On the road...

Tomorrow Alex and I are traveling to Billings. He is attending a youth worker conference while mixing in a little business and I am just going along for the ride. Although I am dreading the five hours in the car with both kids, I am very excited to see my parents and sister's family. My dad hasn't seen Riley since Christmas and he is just going to be floored by how much she has changed! My mom also bribed Alex and I with a free day to go skiing while she watches the kids. Who can turn down an offer like that??? I haven't been skiing all season and honestly I don't even know if I got the chance last year. Kids sure do change the options for "free" time.

Among other things, Alex and I have been going through open houses for the past four months or so. We have a very loose ambition of selling our house this summer but it truly is just fun to go through houses and either fall in love with what other people have done, or cringe at what other people are capable of doing! I really feel like I have a pretty good idea of what's important to me for our next house whereas when we bought this house, I was a bit impatient and wanted anything that would get us out of our apartment. In this economy, though, I definitely think our patience, research, and homework will find the perfect house for our family. Don't get me wrong, our current house has definitely become our home and I am going to be a bit sentimental when we do finally move, but it will be very freeing to have more space for the kids to move about in.

Tonight Alex is going to a bachelor party and so the girls (and kids) are getting together for pizza and games. A little girl time will be good for the soul, I think. :)

I hope everyone enjoys the nice weather that is slowly making the days a bit more bearable.

Sleepless nights...

I've had an incredibly difficult time sleeping lately and it's starting to take its toll on me.  Yesterday I felt like a walking zombie and barely had enough energy to make it through the day.  My personality has been a bit dull which is unfortunate for the ones I come in contact throughout the day, but it truly is exhausting to fake a happy persona.  The reason behind me not being able to sleep is because I literally cannot turn my mind off.  It just goes and goes and no matter how hard I try, I cannot stop it from dwelling on a certain two-year old I call my son.

The reality of how difficult my life is going to be is finally starting to hit.  The hopes of Cale one day "catching up" and being normal are slowly fading away.  Most parents look forward to their child growing up but I am terrified.  I lay awake at night going through scenario after scenario of what my life will be like in a year, five years, or even ten years.  I worry so much I begin to feel sick.  I just lay there praying I can fall asleep so that I don't have to worry anymore.   I literally cannot shut off my mind.

I go back and forth on my emotions towards God when it comes to Cale.  Some days I am accepting of what either God has done or has allowed to happen.  Some days I even feel at peace.  Lately, though, all I have been feeling is anger.  God healed many people while on this earth and performed many miracles.  He created the mountains, the stars, and the seas.  He did things we cannot even possibly fathom as human beings, which is why I'm left desperately wondering why He won't heal my son.  My head knows the answer is because He has a plan that will ultimately bring Him the glory, but my heart is in turmoil.  Why Cale?  Why my family?  

I hope this doesn't leave people doubting my love for my son.  I honestly don't think I could love him any more if I tried.  He's my little man and I think I love him more because of the life he's had to fight so hard for.  I just want him to have the best life possible and it's hard for me to accept that this is it.  

God can move mountains, I'm certain of that.  So why won't He heal my son?

  

Baby Dedications!

This coming Sunday we will dedicate Riley to our Lord at Missoula Alliance Church!  I have been consumed with the nonsense of what she's going to wear, what the rest of us is going to wear, if we should have a post-dedication celebration with family and friends, and who's going to take pictures of this momentous occasion.  Getting wrapped up in all of this small stuff has forced me to take a step back and focus on what this day means for our family, and more importantly, for Riley.

It was almost exactly one year ago that we dedicated Cale to the Lord.  He wore a cute black suit with a light blue, button-down shirt and an adorable clip-on tie. He was stunningly handsome!  It was such a big occasion for us that my family from Billings came to witness the event.  Perhaps it was the way Cale entered this world or maybe even the uncertainty of his future that made it so much bigger to us, but for some reason dedicating Riley doesn't seem as momentous.  I look at it somewhat like this: for whatever reason, good or bad, people seem to trust situations to God when they are too big for us to handle on our own.  It's when we feel like we can be in control of things that we stop trusting Him.  If I apply this to Cale and Riley, I begin to see that I feel more in control of Riley than I do of Cale.  I have no idea what the future holds for Cale - will he be able to walk or talk, will he ever have a job, will he ever have a girlfriend or even close friends, will he be accepted by people, will he ever have children of his own, etc.?  With Riley, I "know" she'll be able to walk and talk, she'll probably have tons of friends and unfortunately many boyfriends, she'll have several jobs before she finds the one that ends up being her career, and if she's anything like Alex and me, she'll be a social butterfly who one day has kids of her own.  I have to trust God's plan for Cale because things are too uncertain to make a plan of my own.  With Riley, it's easy for me to get lost in my dreams of her playing golf, going to prom, and planning her wedding that I forget that she's just as fragile as Cale is, and that God could take her from us in one breath.  Her life belongs to God just as much as Cale's does, but it's much easier for me to feel in control of her than it is for me with Cale.  It's hard for me to admit that but it's the honest truth.

This Sunday I am going to pray that Riley will know the Lord at an early age and that she trusts Him with her life.  I will pray that Alex and I can be good role models for her and that she can see God's love shine through us.  I will also pray that I can begin to understand that although she's my child, she's also on loan and that one day she will be with her true Father.  My job is to take the best care of her that I know how and give her the absolute most love she could ever experience on this earth.  

This whole realization is oddly comforting. 

Game's on now!

Alex's birthday was this past Thursday.  He turned 26 years old which means he is closer to 30 than he is 20!  I sometimes find myself laughing when I realize I, too, am getting older and will one day turn 30.  It truly is baffling.  

Anyhow, Alex's birthday had more significance this year than just bringing him one year closer to turning 30.  Riley started crawling, and oh man, things just got interesting!  Cale has been mobile for nearly a year now and so I know what it's like to have to keep my eye on a child, but Riley adds a whole new variable to the equation!  Due to the way Cale is he was never a child that would find a small object on the floor and immediately put it in his mouth.  I could leave pennies, marbles, thumb tacks, and pretty much anything else that a pediatrician or a fellow mom would gasp at the sound of, on the floor and Cale would move right by them and never give them a second look.  Riley, on the other hand, will put anything and everything in her mouth and so I'm learning a whole new definition to the term "baby proof".  Cale, although he crawls and pulls himself up on furniture, doesn't exactly move at lightning speed.  Riley, though, can be nowhere in sight when I'm changing Cale's diaper and the next thing I know she's one fist full of a poopy mess.  Yes, things just got a whole lot more interesting but I am having so much fun!  I remember the countless hours of physical therapy that we needed to get Cale to move and so just watching Riley learn it all on her own has been thrilling, not to mention it has lifted a huge mountain of worry off my shoulders!  Now I just need to hold my breath until she learns to walk and talk. :)  

Cale has been learning a few skills of his own, too.  We have baby latches on all of our cupboards to keep Cale (and now Riley) from opening them and dumping dishes all over the floor.  The other day I was cooking and heard a huge crash!  Cale had pulled a stack of glass bowls off a shelf and let them hit the floor.  No broken glass but there were many tears after a harsh discipline...Cale knows better.  I thought it was weird that he had gotten into the cupboards but I excused it as me just forgetting to close the door.  Well, he got into the same cupboard yesterday but thankfully I caught him before he managed to pull anything off the shelf.  I watched him from the around the corner to see how he was getting the door open and I watched as he carefully opened the door as far as it would go until the baby latch caught, then he wiggled his hand up to pull down on the latch, and after he did that he knew to pull on the door before the latch caught again.  Amazing.  Simply amazing.  So much for our kitchen being child-proofed anymore.  Oh well, a part of me is just so proud that he is smart enough to have figured that out. :)