{ Katie + Morgan's Visit }

Katie and I became friends through blogging. Katie was a "bloggy friend" of my real-life friend Chelle, which is how I came across her blog. We met in real life three years ago at Seabrook {you can read about it here and here}, and I think she may have been the first Aussie I ever met! Since Seabrook, Katie has married her sweetheart Morgan, and this summer they are making their way across the USA on a delicious, once-in-a-lifetime trip visiting friends and family. They spent two nights with us in between a week in Spokane, Washington and a week in Charleston, South Carolina, and we had such a delightful time! Katie and Morgan were so gracious with our cramped accommodations, sleeping on an air mattress that pretty much took up our entire living room floor! I'd never met Morgan, and Mike hadn't met either of them, but we really enjoyed the time we got to spend together. Maybe someday we will be able to visit them in Australia...wouldn't that be sweet!

Their visit was brief, and peppered with the early mornings and long naps of a little girl who loves her sleep. Nevertheless, we got to show them around our neck of the woods, as well as a bit of downtown Seattle.

 

:: at the beach near our house ::

 

 

:: Katie + Morgan ::

 

We did have one very unfortunate incident when we went to a local brew pub/restaurant for dinner: They refused to let K + M order drinks without their passports as additional identification. Apparently Australian drivers' licenses are not enough proof that they are of legal age {which happens to be 18 in Australia, anyway!}.

 

On Sunday the grandparents watched Lainie and we went to downtown Seattle. I took almost no photos {which I could say about nearly everything we've done over the last year. If it's not Lainie being cute, apparently I am unable to muster the strength to get out the camera.}. We had lunch in an open-air Bolivian café in Pike's Place Market, meandered through the market, and visited Anthropologie. Katie and I really love that store...Mike and Morgan hid and amused themselves while we browsed.

 

We rode the Great Wheel on the Seattle waterfront--first time for all of us. The views are breathtaking!

 

:: Looking toward West Seattle ::

 

On Monday, the Aussies toured the Boeing factory while I took Lainie for her one-year checkup and shots. Then we all went to the Flying Heritage Collection, which has some amazing, fully restored WWI and WWII aircraft and tanks. Two different airplanes are the only surviving ones of their specific make known to exist.

 

At this point, my camera battery died. Just imagine lots of laughter; both real and impersonated Aussie accents; and a bittersweet farewell at the airport.

 

Our house still seems so quiet--we had a great time with you two!

{ where I'm going from here }

A few weeks ago I told you why I haven't been posting as much recently. {Besides the obvious one--the almost-ten-month-old reason why I don't have time for a lot of things I used to do before she was born!} To all of you who read, thank you for listening to my heart. To those who responded, thank you for sharing your perspectives. {I replied to your comments in the comments section of that post.} It really, really helped me to see this from your viewpoints, helped me get outside the little ruts in my brain and think about it from another perspective. Thank you.

I'm not quitting blogging. It's the most realistic creative outlet I've got right now, I enjoy it, and honestly, I never intended to stop--I'm just re-aligning my parameters. {Realistic meaning I actually do it...it's not messy...no clean-up required...no supplies to shop for...doesn't cost anything...I can do it any time of day or night when I have access to a computer. I can spend five minutes or two hours. Blogging really is kind of the perfect "hobby" for mamas who are verbal and visual and feel overwhelmed every time they look at their bins of scrapbook supplies and think, Rats, I'm SIX YEARS BEHIND.}

So, yeah. I'm not going anywhere. I'm just maybe not going to post quite as much about Lainie. Mike and I have discussed it, and I think there is a balance to be found here. I don't want to go psycho and give our kids fake names and go out of my way to camouflage every personal detail that I possibly can. That's taking what started as a healthy desire to protect and turning it into a something ugly and burdensome and unnecessary. At the same time, I'm not going to glibly spill every single little adorable tidbit about her and us. {That would bore everyone except me and Mike, anyway.} There is a point where I need to stop being too serious and worrying about whether or not that photo I posted of Lainie at 2.5 months old is going to somehow ruin her life when she's in college. I think I'm working toward that point. ;-)

So here are some recent snapshots of Life with Lainie:

:: quite proud of what she can accomplish, given some chili and a little time ::

 

:: helping mama test batteries on tea lights for the Good Friday service ::

 

:: her standard pose after eating ::

 

This kid just gets cuter and cuter every day. Last Wednesday, the day before my birthday, she learned how to clap, and I'm pretty sure she thinks it is the coolest thing that has ever happened. When she starts clapping, she totally forgets whatever she was doing and gets a huge smile on her face. And if the people around her start clapping too? You should see her delight! I can't even believe she will be ten months old on Saturday. This weekend also marks one year since we found out that she had a diaphragmatic hernia. Yep, that just-for-fun 3D ultrasound was on the last Friday of April. Again, crazy--how has it been a year? That means it's been a year since we finished the childbirth class, a year since I was 30 weeks pregnant, a year since life suddenly jolted down a path we never, ever imagined.

 

Thank You, Jesus, for that path. Thank You for going before us down that path. Thank You that Your plans are so much bigger and better and more glorious than ours! And thank You for going before me down this blogging path...You know where it's going to lead so much better than I do.

{ Why I've been quiet }

It seems like every time I have the urge to write a blog post, life prevents me from doing so. There's a small girl who doesn't much care for mama being glued to the computer screen for long periods of time--well, for any amount of time at all, really, and I think she's utterly right--and when she's napping, there's dinner to make and bills to pay. By the time she falls asleep at night, my brain is wiped out. I've never been a night owl by choice, and regardless of how energetic I feel, after 8pm, my brain just doesn't work the way it does during daylight hours. {Wow, that was a lot of d's in a row.} Words don't just flow. I struggle to adequately express what's on my heart, let alone wax eloquent.

Apparently I wax best during the day...maybe y'all should consider yourselves lucky!

Part of the reason for my long pauses lately is because I'm re-evaluating just how much I want to share here. I've read a couple of blog posts lately that have made me re-think how much personal information I want to put out there, preserved indefinitely and in a completely public fashion, on the internets. Spurred on by this article, I'm trying to figure out how much of Lainie's life I want to put on this blog. I hadn't given a lot of thought to her future "online identity" and how what I'm sharing about her now may be tied to her as an adult...maybe forever. That's sobering; it's the nature of our current digital age, isn't it? A few weeks ago, I was going through my blog archives trying to remember what we've done on Easters past, and I came across a post I wrote three years ago, in which I talk about why I started blogging. The first reason I listed was "to better keep in touch with family and friends who don't live in the area." That's still true, but even if you're not paranoid about crazy people, publicizing too much information about yourself online may be dangerous. {I cannot tell you how much that lady's experience freaked me out!} And then there's the fact that I am now also responsible for how much info about a certain little lady gets put out there, and well...I'm not exactly sure where to go from here. I don't want to make this a private blog, but I also don't want blogging to be something I worry about. {As a side note: I was a lot funnier back in 2010. I'm all serious and businesslike and "here's the list of things I have to check off" nowadays...which I know I was like then, too, but boy! My posts were a lot funner to read!}

Fellow bloggers, why do you blog? Has the focus or purpose of your blogging changed over time?

Fellow mama bloggers, how do you find the balance of what and how much to share about your children? What are your boundaries?

{ this + that }

Maybe you were hoping {dreading?} that this, my first "real" post since getting back from my trip, would be a delightfully longwinded and photo-heavy recap of our weeklong adventure in Idaho. But nay, it is not to be. Not today, anyway. There are a few hundred photos on my camera, waiting to be downloaded and edited...and that seems like a lot of work. So today let's talk about other things.

Liiiiiiiiiike...teeth! Lainie's first tooth popped through just before we went to Idaho, and two days ago its next-door neighbor showed up, too. We've been incredibly fortunate in the teething department so far: Her only "symptom" for the first tooth was crazy long naps. I'm serious. She slept that tooth through her gums! Second one, she woke up crying at night all.the.time {but only at night--not during naps}, to the point where she spent several nights snuggled next to me in our bed because that was the only way we could get her to sleep for more than 45 minutes at a time. The child does snore, though, so regardless I haven't been sleeping much. I think I see the white nubbin of an upper tooth making its way down, so we may have more adventures coming up very soon.

Since our sleep was already all screwed up and disappeared, two nights ago I made a spur-of-the-moment decision to stop swaddling Miss E. I've been dreading this--putting it off for months--because I know that having her arms free to poke herself, knock out her binky, and in general wake herself up is going to be a nightmare. Stopping swaddling a baby who sleeps like a dream when swaddled flies in the face of the old adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." She ain't broke, but I knew that sooner or later we'd have to "fix" her. {Though I would've been fine with swaddling her till she's six years old if she'd let me...} And while "nightmare" might be a bit too strong a term, this whole sleeping unswaddled thing has definitely been rough. Yesterday she could not stay asleep for her afternoon nap. She was clearly exhausted and would fall asleep almost immediately when I picked her up, but she would wake herself up within minutes of me putting her in her crib. After two hours I gave up. I felt so bad for her: she looked so confused, tired, and frustrated. It was impossible to be upset with her...she so obviously wanted to sleep, but didn't know what to do with her newly-free hands. I kind of felt like a terrible mother at that point. The moral of the story is, I'm really thankful for what a good sleeper Lainie normally is, and am going to stop whining now.

By the way, is it just me being self-critical, or do I whine a lot about the tough parts of motherhood?? Honestly, tell me! Often I feel like my "mommy posts" are kind of whiny after I've written them. I don't mean them to be. I love my daughter, I love being a stay-at-home mom, and I want to be open and honest about both the joys and the challenges of this season. I start to question myself, though, when I compare myself to other mommy blogs. A lot of them seem so...cheery. Maybe it's just the blogs I frequent, but often I look at my blog and think, "Wow, I sure do complain a lot!" At the same time, I don't want to paint an unrealistically rosy picture of motherhood. So, do you think I'm a complainer? Or am I just keepin' it real?

K, I'm off to do things like make popcorn and knit and watch the second half of "Gone with the Wind." Why would I spend a perfectly beautiful, sunshiney Sunday afternoon inside? Because Mike is at work {thankyouverymuch, busy season at work...said no wife ever} and Lainie is napping--hallelujah!

{ A Winner! }

One of the super nice things about blogging is making friends--finding kindred spirits you'd never have met in day-to-day life. Andrea is one of those friends. She's beautiful inside and out--if you've read this post, you've seen evidence of her thoughtfulness and creativity!

 

Last week Andrea had a giveaway on her blog: She would design custom blog headers for two random winners!

 

As I'm sure you've noticed, my blog is sporting a lovely new header. Yep, I won! And I have to say, I love the header she made for me. It's just perfect. Thank you so much, Andrea!! It's as though you could tell I'd been thinking my blog needed spiffed up a little!

 

If you're looking for some lovely prints, or are in need of some custom design work, please take a peek at Andrea's etsy shop. Lots more cute stuff can be seen at her shop blog, Take Joy Designs.

{ Comparisons and a Sumtumn Wreath }

I know, I know. It's been a really long time. I get overwhelmed by the sheer volume of vacation photos to wade through, then life gets busy, then we go camping, then I have more photos to wade through--ack! I'm slowly learning that there is no such thing as a "busy season." It's a busy life, period. Occasional hiatuses {hiati?} from blogging are an inevitable part of our busy lifestyle. I want accept these unplanned "breaks" from blogging with joy--isn't it awesome that the people and relationships in my life are more important than the internet?--rather than feeling guilty for "neglecting" my blog. Which is not to say that relationships via online channels are less valid because they aren't always face-to-face...I think you know what I mean. Emily at Jones Design Company wrote a post yesterday that totally resonated with me. If you haven't already, please read it here. She expresses so poignantly one of the double-edged swords of the blog world: feeling bad when you compare yourself to other women as expressed on their blogs. I encourage you to read her post in its entirety, but these paragraphs especially stood out to me:

"It is a constant struggle for me to be able to look at other’s successes [on their blogs] and be genuinely happy for them without that little nudge of insecurity to creep in. And on the other side, it is a challenge for me to look at my own successes and not feel like I am somehow better than another.

To be in that place where I am fully confident in who God made me to be and have no need to compare myself is where I am headed, but I am not yet there."

source

Amen! All that to say that the guilt I feel when I think, "I don't blog often enough!" is based purely on comparison with how frequently other bloggers post, not because the Lord told me to blog X number of times per week and I'm not.

A whole slew of posts about Kauai are coming up in the next few days--making time to blog is my treat for myself after spending all evening yesterday doing laundry from our most recent camping trip. I'm finishing up the last load as we speak--honestly, I think it's number ten--even our blankets and pillows were saturated with campfire smoke! But tonight I want to share our front door wreath with you. Almost as soon as we returned from Kauai, I was overcome with an almost physical urge to make a wreath. A sumtumn wreath. It's not quite autumn; goodness knows we've barely even tasted summer weather in the Pacific Northwest. But I wanted--I practically needed--to make an autumn-ish wreath for our front door. An end-of-summer wreath. A sumtumn wreath.

Jones Design Company tutorials to the rescue. {Honestly, this post is not a plug for JDC. Emily has no idea who I am. I just happen to love her tutorials.} I followed her easy directions for the ruffle wreath, added a few satin flowers, and voila! A sumtumn wreath!

Now I'm off to wade through vacation photos and share the glories of Kauai with you all over the next few days!