somewhere between silence & screaming

Seeing “edema” officially written on your hospital records, starting several weeks ago, and kind of smugly thinking, “I knew some of this was water retention!” 

I will have my child at the end of this month or early next month.

I am equal parts ecstatic and terrified hah.

The pregnancy stuff is going well (except for any interaction with Quest Diagnostics.  If for some reason I go into labor at 37 weeks, which is considered full-term, and have to go into isolation because they messed up my MRSA testing schedule… they will be receiving an angry letter from me.)  I’m going on 35 weeks, which is crazy.  I’m also excited (and currently procrastinating cleaning for) our last baby shower this weekend!

We’ve been working on getting the house ready, so that’s been time-consuming, but fun!  We got new cabinets to replace a little coffee cart area that was in our kitchen:

I was really concerned that the addition was going to box our kitchen in, but it actually looks a lot bigger… plus there’s more storage, which we really needed.

So we took the wheels off the bookshelf that was being used for coffee and decided to paint it and use it as the bookshelf for the nursery:

Unfortunately, we made a major mistake early on by not taking the electric sander to it.  Originally, I was going to paint the outside blue & the inside shelf area yellow.  The blue did okay, but the yellow would not go on evenly (even with 2 coats of primer and 3 coats of yellow), so I gave up and modge podged some scrapbook paper to the shelf part, covered it with Jackson’s stuff and called it a day.

Early on, we painted stripes on the nursery wall, but I’ve gone back and forth on what I wanted to do to it since then.  I decided to stick to letters, but since the bookshelf scrapbook hack went well, I wanted to attempt that with the letters as well.  SO EASY, and I’m very pleased with the result.  So pleased, in fact, that I proceeded to modge podge two ikea picture frames for his pegboard area (which is definitely still a work in progress).

For what it’s worth, I’m going to do something to the J that is blending in.  I just haven’t decided what yet.  And there will be pictures in the picture frames soon.  And I may possibly change the layout (again), which is why the pegboard is my new favorite thing (change things whenever I want very quickly with no new holes in the wall.  Perfection.)

I’m going to go ahead & post Jackson’s stats as 35 weeks, even though I’m not quite there yet, but today was supposed to be my 35 week appointment, so if it’s good enough for the doctors, it’s good enough for me.

Supposedly, Jackson is the size of a coconut, between 17.2 and 18.7 inches and between 4.2 and 5.8lbs (unless he’s slowed down in growth, he should be toward the upper end of these ranges).  Our next growth scan is on May 13th.

He has flipped upside down and hiccups a lot.

I don’t think I ever shared all of his 3d ultrasound photos on here, so here’s a few of my favorites from 32 weeks:

 Sleeping: 

Attempting to sleep after being poked.  He has 5 fingers, but one of them is curled underneath hah:

Trying to suck his fingers and getting cranky at being poked by the ultrasound lady:

Supposedly, he will be too large to see very much past his measurements at the next ultrasound, so I’m happy we have these photos of his little face.  Technology is crazy.

Okay, I think that’s it!

So our anniversary is coming up in 3 weeks, and it always gets me thinking.

Five years ago, i promised to love one man for the rest of my life. The entire day is a blur now, but a few moments do stand out.

Particularly, the butterflies that danced in my stomach as I walked to the sanctuary, ready to see Josh for the last time as my fiance, knowing that in a few short hours we would walk the same path down to the reception hall as husband and wife.

During the ceremony, my nerves got the best of me, and I took far too large of a bite during communion and just about choked. We giggled together as two of our friends sang Dave Barnes in the background. He started telling me a couple of funny things that happened before the ceremony as I chewed and chewed and chewed, and we laughed more. It’s all on the wedding video… about 3 minutes of us in our own world laughing and chatting during our ceremony. I love watching it now, because it’s the one thing in our lives that hasn’t changed. We started our marriage united in Christ and the absolute best of friends.

That will always stay the same.

The rest of our marriage as been an adventure though. In the last 5 years, we have:

• traveled together to France, the UK, Alabama, Argentina, Uruguay, the Bahamas, Georgia, Texas, Germany, Czech Republic, Austria, and Colorado.
• worked at a combined total of 5 companies, holding a combined total of 10 positions, including a combined total of 6 promotions.
• added a dog named Buddy to our family
• ate 11 Thanksgiving dinners
• celebrated Christmas 20 times
• attended my college graduation
• owned 3 cars and 2 motorcycles
• moved from Tennessee to Florida
• Bought our first home and tackled more home repair, renovation & decor projects than I could possibly count
• Served with a combined total of 9 ministries
• Participated in a combined total of 8 small groups (or sunday schools or life group or whatever you want to call them)
• created one tiny human who will arrive in June

So basically, the past 5 years could be summed up in this simple observation:

We are stupid blessed.

I can’t even fathom what the next 5 years will hold.

So to recap:

I had a bacterial infection in my left cornea. I used drops. When I came to the doctor a week later, I found out the cornea infection was better, but I had caught a viral infection as well also in my left eye, which would just need to run its course.

Today, I showed up for a follow up again.

Left eye is great. It’s going to take a few months for my vision to fully come back from the cornea infection, but the infections themselves are gone.

However, I now have the viral infection in my right eye.

True story.

So in life group tonight, i was trying to explain how you go from following God out of fear or obligation (like a Christian checklist) to following Him out of love, and I wasn’t doing a very good job with it.

I kept thinking about it on my ride home, and I realized just how much Jackson is teaching me (or how God is using Jackson to teach me) already.  Most of the time when I experience that, “Aha!” moment from God, I feel a little silly — like everyone must already know this and I’m lucky no one figured out how clueless I am.

But tonight I realized this isn’t the easiest thing to understand.  The truth is there’s a balance between respect and love, but it’s love that covers a multitude of sins.  It’s love that motivates and gives us hope.  It’s love that Jesus calls most important.

One of the scariest things, in my pregnant opinion, about becoming a mother is that we could really screw Jackson up.  I think about how many people point back to their childhood as the root of their adult issues, and all I can think is, “Jesus, come now before we scar this kid for life.”

When he gets here, he won’t know what love is.  I could try to tell him about it, but it will be like trying to explain what water feels like to someone who’s never been wet.  Or what music sounds like to someone who has never been able to hear.  Plus, he won’t be able to understand English yet, so there’s that.

Even more, he won’t have any idea how to love me.  He’ll naturally gravitate toward me because I’ll be the only familiar thing to him, and he’ll recognize my voice and scent.  But in terms of what we typically define as love, he just won’t know how.

And the only way he’ll learn how to love me is by me loving him first.

I think that’s what it comes down to with God too.  You can’t move from following him out of fear to following him out of love until you’ve let him love you.  You can only love him after he’s first loved you.

So I started thinking more specifically… how do you let God love you?  And I thought about my son and His son, and how the whole thing still overwhelms me a bit. 

When he’s brand new to this world, Jackson will come to me for comfort.  He’ll rely on me every day for his every need.  He’ll observe me (and Josh), and learn from what we do and say. 

And I’ll respond.  I’ll comfort him and hold him.  I’ll be dedicated to giving him what he needs before he even understands the extent of how much he needs it.  I’ll be there with him every day, and I’ll work with him to help him grow and thrive.

And that’s how God loves us.  Just like Jackson will have an innate familiarity with me, I believe we’re born with an innate familiarity with God.  He created us.  We are made in his image.  He naturally draws us to himself.  

And when we acknowledge that familiarity, we naturally reach out to him.  We pray and share our hearts with Him.  We trust him to provide for us daily.  We read His word to understand what he does and says and to learn.  And we become more and more like Him.  And we begin to understand His love as we experience it.  And we begin to love Him back.

That’s as far as I’ve gotten.  Or Josh is bugging me to try his bacon, and I’ve also lost my train of thought. >_>

So today I had a follow up appointment for my eye (which I found out had an infection in the cornea last week).

As my doctor was looking at my eye, he asked, “Did you have a sore throat last week?”

To which I replied emphatically, “Yes!”   And then gave him a very confused look as I tried to figure out how he knew that.  Originally I thought it was allergies, so I took Claritin.  When that didn’t work, I drank a lot of hot tea for a couple of days, and it seemed to go away.  I had Googled if it was a side effect of my eye drops, but it didn’t seem to be.

So my doctor scoots his chair back and tells me he has good news and bad news.

The good news:  The antibiotic drop is treating the bacterial infection in my eye.  The infection looks better, but it’s not completely gone, so I’ll need to keep using the drops for another week.

The bad news:  I picked up a viral infection in the same eye last week.  He compared it to getting a cold in my eye and told me that it often affects both the throat & eye, but it lingers longer in the eye.  There’s nothing he can do to treat it.  It just has to go away on its own over the next 2 - 3 weeks.  And my eyes will remain highly sensitive to light until it runs its course.

So basically, I have a bacterial infection in my cornea and a viral infection in my eye right now.  I didn’t even know you could have both at the same time!

At least there’s a light at the end of the tunnel now… even if it’s making my crazy sensitive eyes water.