Against Nothingness

I hear babies cry... I watch them grow.  They'll learn much more...Than we'll know And I think to myself... What a wonderful world.  I don't know what I can add to that song, other than you should listen to this version of it  (A medley with 'Somewhere Over The Rainbow' by Israel Kamakawiwo'ole).  I am blessed in the family God has given to me. My dreams are already coming true, and have come true. I take great joy in Kristina and Hannah and Ethan. They teach me new things all the time, they make me smile, they make me worry and warm my heart. Yes, I am still tired all the time. It is worth it though.  I had planned to write some kind of reflection on family life in 2011, but I am finding it difficult. I could fill pages and pages with accounts of the past year, and yet none of it seems to communicate what I want to say.  I think what I want to say is that I thank God for these three people. They are precious and amazing.  ...

Welcome to the blogosphere love! You look a bit dazed; was the trip here long and tiring?  Well, I, and we, are glad you are here. And I an assure you, honey, that you are going to have a great time here! Wink Wink!                                        By now you ought to wonder what I am talking about, yes? Of course you do! I know exactly how curious a bunch you are! First, the obvious: Kristina has started a blog. "Mommy's Monkeys" . Not only has she started a blog, but she has pre-populated it with posts so that now that she has 'gone public' there is already a bit of history on her site. That also means there are several good posts for you to go and read . But, you ask, why would you read them? I am glad you asked, because that takes us to my second point.  Second, the soon to be obvious: Kristina's blog is about being a mother, and about our family. If you have...

As I have shared before , we are a family that prays together. While we do pray randomly with our children, we also pray regularly: every meal time, every nap time, and every bed time.  The other day, while I was putting Hannah to bed, she followed my prayer with a prayer of her own (blah blah represents nonsense sounds she was making; other than that, what follows is a fairly word for word transcript of Hannah's prayer): Dear Jesus, Blah blah, Daddy, blah blah Hannah, blah blah Mommy, blah blah blah blah, Baby, blah, Uncle, Auntie, blah blah,  Jesus, Amen.  First, I recognized the form. I thought to myself, my daughter is so observant. She has picked up on all the parts of our praying that are common to most of our prayers. We always start out with "Dear Jesus" or "Dear Lord", pray for Hannah and the rest of our family, and end by saying "In the name of Jesus, Amen." (which Hannah has, naturally, shortened).   Then, I noticed that she had made th...

On Sunday morning at 7am we got started. And by we, I mostly mean Kristina. As much as I might say, further on in this post, that some things were difficult, nothing I had to go through is anything like what Kristina went through. I just wanted to say that out front. Anyway, labor began Sunday morning. We headed to the hospital at 1230 and were very happily surprised to find out Kristina was quite far along (especially compared to where she was with Hannah when we went to the hospital). Labor then 'progressed' (got progressively worse and more painful) into the early evening. This is where I say Kristina is crazy. Crazy as in amazing, ridiculous, and unbelievably impressive. She did the whole thing with no painkillers (except a small amount of laughing gas). I think the hardest part, for me, was just seeing her in so much pain and not being able to do anything. I had a huge urge to 'fix' things. I prayed a lot, and probably harder than I ever had before. Any...