You might be a redneck if...

This is how Gracie has been taking baths for the past week or so...blue plastic baby pool in the front yard...heck, in this heat, anything goes!

(Apparently the heat got the best of Dock in the first picture as well)

What Goes In Must Come Out

For those in the know, you will be very glad to hear, with a title like that, this is NOT a post about how the entire family is recovering from the stomach bug...although, let me just say, the past few days have been motherhood trial by fire.  I passed...but just barely!

This is more about what has been going on inside my head these days.  Last week was, for whatever reason, a week where I was teary.  I give myself a hard time about that, about being sad.  But we lost Rip a little over a year and a half ago.  I try to think about what my reaction would have been before I was this girl to hearing that someone else had lost a child a year and a half ago, and I am sure I would be horrified and wondering how they were still dragging themselves around! People who hear about me as "the girl who" probably feel the same way (although, if you are going to talk about me behind my back, you may also want to mention that I know everything there is to know about Great White Sharks, just to add a little dimension).

Before we lost Rip, I always expected good.  I've noticed some of that slipping away and I don't like it.  I hear sad stories on the news or in passing and they shake me to the core.  I find myself questioning God, not really that He is, but how all of this bad can keep happening.  I know there are answers, a fallen world, a plan we don't understand...but that's hard to remember sometimes.

It takes me really coming back to God, to prayer, to get my head on straight again. And I truly do feel peace...I will be very honest, without my faith I have nothing.  No hope of my child in heaven and no hope for the prayers I whisper daily for my child on earth.  I believe, with all of my heart, but it isn't always easy.

So what to do about the negativity I have found slipping in to my old "glass half full" self...

I said after Rip died that I was still the same person, the same Anne "with an e" girl that I was before, and that is partially true.  But you can't go through something life changing without being well...changed.

I said I wanted my life to be a celebration of Rip's life.

And, maybe most importantly, I said I wanted to be the same mother to Gracie that I would have been two years ago...but, I think that is not true either...I want to be better.

The closest I can come to answering any of this is my favorite Bible verse from childhood, I found it when I was about ten and worried about one thing or another (my poor parents) and used it many times since...

Finally, brothers and sisters, whatever is true, whatever is noble, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is admirable—if anything is excellent or praiseworthy—think about such things.
Philippians 4:8


I think the problem I've been having is that I have forgotten to think about such things.  I'm not talking about burying my head in the sand, not acknowledging anything painful or sad...but remembering the good that comes with the bad.  Realizing that bad things happen, but not to the exclusion of expecting good.  


What goes in, must come out...what I put in my mind on a daily basis, the thoughts I choose to concentrate on (and most of the time, at least now, it is a choice) if those are pure, lovely thoughts...maybe that glass will start to fill itself up again (maybe even a little over half full, that is certainly how I like my wine glass anyway!) And maybe all of those things I want for my life, my little Anne "with an e" who celebrates her firstborn and rocks mama-hood for her second, life...those things will be just as lovely and excellent.

In This Minute

I have been dreading and worrying (and worrying) and praying and down right obsessing over something for the past couple of weeks.

Yesterday, at daycare, Gracie held her bottle by herself for the first time.

These things seemed completely unrelated until last night when I was putting Gracie to bed.  I was giving her a bottle and rocking and fretting and fuming away, when a phrase popped in to my head, "Be in this minute".

So I took myself out of my head and brought myself back to this minute.  This minute is where I get to give my baby girl a bottle before she gets too big and sassy and wants to do it herself, where I can just listen to her hungry little suck-suck-suck noises gradually slow and become lazy as she drifts off to sleep.  This minute is where I watch her pudgy little fingers rub the sleeve of her pink owl pajamas (something I used to call "collecting soft" as a kid). This minute, all I really have to think about is how impossibly long my baby's eyelashes are and how anybody can have such a perfect little tiny nose.

I don't know what the outcome will be to my worries, I would like to believe "it all works out in the end", but sometimes that is hard to do when you aren't at the end.  But what I am trying really hard to remember is that this minute is just that...a minute.  I flash of time that will be gone before I know it.  So, regardless of anything else, I need to enjoy being in this minute.

Happy Father's Day Parke Harris!

My intention was to do a sappy Father's Day post to Parke, about how much he deserves this day, about what a wonderful father he is and has been to both of our children, about how proud I am that I picked him to be the Daddy...

And then last night, I went to run a few errands.  By the time I got home, about 45 minutes after I left my smocked dress/ bow wearing princess of a child, this is what I found in my front yard...

And I realized that is what a good Daddy really is...someone who takes you outside in your diaper and socks, lets you get aways with all the things your Mama never lets you do (by the way, I love Gracie's face in this picture..."uh oh Daddy, she's back!")

So Happy Father's Day Parke Harris, We love you!!! To many, many more years of getting away with stuff when I'm not around.

" I Will Listen"

Tonight I opened my Bible and a folded piece of paper fell out.  The outside read "To be opened December 2011"

The inside read:

11/29/2010

Dear God,

I do not know why you had to take Rip from us, but I promise to try to accept that there are things that I cannot and will not understand.  I will try to put my trust in you.
Here are the things that I ask (beg) in your name
- I ask for peace for Parke, my family and myself
- I ask you to keep my marriage safe and full of love
- I ask you for a healthy child, born to us so that we can show him/her all of the love we have
- I ask you to never again let me take any moment for granted

In your name,
Amen

I wonder what the girl who wrote this note would have thought had she known that she would have been too busy to open it in December 2011...or for almost six months after...because she was spending every moment loving her healthy baby girl?

"In those days when you pray, I will listen."

Call on Me Brother

Remember that "good" brother I was telling you about?  Well, he is at it again!

In all seriousness though, click on the link below to help a very deserving family. 

http://congotomaine.blogspot.com/

That's My Girl

Note home from Gracie's school yesterday...

"Could we get an extra ounce or two in Gracie's bottle, she gets REALLY upset when they are empty.  Thank you!"

That's my girl!