Fall (ing to pieces)

I love Fall, it really probably is one of my favorite seasons. Only because I love Winter as well, and Fall makes me excited to leave the gross heat of summer and enjoy the wonderful snow and cold of Winter. I know, all you summer/south/heat lovers now know for sure I'm nuts and probably dislike me greatly. Sorry, Midwest/Northern born and raised and love the cold. Okay, I don't love -30 below with -50 windchills, but I do love Snow and Sleds and Skis and Mittens and Winter and Christmas. So Fall is just an encouragement that those things are in fact coming. Plus I love hooded sweatshirts and warm fuzzy pajama pants. And when it hits 50 or so, out comes that sweatshirt. The ones that now still fit that is. I'm finding I'm needed slightly longer things now to cover my ever-expanding baby belly. That's another reason to be excited for Winter, we just have to speed through Thanksgiving and Christmas as usual, spend January preparing and counting the days, and boom, baby in our lives. That's my hope anyway, that it will go quickly like that and I won't have to count every day going "really baby, let's go!". Optimistic I know.
Anyway, that detail aside, I love Fall, I'm excited to see the leaves change and to wear my hooded sweatshirts. I love the smell of Fall in the air. I know, it's dead leaves and smoke, but it still smells good! I love the anticipation, the sheer joy of it all.
In high-school/college the Fall was usually my hardest time emotionally. For whatever reason, less light, less nutrients,whatever, it was usually the time I would fall emotionally and spiritually to pieces.
But like the other many blessings my husband has bestowed upon me, he evens me out. He really does tend to keep me more balanced (only by God's grace I know and am thankful for). Mostly because he's pretty even-keeled and I'm well, not. So I'll get all worked up about something and he calms me down and talks me down. And really, after 3+ years of this, I really don't get as high-strung to start with. Now, let me stop and say that's God's grace and mercy at work in my life too. I've had to grow up a lot, physically, emotionally, and spiritually, since being married, and God has used that to grow me in His image. At least, that's my prayer. And I do see growth in Him in my life.
So this Fall, I'm anticipating Winter, loving the beauty around me, being so thankful for my steady husband, and am in awe of a God and Creator who loves me enough to keep me close to Him and grow me up to be holy and white as the snow to come.

Really?! What does this say about my parenting?!

News Flash:
We have a dog to give away, or in seriously need of some training. He's been a good puppy for the most part, a little high strung and hyper, but really, he's part terrier, what did we expect?
He loves to steal stuff and have you chase him, but he's been pretty obedient over all. Until this last week. We had him neutered a little over a week ago and ever since then, it's like he's possessed. And I don't know what to do with him. He's always loved to chew and if you let him, chew on you, but if you told him to stop or "NO" he would. Now, he just gets sassy and crabby and barks at you and really bites hard if you ignore him. This HAS to stop.
1. We have a renter upstairs who probably doesn't appreciate him barking all the time.
2. With the baby coming he can't A. Bite B. Steal Stuff C. Bark a lot D. All of the above. The correct answer is D.
3. He needs to obey!!!
We were at the grocery store on Sunday and he was in the car and when Andy went to get out of the car he jumped out. He's never done this before first of all, and secondly, he wouldn't come when we called!!
I think a lot of it is an attention thing, he wants to be chased, he wants to play, he wants attention period, even if it's bad attention. But this has to stop! I thought the neutering thing was supposed to calm a dog down, not have the opposite effect. Grrrr....I'm sooo frustrated!!!

PackRatitis

I'm creating my own word- PackRatitis- meaning having the disease of being a pack rat. Which I have tendencies to be, and my husband definitely is. Which can or cannot be a problem depending on how you look at it. But when trying to make room in a smaller house for a baby, it can be a problem. I've done a fairly good job of cleaning my stuff out of our "office" turned baby's room lately. So today, our day off, I'm being a taskmaster and begging Andrew to clean out his desk so we can move it out. Since it's raining and dreary out he's being kind enough to humor me. I've been feeling a bit overwhelmed by the amount of stuff we've accumulated since we got married especially and moved into a bigger than 3 room apartment. Somehow I think the stuff multiplies to fill the space you have. Anyway, I feel like we have tons of stuff, why do we keep it, what's it for, who really cares how much stuff we have? etc... And really, why can't we just toss stuff? Like my notes from college, do I really need 90 pages of notes about intercultural communication? You never know, maybe... gross, I disgust myself.

But then, I was cleaning off the top of the filing cabinet, trying to figure out where we are going to move the filing cabinet to, and wondering why it was endearing to me at one point that my husband loves music so much he seriously owns 300 cd's, and why do I have to be the one to move them to a new spot? When I found this:

Random I know. But it made me smile and kiss my husband. This seemingly pointless piece of a tree trunk that measures about 6 inches in length is a piece of our first Christmas tree as a married couple. Which has a wonderful story to it. First of all, had to have a real tree. No discussion. Secondly, lived in a teeny-tiny barely room for us apartment. Thirdly, we went so late in the day that it got dark, I got cold, I'm sure I cried at some point, but we got a huge honking tree out of the woods, paid the man, and made it home. Only to drag this, I swear 7-8 foot tree upstairs to our apartment and have to cut probably 1+ feet off of it. We made it though, and the tree took up about half of our 12 foot living room that Christmas. Seriously, there was room to walk by it, sit on the couch, and watch TV about 2 feet away. But it was real, it was big, and it was beautiful. And it made great memories for our first Christmas together.
And this little piece was part of what Andy had to saw off the bottom after we got it up into the apartment, and he decided to keep it. I couldn't figure out why, I mean seriously, sticky piece of wood sitting on the bookshelf in our apartment. I cringed and teased him every time I dusted around it. But he was stubborn and would laugh back at me and say something to the effect of "just leave it be". So I did, and when we moved to this house, it got put on the filing cabinet with the rest of his odd collection of stuff to keep.

Until today, when I decided to clean it off and move most of it to the top of the dresser which until now collected clothes and stuff the dog was trying to eat. And I found this piece of tree, no longer so sticky, and I didn't cringe, I was instead so thankful that my husband is thoughtful enough to care about the little things, to enjoy the little moments of our life together, and to keep a part of our first Christmas Tree. And even though we're probably still packrats, I have a lot of memories from the past 3 1/2 years that I'm reminded of in a lot of the "stuff" that we keep around. And honestly, I wouldn't trade them for anything, even more space.

Just a case of loneliness?

So Andrew (my beloved husband), has been working evenings this week filling in for someone who's on vacation. I enjoy having him home for a while in the morning, but that fact that he doesn't get home until pretty late at night is pretty hard on me. It shouldn't matter whether I'm alone in the morning or the evening, but it does for some reason. I can be so productive in the morning after he goes to work and before I go to work, but somehow at night I just sit and wait for him to go home and feel sad and try not to cry.

That sounds so desperate and needy I'll even admit how bad that sounds. But it's true. Before I was married, I could spend a whole evening alone and not feel an ounce of sadness. I definitely have some introverted tendancies to where I need some alone time, but not like this.
I know lots of couples who can work opposite shifts from each other or just go to bed before the other one, but I have serious issues doing this. I don't go to sleep very well and I love the time with my husband. I treasure deeply going to sleep with him and waking up with him. I think some of it is our desire when we were engaged of just being in the same town together, and we couldn't wait to be married, but yet, we treasured that for marriage, so now, it's soooo precious.

Anyway, I simply treasure even more the time I get with my husband and I'll be thankful when this is done, except he's doing it again in 2 weeks, and with his job it's always a possibility that these will be his regular hours. So I have some growing to do, and some dependance on Christ instead of my husband, except I love being dependent on him. I mean, not that I don't want to be dependent on Christ, just that I don't ever want to grow independent of my husband. I'm not sure how this will all play out when I'm a new mom and up late at night and he needs to sleep, etc... Okay, I have GOT to work through this!

Do we ever really do anything as good as Mom?

I scrubbed my kitchen floor yesterday, and I mean really scrubbed, like hands and knees and everything. Why I did this when my hips and legs are already killing me, I'm not sure, but I did. My one confession being that I don't clean under the fridge or stove in any place that we rent. You don't even want to know the gunk and grossness that lies below there from previous people. My justification being that it's not my crud so why should I clean up other disgusting people's disgustingness?! Of course now that I know how gross it is it will bug me for days that I skipped that part. I used to clean cabins/houses for a pretty good hourly wage, and yes, I cleaned under the fridge. So maybe if I got payed $13 for an hour to clean under my "rental fridge/stove" I would do it. Since I'm not, I'm going to have to feel a lot more guilty first.

I've decided I can no longer watch the news after the 6pm news. I have nightmares if I do. Like of little boys being stepped on by horses and houses on fire and it's just not good. I'm blaming it on my mothering instincts that are apparently now in full force. Which I decided yesterday when the dog got neutered and I almost cried because he was so scared being left at the vet's and I felt guilty for inflicting pain on him. Yes, it's for his and our good, but who cares?! He's my baby and we were letting him feel pain. Yep, mothering instincts are here.

Speaking of the dog, he loves toasted bread products. If you make toast, a bagel/english muffin, whatever, as soon as he hears the toaster pop up, he's at your feet tail wagging and making your life miserable. Don't sit down while eating said products, he'll either be on your lap or the back of the couch trying to steal bites on the way to your mouth. If you stand up and eat, he'll jump up on you for a while until you cave in and feed him some. Best to throw it far away to distract him for 5 seconds or so. It's his favorite thing, or so I thought until yesterday when we made eggs and he REALLY freaked out. Apparently toast comes in second to eggs, there's just no way to describe him when he wants these, he's almost human. Kind of like a demanding child...hmm...

And speaking of mothering, I made cream puffs tonight. Just for the sake that I had heavy whipping cream and decided to try. My mom makes incredible and amazing cream puffs. Mine were okay, too much work for 11 puffs, but they are good. Not like Mom's. Her's would be worth the work, mine are debateable. I wish I could cook/bake like my Mom. When she makes bread products, she doesn't use a recipe. Growing up it was, "well, put this much in and I'll tell you if it looks right." Great tasting, not so helpful for learning to cook since I have no concept of amounts or depth. Driver's Ed for example: "Turn your blinker on halfway down the block." That's great if I know what and where halfway down the block is, I still can't tell.

Anyway, I love my Mom, and I really wish I could be like her in more ways than cream puffs. I wish I could do most of my life as well as my Mom has done hers. My one consolation is that I loved my grandmas to death. My Grandma Otto (who has passed away) still makes me cry when I think of her and I can't compare her impact on my heart and life to anyone else. The consolation being that my kids will have just such and amazing Grandma Otto as well.

Not quite what I expected...

Today is my day off in the "middle of the week". My doctor restricted me to working 4 days a week after all the drama with the baby a while ago, and really, it's much appreciated! I really do need a day to rest up, it does me and the baby good. That's what I planned today, some coffee with an amazing friend, some lunch, some errand running, a walk with the dog, a nap, and maybe some cleaning out of the office/baby's room. Except since I'm pregnant I've seemed to lost my mind and totally forgot that I was supposed to go to a surprise birthday lunch. Which thankfully, I was reminded about at coffee so I still got to go. Except then my whole schedule was thrown off 2 hours and all I've got done on my list is the coffee, lunch out, and errand running. And it's almost supper time! grrr.... Maybe I will just go take that nap and worry about it all later. Because really, that's the point of today, to rest up!