Just a quick prayer request: Please pray for our sister-in-law, Monika, who is expecting child #2. She is only at 6 mos gestation, but her water broke over the weekend. At last report, she was not in labor, so just pray that baby stays inside as long as possible. Thanks!
- posted by Lenise @ 12:32 PM |

 
Well, I figure it's time to break the radio silence. I don't have a great excuse for not posting, but lately I've been more tired like I was at the beginning. Doesn't mean I haven't wasted lots of time!

Hubby and I took a trip to Borders today- his brother and sister-in-law sent us a very sweet care package including _What to Expect_ and a Borders gift card! I feel like I have enough pregnancy books, and I ordered a breastfeeding book and one on childcare through my insurance company, so it semed like time to beef up our children's literature department. I already had one Harry the Dirty Dog book (the one about the opera singer next door) and a children's catchism, but nothing suitably infantile. So we found _Baby's First Book_ with some very simple accounts of Bible stories, a sweet wooly-clad book about Lucy the lamb (I'm trying to do the nursery in a lamb theme, with mixed success at best), and a somewhat more sophisticated Easter book from Concordia, just in case our baby wants to delve into theological doctrine at the ripe old age of seven months. (You never know, the child may take after Daddy.) Daddy also talked me into buying an Iain Pears book. Considering how long it took me to get through _An Instance of the Fingerpost_, I was glad to see that this one is considerably shorter!

Back to the lamb-themed nursery: So far, I have a Little Bo Peep rocking chair (child-sized), a little wooly lamb footstool (complete with a pink bow in her "hair"), and a print of Biblical-looking shepherds with lots of sheep. I went looking for lamb fabric, and all I could find was a nice print on a PINK background. Since we have not been planning on learning the sex of our baby before birth, this presents something of a problem! I may just have to go with the "Three Bags Full" cradle set by Cotton Tale or abandon my lamb idea entirely, since the alternatives seem to be insanely expensive or just way too coffin-y (I know that's not a real word, but it's the closest I could bring myself to ponder). Anyway, if you have any ideas, let me know! I guess I could always get a plain set and look for an applique! Hmm... Gotta go Google!
- posted by Lenise @ 5:51 PM |

 
Well, not too much to get angry about lately, apart from traffic frustrations. I am wondering whether my hormones have me more irritable than usual. I've gotten peeved at lots of things, but I seem to be able to let it go, so maybe they also make me more forgetful!

We had an exciting day yesterday. Not knowing how far along the baby was, they scheduled an ultrasound. We got to see Junior bouncing around! They measured baby at 5.5 cm crown to rump, which is supposed to mean we're at week 12- a good three weeks later than I thought! I've been afraid to get too excited about everything this early, but seeing our little one moving all around was amazing. I'm excited now! We have 2 photos of baby. One is from the back, so you can just see a round head & a round body & nothing else. A co-worker, looking at it, said "Oh! A peanut!" She does have a point. But you can see limbs in the other one- or at least pieces of limbs. It's very, very cool. Of course, it's too early for them to tell us if we have a boy or a girl, and we aren't sure we want them to tell us when the time comes. We've got 8 wks to think about it.

I made a cool discovery this morning. Paul and I had started trying to conceive last April, but found out in the fall that I had a fertility problem, for which my OB/GYN was willing to put me onto Clomid. I didn't rule out drugs, but didn't want to be trying to circumvent God's will for us this summer (i.e. the Ukraine trip), so I decided that I would hold off until at least March (then, Feb ;-] ) before intervening, since I could probably go to Ukraine 3 or 4 mos pregnant. The whole time, though, I was pretty unhappy about not being pregnant while watching what felt like everybody else have babies. A few people (mostly family) knew what was going on, but I felt silly talking about it and didn't share it with our shepherding group. Then on New Year's Eve, we were at a party with shepherding group friends, and we all had to talk about the big thing that had happened to us in the past year. Well, I figured I'd be lying if I said anything else, so I decided the time had come to share with the group. Naturally, being the people they are, they promised to pray for us and were very sympathetic with my whining (although we hadn't been trying for even a year yet!). Well, I made a pregnancy calendar at WebMD today, and, according to my due date, we conceived within days of the New Year. I'm sure there's a lesson here other than prayer works, probably that we should allow ourselves to be vulnerable to those God has surrounded us with as part of His family. We'll see how long I can keep that lesson in mind!


- posted by Lenise @ 10:18 AM |

 
Thanks for all the well-wishes and greetings! It is nice to have an instant audience ;-]

OK, time for my gripe of the day: Kerry's Vietnam theme is NOT morally or in any way equivalent to Bush's 9/11 theme. COME ON! I'm not saying that Kerry has no right to campaign on his Vietnam service (though he does seem to be in denial about his activities following the war), but how is this issue currently relevant? Can anyone ask that question of September 11th with a straight face? There's a good article about that here (registration required).

You all certainly have figured this out, but a truly fair-minded liberal friend of mine today said he didn't see any difference. He must not be trying too hard.

Meantime, the Durham paper ran a "news" story this morning complaining that Bush was showing up at sporting events to appeal to his white male base. It tried to paint him as a phony for not going to the rodeo and NASCAR events regularly throughout his governorship and presidency. Maybe he had better things to do than tie up roads in already crowded places? I wish I could post the link, but they already took it down (as well they might!) My liberal friend agreed there was a lot of "analysis", but wouldn't condemn it as excessive without knowing which section it was in (well, it wasn't the editorial section!)
- posted by Lenise @ 8:07 PM |

 
So why would I, a staunch supporter of the war on terror, and an admirer of the warmonging W call herself Paxifist? I'm glad you asked. It's probably a phase I'm going through, but this week has really pounded home to me the prevalence of hostility in the world. In each of the last five days, someone has made me feel reviled, disdained, disrespected, or just plain hated. Y'all, I'm one of the most mild-mannered people you will ever meet, and by this afternoon, I was answering a screaming (literally) liberal with as close to a matched tone as I could manage. Probably not close (at least I hope not). The most disturbing part is that this person was a co-worker whom I like a lot and consider a friend. To have her screaming at me for defending the president was actually worse than a customer's attempt to get me fired on Monday. It was probably not worse than the people who don't think that it's enough that I abide more or less by the traffic laws, but think I'm presumptuous for occupying a car's length in one lane of the highway and don't deserve any jot of consideration from them. One of those had me in tears Tuesday morning.

So I've had enough of suffering in silence. I'll be verbose in obscurity instead.

Some people just have an easy time de-humanizing others. I guess we all do in different situations, but I just can't see myself saying, "Saving five minutes on this commute is more important than the safety of other people (cars?) on the road."

[My] Paul would probably say, "welcome to your fallen human nature."

So, getting back to your question, I was inspired to call myself Paxifist because I wanna know, "why can't we all just get along?" on an interpersonal scope.
- posted by Lenise @ 9:11 PM |

 
Greetings to the blogosphere! I assume DeaconPaul will announce my advent to all his loyal blogpals, so I'll say hi to those I've met. Hi, Dawn & Jason and Hi, Sabot!

- posted by Gary @ 8:53 PM |