When I wrote last week about our day in emergency with Eleanor, I mentioned that I was meant to have spent that day preparing a sermon. My topic was the passage in Acts 28 where Paul was bitten by a snake and the islanders think he will be poisoned and then he lives. I wound up taking about the way our words can be life or poison.
It did come together well in the end, and my church has our sermons available online, so if you'd like to listen to it you can. It is in two parts and in part one my mic goes out for a bit but comes back. Part one here. Part two here. If that doesn't work, go here.
I just listened to it and it's always weird to listen to yourself, but good. I like knowing what I said. I am so wired when I start talking that I talk really fast. I also apparently say "you know?" and "um" a lot more than I thought I did. I also sound like my friend Jan. Which is good.
Enjoy. :)
Friday, November 21, 2008
Thursday, November 20, 2008
stu and jacqui's (vancouver) wedding
Last month our good friends Stu and Jacqui celebrated their wedding here in Vancouver. They were married officially in September, and then celebrated in Australia and finally came back to their (adopted) home city of Vancouver. They had asked our girls to be their flower girls, but we felt that it wasn't right for us to do the trip to Salt Lake in September, though that was really hard to be away from them. So their celebration in Vancouver was especially sweet for us to bless them and celebrate with them.
They really honoured us by allowing Sophia and Nori to be their Vancouver flower girls and asked Wade and I to walk in ahead of them and introduce them. Wade and I (and now the girls) have referred to ourselves as Team Pallister for a long time and we were really thrilled to introduce Team Bishop. (They even have that engraved on the inside of their wedding rings!)
It was such a special day and here are some pics taken by our friend Mark.
This is an unbelievably accurate representation of Eleanor's personality. She has entered the church to do her flower girl walk and has decided that instead ripping the reserved sign off of the pew is the thing to do.
This is the scenario we used to describe our girls to new people we met the next week after the ceremony: Nori has decided that swinging off the reserved ropes on the pews is so much more fun than doing a flower girl walk - flowers are on the floor now. Sophia is entirely focused on her flower girl form, and walking so seriously and taking all her duties so deeply to heart.
Sophia dancing at the front of the church during worship.
Our dear friend Joseph left this blanket as a gift for Jacqui and Stu, and we felt like we were supposed to bless them as a mother and a father of the nation of Canada. It was good. The inner Frank Naea came out in me... if you know what that means, you'll know what that means.
Stu is kind of love with Eleanor. He reckons this is photographic evidence of her stealing his soul.
What is strange is that we hardly ever have pictures taken of all four of us. So nice to have this. See how I planned the little bits of green in our all our outfits? I love stuff like this.
These two have been such, such a gift to us this year. They give us joy like this often.
No idea what I am saying here, but I am apparently still funny.
Stu and Jax figured Soph needed a new Aussie soccer shirt, 'cause the one Leigh and Ange gave her when she was 2 is getting a little small. As you can see, she thinks it's pretty rock and roll, but that's mainly because of the seeds Uncle Leigh has planted.
All photos copyright 2008 Mark Bergshoeff. Not to be used without permission.
They really honoured us by allowing Sophia and Nori to be their Vancouver flower girls and asked Wade and I to walk in ahead of them and introduce them. Wade and I (and now the girls) have referred to ourselves as Team Pallister for a long time and we were really thrilled to introduce Team Bishop. (They even have that engraved on the inside of their wedding rings!)
It was such a special day and here are some pics taken by our friend Mark.
This is an unbelievably accurate representation of Eleanor's personality. She has entered the church to do her flower girl walk and has decided that instead ripping the reserved sign off of the pew is the thing to do.
This is the scenario we used to describe our girls to new people we met the next week after the ceremony: Nori has decided that swinging off the reserved ropes on the pews is so much more fun than doing a flower girl walk - flowers are on the floor now. Sophia is entirely focused on her flower girl form, and walking so seriously and taking all her duties so deeply to heart.
Sophia dancing at the front of the church during worship.
Our dear friend Joseph left this blanket as a gift for Jacqui and Stu, and we felt like we were supposed to bless them as a mother and a father of the nation of Canada. It was good. The inner Frank Naea came out in me... if you know what that means, you'll know what that means.
Stu is kind of love with Eleanor. He reckons this is photographic evidence of her stealing his soul.
What is strange is that we hardly ever have pictures taken of all four of us. So nice to have this. See how I planned the little bits of green in our all our outfits? I love stuff like this.
These two have been such, such a gift to us this year. They give us joy like this often.
No idea what I am saying here, but I am apparently still funny.
Stu and Jax figured Soph needed a new Aussie soccer shirt, 'cause the one Leigh and Ange gave her when she was 2 is getting a little small. As you can see, she thinks it's pretty rock and roll, but that's mainly because of the seeds Uncle Leigh has planted.
All photos copyright 2008 Mark Bergshoeff. Not to be used without permission.
Wednesday, November 12, 2008
today
I would be wise to go to bed, but still wound up and writing will help. I began today by going to our DTS girl's small group. It was a really good conversation, and my phone rang towards the end. It was Wade, and I answered by saying - "I'm still in the middle of small group." He quickly responded, "I need you to tell me how much Eleanor weighs right now, I have poison control on the other line. She got into the bottle of Dramamine." Oh. God. The bottle I dropped in the pile of stuff in the living room while running to the bathroom and I forgot.
Oh. God.
Told him. Small group prayed. Wade called back. There were 12 tablets in the bottle how many did I take on the cruise (adult motion sickness meds)? I don't know for sure. She may have only had 1, but it could be as many as 2 or maybe even 3, and if she has had three she's in danger. Wade asks Soph - how many did she eat? TEN! No, no. He feels stupid. he was just shaving. I feel stupid. How could I? No,no... My friend Krista sprang into action, and came with, giving us her car, taking Soph, our school director Mark waved her out the door, go, just go. Lunch for Soph? We'll take care of her, just go.
So off we go, Nori seems fine - we're whisked in to a room immediately at emerg at Children's Hospital, poison control has called ahead - what a way to skip a huge line. Heart monitors, respiratory monitors, pulse monitors on her little toe. And what do you have to take to counteract this drug? Charcoal. For real. Charcoal. And we either have to get her to drink it, or it goes into through a tube in her nose. We add chocolate milk, I add more and more, trying to get her to drink through a straw. She does at first, gags, refuses. I add more chocolate milk, later cursing the volume she now needs to imbibe to get it all in.
Wade and I discover that Eleanor's determination does come from us, we are actually more determined than her. We are determined not to watch her have a tube up her nose to get this stuff in her, and we tag team, me holding her, Wade putting the bottle up to her lips. We finally reach success by allowing her to nurse for a count of ten, and then count as we get her to drink the "black milk". We count. We count like Dora, Wade yelling "Uno, dos, tres." We sing Blue's Clues, and Wiggles. It takes forever. It takes an hour. There's black everywhere. We all have gowns on, and there is black charcoal spit everywhere, on my glasses, in Nori's ears, on her neck, under her fingernails, on my new green tights. We blacken and blacken a half a dozen face cloths. I become convinced this is the parental equivalent of having to write lines as a child. "I will not leave medicine where my child can reach it. I will not leave medicine where my child can reach it." At times we laugh she looks like something from one of Rick's hilariously terrible MST3K movies "The Baby From The Black Lagoon." But once, when she was so weary, I just had to turn my face so she wouldn't see me cry.
And then, we're done. It seemed like the bottle was never going down, she would drink and drink and it looked the same, but finally, there is about an inch or so left of the 300 mls and Eleanor is so exhausted she is falling asleep between sips, and I say, "We're done." I am not doing this any more. She most likely only had one or two tabs, not 3, and I am all for being safe, but I. am. not. doing. this. to my baby any more. Wade makes the last inch of the trusty, fantastic, horrible stuff disappear down the sink. I confess later to the nurse but she doesn't get it and just sees the empty bottle and commends us. I absolutely take the praise, we earned it.
They need to keep watching her, and just when I get her to settle a new nurse comes on shift - then she finally falls asleep and they've ordered an EKG. I reluctantly wake my warm sleeping girl (I am totally convinced she's fine by this point) and the EKG technician soothes her by singing a lullaby to her in Romanian about an elephant. The staff were all amazing. Poor Nori never got back to sleep and thankfully a "Child Life" staff person comes to the rescue with books, a DVD and some bubbles. Nori was not thrilled about being taped to all the monitors, so we were getting a bit desperate as to how to keep her still for an hour.
Eleanor is fine, so fine. Poison control finally signs off on saying she can be released in an hour. Nori is asleep within minutes of being in the car - we're all exhausted, new fans of BC Children's Hospital and Poison Control hotlines, not such big fans of the makers of the child proof caps on the Dramamine (was it on right? i think not... stupid me...)
We get Soph, she has spent the day in total happiness, taking pictures of herself with Krista, composing new songs and dances to Uncle Stu's guitar. When she gets home she changes into an entirely beige "explorer" outfit to match the new home-made binoculars she and Wade just crafted from two toilet roils and a cork, and wants to hear all the dramatic moments of the day, imagining how cute Eleanor was in all of them. We try to explain the dreariness of it all. She mentions she'd like to take a lot of medicine so she could read books, watch a DVD and have bubbles. I barely control myself, but manage well. I have promised her bubbles to never eat medicine.
I was supposed to write my sermon today for Sunday. Not sure where I'll fit it in now. It is on the chapter in Acts where Paul is bitten by a snake in a pile of kindling and all the natives think he'll die from the poison but he lives so they think he's a God. For real.
Lord, thank you. Lord help us.....
Oh. God.
Told him. Small group prayed. Wade called back. There were 12 tablets in the bottle how many did I take on the cruise (adult motion sickness meds)? I don't know for sure. She may have only had 1, but it could be as many as 2 or maybe even 3, and if she has had three she's in danger. Wade asks Soph - how many did she eat? TEN! No, no. He feels stupid. he was just shaving. I feel stupid. How could I? No,no... My friend Krista sprang into action, and came with, giving us her car, taking Soph, our school director Mark waved her out the door, go, just go. Lunch for Soph? We'll take care of her, just go.
So off we go, Nori seems fine - we're whisked in to a room immediately at emerg at Children's Hospital, poison control has called ahead - what a way to skip a huge line. Heart monitors, respiratory monitors, pulse monitors on her little toe. And what do you have to take to counteract this drug? Charcoal. For real. Charcoal. And we either have to get her to drink it, or it goes into through a tube in her nose. We add chocolate milk, I add more and more, trying to get her to drink through a straw. She does at first, gags, refuses. I add more chocolate milk, later cursing the volume she now needs to imbibe to get it all in.
Wade and I discover that Eleanor's determination does come from us, we are actually more determined than her. We are determined not to watch her have a tube up her nose to get this stuff in her, and we tag team, me holding her, Wade putting the bottle up to her lips. We finally reach success by allowing her to nurse for a count of ten, and then count as we get her to drink the "black milk". We count. We count like Dora, Wade yelling "Uno, dos, tres." We sing Blue's Clues, and Wiggles. It takes forever. It takes an hour. There's black everywhere. We all have gowns on, and there is black charcoal spit everywhere, on my glasses, in Nori's ears, on her neck, under her fingernails, on my new green tights. We blacken and blacken a half a dozen face cloths. I become convinced this is the parental equivalent of having to write lines as a child. "I will not leave medicine where my child can reach it. I will not leave medicine where my child can reach it." At times we laugh she looks like something from one of Rick's hilariously terrible MST3K movies "The Baby From The Black Lagoon." But once, when she was so weary, I just had to turn my face so she wouldn't see me cry.
The baby from the black lagoon is so tired....
And then, we're done. It seemed like the bottle was never going down, she would drink and drink and it looked the same, but finally, there is about an inch or so left of the 300 mls and Eleanor is so exhausted she is falling asleep between sips, and I say, "We're done." I am not doing this any more. She most likely only had one or two tabs, not 3, and I am all for being safe, but I. am. not. doing. this. to my baby any more. Wade makes the last inch of the trusty, fantastic, horrible stuff disappear down the sink. I confess later to the nurse but she doesn't get it and just sees the empty bottle and commends us. I absolutely take the praise, we earned it.
They need to keep watching her, and just when I get her to settle a new nurse comes on shift - then she finally falls asleep and they've ordered an EKG. I reluctantly wake my warm sleeping girl (I am totally convinced she's fine by this point) and the EKG technician soothes her by singing a lullaby to her in Romanian about an elephant. The staff were all amazing. Poor Nori never got back to sleep and thankfully a "Child Life" staff person comes to the rescue with books, a DVD and some bubbles. Nori was not thrilled about being taped to all the monitors, so we were getting a bit desperate as to how to keep her still for an hour.
Eleanor is fine, so fine. Poison control finally signs off on saying she can be released in an hour. Nori is asleep within minutes of being in the car - we're all exhausted, new fans of BC Children's Hospital and Poison Control hotlines, not such big fans of the makers of the child proof caps on the Dramamine (was it on right? i think not... stupid me...)
We get Soph, she has spent the day in total happiness, taking pictures of herself with Krista, composing new songs and dances to Uncle Stu's guitar. When she gets home she changes into an entirely beige "explorer" outfit to match the new home-made binoculars she and Wade just crafted from two toilet roils and a cork, and wants to hear all the dramatic moments of the day, imagining how cute Eleanor was in all of them. We try to explain the dreariness of it all. She mentions she'd like to take a lot of medicine so she could read books, watch a DVD and have bubbles. I barely control myself, but manage well. I have promised her bubbles to never eat medicine.
I was supposed to write my sermon today for Sunday. Not sure where I'll fit it in now. It is on the chapter in Acts where Paul is bitten by a snake in a pile of kindling and all the natives think he'll die from the poison but he lives so they think he's a God. For real.
Lord, thank you. Lord help us.....
Wednesday, November 05, 2008
this is a good one
The girls are in bed asleep. The last three nights Eleanor has slept through the night. It is amazing what kind of perspective you can get on your child waking up at 5:30 am when she has hardly slept at all the night before... and it was the day after daylight savings - so I counted it as if it was 6:30 am... and today they "slept in" until 6:10 am - whoot! Thanks so much to those of you who thought of her and prayed for us or sent your sleepy vibes our way. We are much refreshed.
This past month has been an extreme emotional roller coaster, from some of the worst days I've had in recent memory to definitely some of the best. Speaking of some of the best days, here's some pics from our cruise.
Speaking of how much they rock, when we were on our way home from Alberta, Sophia was noticing the signs at airport security with all the "do not" symbols and began to "read" the sign that had various weapons, liquids, and a skull-and-crossbones poison symbol crossed out. She said, "That sign says, 'No lotion, no knives, no guns, no pirates.' " Yep, we agreed, no pirates. Darn good thing. If I'd had all my new perspective, they'd have been some sorry-ass pirates for sure.
This past month has been an extreme emotional roller coaster, from some of the worst days I've had in recent memory to definitely some of the best. Speaking of some of the best days, here's some pics from our cruise.
At the "captain's reception", the formal night on our cruise.
The view of "Los Arcos" in Cabo San Lucas, from the ship.
Me at the taco place that Wade researched in "Lonely Planet" that we totally trekked into the locals only area to find. It was next to a Mexican construction sight and it was awesome. I seriously do not know why I EVER doubt that guy, for real.
Dressed up for dinner. You can tell how relaxed we were by the fact that we had time and energy to stop and take pictures of ourselves in the mirror. Sigh. Sweet life.As far as the worst goes, I am feeling better about a number of things, I got some new perspective recently. I had become bogged down by a lot of relational stuff going on, and by some drama in our neighbourhood. Then on Sunday, our pastor shared a bit about the legacy we leave behind us, and shared this clip of Bono receiving an award from the NAACP. I started thinking about how differently I felt about the things I'd been struggling with when I thought about them from the perspective of what I'm willing to suffer for myself vs. what I'm willing to put up with if I know it will leave a better world, legacy, attitude or neighbourhood for my kids. I would rather not have conflict with anyone, ever. I hate it. But I'll fight a hell of a lot for Sophia and Eleanor. They rock.
Speaking of how much they rock, when we were on our way home from Alberta, Sophia was noticing the signs at airport security with all the "do not" symbols and began to "read" the sign that had various weapons, liquids, and a skull-and-crossbones poison symbol crossed out. She said, "That sign says, 'No lotion, no knives, no guns, no pirates.' " Yep, we agreed, no pirates. Darn good thing. If I'd had all my new perspective, they'd have been some sorry-ass pirates for sure.
Saturday, November 01, 2008
october-festivities
The fire fighter and the sparkle fairy riding the unicorn are ready for some candy.
Whoo! Well where did that month go? We were on the road for most of October, at the beginning of the month in Alberta, a trip which mostly was lame; and the end of the month Wade and I were in California for some meetings with our really good friends and then we went on a 4 night Mexican cruise which ROCKED. Man, I really love my husband.
The transition home has been pretty rough for Eleanor. She seemed to do well while we were gone, but when we came home she was clearly terrified we were leaving again. She has been better over the progressive nights, but she is still not back to normal, so we'd love prayers for that, and that there would be no long-term fears or wounds from us leaving her for 10 days. I have figured out since we had kids that how long we go away for, that's how long it takes us to recover, so I have tried to mentally prepare myself that it could be at least 10 days before things settle again. We're on night #5 tonight - half way there?
We had fun with the girls yesterday, dressing up for Halloween, going to our local mall for train rides, trick or treating and supper. We stopped by Stu and Jacqui's t see their new place (AMAZING) and Soph tried T or T'ing at two houses in their new 'hood, which she called "darking" because she was out in the dark. That was about enough for her. She got a bad scare when she was 2 which she still remembers so we have gone with well-lit activities. She LOVES to dress up so much it seems cruel to deprive her of the process, which was clearly the best part. My brother was with us and videoed the whole thing, which was precious. Here are a couple of clips below:
Nori (off camera): "Candy! Candy! Candy!"
Soph:"This is such a pretend. All of this stuff is pretend. This is just pretend, ok? This is very pretend."
Nori: (Rough translation) "Noone told me that Mum would not be on the train. OOO wow. Wait. Where is Mummy?
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