Christian Catch Phrases

The other night during our marrieds community group Nate gave the every-familiar instructions of, "pray as you feel led" and had to stop to comment on the awkwardness of saying and hearing what has become such a trite sounding phrase in Christian circles. We then detoured into a brief tangent on other overly used phrases by our generation in the church circle here in southern California.

Here's what we came up with:

- "Pray as you feel led."
- Wanting things to be "organic" (Not as in food, but as in meeting people or beginning new ministries). Our friend Katherine called a spade a spade and revealed that this is usually just code for unorganized.
- "living in the tension" between two things in life you're trying to balance or figure out.

Are there any Christian catch phrases that make you wish you had a dime for every time you hear it?

You Know You're Pregnant When...

...you have to choose to eat unpurchased snacks while grocery shopping or die.

...you use red lights as opportunities to throw up.

...you big, snotty, ugly cry through comedies like Cheaper By the Dozen 2 and Bride Wars.

...you have to buy new underwear because the bikini briefs that used to do the trick seem to only cover one hemisphere these days.

......you eat grapes, 2 chicken corn dogs, fig newtons, 8 jumbo shrimp with hot sauce, and 1/2 an entire green bean casserole for lunch, while washing it down with a liter of iced tea.

Thanks Giving Pregnancies

Top: Thanksgiving 2007. 18 weeks pregnant with Selah Grace.
Bottom: Thanksgiving 2009. 17 weeks pregnant with ?.

The patterned dress is a little more foofy, so it might be hard to tell...but I think I stick out farther this round than I did the first time. I'm just glad that I'm past the awkward stage where people think I might be pregnant but are too scared to ask, or think I'm not pregnant but have just been tearing into the holiday treats early. This bump seems to carry a little lower than Selah did. Some people would say that means its a boy. However, the amount of time I spend with my head in the toilet would make others say this one is another girl. Next month's ultrasound will tell!

Learnin' Our Letters

Yeah, she's a little smarty pants. It's fun to watch her learn.

What I Know For Sure

If you're familiar at all with the Oprah empire, then you know that she asks all her highlighted guests one question: "What do you know for sure?" Sometimes the answers are poignant and profound. Sometimes they're goofy and light. Recently the actress Julianna Margulies (you'd know her from ER, but she recently started the series The Good Wife) discussed finally understanding the wisdom of her mother's words, "This is only a moment, this is not the rest of your life." Those words ARE especially good for those of us young moms to remember when the baby is waking up again in the wee hours of the morning or hanging desperately from our leg while we're trying to cook dinner or screaming in indignant anger as we determinedly walk past the 10ft display of goldfish crackers and Elmos in the middle of WalMart.

Because I'm a little egocentric, I started to wonder what I would tell Oprah if she ever asked me her signature question. What do I know for sure? Well, not a whole lot at 27, but definitely a lot more than I knew at 17. As I've mentioned before, I'm counting on that life-learning trend to continue with age.

After a very underwhelming amount of thought, this is what I know for sure: Problems are always smaller in the morning. My mind does two things to me at night. It very easily distorts the amount of tomorrow's work into giant, gnarled beasts of things and then it very easily becomes overwhelmed by the impossibility of defeating them. Once that gets going, it is a tail-chasing, chicken-or-the-egg cycle that just compounds upon itself until I go to bed exhausted for tomorrow before it even gets here.

A "Please help me God!" prayer. A night's sleep. And then...the morning comes. Dawn's light acts as an amulet against the overwhelming thoughts of night. In the morning it all seems like so much less of a problem. In the morning the day looks not only do-able, but dare I say, enjoyable. In the morning there is a new hope.

That is what I know for sure. And now when I start to feel overwhelmed by what I am supposed to get done in the upcoming day and wonder how I am ever going to produce what I am expected to produce and live through it, instead of fretting over it I finish this day as best as I can then I go to sleep. Because I know that problems always seem smaller in the morning.

If Oprah were to ask you her signature question, what would you say?

Too Much

You would think that after having to abandon the same plan every time I would learn. Change the plan. Accept that the plan simply will not work. Looking at this positively you might call me an over-eager optimist or someone with ferocious tenacity. Being equally correct and slightly more honest, you might just call me stubborn, thick-skulled, and wildly off-based with reality.

What am I talking about? I'm talking about the fact that my daily mental to-do lists are all too much. I'm talking about the number of errands I believe achievable within our morning window of viable outing hours. That time between breakfast and mid-morning nap. I'm talking about how I genuinely think the night before that I can "just pop into Ikea real quick" since I'm going to be in the neighborhood and then realizing (for the umpteenth time) the next day while actually in the neighborhood that my child's eyes are glazed over from exhaustion and hunger and if we don't get home THIS INSTANT things are going to get real ugly real quick! There's that old saying that a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. The actual moral of that proverb doesn't really apply here, but the mathematics of it always reminds me of the transaction cost in taking too long during errands. For every one minute spent on errands past nap time, there will surely be double that time of cranky baby in the afternoon.

[Let's rabbit trail here for just a minute on the LUNACY of thinking I can "just pop in" to Ikea with or without a baby. While awesome, that place is a labyrinth. An obvious tactical ploy designed by the company to trap you in and make you buy things you didn't want to buy. Unless you know about that sneaky little door that leads to the shelving of actual merchandise down that hall you can't actually see upon first entering the store, you will inevitably trek up the stairs to the showfloor, lose all bearings of time and space and acuteness of mind, and after a confused hour of being inspired and disoriented finally although inadvertently meander your way back downstairs to where the purchasable goods are. I try with all urgency to avoid being swept with the current up the stairs unless I am equipped with the appropriate rations of goldfish crackers and Coke to survive the journey. This means I use the hidden door behind the staircase and go straight to what I need. But I am me, so I get distracted. I wander around and look at all the cool things I don't need and get flashes of cool ideas of things I could create, and continue to wander dazed with the same feelings of inspiration and disorientation that I was trying so earnestly to avoid upstairs. If I'm lucky I remember what I actually came for, but not always. I have much more to say about Ikea but this rabbit trail needs to end. Apparently my heart needs to dedicate an entire blog to our Swedish friend. Another Day. End Trail.]

I'm not really that surprised by myself that I keep making plans to get so much done in one round of errands and EVERY TIME abandon the over-indulgent plan to simply come home and put the little one to bed. Babies don't have our adult problem of wanting to be overachieving perfectionists. They are much more able to acutely assess what they need in the moment and do it. Selah very adamantly lets me know when she needs another snack, a drink, a snuggle, a rest. I find that I get so gung-ho and heels down in the production of "getting things done" that I deny myself these things during the process or hold them over my head as a reward to be won at the finish line. Where did this crazy idea come from? Why as a culture do we have a need to go, go, go, accomplish, accomplish, accomplish?

Although it pains my vain pride, when I'm truthful with myself I own that I need those moments of rest each day just as much as my daughter does. It seems like the perfect time to clean the house, etc. but I usually avoid dishes and mopping during this time like the H1N1. No, I don't always nap (although some days I slide back in between the sheets, guiltily think of my husband who NEVER gets to nap, then pray very hard that babes will take a looooong one for me). I eat chocolaty junk foods that I don't want my toddler to eat yet. I nestle deep into the couch and read a good book. I scan the free section on craigslist looking for treasures to become my next creative project. I pray. I rest. I give myself space to just be because I'm realizing that my mental to-do list for each day is all just too much, that my expectations for achievement are completely unrealistic, and what I really need to do for myself and for my family is to stop spinning my energy in frenzied, unproductive busyness and just get still.

I'm learning that if everything doesn't get crossed off the list at the end of the day, it's OKAY! It apparently wasn't what needed to happen in that day anyway.

Maybe it's because we lived in a culture outside of the fast-paced U.S. for so many years. Maybe it's because I'm a mom now when I wasn't before. Maybe it's because I'm older. Maybe it's the amalgamation of all these named reasons and even more reasons that I don't understand, but I can't cram as many things into my days as I did before. It's too much. Trying leaves me physically, mentally, and emotionally exhausted, apathetic and out of touch with life, and not to mention spiritually dry. That's NOT the way I want to spend my days! I'm sure it isn't your life goal either.

I hope you'll take a moment to be still today. I hope you won't mentally berate yourself for not getting x,y, and z done. I hope you'll feed your soul today and bravely declare that the plan was not only unrealistic but unnecessary and unaligned with the needs of the day. I hope you'll be bravely counter-cultural and ask yourself why you're trying so hard to do too much. I hope you'll rest.

I will most likely think I can add a quick trip to Ikea, Costco, Target, fill-in-the-blank with any number of stores here, again the next time we are out. And I will assuredly remember and realize why that just isn't possible once we're in the reality of errands. But hopefully I will feel less like a failure and more like a good mother when I pull into the driveway and take us inside to rest and nourish our weary souls.

Cloth Diapering

You might call us crazy, but we use cloth diapers. Happy Heinys in fact. Isn't that a cute name? And little Selah Grace's heiny is happy indeed.

Now why on earth would we EVER choose to use cloth diapers in this new millennium? Basically it came down to these three issues: 1)health 2) cost 3)earth consciousness

1) Health
Nate and I both have pretty sensitive skin. With our powers combined, we passed this hyper-sensitivity off to our daughter. (Sorry kiddo!) Selah was in disposable diapers the first two months of her life and she seemed to have a perma-rash. It was red and moist and bumpy down under. Not comfy. So, we wanted to give her a new option. In her cloth diapers only soft fleece touches her tushy and it feels quite dry even after she tinkles. We've only had about two very small bouts of diaper rash since the switch a year and a half ago. Hooray for healthy bottoms!

2) Cost
Disposable diapers are expensive! Studies reveal that it costs approximately $2,000 to diaper a kid for the first 2 years. Yikes! Multiply that by how many kids you're going to have and see all the opportunities for those thousands you just diaper genied away. We use one-size pocket diapers. They're awesome because you can adjust their size as your baby grows and they fit babies 7-35 lbs. It cost about $400 total for all the diapers and inserts, which seems like a lot up front, but is just a tiny fraction of the cost of disposables. Twice I've deviated from cloth diapers. Once when we were away on vacation and once when Selah was sick with some funky stomach bug. Both times we came to the realization that it is a good thing we don't have to use disposables because buying diapers does NOT fit into our family budget!

3) Earth Consciousness
No, we are not hippies and all the stereotypes that come with that label. Yes, we do love the earth we live on and want to do our small part. We try to be water conservationists within reason. We recycle even though it sometimes means having empty cans and bottles in the car until we reach home to put them in the big blue bin. We're planning on having a number of children, so we don't want to be solely responsible for filling up the San Diego landfill with chemically enhanced plastic (disposable diaper), sealed in plastic (diaper genie), and then encased in another layer of plastic for good measure (trash bag). I'm curious to know how long that takes to decompose.

Cloth diapering is what our family has chosen to do. It is the best option for us because of the above three reasons. But we aren't crazy fanatics who judge the rest of you disposable diaperers out there! Congratulations on having a kid without super sensitive skin and for having enough money to afford them. Cloth diapering is simply what is best for our family right now.

I've listened to a lot of new moms recently confess that they are scared to tell other moms about ways they parent. I am assuming they fear being met with judgement and incredulity. My response is always to tell them to have assurance in the choices they're making that are in the best interest of their family and forget about what other people think. "Other people" and other people's opinions are not the ones you're in charge of.

For all you people out there who think we're crazy: Yes, we are, but for many reasons not having to do with cloth diapering.

For all you people out there cloth diapering: Keep up what works for your little one and your family!

For all you people out there disposable diapering: Keep up what works for your little one and your family!

Selah Grace in a pile of clean diapers when she was Tiny Baby.

Baby Signs

Selah Grace will be 18months old in a few days. While her spoken vocabulary is growing to include roughly 20 words, she still prefers to communicate through baby signs. She has a whole assortment of signs for the various categories of her life, mainly including food, animals, and activities. Some of these I taught her. Some of these she made up. I thought I'd record a few of them before she trades them all in for "real words".



(She added the crunchy sound effects for apple all by her smart little self.)






I missed a good shot of "elephant" while we were taping. It is holding one finger up to the nose to represent a trunk. That's what Selah is doing in this picture. I asked her to "say" elephant for the picture. It does look highly suspicious of nose picking, but she really is just trying to show us that we're at the elephant exhibit.



If this all looks like a bunch of nonsense to you and like the kid keeps making the same fists, don't worry. It did to us too when we were first reading about it in parenting books. Now we can see little nuances when we do it with our daughter. It has been so helpful for Selah to have words she can show us and so much fun for us to interact in conversation with her!

How I Know I Live in Southern California

San Diego is definitely the place I consider home these days, but even after all this time and all this familiarity, there are still moments when I am hit full blast with the reality that this is indeed California! Not just California, b/c really California is two different states with an invisible line where native northerners and southerners do not claim the other side.

Some of you may be thinking shocking, Jenny, really...but after growing up mainly in Oklahoma then spending most of my married life in Malawi, life in California is definitely a culture unto itself.

Here are some ways I know that we are definitely NOT in Kansas (er..Oklahoma) anymore:

*All parking spaces are intended for trendy little mini-coopers. Since I do not own a smart car, nor am I a Keebler elf, I often have to pass up empty spots in search of a place my Brontosaur of a 93 Camry will not too conspicuously jut out into the flow of traffic.

* The blaring lack of mall-sized gas stations every 1/2 mile.

* Sing it with me: "Where have all the cowboys (I mean Republicans) gone?"

* If I walk up to a door at the same time as a man expecting him to open it, and appropriately step aside to allow for the opportunity, I am usually left standing there.
-I would like to insert here that if we get to have boys we will raise them to be little gentlemen even if they are from southern california.

* Not every couple want 5 kids.

* When in doubt, wear jeans, a tank top, and some flip-flops. Most likely you will be perfectly matched for the weather and any social occasion.

* The beach is right there waiting for you to enjoy it.

* I mention a trip to Oklahoma to my husband, the native San Diegan. He replies that he has to check his passport is still valid.

* Church is chill. Our pastor preaches in cargo shorts and flip-flops, but dresses it up with a short-sleeved button up shirt. We have a pancake ministry team that makes pancakes on the boardwalk for surfers and homeless people alike. We have a surf ministry team.

Here are some ways I know that we are definitely NOT in Malawi anymore:

* When giving directions I never find myself saying, "Turn left at the banana vendor."

* The spiders in my home are tiny and not scary. They are not the size of a crab. They do not scream at you and attack when threatened.

* I went to one grocery store and got everything we need. Including milk that goes in the fridge, not the pantry. Including Oreos.

* Did I mention the beach is RIGHT THERE, waiting to be enjoyed?

These are the realizations that sweep over me about living in southern California. I'm interested in hearing about how the rest of you so calis know you live here and no where else on earth!

Music Time!

A Family Jam Session.