before we're four...

(a promised family update)

josh: 29 years

josh is now sporting a fatherly beard while wearing increasingly skinny pants (the pants mostly thanks to his ongoing sponsorship by jedidiah--free clothes!). since returning from christmas he has been enjoying a prolific time of music-writing. lyrics still to come, but he’s been gathering lots of material for two new projects. thanks to the internet he’s been able to collaborate long-distance with other musicians so he’s already got some drums, bass, banjo and accordion to work with, along with some great samples.

he’s been averaging about one away-from-home show a month since moving to portland, but he’ll just do a few local shows for the first few months after the baby is born. God has really provided for us, so we’ll be okay not doing any significant gigs in the coming months. josh can take a bit of a paternity leave; i expect he & heron will spend alot of time together in coming weeks! he can always work on lyrics in his head while he & heron are out & about!

josh should probably be writing his own update. i don’t know what he would choose to share. spiritually, it seems like he’s entered into a new season, one that he’s been waiting for for months (or years?). his most recent gig took him to redding, california, home of bethel church, pastored by bill johnson. he’s been listening to bill’s sermons for years, & has felt very encouraged & inspired by what is happening at bethel, particularly through their school of ministry. josh returned from his trip to bethel feeling very refreshed, his faith renewed. we believe that God will have alot of exciting new things to teach us through our ongoing relationship with the folks at bethel.

heron: 20 months

heron has been practicing being a mama herself. she seems to have a bit of an understanding that things are changing around here. for months she’s been touching my belly, saying, “baby! baby!” and kissing it sweetly. now she is sorting through the baby’s clothes & trying them on to check for fashionability. she then clothes her stuffed animals with them, places them in the bassinet & sings to them, rocking them to sleep. she has taken to calling all of her stuffed animals her babies, and constantly keeps the whole lot of them at her side. (she won’t even go upstairs now without carrying all eight of them with her!). she also lines them all up on the couch & reads to them.

heron is currently into building & playing inside forts & houses. every table, pile of pillows & blankets, or set of curtains becomes a house, and she brings her babies & books (& usually mom or dad, too) inside with her. she is also learning her colors, even sorting her blocks into like colors.

last week i caught heron looking at herself in the mirror saying, “no, mine!” over & over with a sinister smile. thankfully she is also learning the word “yes,” even “yes, please,” though she is already informalizing it into “yeah...”

she has started referring to herself as “hannah” and has caught on to the fact that josh & i have names other than “dada” and “mama”. thus, we are now at times “josh” and “mitchy” to her.

she has been in a continuous linguistic leap for months now, & her sentences are becoming more complete. tonight, for instance, she said, “hannah toot bathtime dada” which of course means “heron tooted in the bathtub with dad.”

heron is growing up SO fast, becoming more little girl than baby every day. this is sad to me sometimes, but i am very thankful that she is as grown up as she is now that we have another baby joining the family! i think she will be an incredible older sister, and will really benefit from having a live-in playmate.

michelle: 40 weeks

yesterday was my due date. these 9+ months have gone so fast & slow all at once. in many ways my body seems hit harder by pregnancy this time than the last (lots of migraines, etc), but in many ways it’s been easier. chasing a toddler around all day has kept me distracted & active. aside from a bad cough that i was battling for five weeks, my body feels healthy & ready to birth. heron & i take daily walks & have been going over to the community center several times a week to run around when it’s too yucky for outside play.

i do feel like i’ve been hibernating for the past few months, since our move to portland. very alive & active within the context of our nuclear family, but a bit out of contact with the rest of the world. it’s been a time of much introspection, and even a new phase of mourning over the loss of my dad now that we’re in our own living space. i’ve really been able to take some time that my heart has long needed.

even though this is my second child, i’ve actually had more fears to battle this time. mostly, these are irrational, & unrelated to anything i experienced with heron’s birth. heron’s birth was perfect in many ways. no complications besides tearing, and i was able to deliver naturally, just as i’d hoped, in 5 hours, a week early. at the end of it i felt like a hero, able & ready to conquer the world. but with this pregnancy, for months i was almost paralyzed by fear. fear that i would die, or that the baby would die, struck with the realization that birth-giving is a willing enlistment into a war, & there’s no guarantee of survival. i wasn’t feeling as connected to the child this time around, which convinced me that it was because he or she wouldn’t survive. or i’d convince myself that since i couldn’t imagine my life beyond the birth, that meant i was the one that wasn’t going to make it. the root of both of these things was a very skewed perspective of God & myself, &, i think, the role of suffering in our movement towards glory.

but then i had a really amazing week (early january?), full of breakthroughs, & i finally, truly, felt free from fear. really...FREE. God has very tangibly taken my hand & heart, & filled my mind with His promises and peace. it’s been months of prayer & journaling, & crying with josh. but i really think this pregnancy has been used to uncover alot of lies i’ve believed about myself & my value to God. with both pregnancies now, He has used these 9 months to bring about new growth in my own soul, new levels of healing and grace. today i feel so ready to embrace this new little life into our family...

on a lighter note, the past few months for me have also been about “nesting” i suppose. we have finally gotten entirely settled into our house, including my studio. for the past two years many of my art/craft supplies have been in storage, so having my supplies out of boxes, organized, and having a space that i can close the door on has been a huge boost to my productivity + sanity. now, even if i only have 5 free minutes, i can quickly jump into & out of a project.

josh & i have also put the finishing touches on the other spaces in the house, finally hanging up art, completing the decoration of heron’s room, & making our own room feel more welcoming to us (ah, what a difference the removal of the pile of amazonian blow guns, bows & arrows, didgeridoos, and trick kites can make to a space!).