Everyday Life

Categories Parenting

Riding an Elephant

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Going to Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo was an at-least-annual part of my childhood.

We’d load into the car some Saturday morning, singing Dad’s ditty:

“Going to the zoo, zoo, zoo, zoo
Zoo, zoo, zoo, zoo
Beeps and bonks and squeaks and sqwanks.”

We’d arrive at Grandma Menter’s in Bellevue in time for lunch at noon – except that, while Grandma Menter was an excellent cook, she was not excellent at multitasking, which meant that lunch was generally around two.

Tirzah Mae and Papa check out the cow and calf
Tirzah Mae and Papa check out the cow and calf

This didn’t bother us much (that I remember), since we had cousins to play with and 7-Up to drink.

Except that myself, my sister, and the cousin who falls exactly between us in age REALLY wanted to ride the elephants.

As I remember it, elephant rides were available until 3 pm – but since lunch was always at 2, we were never at the zoo in time for elephants.

Other times, we’d go with Grandma to the in-zoo cafe, which meant we were there earlier – but then we’d have to trek through the Leid Jungle, and would yet again miss the elephant rides.

Tirzah Mae and Mama pet a sheep
Tirzah Mae and Mama pet a sheep

A couple of months ago, a plane left Swaziland with sixteen elephants on board. The elephants were bound for Dallas, for the Sedgwick County Zoo (in Wichita), and for Omaha’s Henry Doorly Zoo.

The departure was rather a story because some environmental groups were trying to block the transport and the zoos opted to sedate the elephants and load them up for transport without a permit in order to force the issue (they were successful at doing so.)

Tirzah Mae and Mama with an Orangutan statue
Tirzah Mae and Mama with an orangutan statue

I followed the story with interest, partly because it’s Wichita news – and partly because it’s Henry Doorly news. And partly because I never got to ride those elephants.

I still haven’t ridden the elephants (I rather doubt that’s at all d’jour in today’s conservation efforts) – but thanks to Daniel’s employer, our family has gone to see Wichita’s six new elephants.

We spent the afternoon on Sunday at the Sedgwick County Zoo, where we petted the goats and sheep (one got out while we were at the gate!) and where Tirzah Mae clucked and crowed and quacked at hundreds of different bird species.

Tirzah Mae is enamored with large birds
Tirzah Mae is enamored with large birds

And we saw the elephants, two weeks before the exhibit opens to the public.

Tirzah Mae inspects the elephant
Tirzah Mae inspects the elephant

I don’t know that Tirzah Mae was enamoured with the elephants. She was already tired by the time we got to the exhibit – and elephants, unlike birds, are entirely outside of her realm of experience).

But I loved seeing the elephants ambling about their spacious enclosures.

Tirzah Mae and Mama enjoy the elephant
Tirzah Mae and Mama enjoy the elephant

It almost resigns me to not having been able to ride the elephants. Almost.

Categories Everyday Life

Pushing RESET

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An acquaintance asked what I did beyond parenting a toddler and gestating an unborn baby – and I had no idea how to answer. What do I do beyond those things? Do I do anything beyond those things?

I feed myself and Tirzah Mae multiple times a day (parenting, gestating). I put Tirzah Mae down for naps while counting kicks and practicing relaxation to improve my chances of a successful VBAC attempt (parenting, gestating). I exercise daily while attempting not to step on my daughter who is underfoot (parenting, gestating.)

Yeah, I pretty much parent and gestate.

The things I used to do, for fun or leisure or work, now have to be worked around the parenting and gestating gigs.

And parenting and gestating haven’t been offering me any opportunities to sit down lately.

I still read books, while marching in place or while doing planks or pelvic rocks (more active woman = less risk of preeclampsia, more acive woman = increased chance of successful VBAC attempt). Occasionally, I read books while bathing if I happen to delay bathing until Tirzah Mae’s nap time.

I still read blogs, sort of. I read them on my phone while waiting for one of our meals or snacks to heat in the microwave or for the toast to pop in the toaster. Or (if I don’t have a bed to make or clothes to lay out or something to sweep up or wipe up or pick up) while I’m waiting for my bathwater to finish running or when I’m otherwise unavoidably delayed in the bathroom (ahem.)

Usually I have just enough time to skim headlines and “mark unread” blog posts from my friends. You know, all those blog posts that I intend to go back and read and comment on when I have time to actually read them and comment on them. Sometime when I’ve got more than 50 seconds to pay attention to them.

If I’m particularly caught up, I whittle my feedly down to 95 or a hundred unread articles by the end of the day – and all 95 to 100 are posts by friends. Posts I want to take my time with. Posts I want to read carefully. Posts I want to comment on.

But there’s no time to sit down and take my time with them, so those 95 posts languish.

Until last week, when I accidentally pressed something and those posts went away.

For a brief moment before new posts started filtering in, my feedly “unread posts” equalled zero.

It was a hard reset – and, so far as I know, there’s no way to undo it.

I thought about getting upset about it, but then decided against that course of action.

Instead, I’m going to embrace the reset. I’m going to consider it a do-over.

Like the FlyLady says, “You are not behind.”

I am not behind.

I am right where I need to be, taking care of my daughter, taking care of my home and my husband, caring for myself and our unborn child.

And if I happen to ever find an uninterrupted 15 minutes to sit down at my computer, I’ll take those blog posts by friends day by day without worrying about trying to catch up on the past months.

Sometimes we need to push RESET – and sometimes we need to embrace the RESET when it’s offered.

That’s what I’m going to try to do.

Categories Everyday Life, Tirzah Mae

Like Mama, Like Daughter

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It was little more than a whim – I was feeling as though Tirzah Mae had been wearing the same dresses to church week after week, so I pulled out the bag of clothes I wore when I was a child…

I was thrilled that I had, since I discovered that this little jobber – what I’ve always referred to as the “Bavarian dress”, brought back by my Grandma from a European tour – was already almost too small for Tirzah Mae.

The "Bavarian" Dress

She wore it that day – and posed in it that afternoon.

Here’s me, wearing the same dress some 30 years before.

Rebekah in the "Bavarian" dress

I also had Tirzah Mae take advantage of some of the last cool days of the spring to wear the little jumpsuit my mother made me.

Jumpsuit should fit in the fall?

As you can see, the jumpsuit is definitely on the long side for Tirzah Mae – and since I wore it sometime right around my 2nd birthday, I’m thinking that bodes well for getting a good deal more use out of it come fall!

Rebekah with her Grandma Menter in the jumpsuit Mama made her

**Side note: See how little hair I had in the Bavarian dress – and how much I had by my second birthday? Perhaps there is hope for Tirzah Mae yet.**

Categories Pregnancy

When the Rubber Hits the Road

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Compared to what many women experience in the first trimesters of pregnancy, my pregnancy with Tirzah Mae was easy. No signs of danger until we started rounding the corner from trimester two to three, when I started retaining excess fluid and my blood pressure started rising.

So when people have asked me how the pregnancy is going, my response has been cautious.

This has been a very easy pregnancy. Easier than Tirzah Mae’s. I’ve had virtually no nausea, have had mostly manageable energy levels, have felt baby move from impossibly early weeks.

But early pregnancy is not necessarily a predictor of pregnancy outcome. I know that.

The odds of having preeclampsia as severely as I had the first time? They’re low.

But they were very low the first time too.

I’ve been cautiously optimistic, knowing that the real struggle would come in trimester 3.

And now, as I begin to turn the corner from trimester 2 to trimester 3, the rubber hits the road.

Do I trust God like I say I do, that whatever comes is in His control and is for both my good and His glory? Have I learned the lesson He was teaching last time around, that His grace is sufficient for what He brings, not for the anxieties I’ve been told to cast on Him? Do I really believe that whatever happens, Christ is enough?

This is when the rubber hits the road.

So far, my body is doing well. Weight gain is appropriate; blood pressure remains low; baby is active all.the.time.

My mental state? It varies. Sometimes I’m bawling with terror, other times confident that God has it all in hand. You’d think the terror would be connected to my physical state, but it doesn’t really seem to be. The day it was super hot and I gained a few pounds of water over the course of the day? I was good. It was three days later, after the weather had cooled off and my weight was stable from morning to evening, that I fell apart and spent the morning crying.

It’s an exercise in trust, here in trimester 3 as the rubber hits the road.

But while my mental state goes up and down, one thing is certain these days – I’ve got tennis shoes on my feet.

The combination of weight gain and pregnancy-induced relaxin production means my feet ache from the time I step out of bed in the morning until I fall into bed in the evening – which means I had to run out and grab a new pair of tennies to make it through trimester 3 (My previous tennies were pretty much destroyed by constant use and massive swelling during Tirzah Mae’s super-short third trimester – and I don’t wear tennis shoes unless I absolutely have to, so I didn’t bother to replace them once she was born.)

Pregnancy tennis shoes

I got these pretty white and pink jobbers at the Sports Authority store that’s going out of business – at $30, they mark my most expensive pregnancy clothing purchase thus far.

Categories Book Reviews, Pregnancy

Book Review: Your Pregnancy Week by Week by Glade B. Curtis and Judith Schuler

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The front cover of Your Pregnancy Week by Week proudly announces that it is “The only best-selling guide written by a doctor.” The spine contains a medallion announcing “The only best-selling guide written by a doctor.” The back cover proclaims the book to be “The expanded, fully updated edition of the best-selling pregnancy guide written by a doctor.”

So the major selling point of this book is that it is written by a doctor. Glade Curtis is a board certified OB-GYN, which means he’s the perfect guy to walk a woman through every week of her normal pregnancy, right?

Well, that depends a lot on your view of what pregnancy is. Is pregnancy a medical condition to be monitored and controlled (as you would diabetes or heart disease?) or is it a life event to be cherished and enjoyed (as you would an engagement and preparation for a wedding?)

Curtis (and the obstetric community as a whole) tends to think that pregnancy is a medical condition to be monitored and controlled. As such, Your Pregnancy Week by Week consists of telling a woman all the things that might go wrong with her at any given point during her pregnancy, all the tests which might be necessary to make sure that nothing is going wrong, and why she should trust her doctor implicitly and herself not at all during pregnancy.

Okay, someone not quite as passionate about pregnancy and birth as I am might feel that I’m overreacting to this book. Things can go wrong during pregnancy, they might say. Tests are sometimes necessary. You should be able to trust your doctor. Your own instincts aren’t always right when it comes to pregnancy. And, for that matter – pregnancy isn’t simply a life event like an engagement. Things are happening in your body!

And I agree completely, dear not-so-passionate-about-birth-as-I. Things do go wrong during pregnancy – I, of all people should know. I could have died during my pregnancy with Tirzah Mae. Tests are sometimes necessary – the ultrasounds to make sure Tirzah Mae was still growing when my body was no longer functioning as designed, the blood tests that finally told us that my kidneys and liver had stopped doing their jobs – those were necessary (and without the blood tests indicating the need for delivery both Tirzah Mae and I would have died.) It is incredibly valuable to have a caregiver you can trust – which is why I am SO grateful for my midwife, who was alert to normal pregnancy and knew when to refer when my pregnancy became anything but normal. That’s why I’m SO grateful for my OB, who values women and who works with them to help them have as normal a delivery as possible.

Pregnancy isn’t SIMPLY a life event like an engagement. Your body is changing, your hormones are changing. You’ve got extra blood pumping through your veins, an extra body inside your own. Things are happening to your body that you want to understand. You want to know if those changes are normal or if they’re something to be worried about. In some cases, you NEED to know if they’re normal or if you should be worried about them (ten pounds weight gain in one day – that’s not normal. It’s definitely something to be worried about.)

But Curtis and his co-author aren’t simply helping women understand what is normal and what isn’t. They are detailing, every week, another horrible thing that can go wrong during pregnancy (tacking a line at the end about how really only two in a thousand women are going to have this problem, so don’t worry.)

Curtis explains (week after week) why a woman shouldn’t ever be afraid to get a test or a procedure because they only ever help your doctor and you and your baby (and have never been PROVEN to be harmful – the anti-precautionary principle). And he explains (week after week) why a woman should be afraid to drink caffeine, eat sugar, eat artificial sweeteners, take an over-the-counter drug, etc (because it has never been PROVEN to be safe – the precautionary principle.) The doctor is always right and can do no harm. The woman is always to be doubted and will kill her baby if left to her own devices. (Okay, I’m exagerating a little.)

Oh, and don’t even get me started on the unscientific suggestions Curtis has for labor. He encourages enemas (for the patient’s safety and comfort, of course!), fasting during labor, lying down during labor, and episiotomies. Continuous fetal monitoring is necessary for baby’s safety. And if you aren’t sure you want a natural labor? A doula is a bad idea (well, actually, are you SURE you want a natural labor? If I give you this epidural, then you’ll be so much more comfortable and will be so much easier to monitor and won’t try to move around or anything… big plus? you won’t have to hire a doula!)

Yeah. No.

Choose to have a pregnancy and childbirth not defined by fear. Choose to trust that your body is fearfully and wonderfully made. Choose NOT to read Glade Curtis and Judith Schuler’s Your Pregnancy Week by Week.

Rating: 0 stars
Category: Pregnancy
Synopsis: An overmedicalized, fear-based, doctor-is-always-right tome on pregnancy
Recommendation:If you want to be scared out of your mind by all the things that could go wrong in pregnancy and to be convinced that every intervention your doctor might suggest is absolutely the right decision, you’ll want to read this book. If you prefer to learn what a normal pregnancy looks like, how to deal with the normal problems of pregnancy, and to make evidence-based (versus fear-based) decisions for your pregnancy and childbirth – this is not at all the book for you.

Categories Everyday Life

Happy birthday to me

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I generally take a nap on Sunday afternoons while Daniel is home to take charge of Tirzah Mae.

This week was no exception. After completing a range of household tasks, I took myself off to bed.

I napped a bit, glad for the sleep and woke up to Tirzah Mae awakening from her own nap. I got her up, changed her diaper, fed her afternoon tea.

Daniel was nowhere to be found.

We went to investigate and found him in the garage, clearly hiding something.

Daniel’s work took him rather late into the afternoon, later than our usual dinner time – so, after a quick consultation with him (having warned him that I was going to open the garage door), Tirzah Mae and I started into dinner on our own.

About midway through our meal, Daniel came into the house, instructing me to close my eyes.

When I opened them, he was holding this windchime!

My birthday windchimes

Happy birthday to me!

(I’ve always wanted a windchime, but am not much of a shopper so it’s an item that’s perpetually been on the “buy some day” list. Except not anymore, ’cause Daniel made me one for my birthday!)

Categories Pregnancy

Skirt-Wearing in Pregnancy

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Dressing for pregnancy is hard.

There’s trying to figure out how to adjust to a figure that’s changing on a weekly (no, make that daily) basis. There’s trying to avoid spending too much money on clothing you’ll wear for five months or less. There’s guessing what size you’ll be at what season, and figuring out how to layer to make that outfit you bought for when it’s hot and you’re huge work for now (when it’s chilly and you’re not quite huge yet.) There’s trying to strike just the right balance between comfort and style.

It’s hard.

One thing I’ve found, as a mostly-skirt-wearing-woman, is that skirts are an absolute lifesaver.

My pre-pregnancy pants stopped fitting somewhere around the end of the first trimester – and while I wore them for a little while with zipper unzipped and a belly band covering, it wasn’t long before I needed maternity pants.

Skirts, on the other hand, don’t have that pesky crotch that forces the waistline to a specific place. You can wear them high over the belly (if they’re flowing) or low under the belly (if they’re more fitted or if you find it more comfortable that way.

Wearing a skirt over my bump

Wearing a skirt over my bump

In addition to being easy to wear, skirts are wonderful for a variety of weather. If it’s cold outside, you can always throw a pair of tights, leggings, or pants underneath. If it’s warm, you can go bare-legged and enjoy the breeze.

One extra benefit – if you’re a leaker, you don’t necessarily have to resort to pads around the house. If you leak a little, you can just change your underpants without having to worry about changing your “over”pants as well. (TMI? Maybe. But this is pregnancy we’re talking about here – plenty of potentially embarrassing material to cover.)

Wearing a skirt over my bump, part 2

Check out how high that waist is!

I’ve had to retire a few skirts so far this pregnancy due to length issues (I generally prefer to wear a waisted skirt high over the bump and an elastic-waist skirt low; if the skirt is waisted and short, it gets a little TOO short once it’s over the bump) – but I’ve still got almost a dozen skirts that I’m still wearing, and expect to continue wearing for at least another month or two.

BONUS: My sister-in-law was giving away a strapless maxi-dress and I grabbed it on a whim, thinking it might make a good pregnancy skirt. I’ve been wearing the elasticized part (that’s supposed to go over the breasts) over my bump and and letting the skirt (which is supposed to start just below the breasts) hang just below my bump. It gives me the security of coverage while still letting me have a maxi-skirt. This tip probably only works for tall gals like myself, but I’ve found it to be wonderful.

Maxi dress turned maxi skirt

Maxi-dress turned maxi-skirt

Did you wear skirts during your pregnancy? What are your best tips for overcoming the clothing hurdles of pregnancy?

Categories Faith, Parenting

Happy/Sad. Good/Bad.

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Happy. A little boy wore a gleaming smile to match the word.

Across the page, the same little boy had giant tears rolling down his face to illustrate “sad”.

I turned the page to continue reading to Tirzah Mae, but then stopped short – for the next two words were “good” and “bad”.

After a bit of quick thinking, I told Tirzah Mae that the words were “kind” and “naughty”.

I won’t be buying that particular book for Tirzah Mae, nor will I be checking it out of the library again for her or her siblings.

Good and bad are such loaded words.

In one sense, the illustrations were apt – showing good or bad behaviors. But the rest of the book was describing opposites that modify not behaviors but the child. While each page included only one word, a parent could have “read” the sentence “The child is [insert word].”

“The child is happy.”

“The child is sad.”

“The child is alert.”

“The child is sleepy.”

Tirzah Mae is MESSY.

“Tirzah Mae is messy.”

But when it came to “good” and “bad”?

“The child is good.”

“The child is bad.”

It doesn’t fit my theology.

There is a sense in which every child is good. There is a sense in which every child is bad. But neither have to do with the child’s behavior.

Every child is good in the way that God declared Adam and Eve “very good” after creating them. Every child is created by God and, in some small or large way, reflects God’s image. In that, he is good.

Yet every child is bad, in that every child is born sinful. “No part of [him] is untouched by sin, and therefore no action of [his] is as good as it should be, and consequently nothing in [him] or about [him] ever appears meritorious in God’s eyes.” (J.I. Packer’s definition of total depravity from Concise Theology.) In that, every child is bad.

To suggest that a child is “good” because he engages in kind behavior and that he is “bad” when he engages in unkind behavior undermines both the innate “goodness” and the innate “badness” of a child.

I would not want a child of mine to think that she is only valuable in my eyes when she engages in kind behavior. She is valuable because she is a human, created in the image of God.

I would not want a child of mine to think that she is only bad when she engages in naughty behavior – and to think that by changing her behavior she can change her innate badness.

No, I want my daughter (and our unborn baby and every child who enters our family after that) to know that she is precious because God made her. I want my daughter (and our unborn baby and every child who enters our family after that) to know that she is born a sinner and acts sinfully because it’s who she is.

I pray daily that my daughter would recognize that there is nothing she can do to make herself “good”. Every day, I pray that she would recognize her inability to save herself from her sinfulness. Every day, I pray that she would fall upon the mercy of Christ to make her good.

And I want the words I use to help her to recognize her need for a Savior – not to encourage her to cling to works righteousness.

Am I too picky about words? Are there any common phrases that get your guff?

Categories Everyday Life

Goodbye to Betsy

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Yesterday Tirzah Mae and I drove back to the old house (affectionately named Betsy) for what we’re hoping is one of the last times.

We cleaned the kitchen and bathroom – and gave our realtor keys to the front door.

Tirzah Mae and Mama post-cleaning
Tirzah Mae and her Mama post-cleaning

Lord willing, Betsy will be on the market by the end of the week.

Lord willing, she’ll be sold soon.

She served us well – Daniel for eight years, me for three, Tirzah Mae for one.

She was our newlywed home, the first home either Daniel or I had owned, the home where we started building our family.

And now, as we prepare to expand our family, as we celebrate three years of marriage, as we enjoy the home we built together, we’re ready to hand Betsy over to others.

Will she be home to a single person just starting out (as she was for Daniel)? Or will it be a young couple who moves in? Maybe it’ll be a family (although it’d have to be a small one – she’s just a little house)?

I don’t know what the future holds for Betsy, but I’m glad she was a part of our past – and I wish whoever comes next as much joy in her as we had.

Categories Everyday Life

Thermodynamics and me

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The first law of thermodynamics says that energy cannot be created or destroyed.

Practically, this means that when something new takes up a large portion of my energy, something else must give.

Moving, and the process of settling into a new home, takes a massive amount of energy.

Since energy cannot be created or destroyed, the energy for moving and settling must be taken from elsewhere. To minimize damage to my family, my home, and my health, I have chosen to reallocate as little energy as possible from those arenas – meaning that the majority of the energy for moving has been borrowed from reading and from blogging.

The second law of thermodynamics says that entropy (disorder) always increases.

Practically, this means that when attempting to bring order to one aspect of life, other parts fall into disorder.

So as I work to bring order to our new home, all of the habits I’ve worked to establish over the course of many years tend to fall by the wayside.

Yes, I am getting our new home organized – but I struggle with the daily habits that keep a home running smoothly. Picking up toys. Washing and drying and folding the laundry. Making a menu and doing the grocery shopping. Making meals and cleaning up after them. Wiping down the tub after use. Sweeping the floor regularly.

I have kept active – loading and lifting boxes, carrying them up and down stairs. Arranging them in the car and in the garage or basement once I get them to Prairie Elms. But the habit of daily exercise – aerobic, resistance, and flexibility training? This habit has fallen aside. Daily Kegels, pelvic tilts, and squats? Nope. And relaxation exercises in preparation for childbirth. Yeah right.

But as much as the first two laws of thermodynamics have been active in my past month or so, the third has not yet exerted its power.

The third law of thermodynamics says that entropy (disorder) reaches a constant value as the temperature approaches absolute zero.

Thank God that the temperature here is quite a bit higher than that – and that disorder is not anywhere near a constant value.

In fact, it seems we are finding a new equillibrium.

Enough of the house has been moved in that things are starting to feel settled. We’re not constantly asking for some item that’s still at Betsy or hidden away in some still-packed box.

The house is moderately tidy and, most days, my cleaning to-do list is getting done.

I’ve slowly worked my workouts back up, from one set to two to three. I’m back to my previous routine.

And now that my world is slowly returning to a new normal, it’s time to add in those last few items of my previous routine.

Reading.

And blogging.

Old friends forsaken by the laws of thermodynamics.

But I’m resisting, I’m returning. Thermodynamics won’t have the final word.

Temperature’s not at absolute zero quite yet.