Back in the Land of the Living

It has been a challenging week here at Casa de la Funny Farm. I have been sick with a miserable affliction which I'd certainly never had before and I hope never to have to revisit. And when Mama's sick, the whole household suffers.

That it is hard to care for a 4 week old infant while sick goes without saying. I'm thankful that I have a thoughtful and kind husband who stayed home and put off his own work to help me. He took as much baby-duty as he could, and scrounged up food for us to eat, and kept the dishwasher full and running as well. Sometimes I just hate that I don't have family around to call on when I need them. I am quite thankful for a few very good friends who help, however.

Today I'm feeling quite a lot better (though still resting) and things are looking up.

A couple nights ago, in the midst of feverish insomnia, I had a whole blog post written in my head, and which I obviously should have gotten up and just typed out as I wasn't sleeping anyway, and it's gone from my head now. But perhaps it's just as well because things with seem perfectly reasonable during a feverish night usually turn out... not to be quite so reasonable.

I know it had to do with frustration at never being able to patiently bear my afflictions. I know it had to do with lack of trust in God-- while I may cognitively know that He uses all things for my good, I don't handle the difficult things very well. How many (many!) times has the Lord proven faithful to work out even the most distressing events perfectly, even to the point of making me thankful for them down the road (sometimes years later), and yet I still whine and complain and fall to pieces when things are difficult. And really, I don't suffer that much. In fact, really not at all. I am quite blessed and I have it really good and I can hardly expect to have no difficulties in this life, right? But I'm spoiled. So I complain and balk at the hard things. I should know that these things pass. Cognitively, I do. But I often don't feel it. So I guess I have to keep stumbling over this lesson for a while yet (probably a looong while cuz I'm kinda stubborn that way). I wish I could say I handled these things gracefully and patiently, but I don't. The truth is that I don't have it all together sometimes, and I fall apart in a hurry.

But I ramble.

On a different note, our little Evan Timothy is one month old today! One month! Now the months will just start piling up on him and will turn into years and... But let's not get all maudlin around here. He's a month old! At 3:00 this morning I had to change his diaper and he was grinning and making eyes at me like he was so happy to see me and life is just a great big middle-of-the-night party! I tried to get some pictures of his early-morning smiling when we were getting up for the day today, but at one month old the smiles are brief and fleeting. (And besides, the light in my bedroom was too dim for photos. ) But what a reward those little smiles are! This newborn time is hard. It's intense and exhausting. This time around I have some perspective and I know it won't last forever (or even very long), so I'm not struggling with it as much as I did when Jonah was a baby. But it is hard. And then come those smiles... and it's all wiped away in an instant. (Only, of course, to reappear an hour later when nap time rolls around again...)

After Evan gets his breakfast-in-bed in the morning and we sit up and get ready to start our day, I always sing the "Good Morning" song from Singin' in the Rain, just like I sang every morning to Jonah and my Mom always sang to us. Now Evan seems to expect it and he gets really still and looks at me, waiting for me to sing. When I start to sing, he starts to grin. It's... great. And now Jonah joins us on the bed for that ritual and sings with me and we giggle at the baby grins.

It's the little things.