My Ebenezer

We were at the park Sunday night (there wasn't an evening service at church) and Noah was enjoying the swings. I thought you'd like to see and hear his exuberance. The video is dark because the sun had just about set.

Saturday, Noah's nap lasted about 35 minutes. Not. Cool. Knowing I'd never make it til evening if we had to entertain Noah at home, we decided to head out to the beach. It was sunny and about 80 degrees when we left our house, but cloudy and 15 degrees colder at the beach. What on earth? Here are some pictures from our afternoon. Noah and I were trying to build a sandcastle. Can you tell I'm FREEZING? And again with the hair; I don't know what to say. :) Pouring the water for the sandcastle Showing me his shell he found Being himself. Excited about something! Carrying the water for the sandcastle. This pic should be first, but for some reason Blogger likes to rearrange my photos for me. :)

It just came to me why they call it a "bulletin." Because the points are in bullet format! At least I think that's why they call it a bulletin. Tell you what, if I'm wrong just let me continue thinking this is true, okay? Thanks. :) Anyway, since it's closing in on my bedtime and my brain is in a fog from this cold (why does a cold have the power to render a thinking person thoughtless?), I thought I'd give a few bulleted points of our life lately. Bullets , get it? So this is a bulletin . I told you I have a cold! Noah and I are still sniffling and blowing. I hope it goes away soon. Matt and Brianne have it too, so the whole Florida Rowley clan has been suffering some sort of upper-respiratory yuck. Between that and my pill I have been feeling pretty lousy. Only 3 more days to go of the pill. Don't know about the cold. Josh had today off which was fun! We had homemade waffles for lunch, went to the Salvation Army, took a nap (Noah and I did), Josh went t...

Have you ever heard a 20-month-old say these words to you? It'll melt your heart right out of your chest! And if that doesn't, the 20-month-old's giggling while you tickle him silly will . This is when parenting pays off. Noah and I have caught a bit of the sniffles. Hopefully we'll be able to chase them off with lots of liquids and rest. In the meantime, we're laying low and tickling plenty. :) Noah is really starting to put more words together. "Tickle me, Mommy" is actually a complete sentence! He also says: "More milk (or juice or whatever he wants), please!" "Ride, Daddy!" "Here you go" "I do that!" (ahh, independence) "Shoes on!" "Hug kid" (this means he wants to play with a kid) "Bye-bye Daddy!" All these phrases, along with adjectives like "big" or colors of objects have really expanded his vocabulary and his ability to get his point across. I used to think I loved the...

Boy, did we ever need a date night tonight! With the events of the past week~me feeling so crummy much of the time, Noah getting sick, impending IVF, developments in Josh's business~we just needed a break. A quiet break. So we arranged with Matt and Jen (thanks, guys for being okay with the last-minute nature of the evening!) to watch Noah so we could go out and TALK. We went to Bono's BBQ for dinner. Man food! :) It was very good and I was glad in the end we got to go there. Afterward we went for a FREEZING walk on the beach. I think we were there about 1.2 minutes; long enough to snap a picture and then beat feet back to the car. :) The wind was very strong and chilly today! We drove around for a while, went to the Fresh Market and bought some chocolate-toffee-covered pretzels for dessert, and ate them in the car while we enjoyed each other's company. We commented to each other that at that point it wouldn't have mattered if all we did was sit in a parking lot and wat...

Being such a beautiful day, I went out and laid in the grass for a few minutes after lunch. Noah found me! :)

Yesterday I had my big Orientation for IVF. I'd forgotten how much information there is to know and how much precise timing goes into everything! The appointment went well, including the two procedures they did (one ultrasound and a trial transfer) and bloodwork they took. Our next appointment will be April 2, and that will also be the day I begin the Stimulation Phase of this process. Depending how long that takes (and I was a slow-responder last time which may draw out that part) we may be looking at an egg retrieval sometime the week of April 12-17. Sometime in the next 2 weeks, Josh needs to go in for some bloodwork to prove he doesn't have HIV or Hepatitis. I also need to order my medications and the bazillion needles and syringes that I will be using. In the meantime, I have been instructed to quit all exercise as of April 2, except for light walking or swimming~nothing that makes me sweat or gets my heart rate too high. I went on Exercise Strike last week and most ...

How fitting that we should have studied that verse from Hebrews on Sunday. Who could have known what we'd face last night? God. That's Who! I awoke to the sound of Noah crying loudly from his bed at 1:30am. As soon as I entered the room I could tell something wasn't right, and as soon as I came close I figured out why. Noah had vomited in his bed! (Do you know me really well? If not, I'll jump in here to say that I am PETRIFIED of vomiting, no matter who does it. I can't figure out where this fear comes from, but it's been a lifelong battle for me.) So anyway. I got Josh to help by cleaning up Noah while I cleaned up the mess in his bed. I won't go into any details, because frankly, they've been replaying in my own head all day today, so why should I do that to YOU too? :) The entire time I was cleaning the bedding, my heart was pounding and I was working up a real panic. But at that time, the Lord brought to mind that verses we had studied on...

I used to believe that there was no such thing as a Parenting Handbook. I've commented to a few people that I wished Noah came with an owner's manual. Maybe he didn't come with a literal one detailing how his body works or how he learns, but I was overlooking the best one telling me how to handle him and how his heart works: The Bible ! The Lord showed me the other day through my Bible reading some of His heart of discipline for children. Look at the following passage: Ps 89: 30-34 "If his sons forsake My law and do not walk in My judgments, if they violate My statutes, and do not keep My commandments, then I will punish their transgression with the rod and their iniquity with stripes. But I will not break off My lovingkindness from him, nor deal falsely in My faithfulness. My covenant I will not violate, nor will I alter the utterance of My lips." Yes, the Lord does chasten with the rod! And He also tempers it with His lovingkindness and stays true to His faithfu...

Part of the suppression stage for IVF, which I am in right now, involves me taking a birth control pill for one month. I'd forgotten from the last time we did this how thoroughly nauseated this pill makes me! I was up from 2-5am last night with horrible nausea, and already feel gross again. Ugh. Last time the nausea lasted a week and then subsided, and I'm hoping it doesn't last any longer this time around. It was so bad last night, it made me question whether all this was worth it. And then I remembered Noah and all the similar trials we went through to have him. I think it was worth it!! Remind me of that if I wake again in the wee hours of the morning feeling green. :)

We're starting the whole In-Vitro Fertilization (IVF) process again as of this week. There, I said it. That's the bare fact, but there's so much more represented in the words of that sentence that I can't just leave it at that: There are a year's worth of seemingly unanswered prayers behind that sentence. Or maybe, rather, a year's worth of answered prayers! Depends on how you look at it. There is anxiety and dread behind that sentence, as well as hope and growing excitement. That sentence represents a two-month-long string of pills, shots, blood samples, and doctor's appointments. Hopefully, the Lord will give us our second child at the end of this. For those of you who are unfamiliar with IVF or have forgotten since the last time we did this (believe it or not, that includes me! I've forgotten more than I remember, I think!), I will give you a rundown of what we can expect over the next several weeks. I'm actually going to just copy the informatio...

The new koi pond at the zoo Noah loves to push the stroller when he's not in it. Josh standing outside the new Asia section at the zoo. Noah just wanted to get down! Remarkably, Josh took today off. The whole day. Off . I'm just going to let that sink in for a minute... :) Josh hasn't had a day off in....oh....about 6 weeks! (He's been working 6 days a week, so technically he has had Sundays off, but I think we would all agree that with the church schedules, Sundays are not really days off.) But I would be the first to say that he deserves a day off, and we had such a good time as a family. We had pancakes for breakfast, and then headed off to the zoo. What a gorgeous day we had! We spent the morning at the zoo, then went home for lunch and Noah's naptime. For dinner we went over to Matt and Jen's to celebrate Will's birthday, and then we went to church tonight. It was a very restful day that we all needed. I had joked that I was beginning to forget Jos...

Usually I don't mind the time changing in the spring or fall. I love the extra hour of sleep I get with the Fall time change, and I love the extra hour of sunlight I get at the end of the day in the Spring. However. This Spring the time change is beating me. I cannot get my inner time clock to change! I go to bed and lay there for an hour because I'm not tired, finally fall asleep, then when the alarm goes off in the morning I think "You've GOT to be KIDDING ME!" because it feels so early. I could use a nap in the afternoon too... Hopefully soon my body will catch up with the clocks and quit making me so tired!

Saturday night we had another installment of company come~the Donovan family from Connecticut, who are a very dear family to us. They have 6 children, ages 4 1/2 to 12 (2 sets of twins)! It was a very energetic, crazy, and FUN weekend! I'm starting to really love when people with kids come, since they usually entertain Noah (and vice versa). :) They came Saturday evening and stayed until 2pm today. It was so wonderful to have Don and Birgitta to talk to and get advice from! Jen and I grilled Birgitta Sunday afternoon about how to succeed at this wild ride we call parenting. She had some good tips, but mostly great encouragement that it does get better, that I am now in probably the hardest part of parenting, but it should get easier if I do my job well now. I was so grateful to have her to bounce my troubles off of, and get great feedback "from the trenches." Thanks, Birgitta! I also have to give a HUGE Thank You to Jen, who was a great help with all the meals. As you mig...

Funny, yesterday I posted about how Noah calls everything yellow, but can point out a color if you ask which one is green or blue or whatever. That was then! Now, overnight, all this color information has clicked, until now he can point to a color and get it right on his own! He still hesitates, and you can tell every fiber of his being wants to say, "Yellow!", but he'll stop himself and say the correct color. Which gets him tons of praise and a few tickles to boot! Maybe that's the ticket to potty-training?

I'm slacking lately. How's that for honest? :) What I mean is, over the last several weeks I've been letting myself get back in the habit of just "surviving the day" rather than being proactive in my parenting. My natural default is to send Noah off to play by himself for a while so I can have a break. Or to sit silently at lunchtime, eating my lunch and not talking to Noah. Or to ignore opportunities to instruct him and help him learn and instead go check my email or choose my items at the grocery store, with my only comments to Noah being, "I said , 'sit down in that cart!'" The truth is, I have a very high-energy little boy. The truth is, I get tired of constantly being "on" so to speak. But the truth is, I'm neglecting one of my most important jobs on this earth. And the truth is, I don't turn to Christ enough for my strength. This combination translates into bad parenting, frustration for me, and a disservice to N...

I'm so behind in my blogging! I can tell I am behind when I start dreading to sit down and blog; when I have to carve out a huge chunk of time in my day and Just Do It. I don't dread it because I hate to write, but because I have let too much time go by and now I have about a gazillion things I could say, but don't know where to start or how much to include or where to stop. And then I look over at some mounting house project, like the countertop ledge which is drowning in papers or my kitchen floor which is screaming "SCURVY!!!" and I start panicking. But you know what? Those projects will be there tomorrow (I know this because they were there yesterday), and there is a very real part of me that feels the need to document life, so I can temporarily ignore the house for the time it takes to catch back up on this blog. So where were we? First, Noah's vocabulary : In a word, it's astonishing . At least, to me it is. Maybe those of you with very vocal childre...

Excuse me, I have to yell for a second: NOAH SAID "PLEASE", FOLKS!!! He's been signing "please" for a long time, all the while being able to say other words which seem much harder ("Breeze", anyone? Seriously, he can say "breeze"!). Tonight on the way home from church I was handing Noah some Teddy Grahams in the backseat. He would say "More bears" and then sign the "please" part. And THEN! The sweetest sound in all the world at that moment, "More bears, please!" I could have kissed him to pieces! :) Just had to write that down.

It seems the Lord has provided a church location for Truth Baptist Church of Jacksonville! I was waiting til Jen posted about it, so I wouldn't be stealing their thunder or assuming that this was for sure. On Saturday, Matt and Jen asked about the possibility of using the Holly Oaks pool/club house for our services. Not only was it available, but it was by far cheaper than any storefront or office space they had checked into! And it's in a great location on a busy road CLOSE by to where we all live. As soon as we set a starting date we plan to have Sunday Morning services there, with Sun evening and Wed nights at Matt and Jen's new home (which they are supposed to close on this month). It's all starting to seem more real now. :)