tricycle

Hmmm...I feel a bit goofy about the level of emotion I expressed yesterday about my furniture. Everything else I still stand by, and writing all that out was helpful - especially expressing what I felt about Andrea; but the furniture is growing on me. I think I need to just change a lamp shade and add a few cushions... you could probably tell that it wasn't the furniture that was the problem. Guilty of BWE (blogging while emotional).

After I posted, had a good cry, Matt and Wade got up and talked to me, and the sun was shining, and Soph said, "I really love this new couch, Mum!" and the guys both looked at me and we all smiled at my freakiness and Soph's loveliness.

Soph woke up from her nap yesterday and said, "Mum, I want a bicycle." It seemed a little out of left field, but I said, "You do have a bicycle, a tricycle actually. We put it away over the winter but I could get it out for you, I bet you could ride it now." She did a long pause and said, "No, Mum, for licking, with a stick."
The light goes on. "OH! You want a Popsicle!" Yeah! Dora purple Popsicles Papa bought us all 'round.

What was cool was that we had remembered the trike and went outside in the sun later and even though it was hard at first, she learned how to work the pedals and we are all triumphant.

Wade is pretty sad about leaving us today, as am I. I think I would fall apart if I was going away from the girls for 3 weeks. So glad Matt is staying with us. I am thinking of how soldier's wives feel when they send their husbands off to war. I would way rather send my husband on a missions trip, especially with one of his best friends to his favourite continent. We'll be fine.

Could someone email me tomorrow and tell me we'll be fine? Thanks.

sad

It's been a really full week. We've been trying to get a lot done this week, especially in soapland before Wade goes away tomorrow. TOMORROW. For three weeks. I couldn't be happier for him. He is off to Cambodia with his buddy Phil to lead a missions team for 3 weeks. 3 WEEKS. When I prayed about whether or not he should go, I felt like God said it would give Wade life and joy, and that he would bring something to the team that they needed. It's only today I never waited to hear what God had to say about me. I feel like my stomach is in my feet. Three weeks. crap.


This week we gave Sophia her first vaccinations. Those of you who know me know this was a MAJOR decision for us, and she did great and it was really really horrendously terrible to hold her down while she screamed and cried and panicked all through it. IMMEDIATELY afterward she was fine. I am still recovering and still wondering if I made the right decision. She's been pissy for three days.

My neck and shoulders really hurt.

I got new furniture. I have been hoping for a new couch. I got a new couch and chair for free from craig's list. I was so, so, so excited about i couldn't believe the lady chose us. It was a huge bright spot in an intense week. I told strangers about it. I have spent a really, really long time choosing the colour of my living room walls and throw pillows and decorations in my living room and then it got here last night and apparently my computer monitor is colour calibrated wrong. The furniture doesn't match. It really, really doesn't match. It is not tan striped, or even khaki-ish striped, but kelly green, minty green striped. it matches nothing. what could i say? when the guys (4 of them) and vans and everything were taking my old, ratty, matching furniture away I wanted to stop them, but I couldn't. I woke up this morning feeling like crying and puking about it. It is lovely, comfortable, free furniture that I hate that makes everything I worked so hard for in my living room look awful.

And my friend died. My friend Andrea who I adored. She was one of my best friends in college. She made me a tampax mobile for my 19th birthday. She made me laugh harder than most. When I left my ex, she had left me a key to her house in case i needed to go. I went and there was a note and a safe place and her comfy bed and her Annie Lennox and Harry Belafonte CDs. I found a children's book she gave me the other day when I was reading to Sophia she had inscribed to me telling me how amazing I was.

After I came back from YWAM she stopped returning my calls. She obviously wanted distance and I think in my new found enthusiasm about loving Jesus I was insensitive to her - and it could have just been her stuff too, but I just felt like it was me.
I grieved that friendship a lot. It messed me up a bit. I missed her and prayed and prayed and prayed it would be restored. When I met Leanne Klaver the way we could be goofy together reminded me of Andrea and healed something in me. Last year I 'googled' her name and found a website made by Andrea's friends. She had a rare form of cancer. I emailed and we wrote twice. We made a peace of sorts. She addressed the letter to JHP. That said more than I know how to express right now.
I saw a friend of hers right before Eleanor was born and she said Andrea was in bad shape. I went home and cried and cried and grieved again. I didn't want to know what was happening...it was too hard - and with Eleanor being born and all the transition, I was able to tell myself I had enough on my emotional plate. But two days ago I was doing the dishes and suddenly thought, "I want to know what's happening."
I looked at her website to find out she died 5 days after Eleanor was born. I missed the memorial. I wish I had sucked it up enough to look earlier. I wish I has gone to the memorial. I wish she had met Sophia. I wish I could be with people today who could tell me about the last 6 or 7 years of her life. I wish I could show them the pictures of her at my wedding. I wish I could tell someone who knew her how she once bought Wade and I all 5 "far side" books all at once, or how noone could sing through the whole "James Taylor Live" album like her when you were drinking tequila - except me. I wish I could know if she ever mentioned me.

I wish my furniture matched.

dedication pics

If you'd like to see more photos, send me an email or leave a comment and I'll get you a link to an online gallery. Enjoy! We had a lovely time. Thanks Sandra!

bella

Ella Bella indeed.

dedication

"She was God's all along, but today we had a service to declare that we agree to the terms."

Yesterday we had a dedication for Eleanor. It was perfect. Jennifer, Angela and Moaike arranged it all. It was gorgeous, gorgeous... decorated, planned, executed to perfection. But no one can say it better than Moaike anyway, so please read her entry, "dedication".

a dose of Soph

For those of you who have been missing the Soph updates, here's some new news:



Soph has suddenly morphed into a 'big kid'. It has to do with her haircut, for sure, but she started taking swimming lessons, wanting to skip rope and write the letters of the alphabet. She went to swimming with Wade and they were both so excited about it. We all went to the pool this week and her confidence level has suddenly jumped WAY up, she's splashing and jumping all over. It was Eleanor's first swim! She was not so jazzed, apparently nursing pool-side in a warm towel is more her speed. I, apparently had nasty, fuzzy, Mum pony-tail hair...I wasn't looking at me :)



Sophia has taken to cheering for the Vancouver Canucks (our local hockey team - in the playoffs now) with Uncle Matt, my brother who lives with us. They put Canucks tattoos every game and have a good time. We take great delight in the fact that when she tries to cheer "Go Canucks Go!" she actually says "Coconuts go! Coconuts go!" She stopped a guy on the street today who was wearing a jersey to show him her Canucks tattoo like his shirt. Slightly bemused twenty-something...very funny.



Soph loves language and sounds. She has now taken to making up words all the time,especially when she wants to express something she doesn't have the vocab for. "This is just my peema pumba bounce." "Did you see that toota teeena?"



Today I wished I had my camera for Audrey. I couldn't find it, and Soph had put my cowboy hat on and was walking around with her dolly named Audrey wrapped up in a tea towel. She came up and said "This is my baby Audrey." (Like we'd never met before) and I just thought how much Audge would have loved to see her right then...keep on bringing Jesus to Japan, Auntie Audy - someone is going to show up for English class one day, for sure!



I would love continued prayer that Soph grows out of the phase of hurting Eleanor. Most of the time she is just over-enthusiastically loving on her, but boredom, fatigue, and jealousy all still lead to a good smack or a scratch for Ella Bella. I do realize this "phase" may last until they are in their twenties, but I choose to be optimistic.



Tomorrow we are having a dedication for Eleanor and I am really excited - all my family but my Hawaii sister are coming...but as I write about Audge and my mind turns to all of you in blog-land I am really, really sad that so many of you I love who were here for Soph's dedication are gone now...I know your love is with us - we miss you! I'll post pictures when I can.

Wade

My girlfriend Heather is mother to twins, and has found great companionship in the online community of Mums of multiples. Her latest post tells of an online friend, Snickollet, who lost her husband to cancer two days ago. He was diagnosed a month after they were married. They are parents to nine month old twins, who will now never know their Dad.

This blog is about my girls and my experiences as a Mum, but I realized that as I looked at my blog today there is not much mention of Wade, without whom I would not be a Mum, nor would I be who I am.

So, in honour of a woman who wakes today without her husband, I offer you a tribute to my own:

My husband Wade is the finest man I have ever known, and I know a lot of fine men, including the one who raised me. Wade is an original. There is no one like him. He is fiercely loyal, loving, creative, hilarious, intense, encouraging, adoring and wise.

The way he loves me has changed me. When we fell in love he spoke the truth of God about who I was over me and changed my perception of forgiveness, redemption and who I was in the eyes of God. He is my greatest champion. He has drawn out of me my talents and gifts, and gives me inspiration to try new things. His ability to find an interest, research it, learn it, then dominate it and make it his own (beermaking, spinning fire, laptop techno, making luxury soap, fusion cooking & BBQ) still leaves me in awe and aware of my own tendency to give up, or not even try - yet never leaves me felling inadequate.

Wade gave me my daughters. In a world where so many women do not know their worth, their possibilities, their opportunities and their value in the eyes of God, I REJOICE that just by knowing their Father, my daughters will know these things.

Wade still thinks I'm hot, even though I know I'm seriously changed from 10 years ago, especially after two kids. He still enthusiastically and unashamedly introduces me as "my foxy wife Joanna" in front of the most conservative audiences. The way he loves me and what he brings out in me teaches others about the way a man should love a woman. There is more than one female friend of ours that has proclaimed him the gold standard of men, and I agree.

Wade has no patience for fools, especially fools when it comes to love. My first inclination is to say I pity the men who try to court Kelsi, Sarah, JoJo, Zoe, Micah, Grace, Jaime, Sophia and Eleanor, but really if distance and time enabled it, they would be blessed men if Wade was able to school them in how to love his nieces, goddaughters and daughters.

I do not deserve my husband Wade, just as none of us really "deserves" any great love. I am who I am because of him, and I am aware of the mercy of God on me because of the gift He gave me in Wade.

I love you Wade, I adore you. Besides following Jesus, marrying you was the very best thing I ever did. May my life be worthy of the love you give me.

photograph courtesy of Sandra Vander Schaaf Photography.
copyright 2007 not to be used without permission

come on...

okay, i can't believe there is not even one comment about how cute my kids are...
(see photo below)
eleanor is so awake!soph is funny!
(i'll just write my own comments...)

kid(S) - in the plural

i have 2, count 'em, TWO girls. it's still sinking in....

it's not me, it's you

I've had a revelation lately which has been helpful to me. It has come with the fact that Eleanor sleeps through the night. She has done it enough times now that I actually believe it. She'll sleep for 6 hours at a go, and the last two nights she slept from 10:30 pm - 6:30 am. It is unbelievable, absolutely. Now the thing is, Sophia did not sleep through the night when she was a baby. Maybe she did once or twice, but what I remember is that she woke up every 2-3 hours regularly until she was at least a year old. The thing is this - we don't do anything differently with Eleanor than we did with Sophia, she's just a different kid.

Now the reason why this is so massive to me is that I was convinced that Sophia sleeping (or not) was something to do with what we did or didn't do. As a first time Mum, I was pretty sure I knew what I wanted to do for my baby, but I felt so much insecurity in so many ways, especially around whether or not I should let Sophia 'cry it out'. There are tonnes and tonnes of books written, Mum's discussion groups around this, and theories abound - and honestly, the dialogue IS helpful when you just don't know what to do with your kid. I know so many people who swear that "c.i.o." was good and fine for their kids, and we did eventually do a a limited form of 'cry it out' with Soph, but I also know people whose children did not respond to c.i.o. and who were actually really, really traumatized by it.

Yet there remains a thought (and I think it is actually pretty symptomatic of our whole society) that WE have control and that we can do something (about everything to do with our kids, pretty much). Which as a new Mum, I found really hard...surely my baby didn't sleep because it was MY fault. Then, when I decided to co-sleep with her and just nurse forever, I still felt insecure about that choice at times b/c it wasn't always the norm, and I like everyone to think I do things exactly the right way all the time. But it worked well for us, and we got more sleep that way and all was well, it was just not the norm.

SO Eleanor sleeps, and we haven't done anything differently than we did with Soph, and I realize she is JUST A DIFFERENT KID! This simplistic statement releases me from guilt and worry in many ways - sometimes, it's not me, it's not what I do, it's not a magic formula I figure out, it's just them.

Now, don't get me wrong, I know obviously who I am as a mother is immeasurably important to my kids and who they are, that they are being shaped by me every day. But I think that's the point. Sophia and Eleanor are much more affected by me being kind, merciful and understanding (or not) than they are by whether I rocked them to sleep, or if they started eating solids on time. Yet the latter are the things I think it is easiest to obsess over if I don't watch out. Then I become seriously the opposite of kind, merciful and understanding. Especially if I don't sleep well...hey, sleep deprivation, incessant screaming, nipple twisting, these things all describe torture practices as well as mothering.

You think I would have learned this so may years ago in YWAM, where you can pour your heart out to a student or other staff member, and sometimes they change and grow and become the butterflies you envision they will be and sometimes...they don't. And while it has A LOT to do with you as a leader, on the other had, it's really just them. You think I would have figured that out by now, but when it's your own kids it's even more personal. Which is terrible, in the most awful and the most holy senses of the word.

So...hurray! I am sleeping more now than I have in years, and celebrating the fact. I am not holding my breath about it, if Eleanor stops sleeping through the night, I know I'll miss it, but other than checking my diet and her diaper, I won't wear myself worrying about whether or not it was something I did.

Easter Sunday

He Is Risen! He is Risen Indeed!

GOOD friday

I cut Sophia's hair yesterday. We had a really fabulous day at Mark & Karen's place and Karen had hairdressing scissors there, and I'd been thinking about it for a while and then...I cried. really...it almost feels too big a deal to blog about (almost). One minute she was my baby with her baby curls that had never been cut (we'd only ever cut her bangs) and then the next minute she looked like she was ready for her first day of school. (Which will never come, because we're going to homeschool, and besides, I would cry some more.)
I feel better today, seeing her excited about looking like a big girl, but still...yikes. Good thing we have another baby...but then she is going to grow up too, right? AARGH.

Before

After

\


Still, despite my tears we did have the most glorious, yummy, springy, Good Friday with our friends, and the day started off in a lovely way with both my girls. Now, Soph still hits Eleanor probably at least once a day. It feels less traumatic now because 1) I am not as hormonal, 2) you can kind of see when it's coming and often avert it (the randomness was frightening - this is better) 3)we now know Eleanor is made of rubber and she is the toughest baby who ever lived.

Even though this is the case, Sophia also adores Eleanor and wants to push her in the swing, talk to her, smother her with affection and play with her. So, I had Eleanor on the bed in Sophia's room and I needed to go out for a second. I said, "Soph, could you please talk to Eleanor awhile, and maybe show her a toy?" And when I came back, Eleanor looked like this:



All tucked in! Good, good Friday indeed. Thanks for EVERYTHING Jesus...

songs...

Eleanor snuggles up - a photo from our friend Laura.

Sophia writes songs. She composes them spontaneously, as she spends large parts of the day singing. Some of them however, have begun to stick upon repetition. Tonight's composition:

"Good night my little moon,
Good night my little moon,
The moon is shining and the stars are out,
Good night my little moon."

The other day she made me a 'crown' out of a belt and sang to me:

"You are a queen, you are a queen, you are the best queen,
You are a queen, you are a queen, you are a special queen.
Who is knocking at the door? Who is knocking at the door? It is a great big queen!"

And her jukebox hit:

"Up and down,
Up and down,
Up and down to Chinatown!"

don't know what the coloured squares mean

At the recommendation of my brother Ralph, I took this test.

I too, was impressed with the test, and they assessed me as an 'encouraging director'.


Neat.

P.S. I know that Soph's 'ear muffs' from yesterday's post are not really called 'ear muffs', but they are not headphones, and 'hearing protectors' seemed a bit long a name for a little girl's gear.... any suggestions?

ear muffins like apple martin

Since Sophia was a baby, she likes to be up at the front when she sees a good band. Before she could walk, when we would go see Wade, Ange and Leigh rock out at MA she would CRAWL up to front of the room and hang out on the speaker stands. At church, she likes to dance at the front, and frankly it's easier to have more room to let her roam. Lately though she's been covering her ears at the loud music, and I noticed one of our local children's stores had begun to stock ear muffs, so yesterday we ventured out to get some.

When we were in the store, she wasn't so jazzed about the idea, so I was showing her the picture they had on display of Apple, Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow's little girl wearing a pair. (I have always thought when I saw Chris or Gwyneth interviewed anywhere that we would get along really well with them, and we both have 2 kids near the same age, it'd be fun, I think.) I explained that the ear muffs were for when she watched Daddy play music and that this little girl in the picture was watching her Daddy play music too. (Tho' Wade did dryly add Apple's Daddy made more money than he did.)

After she got the ear muffs and showed them to Uncle Matt and Auntie and Leigh she thought they were cooler and this morning she was excitedly trying them on in the mirror before church. She then said, "I can put my thumb in my mouth." And started to suck her thumb. I didn't get any connection, and then she said, "I have my thumb like the little girl with the pink ear muffins." I registered recognition, "Oh. yes!" Then Soph said. "She watch her Mummy and Daddy play music too!" Then she said, "Maybe we see her at church one day!" So I said, "I would love to see her at church one day, let's pray about that."

So that is why this morning Soph and I were praying for Apple and Gwyneth and Chris Martin, that they'd get to church and get to know Jesus better. You just never know.