Category — Uncategorized

So after 9 days passed due, Vivian went into labor first thing this morning, by 2:30 was pretty sure she was in labor. The midwives came at 4am and found her 5 cm. Within a few hours, she was 8cm! But, then, she stayed that way for another 6 or so hours! Verity was posterior, causing Vivian a lot of pain and doubt (and noises). Just when we thought we couldn’t go on, the midwives asked us to go take a shower and be alone. I held her while she wailed and all of a sudden, the bag of waters finally popped. Vivian pushed Verity out, with an ARM by her head, in less than 5 minutes (and didn’t tear!) I was able to catch her myself and cut her cord. She was very quiet and wide eyed, so sweet.

Verity Rene is HERE! She was born on April 28th, 2009 @ 3:42 p.m. She was an even 8 lbs of baby girl who did not want to come out because of her hand that was on her head and her being in a posterior position. Her gestational age according to her newborn checkup was 41 weeks!

Right now mama and baby are resting while I am blogging.

This was one of the most humbling experiences of my life. How did my wife do it?!? I was able to be there for her 100% for the first time in my life that I could remember. I was given the blessing of being healthy while my healthy girl was born. To be there and support my beautiful, gracious wife, was a gift from God! Just like Verity! I was able to catch Verity and cut the cord. WOW! As you can tell, this is one powerful experience that I was able to have in my life that I will never forget. I am holding her right now..:)!

Just after I caught Verity!

In my dreams, I dare to light a match to the constructs of my life,

Burn all the withering, moldy pieces;
the weaknesses and brokenness left by infidelity infestations;
the unknown outcome of my attempts to preserve this messy house. The pain is too sharp, the work is too hard. The labor long and arduous; questionably worth it.

I want to walk away from the smoldering heap of What Once Was,

find a weeping willow to climb to my new, simple home on a branch,

and sleep.

No baby yet, in case you’re wonderin! Though we experienced a 3 hour “practice” labor in the middle of the night on Saturday, which was soooo much fun. Really, though, I’m grateful for it! I remembered those feelings and how the body kinda figures out what it needs. In my case, it was to sit with my back near the heater and hang on to a towel bar during a contraction. Again, sooooo much fun. The midwife speculated that I progressed to 3cm that night, fwiw.

I finished Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth and have officially changed my birth language to replace “contractions” with the word “rush” (cause that is SO what it is like and doesn’t take as much energy to say) and the word “false” with “practice”. I even read that it’s normal to start labor 4-5 times and then stop again (indefinitely) before it comes on strong enough to complete the birth process. Somehow that makes those hours starting/stopping labor seem less futile 

We had a lovely easter: Ethan got a small basket full of organic lollipops (he specified that he wanted FIVE, with an OHMYGOSH-that-is-more-than-I-can-imagine look in his eyes, lollipops from the “easter bunny”), along with his own Sigg bottle and a wind-up catepillar toy- he was totally stoked about all of that. We did the church thing -which, in our case, is really nothing like it sounds, and finally found new training wheels for Ethan’s bike so he was super excited about that.

We then had burritos at Laughing Planet in the EcoTrust building and walked the Pearl and over the Broadway Bridge to the Rose Quarter to pick up the Max to return home. It was like old times, all that walking. There was something nostalgic about how hubby and I’s conversation just went on and on, and Ethan having to pee in the bushes, and all of us bundled together to get relief from the wind. Though at this point our walking also brings on lots of contractions — but I talked through them and enjoyed the “stretch”.

Back home, I made a lamb/asparagus stew (with fresh lamb meat from a local farm selling at the farmer’s market, gotta love it!)  for our community house dinner and we shared a dessert variety platter, courtesy of the Holberts, to celebrate Hubby’s b-day (which is today). There was some lovely Easter viewing of No Country for Old Men, but at some point I knew my limit and retreated to my room to get the senseless killing stuff out of my head! I believe that after a hot shower, prenatal yoga, reading a book, and listening to Shane&Shane, I was able to sleep without thinking about people getting shot up, lol. I’m bad with those movies –way too visually and emotionally involved!

One thing we did NOT do was remember to let the boys run around and find the easter eggs they painted the day before that Hubby hid around the yard. So they did that a day late this morning

I had a midwife appointment this afternoon (last one before official due date) and the hubs and I are going to do something out and about later this evening for his b-day today.

Otherwise my week is pretty darn boring- I have lots of work to do but I’m having to take it a day at a time and see what I can handle.

Okay, that’s the update! Gotta get going!

For moving and community house updates, check out the new blog (a total work in progress).

More as time and energy allows!

Upon announcing our decision to co-house, or literally share a home with another family, the feedback has been expectantly mixed. Some commented about the state of our economy and the impending need for people to be open to living this way. Some said it was awesome, to let us know how they could help. Some said we were “brave”. Some said it was not a good idea, period.

Fortunately, the decision was made in our hearts with momentous solidarity before we got outside opinions on the matter. There was a certainty that not only were we “up for it”, but that come what may, this was going to be an enriching experience that brings us closer to Jesus, each other, and community.

While it is easier to explain in terms of financial benefits, there’s so much more to talk about. While we were “tested” with questions ranging from lease terms to whether or not we know who will be decorating, we kinda chuckled at how, I don’t know, that’s just not how we wish to approach this. The concept of sharing your home and lives with another family is totally foreign to most of us, and the thought of “giving up” our comforts of individuality and privacy, of exposing another family to our daily struggles, fights, tears, and hang-ups, is not in the least bit appealing. And I understand that — I really, really do. Especially in a culture where we are told that our dreams must be something like that of Wisteria Lane housewives – that the ultimate possession is a better job and a single family home in the burbs, far removed from the “sketchy” neighborhoods and failing schools. We look out for number one, and beyond that a small circle of close friends and family MIGHT be worth our personal sacrifice. With so much on our plates already, we are strapped – we don’t have the money or time to devote to anything other than maintaining our own “world”.

And yet, if I only spoke about the financial or cultural aspects of our decision, I would still be failing to explain the truest reason we desire to share a home. This decision is first and foremost about living out a desire to check out what other sides of God’s heart we haven’t even begun to explore. It’s reading the sermon on the mount and saying – wait, maybe this isn’t just a nice sunday school verse; maybe this is literally telling us how to live, in THIS culture, in THIS time, and for ever. It’s about treating others as equals, as humans who bear the spark of the divine, not competition or annoyances or celebrities or enemies. It’s about sharing what really never belonged to us anyway – our money, our time, our couch – in exchange for seeing Christ at work in the lives of those around you in a deep and personal way.

It’s breaking bread with others, washing their feet and allowing (however difficult it will be!) to let others wash yours. Not from the confines of church walls, or the distance of a charitable donation, but starting under the roof you sleep under (which is also not “yours”).

Leviticus 25:23 — “The land is mine and you are but aliens and my tenants.”

Matthew 7:11 — “If you, then, though you are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father in heaven give good gifts to those who ask him!”

Ecclesiastes 5:10-15 — “Whoever loves money never has money enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with his income. This too is meaningless. As goods increase, so do those who consume them. And what benefit are they to the owner except to feast his eyes on them? The sleep of a laborer is sweet, whether he eats little or much, but the abundance of a rich man permits him no sleep. I have seen a grievous evil under the sun: wealth hoarded to the harm of its owner, or wealth lost through some misfortune, so that when he has a son there is nothing left for him. Naked a man comes from his mother’s womb, and as he comes, so he departs. He takes nothing from his labor that he can carry in his hand.”

1 Timothy 6:6-7, 17-19 — “But godliness with contentment is great gain. For we brought nothing into the world, and we can take nothing out of it. … Command those who are rich in this present world not to be arrogant nor to put their hope in wealth, which is so uncertain, but to put their hope in God, who richly provides us with everything for our enjoyment. Command them to do good, to be rich in good deeds, and to be generous and willing to share. In this way they will lay up treasure for themselves as a firm foundation for the coming age, so that they may take hold of the life that is truly life.”

Acts 20:35b — “[T]he Lord Jesus himself said: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’ ”

Acts 4:32, 34-35 — “All the believers were one in heart and mind. No one claimed that any of his possessions was his own, but they shared everything they had. There were no needy persons among them. For from time to time those who owned lands or houses sold them, brought the money from the sales and put it at the apostles’ feet, and it was distributed to anyone as he had need.”

This past Sunday night was so awesome. We had church at night, and I didn’t even hear the message or anything, and still I was impacted and filled with gratitude. I love our community we have found in Evergreen so much. Hubby and I helped in the kids room together, something that our church does so differently than any church I have been to. The commitment is so practical and so NOT all-consuming, as you are encouraged to only serve in an area of the church for one sunday each month for 4 months, that you find yourself going “That’s it?!” – without resentment, with room to breathe, with freedom to dabble in other things and explore the ways in which you can pitch in. By the time I returned home, the community had been incredibly generous to us: we had a ride there and back, one person went through her extra knitting supplies and gave me a big bag of needles, another person had brought a large bag of their used baby girl clothes and shoes for Verity, and a few more swapped books with me that were on my “to read” list. There were many loving moments in between that touched me with simple hugs, hello’s, and thank you’s. (I work with some one who is also like this- the most generous, loving, intentional gal I know. She works so, so hard, and is truly sacrificial about her resources. She is amazing!) This is radical to me. It is love, it is family. And it makes me want to give back, to redistribute my skills, possessions, or simply my time, in order to care for the people I am growing to love and appreciate so much. I am so grateful that we moved to Portland and discovered the existence of community, a community that I can honestly say God used to shift our lives so greatly, so much so that I have a loving, healthy husband right now, and a child on the way that I have the privilege of mothering along with Lil’ E.

Life is messy and difficult sometimes. People have issues and areas and lots of growing and loving to do to get passed it. No one is immune. No one is in a better boat than any one else, because we were created to have needs, and to depend on each other for those needs to be met in family and community. The more we get out of our isolation, the more HUMAN we feel. With a little compassion and support for one another, I have hope that we humans are capable of seeing passed our self-centeredness and self-sufficiency, and into a world where pursuing a “LIVING” doesn’t mean a paycheck, it means a life of rich blessings you can’t buy with the world’s best gold.

For me, sharing a home is a place I can start to explore this vision, not only within our two families but also in combining our hospitality and resources to offer it as a small gathering place for community to happen. I do desire and plan to get more involved in service opportunities to the poor in Portland — once I get through these super pregnant/infancy stages.

So this is not a defense, not a “you should too”, and not even an explanation. It is simply a conversation about my life and the ways we are changing as a family from the inside out. I hope to continue this conversation eventually on a separate blog dedicated to the happenings of the new home, one that incorporates the writings of the other adults (and maybe children too!) that will be sharing space. We hope to move next month and are hard at work to find the right place, so if you’re the prayin’ kind, throw one up:)

“And I think that’s what our world is desperately in need of – lovers, people who are building deep, genuine relationships with fellow strugglers along the way, and who actually know the faces of the people behind the issues they are concerned about.”

“We try and make the world safe, knowing that the world will never be safe as long as millions live in poverty so a few can live as they wish.”
— Shane Claiborne (The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical)

Below are some more resources we are exploring now and as time allows in the months ahead. If anyone knows of more, please let me know!!! :

Books:
Eberhard Arnold, Why We Live in Community.
Life Together: The Classic Exploration of Faith in Community
Creating a life together : practical tools to grow ecovillages and intentional communities
The cohousing handbook : building a place for community
Reinventing community : stories from the walkways of cohousing
Intimacy and Mission: Intentional Community as Crucible for Radical Discipleship by Luther E., Jr. Smith
The Irresistible Revolution: Living as an Ordinary Radical

Blogs/Websites:
The Canby House
The Simple Way
Relational Tithe
Reba Place

Robert Frost’s “Mending Wall”:

MENDING WALL
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That sends the frozen-ground-swell under it,
And spills the upper boulders in the sun,
And makes gaps even two can pass abreast.
The work of hunters is another thing:
I have come after them and made repair
Where they have left not one stone on a stone,
But they would have the rabbit out of hiding,
To please the yelping dogs. The gaps I mean,
No one has seen them made or heard them made,
But at spring mending-time we find them there.
I let my neighbor know beyond the hill;
And on a day we meet to walk the line
And set the wall between us once again.
We keep the wall between us as we go.
To each the boulders that have fallen to each.
And some are loaves and some so nearly balls
We have to use a spell to make them balance:
‘Stay where you are until our backs are turned!’
We wear our fingers rough with handling them.
Oh, just another kind of out-door game,
One on a side. It comes to little more:
There where it is we do not need the wall:
He is all pine and I am apple orchard.
My apple trees will never get across
And eat the cones under his pines, I tell him.
He only says, ‘Good fences make good neighbors’.
Spring is the mischief in me, and I wonder
If I could put a notion in his head:
‘Why do they make good neighbors? Isn’t it
Where there are cows?
But here there are no cows.
Before I built a wall I’d ask to know
What I was walling in or walling out,
And to whom I was like to give offense.
Something there is that doesn’t love a wall,
That wants it down.’ I could say ‘Elves’ to him,
But it’s not elves exactly, and I’d rather
He said it for himself. I see him there
Bringing a stone grasped firmly by the top
In each hand, like an old-stone savage armed.
He moves in darkness as it seems to me
Not of woods only and the shade of trees.
He will not go behind his father’s saying,
And he likes having thought of it so well
He says again, “Good fences make good neighbors.”

- me: sinus cold… tired… worried… working.
- will reply to your e-mails one of these days

Many of you were perplexed by the error screen on my blog, your trusted visiting spot for the last 3 years. My host attempted a payment to an old card and then locked my account, so I’ve now updated the info and we’re back online!
Can’t write much but to say HECK YES I’m excited about the Lost premiere tonight and can’t wait to spend some more time on the blog when I get back to p’town.

- visiting S.C.R.A.P. next week with friendie Misty for cheap reused goodies to inject my craft bug with crack.
- discovering natural wood toy/craft items at bulk prices
- impending trip to FL and watching LOST Season 5 premiere with decade old friends (and the coming Season 4 from netflix! – tooooooo inject my Lost bug with crack )
- revisiting the possibility of being a homeschooling work-at-home mom tomorrow morning with Debra!
- new blogs to frequent: Debra’s above, as well as this one and this one.
- tomorrow’s plan to pack away Christmas, but move the tree to the backyard covered in bird seed ornaments to enjoy for another week or so from my window.
- the coffee in the french press RIGHT NOW… liquid la-huv.
- the amazing, not to be missed, knee high’s Hubby SCORED as a christmas”time” gift for me from nearby “Sofia’s” on Fremont. Will I ever take them off? Well, I have to shower eventually…

*there’s no place like home, there’s no place like home*

Speaking of goals, add this to my previous list of goals for this year and beyond:

- Focus lately on getting a few more marks on the right hand side rather than the left:

Characteristics of Functional and Dysfunctional Couples

1. Dysfunctional: Being together and unhappy is safer than being alone.
Functional: Being together brings us joy and happiness.

2. Dysfunctional: It is safer to be with other people than it is to be alone and intimate with our partner.
Functional: Being alone and intimate with our partner is as safe as being with other people.

3. Dysfunctional: If I really let my partner know what I’ve done or what I’m feeling and thinking (who I am), (s)he will leave me.
Functional: When I really let my partner know what I’ve done or what I’m thinking (who I am), it increases our intimacy. It’s met with acceptance.

4. Dysfunctional: It is easier to hide (medicate) our feelings through addictive/compulsive behavior than it is to express them.
Functional: We no longer need to hide and medicate our feelings through our addictive/compulsive behavior. We can express our feelings.

5. Dysfunctional: Being enmeshed and totally dependent with each other is perceived as being in love.
Functional: Being interdependent adds strength to the relationship.

6. Dysfunctional: We find it difficult to ask for what we need, both individually and as a couple.
Functional: We are learning to ask for what we need, both individually and a couple.

7. Dysfunctional: Being sexual is equal to being intimate.
Functional: Being sexual enhances our relationship (increases our intimacy).

8. Dysfunctional: We either avoid our problems or feel we are individually responsible for solving the problems we have as a couple.
Functional: We are learning to face our problems and not to feel individually responsible for solving the problems we have as a couple.

9. Dysfunctional: We believe that we must agree on everything.
Functional: We believe we don’t have to agree on everything.

10. Dysfunctional: We believe that we must enjoy the same things and have the same interests.
Functional: We believe we can have different interests and enjoy different things and enjoy being together.

11. Dysfunctional: We believe that to be a good couple we must be socially acceptable.
Functional: We don’t have to be socially acceptable.

12. Dysfunctional: We have forgotten how to play together.
Functional: We can play and have fun together.

13. Dysfunctional: It is safer to get upset about little issues than to express our true feelings about larger ones.
Functional: We are learning to express our true feelings about larger issues, and we are learning to resolve conflict.

14. Dysfunctional: It is easier to blame our partners than it is to accept our own responsibility.
Functional: We are learning to accept our individual responsibility.

15. Dysfunctional: We deal with conflict by getting totally out of control or by not arguing at all.
Functional: We are learning to deal with conflict and to fight fairly.

16. Dysfunctional: We experience ourselves as inadequate parents.
Functional: We accept our limitations as parents.

17. Dysfunctional: We are ashamed of ourselves as a couple.
Functional: We are proud of ourselves as a couple.

18. Dysfunctional: We repeat patterns of dysfunction from our families-of-origin.
Functional: We are recognizing and breaking the patterns of dysfunction from our families-of-origin.

Call it end-of-year itchy, maternal nesting, or psychosis, but me and goals are soul sista’s lately. To name a few… in no order of importance (and I hope to update the blog when something is accomplished throughout the year):

- Cut TV/movies to a minimum and institute a Family Night of games and creativity instead.

- Learn to knit (period) but most importantly: hats, leg warmers, and baby clothes, including cloth diaper covers

- Get a used sewing machine and finish up some drape/baby clothes/natural toys/etc dreams of mine.

- Learn to make (and commit to making!): my own bread and crackers, rice milk, kefir/yogurt and soap.

- Turn studio into place for guests and my writing, reading and craft-making adventures.

- For next 4 months, with Hubby, focus counseling and mentoring relationships on our parenting skills (and ISSUES)

- Launch new business (website) in order to attract more freelance clients (this will be realized in about a week!)

- Decide/commit on whether or not to homeschool Lil E for the next 2 years (meeting with some one about this this week! Yay!)

- Take online courses on website design and development to obtain credentials (haven’t heard back from an advisor I contacted last month, but its on the not-so-back backburner of mine – and its in good company with many other not forgotten, but not gotten around to lists.)

- Paint and photograph more artwork to beautify the home on a dime (accomplished 1 new painting and 2 new framed photographs this week, have more painting to do…)

- Continue my commitment to counseling, discover, healing and wholeness.

- Increase awareness of God in daily routines and increase involvement in church theology and service activities.

- Start seedlings of this year’s plantings indoors and successfully grow more than herbs and tomatoes this year.

- Strengthen my community/network of female/mommy friends in Portland.

- Gain less baby weight this time around, and lose it faster too! (So far so good- 24 weeks, weight gain at less than 15 pounds)

- Have a successful homebirth (the best laid plans, anyhow!)

- Learn to cut hair better since me, my son, and my Hubby all go to yours truly for their lousy haircuts (okay, they aren’t lousy, but they could be better, that’s for sure!)

- continue to make all debt payments on time, equaling over $10,000 by end of 2009 (nearly half my current income!)

- Figure out how to live the fullest life possible with the least amount of income as possible in order to achieve progress towards simplicity, enjoyment and balance.

Come on, let’s hear ‘em, what be yours?