Brooks' Baby Book

Just two weeks after Brooks was born, I began working on his baby book.  I knew from working on my pregnancy journal that I wanted something different and one of a kind. I had no idea when I started that it would end as a stunning, 5.5lbs, 327 page, 12 month labor of love. But it did and I couldn't be any happier with it!  However, it has set a standard that I now know will have to be met with each subsequent Hall baby and I am a little fearful of that as creating this with one babe in the house was challenging enough!  

I've received some requests after my posts of its progress and arrival on Instagram to share some of the content of the book.  Please know, I cannot take credit for the book in its entirety.  I scoured Pinterest and baby books in physical stores for hours seeking ideas for content and format.  I modeled the cover off one I particularly fell in love with off Pinterest one evening before Brooks was even born. Page by page it began to fall together...

A peek inside:

~ monthly journal entries to Brooks & a stats page with monthly picture
~ people who came to visit in hospital & pics of them
~ social media birth announcement & first birthday wishes
~ what things cost the year born
~ teething chart & teething habits
~ nicknames
~ professional pictures
~ first haircut
~ first holidays
~ first house & first nursery
~ doctors : delivery & pediatrician
~ immunization record & birth certificate
~ baby dedication attendees, cards, & certificate from church
~ first birthday invite & attendees

Along with 1200+ plus pictures of every day life, events, trips, and so on.  What would we do without an iPhone camera?! In the back I've also began taping in ticket stubs, voting stickers, first birthday wrapping paper, and so on.  I decided to close the book in my own way though, and wrote a letter to my future daughter in law.  Yes, it was as strange & difficult to write as you may imagine it would be! 

Behold, 12 x 12 inches of Brooks' first year of life in all its glory!

Book created and published by Blurb.

www.blurb.com

Fallen Mirrors

I could hear the tiny fists pounding against the mirror over and over. I scrambled into the closet and warned the sweet boy of his impending demise if he continued to play near the unanchored mirror leaning against the wall.

He looked at me blankly and ran off to play.

Days later, the same tiny fists began pounding the same leaning mirror. 

"No no Brooks, you can't touch the mirror. It will fall and hurt the baby." 

Each time the closet would be left opened he would wander in and the scenario would repeat. Again and again.  I would talk to him about the danger, remove him from the situation, and distract him with other activities. 

But each time, the desire to pound tiny palms against the mirror and look at the "baybee" drew him back in. 

Then it happened. One Saturday morning as we both stood there getting ready, the mirror crashed on top of him after tiny fists stopped pounding and started pulling instead.  It trapped him and scared him.  He cried out and I ran.  I lifted the mirror and scooped him up.  Soothing him, rocking him, comforting him in his disobedience that led to self inflicted pain. There was no "I told you so." No anger or snark.  No spanking or discussion.  

I sat there rocking him in awe as I realized God was teaching me about himself through my child.  About his heart as my father. 

God has told me no so many times in my life.  The no's have come in a plethora of ways. Warning signs, verbal reprimands, talks, questions, and sometimes flat out red flags that should have sent me running away screaming.  Yet every time I've ignored the no, disobeyed the command, when the mirror falls, He takes me into his arms and He comforts me.  He never tells me "I told you so." His love abounds despite my mistakes.  How deep the Father's love for me.  For us.  For my sweet Brooks who will need Jesus to comfort him when one of life's mirrors crashes down upon his disobedience. 

And yet again, my tiny boy, gave me a glimpse into God's love for me. He taught me a lesson that I hadn't fully grasped on my own.  How great the Father's love for us is. 

He Is Enough

Contentment.

My one little word for 2015. 

Two weeks ago our pastor challenged us to pray for God to reveal a word to us for the year that we would focus on.  It's funny to me how the mind plays tricks on us.  How we think we know what God will speak to us (which is totally hilarious that I would think I can predict God, who has proven himself to be completely unpredictable yet always perfect).  Someone please tell me I'm not the only one who tries to project things on God?! 

Anyways, contentment, my word, isn't what I would have expected. Discipline, maybe. But not contentment. 

Contentment wasn't on my radar because I'm not discontented. I wouldn't even say I'm not happy with my life or wish anything different.  Because I am, and I wouldn't.  So I began to pray for clarity about my word.  The one that just kept coming to mind.  And then the pieces began to fall together.

For the last five years, every year, something big has happened.  Some change, something new, something exciting, and at first, something traumatic.  New jobs, new houses, four pregnancies, one baby, and all in all, A LOT of BIG changes for us.  As 2015 approaches, I've found myself peeking around the corner waiting for the next big thing.  Is this our year to build a house? Will we buy instead? Are we going to try for another baby? All of these questions about the future and my ever nagging desire to squash uncertainty like a bug with a "plan." 

It was like God told me to simmer down. Be content. Be still. Enjoy the slow ride. Enjoy the now.  And I finally got it. It is like salve to the wound of the unknown. 

I started seeking out scripture on being content.  The Bible has so much to say about it. It covers so many areas of my life that I find myself in contempt of being content.  

"So if we have enough food & clothing, let us be content." 1 Timothy 6:8

"Yet true godliness with contentment is itself great wealth." 1 Timothy 6:6

"Not that I was ever in need, for I have learned how to be content with whatever I have." Philippians 4:11

This struggle with contentment isn't just mine. It's yours too.  We live in the culture of comparison.  Where we see perfectly staged lives, meals, children, outfits, homes, cars, etc on social media. We are bombarded with advertisements online of things we must have.  We are led to believe that we must have everything that we desire. And that if we don't get it, that we are being deprived of truly living. This lie is stealing my joy and it's stealing yours too.  Jesus Christ didn't come to give us abundant homes. Abundant closets. Abundant bank accounts.  He came to give us abundant life. Life that is rich and satisfying in a way that no online purchase, bank statement, or amount of square footage can give you.  

For the year, contentment is my focus. Living abundantly in Christ, not in purchases. Leaning into Him to be completed satisfied in all because He is Enough.  He is enough for me and He is enough for you.

Sleep Training

Dale uttered these two words to an older (childless) couple at church two months ago and they laughed.  They had never heard of such a thing.  Well neither had we people, but contrary to what most assume and what parents wish, babies don't teach themselves how to sleep.  And if yours miraculously did, please exit quietly and don't tell the rest of us because it won't make us admire you, it will make us want to punch you. In the throat. At 2am.

If this seems harsh it's because I am the one wanting to punch the parents of sleeping babies (although I really just want to grovel at their feet and beg them for their secret potion) at 2am while my kid is standing in his crib wailing to be rescued while I'm standing there talking to him like he's an adult. "No sir, we sleep in this house at 2am, we don't cry." 

Let me back up though... I feel like I should preface this "I suck at parenting" post by telling you how the first ten months of his life has progressed.  

As many the entire world knows, we struggled to stay pregnant. We could get pregnant, but we couldn't stay pregnant and that was hard.  It made for a long, emotional road to Brooks.  Once I was able to "stay" pregnant though, pregnancy was pretty fantastic for me.  Aside from the normal heartburn and the fact that I gained the entire body weight of a 1995 5th grader.  (Not a 2014 5th grader, because I've seen those kids and they don't look like we did.  Can you say bra?) I enjoyed being pregnant and for the most part spent months feeling like a kid on Christmas Eve just waiting for D day. 

Delivery day came and it was perfect.  I went in with one goal on my birth plan- GET THIS BABY OUT.  Birth plan success. They put this gooey little ball of love smack on my chest and in within 45 minutes he latched on and nursed like he'd spent the last 9 months practicing on a fake booby in the womb.  Motherhood came totally natural to me.  For the first time in my entire life I felt alive, like I was finally doing exactly what God created me to do. I couldn't care less in those days if I was sleep deprived.  Less sleep meant more time with the baby I had dreamed of my whole life.  The nurses on the floor kept offering to take him so I could get some rest but I refused each time.  I spent those first two nights looking at him, obsessing over his perfection, nursing his teeny tiny belly full, and completely soaking in the full meaning of grace, sacrifice and love.  We brought this tiny little bundle home and continued to live in each moment as he grew little by little.  I couldn't hardly put him down.  We spent those first three months in bed together just learning about each other.  We would play, nurse, nap, and watch endless amounts of Netflix together in those beginning days. At night, he would fall asleep on my chest and I let him stay there.  It was where he belonged in my mind.  He had spent almost ten months in my body, I would let him spend the next six beside or on my body. Dale was completely smitten with him and completely against him sleeping anywhere else than with us.  It was in those moments I learned just how perfect he was for me as I watched him embrace fatherhood.  




Anyways, I say all of that to say this...I totally bombed teaching my baby how to sleep.  When he was 15 days old and I was awake with him at 1am, 3am, and 5am I was so thankful for him that I enjoyed those still nights and thought, I know one day I will miss these.  I just didn't know that I would still be "enjoying" them ten months later.

At 7 months we had finally reached our night waking quota.  I hadn't slept a solid eight hours since before I delivered.  I was spent.  

(Why not give Daddy duty every now and then, you ask? Oh, because I forgot to mention that we were so successful at nursing that Brooks has refused any kind of artificial nipple/pacifier since birth.) 
(You're probably thinking that was another thing I bombed.)
(But I don't.)

So we did the research and decided on a modified version of the big bad cry it out method.  The first night happened by accident.  And by accident I mean I put him in the crib crying because I thought I may actually runaway for the night if I didn't. He cried for 22 minutes.  It was BRUTAL.  I won't sugar coat. It was so bad I actually threatened Dale that if he didn't back away from the door I was going to latch Brooks onto his nipple for the duration of the night and lock myself in the spare bedroom.

Night #2, he cried for 3 minutes. 
Night #3, 30 seconds.
Night #4, no tears.

On these nights he would sleep 7pm-4/5am. Nurse. Back to sleep until 6:30/7am. HALLELUJAH! We did it!  Holy crap. We waited 7 months to do this? We are such first time parents. Total rookie mistake.
 
And it lasted for, eh, a month? And then came teeth.  And then came sitting up in crib. And saved the best for last.... standing in the crib!  All of these things allowed me to offer an excuse for him.  I wasn't going to expect him to sleep through teething pain so we've allowed all of the sleep crutches to slide back in.  

Which brings us to now. June 2014. Brooks is closing in on ONE and I still have yet to sleep a solid 8 hours.  Alas, here we are sleep training again.  Night #1 was good, Night #2 was bad. Tonight is Night #3.  It's a totally different ball game with a baby who can stand.  So no more crying.  Now it is coercing him to stay on his back, with his puppy dog in hand, and a thunderstorm in the background.  

 Three things sleep training has taught me that you need to know:

1. DO NOT ask new parents if their baby is sleeping through the night.  The AAP considers sleeping through the night a 6 hour stretch. I don't know about you, but 2am is not morning in my house. So a baby who sleeps 8-2, is not REALLY sleeping through the night. New parents feel like a sleeping baby is a badge of honor and therefore may actually lie to you and say their baby is sleeping through the night so you think they're a good parent.  True story, I read that in a Parenting magazine.  By that standard, I am a bad parent. Oh well.

2. DO NOT tell a breastfeeding family that they should feed their baby formula, baby cereal, or solid foods so their child will sleep through the night.  This is false information.  Brooks has been eating three solid meals a day of regular non-pureed food for 2 months now plus nursing on demand.  He is FULL, and still will not sleep 12 solid hours like "the internet" says he should.

3. DO NOT offer stories of all of the wonderful parents you know whose baby has been sleeping in their own bed, for 12+ hours, since coming home from the hospital.  This story is crap anyways and that family is lying to you.  Ok, I kid.  That story may be true. If they're buying stock in Benadryl.  Regardless, sharing other people's success stories is not encouragement.

What I've learned about pregnancy, childbirth, a raising a baby is this... everyone struggles somewhere.  Some can't get pregnant, some have horrendous deliveries, some have nursing struggles, some have sleep struggles.  We all struggle somewhere.  If we could encourage each other based on our own strengths I think we could really help each other.  So next time you see a new Mom struggling, be an encourager to her...don't antagonize her. She may be sleep deprived and since she can't shake her baby, she may shake you.

Spirit Lead Me

This post is a long time coming. Some nights I lay in bed trying to fall asleep and I write these posts in my head and tell myself that I will actually type it out tomorrow and post.  And then tomorrow comes, but the post never does.

I realize I posted a lot about our infertility struggles and then stopped when pregnancy finally came for us.  I feel a bit guilty for this...like I cried out in pain but never in joy.  This wasn't my intention, it's just that my labor or love then became a 120 plus page pregnancy journal which I printed after Brooks was born. Something that I knew would be tangible and not just words floating around the internet that people may or may not even want to read.  Now, catching up on pregnancy, delivery, and ten months of life seems daunting and so I'm going to skip it.  A quick trip to my Instagram can catch you up on that. 

I've never been quite sure what I wanted out of this blog or what my purpose was for it.  A lot of times it's been a place for me to share in my journey.  A place to unload my deepest emotions and lay them bare in desperate hope of healing.  Then after becoming a Mom, I wondered if there was a place for me as a Mommy Blogger.  I had plenty of funny stories of the misadventures as a new Mom.  Ones that I would type in quick notes so I wouldn't forget them. But who has time to blog when you can instead spend your days staring at your baby? Not me.  I would read other blogs. Single girls. Older Moms. New Moms. Newlyweds. Baby blogs. Lifestyle blogs. Christian blogs.  Still not sure of where I fit I continued to put it off.

But enough putting it off. Enough worrying where I fit. The only thing that matters is that I continually feel led to write and I constantly ignore the leading coming up with any excuse. So today I'm jumping in. I just needed to type something and hit publish. So here it is. I don't know what is to come, but it is coming. 

Lefty Life Lessons

I am constantly amazed at how a change in perspective can teach you a lesson.

 

Today, as I was working on my Malachi study, but the fabulously hilarious Lisa Harper, I was given this fresh outlook on why God makes us wait for things.  Things that take a long time to be created and even in the end of the wait, don't come out looking like what we'd hoped for or expected.

 

The activity was to write Romans 5:1-5 out on note cards.  Eh, that's easy enough.

 

 

Except you have to write it out with your non-dominant hand. So for me, left.  (I now have the mark of the lefty for the rest of the day-pen smudge on my pinky) Huh, well isn't this going to be interesting. I knew it would be difficult, but I didn't expect it to be so time consuming, and even more surprising, painful.

 

Writing 5 Bible verses with my left hand was legitimately painful. My neck was cramped from the tension of forced concentration (right hand writing is natural, left is forced), I was flushed in the chest (common symptom of mine that relates to stress, frustration, or anger), my hand was sweating and beginning to ache, my lower body started to feel funny as I realized my posture was completely out of whack because I didn't know how to hold my body, let alone my hand.  Then my feet started tingling! Don't ask me how my feet relate to my left hand, but somehow they did. Or maybe God just wanted to throw in the extra tingle for dramatic punch. (He's good like that) When I finished, I looked up at the clock and it had taken me 16 minutes to complete! Woah!

 

As I was writing I kept thinking, I wonder how long it will take me to write it out with my right hand?

 

So after a bathroom break (hey, Baby Hall is the boss) I returned to try it again with what is comfortable for me.

 

5. FIVE. Did you hear me?! FIVE minutes later I was finished! My hand didn't ache, my chest wasn't flushed, my feet weren't tingling, but I was finished. Why on Earth would a righty ever attempt to write something with their left hand? The truth is, they wouldn't. I wouldn't. You wouldn't. Why? Because it's too time consuming. It takes extra effort. Concentration. Posture change. 

 

Ah hah.

 

It was so clear to me (unlike the letters on my left handed verse) that God intentionally takes us out of our comfort zone so that we can learn something about ourselves, about Him.  He knows we need a slow down. Something that allows us to take the attention off the prize of perfection and realize that it doesn't always have to be pretty, or perfect, or legible. It just has to be real. My normal handwriting or my lefty handwriting neither one change the words of the verse. They have no effect on God's words. Just like the wait doesn't change the fact that God loves us and that His best intentions are for us. It just means that sometimes, we need to slow down to appreciate the process and know that when the ending isn't our idea of perfection, that God's Word and his word are still true for us. 

 

Sometimes God makes us sweat. Makes us tingle. Cramps our lifestyles and changes our focus. His intentions are never to hurt us, but to strengthen us.

 

Romans 5: 1-5

Therefore, since we have been made right in God's sight by faith, we ahve peace with God because of what Jesus Christ our Lord has done for us.  Because of our faith Christ has brought us into this place of undeserved priviledge where we now stand, and we confidently and joyfully look forward to sharing God's glory.  We can rejoice, too, when we run into problems and trials for we know that they help us develop endurance. And endurance develops strength of character, and character strengthen our confident hope of salvation.  And this hope will not lead to disapointment.  For we know how dearly God loves us, because He has given us the Holy Spirit to fill our hearts with His love.

Trust

God says trust.

Psalm 62 keeps sticking out to me.  David wrote this Psalm and to me, He is one of the most relate-able bible characters.  I think because he really loved God, he just lost the battle between flesh and spirit so often.  I feel a lot like David most days.  Wanting so desperately to be this spiritual giant for God. Campaigning for what He's done in my life.  I want the work I do to be purely for Him and His glory and not my own but I struggle with pride and wanting the praise of mankind when I should only be seeing the praise of my God. My Savior.

Lord Jesus I pray that you take the focus off me and place it on You.  I beg that my life be glorifying to you.

My words.

My actions.

My thoughts.

My dreams.

I wait quietly for you God, my victory comes from You.

You are my rock.

My salvation.

So many enemies...

 

Satan.

My own brain.

The world.

All trying to kill me spiritually, mentally, emotionally.

My hope is in you, Lord.

I will not be shaken.

By doubt.

By fear.

Victory alone comes from God. I will trust you at ALL TIMES. Even when it's hard. I will pour my heart to you, my refuge.

Oh Lord, you know my anxious heart.  You hear my thoughts and prayers.  The deepest longings of my soul.

Jesus I give it all to you.
I owe it all to you.

I need rest that can only come from You.