Mamas, Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Cowboys...

I was signing the above song to the boys this morning (in my best Willie Nelson impersonation), and after the first line Soren said, "Why Mommy?"

I told him "They'll never come home; they're always alone, even with someone they love", which seemed to satisfy him enough. However, with my growing boys, I can now understand Willie's exhortation, because it is awfully tempting sometimes.

One look...

....and off he saunters to the book corner for some quite time.

Søren and Elliot's Conversations: The Basics

Noises from the other room:

Elliot - in the best piglet voice you can imagine - "Help!"

Søren, quickly and earnestly, "What you need help with?"

Elliot, simply, "Dat."

Some rustling noises followed by bubbly babbles and then "no. no. no," from Elliot, but with no signs of distress.

Welcome Leia!

Name: Leia Hope Bradley (yes, that's as in "Princess Leia" - narrowed down from the 7 girls names they arrived at the hospital with)

Date: 2/18/2009

Time: 7:26am

Weight: 7lbs 2 oz

Length: 18 in

Hair: Lots. Dark.

Looks: A lot like Kate did at birth.

Mood Day 1: Mellow. Not much crying or fussing, but pretty alert with eyes open between naps.

Summary from Leia's proud papa:

"Everything went very smoothly. We arrived at the hospital at 5am. They got Laurie all prepped and we rolled into the O.R. on time at 7am.. We were back in the room shortly thereafter. Laurie is recovering very well, feeling good, and is very excited about the new addition to the family. Baby Leia is perfectly healthy and doing great. She has gotten LOTS of cuddle time with mom, and is a perfect little angel.

Kate hasn't met her little sister yet. We are really excited for her arrival at the hospital this afternoon. I know she will be excited too.

All our friends and family have been incredibly supportive. Thanks to everyone who called, emailed, IMd, SMSd and Facebooked us. It's good to know you have so many people around who care."

And at the table...

Thanks Summer for more fun Valentines Day ideas. Although Søren asked me never to cut up his pancake again. Oops! I think everyone else enjoyed theirs.

A look at my valentines today:


Yep, I am one lucky lady.

King Thrushbeard

I have greatly enjoyed reading through a book of brother's Grimm "household stories" that I found at a used book store down the street. It has been fun to see the differences in the traditional fairy tales I grew up hearing (largely from Disney).

Most recently I read a tale called "King Thrushbeard" which I had never heard before, but it may now be my favorite fairy tale. The closest online translation to the one in my book is here.

It is a story of a young, arrogant princess who openly scorns her suitors to the point her father swears to marry her off to the first beggar that comes to his door. Sure enough he does, and the princess becomes a commoner and can barely even function as such. She cannot do any typical work and so her husband, in desperation, finds her a job as a servant in the castle of their great King's - a King that she bitterly mocked as a suitor. She swallows her shame and does her work and can bring home scraps for her and her husband. One day there is a wedding feast at the castle, and the King sees her and invites her to dance. She resists, but he pulls her onto the floor and the cups in her pockets that hold the food scraps spill all over the floor and everyone laughs and mocks her. She tries to run away but the King stops her and confesses that he and her beggar husband are one and the same. He had heard her father's oath and disguised himself in order to humble her and make her worthy to be his Queen. As it turns out the wedding feast is her own, though she feels completely unworthy to be his bride.

I was struck at the similarities in this story and the story of what God does for us. In the story, you do not hate King Thrushbeard for hiding his true identity because you recognize the princess' need to recognize herself for who she is and recognize his worthiness to be her husband. The King is kind, patient, just, loving and gives her - once ready - exceedingly abundantly more than she deserves. The king is behind all of the "evil" that befalls her, but the evil is ultimately for her good.

Is this not what God does for us? Why then, when God authors difficulty and suffering for us, do we call it unfair? It is because we do not yet have eyes to see the prize awaiting us once he is finished? Is it because we still do not yet see ourselves as we are?

Again and again I am sent back to the moral of C.S. Lewis' great novel "Till We Have Faces". The conclusion is that we cannot have audience with God until we see ourselves clearly. He will not have us while we tell Him how martyred we are and how unfair He is. He will only hear us when we recognize we are far too inferior to be in His presence let alone be heard - let alone be selected as the bride of Christ.

May I remember to embrace the suffering than refines me!

Love Is In The Air....

Or at least above the mantle.

Thanks Leah for a fun and easy idea to spruce the house up for Valentines Day. It also helped me justify still having all those old magazines I should have tossed when moving.

Conversations with Søren: On His Interests

Setting: The Play Room

Søren: Mommy, are you going to play with me.

Mommy: Well, actually, I am trying to clean up the train track pieces so we can have more space for the Little People village.

Søren: Well, Mommy, I am not really that interested in the Little People village. I am more interested in things like trains and train tracks.

Mommy: Oh, well, okay then. I can build you a train track over here, and Elliot can keep playing with the Little People over there.

Pregnancy Number Three: You Asked

You: Do you know if it's a boy or a girl?

Me: No. We also are unlikely to find out. I am actually increasingly suspicious it is a girl.

You: A girl?! What makes you think so?! Contradicting your own spoon?!

Me: Well....the spoon, obviously, has had some discrepancies (see side bar), so I am continuing to collect data and work on alternate, non-hormonal, non-strickly-gender, theories. The morning sickness was strange. The stranger thing still, is that sweets are actually tempting. This has never happened to me. Even with Søren's pregnancy (when I wasn't morally opposed to eating refined sugar), the thought of sweets repulsed me. This time - no joke - I have to exert will power not to bring home those nasty, crisco-frosting covered, heavily-dyed valentine's cookies that they place on a table next to the check out lines at the grocery store (more reasons to get your food off the grid. As soon as I have my garden, or a CSA, I will not need the store any longer! Whoo hoo! We have half a cow coming butched per my instructions in March). I should probably confess now that I did have my husband bring me home locally made chocolate gelato last night. There, I admitted it.

You: Please focus, we are talking about your pregnancy.

Me: Right, right, sorry. Pregnancy-brain and all, I like talking about food.

You: So...you like sugar and you think it might be a girl. Do you have names picked out yet?

Me: Well, I am only 11 weeks along. However, when I "talk" with the baby (I would like to reiterate again, given the mounting evidence against me, that I am NOT a hippie), I also find myself interacting with the baby as a girl.....a girl named Penelope. Yeah, and I think I've even convinced Andrew of the name (which he has vetoed every other time I've brough it up) on the condition we incorporate the name Alene to honor his aunt. So, we're working on something like Penelope Grace Alene. We also have a boy's name, but I'm not totally sold on it (probably because I am not sold that it's a boy). There is no meaningful author correlation, but it's William Justice (whom we would call Liam).

You: Um...what about William Shakespeare? He's a pretty famous author.

Me: Yeah, I was hoping I wouldn't have to confess this to the whole internet world, and especially to my highly literate readers, but um...I strongly detest reading Shakespeare. He, along with St. Augustine and Paul Tillich, are the only three authors I wanted to stab myself while reading at Gutenberg.

You: Wow. Okay, well again, let's stick to the pregnancy. It strikes me that Penelope Grace Alene also does not have an author correlation.

Me: Aha, you are right. However, Penelope is the faithful wife of Odyssyus in The Odyssy waiting 20 years for his return meanwhile putting off 108 suitors. So...there is, at least, a literature connection worth mentioning.

You: So, you said something about not finding out the gender? Are you really going to be able to resist an ultrasound that offers such information?

Me: Well, I probably could. Andrew probably could not. However, it is highly unlikely we will be having any ultrasounds this time around.

You: Really? Does that mean no doctor? Even with two prior c-sections?

Me: Yep. Really, AND my husband is actually more on board with it this time than he was with our first attempt. We found an amazing midwife here in town who is from the rural mountains of Mexico and has practiced midwifery since 1985 deliverying sometime like 600 babies and many, many VBAC's. She is completely confident that I will be able to labor successfully this time, and she is helping me prepare for that now (as my biggest hurdle will likely be the mental one).

You: So, another home birth?

Me: No actually, I think we're going to do it at the birthing center. It's a lovely place with a REALLY big soaking tub =) and a huge friends&family room with a large table where we can bring food, plenty of floor room for people to sleep, etc. I'm excited.

You: If I come up with more questions later can I bug you again?

Me: Oh yes, bug me anytime.

Painting Again

A birthday card for my brother-in-law, inspired by the photo at the bottom of this post.