A Surprise Shower for Mystery Baby and Me

yesterday i thought i was going out for dinner with 3 girl friends, but when i showed up to her house i got surprised with a shower! boy,was i ever surprised! i had NO clue!

the tables were done in bright fun colors

.

some of the gifts....

after having an amazing mexican dinner with guacamole, chips, nacho cheese dip and a caserole that was really really good i got to open presents. very sneakly they had gotten me to register. unbeknownst to me it was for this very shower that they had been planning for months.

more fun gifts!

all of the presents have been opened. my mom had even sent me a card with a gift in it. she had known about the shower when she was down visiting the begining of august. everyone did an amazing job keeping a secret!

my friend heather feeling my belly and saying "i wonder what you are?"

my friend karyn wrote prayer requests and tied them to roses as favors for all of the guests. one of the ones that got left behind was for "abundant finances because babies are expensive"...i am going to send that one to someone for sure just to make sure it gets prayed! :)

a rowdy bunch of ladies!

the shower was organized by my dear friends april and her mom ginny. april is the one holding the new baby (she just had twins 7 weeks ago!!!) and ginny is the one in the lime green shirt. they live in my neighborhoood and have quickly become dear friends.

matt was in on it too and boy is he ever glad it is over. both ginny and april told me i never need to worry about matt because he has an impossible time keeping secrets. those three have been scheming together on this for months. i was just blown away! it was not even in my radar which made it so much fun and i went home feeling so special and very excited to welcome

our new little mystery whomever it may be!

Wanting to Rescue

My son has been crying for a half hour straight. Why? Because this is the chosen day for giving up his "night nights". What are they you ask? They are his pacifiers that he has had since the day we brought him home from the hospital. He has had them for every nap and every night since August 18, 2005. I imagine that he is in there screaming, crying, and kicking the wall right now because he is experiencing withdrawl. It must be like quitting smoking for him. I don't know, all I do know is that if we hadn't been talking about this day for the last 3 weeks or so I would be caving right now. How do I assure him that he will get over what he is feeling right now? It is almost impossible to not want to rescue him. I want to run right out to the mail box and get his "goodbye night night bag" that is waiting for our post man to take it away to some other needy baby. He put them in the bag himself and knew exactly what he was doing. Yet now he has to deal with this feeling. The missing....which I am all to familiar with and that is why I am struggling with not giving in. Who cares if he has buck teeth, who cares if he uses a pacifier until he is 22? I don't! Because I want to protect him from this very feeling that he is experiencing right now. The missing, the longing to have something you can't have. It is a hard lesson for a 32 year old let alone my 3 year old little boy. It's really hard being a mom some days...

"Gamma" comes from Iowa

My mom and Micah in their snorkel attire. While mom was here she bought a swimsuit for the first time in at least 15 years. I told her with a kid in Florida you have to at least own a decent swimsuit. I think she looks beautiful!

I love this candid picture of the two of them enjoying the waves.

Micah waiting for "Gamma" (he can't say r's) to get back in from snorkeling.

My mom really took to snorkeling. We took her to the beach three times and everytime she and Matt would venture off to stare at the underwater world. I will never forget the first time she came back. She was GLOWING with excitement! The second time out they were gone for over an hour and saw some "amazing fish". It was fun watching my mom have the willingness to try something new and loving it so much.

Waving at me as they sat on the beach and let the waves rock them back and forth.

Micah loved it when "Gamma" gave him a bath. She played with him forever.

My mom took a family picture of us that turned out so sweet.

(notice the little bump...)

The time with my mom was way too short. I loved having her here and I can promise you that I was not the only one as Micah called me Gamma for two days after she left. They were like two little peas in a pod. Mom shooed us out of the house one night and Matt and I went to dinner and a movie. It was heaven! They played crash the trucks for two hours! How do Grandmas and Grandpas have such stamina?

We took my mom to the beach three times. She loved snorkeling the best and had so much fun discovering this underwater world. I sure hope my dad gives it a try when he comes to visit after the baby is born. I think he would also be amazed, scared at first, but worth it in the end.

I have to admit I cried when she left... It really hit me how much our family would be changing by the next time she came to visit. Plus one whole person is a big addition! She was so much help that it made saying goodbye really hard because I know how involved she and my dad would be in our lives if we were closer..... Ifs only make life frustrating so I will just look forward to their next visit. It will be truly wonderful to see them both next time!

Drippings

Today has been a rough day. It just feels like a million things have gone wrong. I was starting to feel at the end of my rope earlier this afternoon. Matt called me on his way home from work and I started to cry. Micah was playing with trucks and I thought he didn't notice me. I was crying silently...you know the kind of tears that just seem to seep out of you. I couldn't stop them and didn't even want to try because it felt strangely good, this stream of emotion. Micah slowly crawled up onto the couch next to me and started to lightly wipe my tears away. He looked so sad, but I didn't even have the energy to assure him that mommy was ok. Instead he looked at me as he wiped them away and said, "Mommy you dripping?" yes honey mama drips sometimes...

Special Moments...

My mom took this picture when she was here visiting a week ago. It was totally impromtu because she and Micah were playing football and then he put it in his shirt and Grandma told him he was going to have a baby like Mommy. So I crawled up onto the bed and we touched tummies while mom grabbed her camera. Sometimes those are the best shots.

This is one photo that I will look at with love, forever!

A constant reminder of days when Micah

was young and so was I....

a dose of reality

do you see that baby count down ticker to the right of your computer? i mean look at it! it stares at me every time i log on here. and strangely enough it keeps getting smaller and smaller. i don't get it! why is this pregnancy flying by? where has the time gone? and how on earth did i get so large? though we don't know the sex of this one i am really convinced it is a boy...well maybe it's a girl...no it's a boy for sure....but it really could be a girl....no i've had 2 boys already it's another one....though i am carrying differently this time, it's a girl.... AHHHH! i can't believe i only have 10 weeks left! October is right around the corner and that means the beginning of balancing two kids. how am i gonna do it? i mean sure women before me have done it with far more then two but HOW? how does your love go from so focused on numero uno to splitting between two, three, four or more? i really don't get it and because i tend to be a concept girl (meaning if i don't get the concept it surely has to be impossible) i really don't GET this!

i guess the one thing that gives me some comfort is micah and his potty training. we began full force 2 weeks ago last friday. i waited until matt got home from michigan for moral support. at least that's the reason i tried convincing myself of. really once again i could not get my head around the concept of teaching someone to pee in the toilet and not on themselves in the convenience of a diaper. if i couldn't grasp it therefore it must be impossible. what happened? micah started the first day with 3 back to back accidents. i sighed heavily and dramatically and looked at matt with a look of "see i told you this is impossible". he said be patient. micah had no more accidents the whole day and to top it off he even went poopy in the potty. now that was something i was not ready for. he got it. without me really teaching him anything...he was just ready and somehow it happened. the next day he topped it though. he came running to me (after having gone a whole night dry which i took as a complete coincidence) and said "mommy mommy i have to go pee."

"let's go let's go" i said.

"no, you wait out here" ???? what???? mommy, your life line, wait out here?

tentatively i say "ok bubby, are you sure?"

"yep" he nods to me and sets off to the great white throne alone. i peaked around the corner and he was standing up, peeing with perfect aim!!!

"matt come here", i whisper yelled "you have to see this"

we both peek around the corner and micah catches us and just beams! i mean grins from ear to ear. "i go potty like daddy!" matt and i started jumping up and down yelling hooray micah hooray micah way to pee in the potty. he says, "yeah can i have a marshmallow now?"

to which we replied, "you bet, you're the best, way to go buddy, man you're awesome!"

now you may be wondering where in the world is she going with this....two points.... number one this notion i have developed of feeling paralyzed to do something until i can get my head around the concept is fear and control! i don't have much of either anyway. Second, i don't know how i am going to have enough love for two children. i mean i really don't get how it is going to happen and the more i think about it the more it paralyzes me from enjoying this pregnancy. however, i am choosing to believe that it WILL happen. Even though i can't get my head around it i am going to trust that i too can do it!

Some cute pictures of my little man in michigan

A silly smile.

Making a giant bubble that you can stand inside at the children's museum

Picnic-ing with the cousins.

Riding Brianna's bike and proud of it!

Cousins

Our time in Michigan meant one thing to Micah.... time with cousins. He couldn't get enough and wanted to spend every day with them. My sister in law, Vera asked if Micah could spend the night, I was a little aprehensive (ok alot) but I knew that he really wanted to go. So Matt and I talked it over and he went. He had an absolute BLAST! ..until about 10:30 when he wanted to talk to me. I was walking around Walmart with my other sister in law, Dajana and had to stop what I was doing and sing him his night time songs and pray with him on a cell phone. (Is that what they were invented for?) Then he seemed to be fine. He said I love you mommy and hung up the phone to which I promptly started bawling, yes in the middle of Walmart.

It's so hard to let him grow up...

Going on a walk.

The morning after the big sleep over on the floor...

not alot of sleeping went on.

Popcorn snack and standing in between his two "favorites"!


Swimming in the little pool and then taking a break .


Vera and I took the kids to the children's museum in Grand Rapids

They played in a boat pretending to fish and then Micah and Christian

preformed a concert for us.

one of my last days in gr my sister in law katie came in from pennsylvania with her daughter Elise who is 11 days older than micah and her new little sister celia. so ALL of the cousins were together. great photo op!

Picnic together on micah and I's last day in Grand Rapids. Elise and Micah

They all pretended to be fast asleep on the bed in the basement.
What fun he had with them. It was pretty awesome to watch him interact with his family. Surprisingly there were many similarities even though they all live so far apart. Micah still prays for his cousins every night by name and requests to wear the shirt "my cousins gave me", it is a Detroit Redwings t-shirt. He is sentimental just like his daddy so he comes by it honestly.