here).
Then on Saturday we celebrated our nephew/cousin Kai's first birthday! Looks like he thoroughly enjoyed his cake!
And in between, we've had a few fun evenings with friends... one couple came over and taught us how to play "Dutch Blitz", and another night we had a rousing game of 3-13 with a few Wingate students (current and former). And, to cap it all off, I was able to spend several hours on Saturday with a couple very good girlfriends who I don't see often enough (partly because one lives a few hours away). We ate lunch for 3 hours, walked for about a half-hour, and then went and had dinner!
Pretty soon my parties are going to be more of the "one-on-one at 3 am" variety, so for now I'm loving all these opportunities with other adults, families, etc. If anyone else wants to get together in the next week or 2, give me a call! :)
This picture (of my brother-in-law, James, and me) reminds me of an old math lesson from elementary school in which the teacher would ask us students which container was bigger: the tall skinny one, or the short square one. And, just like the lesson in volume from school, the answer to the above, gripping, riddle is: "They're equal!" That's right, folks. I now weigh as much as my 6'2" brother-in-law, despite the fact that I am almost a foot shorter.
And while I can't prove it the way the teacher used to (by pouring water into one container, and then pouring that same amount into the other container), this next picture should probably suffice to make it clearer:
The really scary part at this point is... I still have one more month to go before the due date! One more month to GROW!
I recently read a Bible trivia question -- in an ad in the local newspaper, of all places -- that asked, "What sprouted from Aaron's staff in Numbers 17?" I had no idea, and decided I really didn't care enough to go look up the answer. But then later that week when I happened to see mention of this "Aaron's staff that had budded" in Hebrews, I decided the coincidence had gotten my attention enough, and finally looked it up.
I don't know why I had never really seen/noticed this before, but it's kind of a funny story! Well, maybe not necessarily funny, since it's God's response (again) to a large group of complaining, grumbling, challenging-all-authority Israelites, but it's interesting anyway. Apparently some of the people were questioning Aaron's right to be a priest (from what I can understand), so God told them He would answer that question once and for all. Each of the 12 tribes of Israelites were to bring one staff, and write the name of their tribe on it. Then he told them to put them in a specific place and "...the staff belonging to the man I choose will sprout..."
So that was the test -- to see which staff sprouted overnight. Gotta hand it to God for his creativity. But then He gets even more creative...
"The next day Moses entered the Tent of the Testimony and saw that Aaron's staff... had not only sprouted but had budded, blossomed and produced almonds."!! Isn't that pretty funny? Why almonds?? Of all things to choose, I just think that's creative. (There's probably some theological significance and symbolism to it all that I am missing, but I'm ok with that.) To me, it looks like He's saying, "you guys need an answer here, but I'm going to go over the top and have some fun with it all -- and show you more of my character by even giving you almonds!"
It made me think about how He does stuff like that in my life, too. Some little things, some big things that are just "over the top" unexpected blessings or signs that He's in charge, working and active. And that got me to thinking about this baby I'm currently carrying. This one is definitely another sign that God is active and in charge here... and maybe that He has a sense of humor in it all as well.
So I looked up "almonds" as a word in a few different languages, looking for a potential baby name, but the research didn't bear much fruit, if you will. Unless Shaqed is a good baby name? Or Cagla perhaps?
So, then I thought maybe just "Almond" would work. In this day and age with babies being born with names like Apple and Coco, why not Almond? Plus, I've always liked the name "Joy" for a middle name...
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Must have a good meaning (first and/or middle names)
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Either first or middle name must be the name of a literary character we love (to stay in our pattern)
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First name should be 2 syllables... maybe we could stretch this to 3. All 3 of our other kids have 2-syallable names... I like that better with our 1-syllable last name.
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Either the first or middle name should start with "D" or "Q." Then we can have a pattern of initials for the 4 kids (either "A", "B", "C", "D") or ("S", "R", "Q", "P")-- which is a pattern going alphabetically backwards (my favorite direction), though not in chronological order.
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First name shouldn't end with "-er", "-en/-on" or "-na" to avoid rhyming or confusion with the other kids.
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First name shouldn't start with "S," "R," or "C" so that when I write a note to the kids, or label cups for them, each one has a unique initial.
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First name should have one of the following sounds in it: long o, s, n, l, or hard c. This will flow nicely after "Colsen." :)
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First name can't in any way allude to hot dogs, picnic food, or ballparks. We don't want any jokes with "Frank."
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First name also can't rhyme with "Frank."
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And, of course, we have to like how the name sounds.
Well, it seems rather hard for us to believe still, but it looks like this little guy
may be a BIG brother soon! That's right... I'm pregnant. We're still kind of reeling from the news... totally unexpected, but we're also getting pretty excited.
In the Bible, Mary "treasured up all these things and pondered them in her heart." I treasure up all these things and write about them on my blog. So in that spirit, I thought I would share my initial thoughts when I first was processing all this. Here is what I wrote back on June 14th:
This week I discovered, to my great shock, that I am pregnant.
My first thought was that Pete and I clearly have no idea what we're doing when it comes to family planning. I think we must have been holding the family planning book upside-down when we read it. For a year awhile back we tried to get pregnant, and couldn't, and now, during the last few years when we've been trying quite hard to not get pregnant, we've ended up with 2 pregnancies.
My second thought was that this might be the end of a dream of ours to adopt a baby - or two or three. I guess we don't know anything definite about all that -- I still feel like I'm waterskiing blindfolded through life -- but there is a bit of grieving that happens with the realization that it will be indefinitely postponed. We had thought our third child would be coming from China. Turned out he was born in Matthews, NC. And we had thought our fourth child would come from Vietnam, or India, or Ethiopia or someplace like that.... but now we may have another Matthews baby on our hands.
And so my third thought was that I am VERY glad this is all in God's hands. Clearly He knows what He is doing, and He is building our family in just the right way. In fact, as I was grumbling about all my confusion and lack of control in all this, I sat down to do my Bible study workbook. I opened the study guide that I've been going through ("Stepping Up" by Beth Moore) and found that the passage for the day was Psalm 127.* Very weird. And very good for me to hear.
And my fourth thought was that it's so strange when a women discovers she's pregnant. It's not like any other event or occurrence in life. You instantly go from "mother of x children" to "mother of x+1 children," permanently altering your identity.
So, it's been a weird week.
* Psalm 127 includes:
Unless the Lord builds the house,
its builders labor in vain...
Sons are a heritage from the Lord,
children a reward frmo him.
Like arrows in the hands of a warrior
are sons born in one's youth.
Blessed is the man
whose quiver is full of them..."
