minus the finishing touches...

the bathroom is fully functional now! i am so proud of my sweet husband for getting so much done in the last several months. we still have hooks and towel racks to hang and some shelves to build, but for now we will focus on the old bathroom where the new baby will live when it makes its arrival sometime in the next month.

so i don't have any great pictures of the laundry room before we started anything, but here it is after the floor was pulled up and some of the wall torn down for wiring and plumbing:




toilet and washer/drier to the left as you walk in. i am loving having a front-loading washer by the way...we had to do it for space and i'm so thankful! this is a good view of my dad and adam's tiling work on the floor too. and i should note that the whole room was incredibly crooked (you, know old houses tend to settle crooked) so adam built up the floor about 6-8 inches first.

sink just as you walk in...we did buy a basic pedestal sink because the old one was a huge vanity that would not fit into the space, but the mirror and light and sink fixtures are from the old bathroom. the rug was on clearance:)

it is so hard to do adam's amazing tiling job on the tub (to the right as you walk in) justice with the camera because it is so white and shiny, but you can see it was very labor-intensive...over 500 subway tiles. he built some shelves in the 8 inches or so of space to the left of the tub and will build more above the tub later on. storage space is kind of valuable in here.

i love this shower-curtain from target and it is pretty much the only decorating bit for now. everything else is straight up functional.

been slacking on the pictures lately. our camera is having major trouble, but adam insists that he wants to use his birthday money from extended family for a new camera so hopefully we will have a reliable one before this next little one arrives. here are a few for now. i am so thankful for my little munchkins and they have lots of fun (and exhaustion) lately.

graham and pax are pretty good buds. they are probably watching for the trash truck here

adam introduces a new fun game called "pillow-time" in which he nearly falls asleep while telling stories usually post-call or something. their favorite is the story about the "big cows."

new favorite snack for marit is peanut-butter banana. graham is somewhat unsure of it still...

probably because he has been on a food strike and makes this cranky face about everything but milk and bread and fruit

however, he has been incredibly cute in other ways...his tongue has been loosed and he loves to talk about all kinds of randomness...constantly saying "watch me mommy!" before he jumps, leaps, or throws or something dangerous. he can't say the 'c' sound so he calls his cup a "pup" and often asks me if i'm "poming?" (coming). he often wakes up before marit and so we have a little one-on-one book time in the mornings sometimes and he loves that.


here is marit living up to her nick-name snuggle bug by snuggling with my nearly 35 week belly. she loves the baby and i think she will actually be a bit helpful when he/she arrives. she rarely naps these days, but plays by herself in her bed for a while. instead she sometimes sleeps until 9 or later in the morning like she's a teenager or something. we are still dealing with emotional self-control a lot lately, but she is usually delightful...in a chatty sort of way. inspired by my sister-in-law, we have been doing a little circle time after breakfast and marit has really enjoyed it. it has been good for me to have a more formal learning time for the verses we have been memorizing together and learning letters. we often do a puzzle of letters, sing a song or two and pray for our day. it has been sweet time for sure...makes me want to homeschool (we are totally undecided on the school front still).



recently:
at a labor day bbq and we are waiting in line for food. suddenly (as is usually the case) marit has to go potty. i take her, but tell her we have to hurry because the "line is almost to the food." she bursts into tears and screams hysterically until after we sit down to eat. we are so confused for a few minutes and then we interpret that "she does not want to see the lion because it is scary." it took a lot of soothing talk to convince her that there was no lion at our picnic and ever since we have been talking about the difference in lions and lines...such literal little people toddlers are!

loving this song today

matt brown played this in our church last night and it made me cry...a musical expression of the faith being passed down from parents to children, generation to generation...a beautiful Gospel legacy.

Above My Door
matt brown
There’s blood, there’s blood above my door.
My daddy, he put it there.
Down veins of wood the crimson pours
and lingers in the air.
What barb’rous redemption thought I,
what bloody protection from night.
But we’ll not feel Death’s bite,
at least not tonight.
There’s blood, there’s blood upon my heart.
My mama, she put it there.
It’s not her blood, but on that heart
are her sweat, her tears, her prayers.
O mother, O mother how I
will treasure your words of life,
and someday when this firstborn dies
that blood will be life.

Take Away One: Above My Door from Third Lobby on Vimeo.

an anxious heart

i have a new besetting sin. i have plenty of other ones, but worrying has not been one of my struggles for a long time...besides the occasional laboring over big decisions, adam has always been enough of a worrier for both of us. some of it has to do with the fact that i have been handling the money (or lack thereof) since adam started residency and though i am fully aware of the fact that we have much more than many, many people, my mind is always trying to figure out how we can be prepared for when our only car that is 10 years old has a problem that costs some serious cash. or what if the ac really needs more than batteries replaced in the thermostat (i figured that out on a call night recently and was so pleased with myself because usually i just break things and wait for poor adam to fix my mistakes). it is just tight...we have enough. barely. we are thankful, but i have been worrying instead of dwelling on the Lord's provision for our family thus far. the other things i worry about lately have been revolving around this belly babe...3 weeks until it reaches term and could make its arrival (with graham early and marit on time, i don't know what to expect). just saying THREE WEEKS made my heart rate go up just a little. it was about this time that i started having preterm labor with graham and was stuck on bedrest dilated to 5cm for 4 weeks. again, why am i not able to move my heart from fear to trust because can't i just look back and see His sovereign hand caring for us? it was a tough month for sure, but dear ones surrounded and supported and graham made it to term. we were not forsaken, but rather tenderly cared for. and then there is this project that sometimes we regret having started. it has been much more time-consuming and expensive than expected...though we know it will make having three (or more) kids a little easier in the long run. the other night on a very busy call night i made the mistake of crying about the impossibility of ever finishing it on the phone with adam after i had spent a harrowing 30 minutes trying to get my very sweet, but still impulsive 2 and 3 year old bathed and in bed without touching a saw of some sort or pile of sawdust or tripping over hammers and lumber and tile. after my pathetic emotional outburst, i was informed of adam's night shaping up to be one of the hardest of residency yet. oops. i just feel so helpless as my belly grows and i have the urge to work and prepare and nest, but i feel so limited in what i am capable of doing until the major stuff is done. we don't have to have a perfect nursery (not started yet at all) before the baby arrives. we certainly didn't with the other two, but i really don't want adam to have to spend tons of new baby transition time working on this beast. i want to mow the lawn and landscape the backyard, but adam says i am too pregnant and he's right...i'd probably pass out. adam did finish tiling the tub the other night (grouting it as i type), but he had to stay up until 2 am to do so between two busy days. i don't deserve him. his sacrificial, patient care of us in the midst of pure chaos in his work life really exemplifies Jesus to us. and then my anxious mind goes to thoughts about how in the world i am going to not just survive, but parent three kids well when i feel like i fail so often every day with the two i've been given. again, i know my life is not necessarily harder than the next mom of small children, but this is just a litany of my personal inner struggles, not any kind of comparison. as a worrier himself, adam has encouraged me to deal with my sin as it certainly does steal joy and hinders my ministry to marit and graham and others. and i have been trying to figure out how to go from fear to trust, worry to worship, anxiety to supplication and have been praying a lot of prayers like "Father, please enable me by Your grace to trust in your sovereign provision and to release my fear, worry, and desire to control..." this desire to control thing is new to me...taking me some time to wage war against this sin. i've also been singing these songs to myself lately:
*weary of earth, myself, and sin
* poor sinner, dejected with fear
*when overwhelmed with doubt and fear (this whole album is wonderfully encouraging and totally worth a download if you like remade hymns)
* pensive, doubting, fearful heart

i read this the other day in amy carmichael's book Edges of His Ways (i also highly recommend this little devotional)
sept 5th
These notes will have been entirely useless if they have not helped to bring us to the place where our happiness does not depend on the work we are doing, the place we are in, our friends, our health, whether people notice us or not, praise us or not, understand us or not. No single one of the circumstances has any power in itself to upset the joy of God, but it can instantly and utterly quench it if we look at the circumstances instead of up into the face of light and love that is looking down upon us-the Face of our own God.
This is the shining path, stretching away from the place where we stand today to the very heart of God. This is the shining path that shineth more and more as we walk in it.

do you see it? there is no perfect way to just tie up my anxious thoughts for good, but it is a constant, active, giving up, refocusing on Jesus and the beauty of the Gospel instead of my very temporary circumstances, desperately clinging to my good, good Savior. there is no promise that "it will all be ok." because, things might go all wrong (according to my plan anyway), my children will not be perfect and we might all suffer at times. we might be financially devastated. i might be tired for the next 10 years...i'm not asked to know, but simply to trust His care of us...

i have rambled enough, but know that i am wrestling with my sin and hoping for fewer emotional outbursts and less freaking out. pray for us as we prepare for huge changes around here...maybe i'll post more about the little people and their cutisms of late tomorrow.

a little more progress

i suppose it would be more dramatic if i waited until this project was fully completed and posted a final picture. however, my sweet and super busy husband has worked SO hard to basically build a bathroom and i want to notice all the steps. the floor is done, molding in, sheet rock hung and painted, plumbing done, wiring done. let me tell you, installing the toilet and washer and drier is no small step to me. i am soooo thankful that the laundry isn't piling up anymore and that i can now put away that little potty that i am oh so tired of cleaning out (marit almost always has to have a number 2 right before she falls alseep at night) because we once again have an upstairs toilet!! go husband! i think the tiling job my dad helped adam do looks great too.

the sink will go where those pipes are and the tub is on the right and hopefully will begin to be tiled and walled in this weekend...

a reminder

you may have seen this on facebook or somewhere, but i want to put it here to remind myself. what a sweet blessing marriage is and how much work and toil is necessary and the Lord uses it as a wonderful refuge to restore and keep us centered.

so refreshed

for the second time since we have had children, adam and i snuck away by ourselves. leaving our precious children in the capable hands of my brother and sister-in-law, we took ourselves to charleston for 2whole days and nights of resting and reconnecting. it was such perfect timing. before we left, adam would have described himself as oh so tired, pale, flat, disconnected, just plain weary. he just finished a rotation in the icu and night float and it felt like we had only had real conversations just a couple of times in the last six weeks. i just felt frazzled to my core. i've been so emotional, sleepless, fearful, and physically in pain (adam told me during one of our middle of the night conversations that i have a radiculopathy of one of my lumbar nerves that just gets a little worse as the babe in my belly gets a little heavier). a nap was one of the first things on our agenda and my back immediately felt pain-free for the first time in quite a while. every mom knows that pain makes it harder to be a patiently loving and consistent mama as well and so i had been struggling with my guilt over this as well. after a little rest, adam was back to himself cracking fairly dumb jokes and whistling.
we stayed in a lovely b+b (our favorite type of lodging) on the harbor

breakfast of champions meant lunch was not required!


watched the pelicans fly over us and the lightning storm from the porch





we talked so much, did a little swimming (i did not realize how much i sink when i'm pregnant!), wandered, rested, rested, rested, talked, talked, ate some yummy food. i love a restaurant in an old house like this one:

especially when the food is like this:


we talked a lot about adam's future-fellowship or no fellowship and for the moment, he is back on the "no" side of the fence. we talked a lot about the tension in our dear little neighborhood, talked about our sin-patterns and grace.

we read ourselves to sleep at night...ah luxury! we went and saw a movie for the first time in 2 years-Inception-we talked about that a good bit too...interesting concepts. we talked about the little one to come in just 2 short months...a 30.5week belly

we missed marit and graham (and pax!) so much and we were glad to return, but what a blessing to focus a little on our marriage and to be restored and rejuvenated to get back to the grindstone again. thank you so much tom and kelly for serving us so sacrificially! love you guys! today is day one of graham being a big boy and tossing the pacifier...he's napping without much trouble now so that's a good start!