Playing Catch-up

I've been waiting to write until I had something deep to share. Call it sleep deprivation or cuteness overload, but I'm operating solely in the here and now these days-- diapers, feedings, and baby wearing-- and can barely string two thoughts together, let alone hope for depth and meaning. Some days feel like weeks.

So how about a baby update instead?

Andrew is changing everyday! He has folds and folds of adorable baby-pudge that cry out for kisses and raspberries. He coos and has started to laugh, but you really have to earn a giggle. We do a lot of reading and singing, and his open-mouthed smile is precious. He sleeps right next to our bed in a Rock and Play, which is basically a motorized hammock of love. We quake at the thought of trying to transition him into his own room and a crib. Somehow I don't think he'll be thrilled at the proposition. 

Andrew still doesn't like to nap during the day at all (much like Margaret and Jack) so I wear him around in a baby carrier as he sleeps. Putting him in it is like a sleeping pill. My old knee is starting to protest, because he likes me to stay on the move while he's sleeping, but a rested baby and a sore knee seem preferable to a cranky baby and a cranky mom. You might say we are wrapped around his tiny little finger. Car travel and stroller rides are still not his cup of tea, so we drove through the night both to and from Connecticut last week so that he would sleep. That worked like a charm.

Picture Time: I realize that those of you who don't follow along on Facebook or Instagram might need some new baby pictures, so I aim to take care of that today! Please note: Margaret is thrilled with her baby brother, and is in lots of photos with him, but she is also a teenager who values her privacy, so that is why I don't post many of her.

More photos to come soon, as he hits the 4 MONTH MARK this week!

I also want to share the exciting news that an article I wrote, called Loss. Trust. Love. is featured in the Summer 2016 issue of Ladies Home Journal!

This is a dream come true for me. The issue is full of amazing articles, and I'm so proud to be part of it. Thank you to Dorie Howell Photography for photographing Andrew and me for the article.

Pick a copy up if you have the chance! I found mine at Food Lion, but friends have purchased them at Barnes and Noble, Costco, Wegmans, and other retailers.

As we slip into August (Jack always called it "The Sunday of Summer") I am contemplating my next steps career-wise and am finally ready to look for a speaker's agent to help me manage speaking engagements. If that's an area in which you have expertise, I would very much appreciate your advice.

That's all for now!  I hope whether you want your days to go slowly or to speed the heck up, you are doing well, Friend.

Express Yourself

I couldn't decide whether to go on our family's annual camping trip this year. The thought of tent camping with a three month old baby seemed overwhelming, sticky, and scary. I mean, this is NOT glamping. We have no running water and our bathrooms are latrines. If Andrew became uncomfortable and inconsolable, I wasn't sure what I'd do.

Up until 3 days before, I planned to have Tim and Margaret go while Andrew and I stayed home. But, as I may have told you, Andrew can be a real fuss-pot, so I started weighing whether I wanted to be alone 24/7 with a fuss-pot, or roughing it with that fuss-pot where I'd have family support.

I made reservations at the closest motel to the campground so Andrew and I could stay there at night. If you've ever slept in a hot tent, you know it's sauna-like, but in a bad way. When I found out the weekend was supposed to be VERY HOT, the idea of a cool room was the only option, I figured.

So off we went on Friday, heading 3 hours away into the mountains, at which point I picked up my motel key. The additional 50 minutes on the world's windiest road to the campsite made me reconsider the feasibility of going back and forth to the motel. Andrew does not like the car, and I didn't want to put him through that.

Here's a towel from the motel gift shop:

I hoped the trip would be good enough for a few stories, but not EPIC enough to make it to dish towel status.

For reasons that are too boring to discuss, I should let you know that I've been pumping milk for Andrew since he was 4 weeks old, instead of nursing him. He showed a strong early preference for the bottle, so I just rolled with it. Or, as I like to say, twice the work for none of the fun. I was overwhelmed thinking of pumping and storing breast milk at a rustic camp site, but I was determined to make it work. We had bottles, coolers, and ice packs. But as I was pumping milk in the car, on the world's windiest road, we started to smell something burning. The portable pump, plugged into the car charger, shorted out.

Crap.

Thankfully, I brought formula as a back-up, so I knew the baby would be fine, but I was now in an isolated spot with quickly filling boobs and a broken breast pump.

We set up camp and I tried to interest Andrew in nursing. He acted as if I were trying to feed him a Twinkie covered with dog poo. Uh-oh!

The hours passed, and my window of opportunity to drive back to the motel closed as darkness set in. Tim borrowed an air mattress for us, we unzipped his sleeping bag to make a blanket, and I wadded up a t-shirt to use as a pillow. I hadn't packed those things for me as I thought I'd be sleeping in a motel. Soon we settled Andrew into his Rock and Play.

My big fear was that he would cry all night, keeping everyone else awake. I dreaded not being able to console him if the new surroundings threw him off. Instead, he had the audacity to sleep through the night.

While this might seem like a good thing, to someone who pumps 4-5 times every day, it was troubling. I tried to sleep, but it was like having throbbing balloons full of hot rocks attached to me. By two in the morning, I was desperate. No pump. A sleeping baby who would not wake up to nurse. A husband snoring blissfully next to me. I had no choice but to start expressing milk by hand. For the next hour or so, I milked myself like a cow, soaking an entire beach towel. Good times.

The next two days, Andrew was more receptive to the boob, and he proceeded to help his mom out by nursing a bit to take the edge off.

Being outdoors all day kept him relatively fuss-free. Yes, it was hot, but we stayed in the shade and appreciated the strong breeze. The best part was having plenty of  people to entertain him. The last day was actually cool enough for long sleeves!

Hi! I'm Andrew, and I slept all night in this tent!

 Even jumping in the air can't make Tim and Margaret as tall as our nephew, Jack's BFF!

 Black clothes don't show wet stains. Yay!

 Camping isn't complete without camp dogs.

We ate copious amounts of deep fried food, from chimichangas to funnel cake and fried oreos, told stories around the campfire, and watched some awesome wiffle ball. We even made Andrew his own little bathtub/swimming pool to keep him cool.

As Jack's BFF cousin and his girlfriend were packing up to leave, a huge bird swooped low over the campsite and kept making higher and higher circles until their car pulled out of sight. Hard times, good times, holy times.

I  still can't believe we took a baby camping. I mean, I haven't even been brave enough to take him to Target yet!

Next year should be even more interesting as he'll be toddling around.

Hold me.

Pain

Last fall I spoke at a college campus about writing memoir and about what the verse, "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted," means to me. Recently, a student who bought Rare Bird during that visit reached out to me. He had started reading the book over summer vacation. As he sat on a beautiful perch above the Hudson River, he read the part about how blue jays have been a sign to my family that we are not alone in our brokenness, and that there is more to life than what we experience here on earth. Blue Jays, our son's interest in birds, and the assurance that our "rare bird" is more than okay in heaven, led to the title of my book. The young man shared that at the moment he read that part, a blue jay swooped down in front of him, reminding him that he is not alone in his struggles either. Had he not just read that passage, he may not have paid much attention to the bird at all. Part of my story became his story.

I know my story of child loss isn't pretty-- one takes a chance by stepping into it, as that young man did. As you, my dear friends, do when you visit me here.

It is scary and ugly, but I'm glad to share it as a way to link me to you, human to human. And in this case, it somehow gave encouragement to someone I've never met.

Sharing stories can inspire, encourage, elicit understanding, incite action, or even make us feel ill.

We can shut down and say we don't want to hear about the hard stuff any more-- the ugly stuff in our neighborhoods, our country, and our world. We can cover our ears and think, "Nope. Only that which applies to MY FAMILY and MY STORY is important." We can be in denial and refuse to acknowledge pain, racism, and  injustice if it doesn't touch us personally.

It's a luxury to be able to live that way, complacently putting our trust in the walls that separate our experience from others, but I don't think that's how we are supposed to exist. Your pain should be my pain, your story, my story.

One aspect of the verse, "The Lord is close to the brokenhearted and saves those who are crushed in spirit" is that sometimes WE are the way that closeness and help comes, from being called to seek justice and mercy and step into each other's lives, in letting God use us in love. We do the absolute opposite when we choose to ignore, refuse to acknowledge reality, and run away from each other's stories. We can be lulled into thinking we aren't part of the problem, even as our silence makes us complicit.