Look, a Blog!

It is hard to write a new blog post when my last post keeps staring accusingly at me from November. You missed Christmas, it says. You missed all of January and most of February, it says. There's hardly any point in writing now, it says.

It's not that interesting stuff hasn't happened in our lives, it's just that it was so interesting, and I was so tired because it was so interesting that I couldn't summon the energy to blog about it. Yeah, not really, but it sounds good if I put it that way.

In sad news up front, we had a miscarriage this past November and lost a sweet little baby. I didn't put an announcement on Facebook, and I didn't write about it here. I felt really reluctant to announce the pregnancy early on, or the miscarriage, but I feel a bit differently now. We did tell a few family and close friends when we found out we were expecting again, and when I was lamenting the fact that we'd have to un-tell them, Steve reminded me that those people who knew about the pregnancy were all praying for us during our time of grief. That was a very comforting thought. I've decided that if we, Lord willing, get pregnant again we'd like all the prayers we can muster and all the joy that anyone wants to send our way when we get those two lines. In a lot of ways I'm still grieving, because it is hard for me to deal with the fact that I "should" be a certain number of weeks pregnant and I'm not. I have seen God's mercy in a lot of this, though, and I'm trying to remain ever thankful for His provision.

What else has been going on? Well, as of January I stopped changing diapers. That's right, Matthew uses the potty (mostly). Kind of a momentous thing since I have been changing diapers since September of 2007. Even though using cloth diapers for most of that time has reduced the total diaper count, it is still a lot of changes. Potty training for me is very stressful. The only way we got through it was going cold turkey, meaning I just didn't buy any more diapers (truthfully, I forgot my coupons when I went to Costco and refused to pay full price for diapers). If I have them available to use, I will give up about 4 hours into the potty training process and just slap a diaper on that stubborn little bottom. But, given the coupon situation I was forced to deal with my frustration and get that kid to use underpants. We're all happier for it.

I am teaching Ethan to read using this book and we're both loving it. I read on another blog how a mom counted it one of her greatest blessings to be the one who taught all of her children to read, and I have bought into that romantic notion. It is pretty fun. Ethan is, helpfully, a very willing student. We (mostly I) am very excited to have found a half-day, classical model school here in our newest town, and so he may actually go out of the home to kindergarten next year. I am hoping that a couple of years of having him there (before we have to move again) will give us a good foundation for homeschooling if we move to a place where private school isn't an option for us.

The other big thing that we've done is taken the plunge into the world of minivans. Since the U.S. government seems intent on devaluing our savings for the future, we thought we might as well spend it now! Actually, our RAV-4 that we bought when Ethan was still cooking turned out to be not the family vehicle we thought. You can't really fit 3-across in the back row and it was proving problematic anytime we had family visiting, or thought about carpooling with anyone to any event, and especially with the idea that God might give us a third little baby we decided to upgrade. So far I love our Odyssey, even if I was a mite sad when we traded in the RAV.

So, we are just trucking along. Our days are full of home group, Bible study, teaching class, disciplining, whooping it up, laughing at toddler antics, cleaning up spills, reigning in our tempers (I like to say that one applies to the 2yo, but it's mostly me), and just generally working on loving each other. Hard work that doesn't necessarily lend itself to blogging, but this time I know I will be more disciplined about keeping up with the blog now that I've caught it up. ;)

Here's the boys, wishing you a good 2012: