It's been a while. {Except for my two quick posts about Elijah's monthly changes, which I did after writing this one. So please bare with me.} We've been sick a TON this winter and spring, and it seems to just unceasingly continue to linger, despite all my attempts to sanitize, bleach, and rid our home of these nasty bugs. So when I say we've been sick a ton, I really mean it's been nearly non-stop since November. And we've just added Elijah getting the spreading-like-wildfire hand, foot, mouth disease from his daycare center. This happened while we were traveling last weekend. Good times.
All part of parenting a wee one, with access to germs 3 days a week in daycare and church nursery. And that's okay, he's soooo worth it. But still, ughhh. So over it!!
Speaking of him, he's 11 months!!! He's growing and changing every day, and I'm just doing my best to soak it all in while juggling a million things. You know how it goes.
In the meantime I've been learning a lot about what's important. This blog has always been an outlet for me and a tangible way to express myself quickly and easily to a certain group of readers, though the list of readers has certainly altered with my topics now mainly focused on parenting.
And I used to really struggle with feeling guilty about that.
No more.
I'm putting a stop to my torturing myself to please people I've never met in real life. Certainly, no offense. And I miss getting to know everyone here. But as much as you want to keep some of your life the same... parenting does in fact deeply change who you are. It alters the very core of your being as you wrestle with the 24/7 care of a tiny little human being you still can't believe is in fact, yours.
That reality still strikes me out of the blue sometimes, and I just have to stop and stare. I'm so in awe of all that God has done in our lives. This little boy baffles me. I'm so amazed by him. By God's goodness in giving him to us. We don't deserve him. But we are soooo incredibly blessed by him!!
So anyway, time for an update from around here....
In the meantime since I've last posted, Elijah has outgrown his infant car seat and has moved up to bigger & better! Now he's also on the side instead of the middle, technically some say it's less safe that way but I'm not too worried. It's definitely helping my back!
He's had his first Easter!
He turned 10 months with big smiles, more crawling, more getting into things, more attempts and words, standing on his own for more seconds at a time, and still not very interested in table food! He smiles so much and lights up our lives, even when he's fussy. He loves to play peek-a-boo, plays by himself lots more, and loves to stand up anywhere he can.
We finally got Grandma time again for the first time since December, twice in just the past two weeks, hooray! We loveeee Grandma time!!
And ohhh how we love Spring. Our front tree blooms so beautifully in the Spring! We couldn't believe the storms that hit about a week after this was blooming, and less than a full 2 weeks later, it's just fully green now. Sad how fast it goes.
On Sunday, May 4th, we had Elijah dedicated to the Lord at our church. Since our church is so big, they don't have it as part of the regular service. Instead there's a separate dedication service in our assembly room where families are invited and the place does still get pretty full {probably holds about 100 people}, and it's lead by our campus pastor of family ministries {not our senior pastor}. Since we don't believe Elijah can be saved or baptized by any means of our own and instead needs to make that decision on his own when he's older, this is simply dedicating him... and us, really... to God and raising him according to God's commands.
We had an incredible amount of family supporting us and we are so grateful to those who came! We also got to see two friends dedicating their youngest kids the same day, and it was all really wonderful. It was handled so well and all of the family was impressed. We are so glad it went well and that Elijah is officially dedicated to God! It was a special day.
Grandparents
Standing up front with our fussy wiggle-worm {it was conveniently nap time}
So incredibly grateful for Pastor Marc and his leadership and care for us!!
Left side: Tim's family / Right side: my mom and stepdad
And Tim's sister was in from Pennsylvania for a conference and drove over that morning from an hour away to see Elijah's dedication. It was absolutely priceless.
Tim and his mama. Figures I took a blurry pic of them. :(
Siblings!
Sweet animal distractions.
Me & my bud
After this, we hung out around church for a bit, got a snack at the muffin/coffee counter, walked around, and an hour and a half later went to the 2nd church service at 11:15. Meaning Elijah went to the nursery and still didn't nap until we got to the car about 1:00. We let him sleep in the car for 25 minutes {with daddy's supervision} while the rest of us went into the restaurant for our lunch celebration and ordered lunch {and texted daddy to come in when the food was almost ready}. Gratefully Elijah had a really good late afternoon nap to finally recover from his busy day!! What a great day though!
More Grandma time and Elijah's first ride on a swing that Monday! He loved it!!
Please continue to pray for us, that we'd all soon be well for a good long season. I'd very much appreciate that! But I continue to be humbled and so grateful for Elijah, the lessons we're learning in parenting and in God's grace, and for God's love and patience with us even when we whine and complain after he gave us such an extraordinary gift!!
He didn't have to give us Elijah, but he did. And sick or not, we are so grateful and want to soak up every second!
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