Adventures in a Musical Mess

I'm considering changing my blog title (no not really!). But a "musical mess" is the accurate description of our home right now. Michael Paul has taken on several guitar projects lately. I think I have mentioned before that he has a side hobby/ business of restoring vintage instruments. I call it a side business because he always makes money on his projects - sometimes a lot. He is very talented and very knowledgeable. Like he knows what instruments to buy, what is a good deal, and how to restore them in a way that will bring the most profit. Sometimes he will find an old body of a guitar for a good deal then hunt down all the original parts and pickups (sometimes buying a whole other guitar simply to strip it of its parts) to put on it and then sells it. Other times he knows it will be better to just refinish the guitar and put new parts on it. Sometimes he does completely original work, like making his own pickguards and custom parts to give a guitar a more artsy look. And then he is always mindful of the exact tone he wants and hunts down specific pots, pickups, and capacitors (and other electrical stuff I don't understand) in order to get the exact sound he wants. Yes he is very talented. And it is a great way to bring in extra income. So I call it his side business. But I also refer to it as his hobby, because in truth, a lot of the money he brings in simply goes to finance his own collection of vintage instruments. (which is nice because he gets to do what he loves without us having to factor that into our real budget). He also has this annoying habit of buying a "project guitar" and then after putting so much time and love into it, he can't bear to part with it, at least not until he enjoys it himself for a few months (or years!). So yeah, it's a hobby as well. Still, he will always sell a guitar when he needs to.

Keziah posing by some of his recent projects

So part of the reason for so many projects lately is we are about to pay for a birth and new baby. While he loves these projects, I still think it speaks volumes to his character that he is sacrificing so much time and energy to help pay for this baby creatively rather than just dipping into savings. He is a wonderful provider. This gift to our family and new baby often goes unnoticed, written off as *just* a hobby. But it's not. It's a vital part of the way he provides for his family and I am truly grateful! (Even if I have been tripping over guitars strewn about our house!)

These two guitars have affectionately been named Professor Scratchy and Colonel Mustard

And this one is Deb, but I call her "the ugliest guitar to enter our house"

So that's one thing. But in addition, Michael Paul has recently been drafted to lead worship at our church once a month. He has always played guitar along with others to lead worship. But being completely in charge is a little out of his comfort zone. And being the perfectionist that he is, he is not content to pick a few easy praise songs. No, he has been going through every worship song and hymn he knows as well as new songs and putting a lot of thought and time into what he will use. He is pouring over the scripture we will be studying in the sermon in order to pick songs that fit with the message. He is considering the flow of the service, the willingness of the congregation to learn new songs, and the perfect key to play each song in. He is constantly asking me questions: Is this key to high for the girls to sing in? Does this sound right? Should I do this intro ..... or this intro? And he is simply unwilling to do those easy G-C-D praise songs unless he throws in some crazy jazz cords to give them some interest. So he basically writes his own arrangements of every song he plays. He leads this Sunday for the first time. I know his brain is not going to stop working on this between now and then. Honestly I think he works harder than he has to. I love the parable of the talents Jesus taught in Matthew 25. But I like to joke that Michael Paul isn't in the parable because he is the servant who was given five talents but not content to steward them to bring in five more. No, he wouldn't be satisfied until he brought in twenty more. Thankfully, he is getting a little better at giving himself some grace.

And he has still found the time to compose a special lullaby for this new little one like he did for Keziah. He's been playing it a lot lately and it is beautiful!

So I have guitars and guitar parts all over my house. I have sheet music strewn all over my kitchen table. The nesting part of me is going crazy because I am just determined to have a perfectly clean, clutter-free house when this baby comes. But deep down, I am truly thankful for the "musical mess" I am living in right now. I am so thankful for my husband. He is a wonderful provider, a truly gifted and talented guitar craftsman and musician, and blessed with a servant's heart that knows he is called to steward these gifts to the ministering of his family and church. I am blessed to have him as a husband. Our children are blessed to have him as a father.

Preggo Art Part II and a Poem

I am officially 38 weeks. The point in time when everyone starts saying, "oooohhh any day now huh?" Although I do think I still have at least two weeks left and probably longer. I am blessed (or cursed depending on how you look at it) with a family history of carrying babies past due dates. So I am still in nesting mode and it seems that as soon as I mark one thing off my dry erase board, I think of two new things to add to it. I have been incredibly productive this last week but still have some things that really need to get done. Thankfully, Keziah has decided to enter into a "preference for Daddy" phase. Perfect timing! Since she is content to hang out with him, I'm able to get things done more efficiently. We hope the phase doesn't end soon as it will certainly make things easier for me to recover and bond with the new baby.

We managed to snap a few artsy photos this week. We did this for Keziah's pregnancy too and I love them (link here). I think pregnant women are so beautiful. So as much as I hate having my picture taken, I know I will treasure these in the future.

I actually don't look that big in this photo but that is just the angle. I really do look 38 weeks pregnant in real life. I am blessed to not gain weight anywhere but my belly. I was not blessed enough to avoid the stretch marks this time! But that is what the retouch button on my iPhoto is for! ;)

More importantly than all the "nesting" preparations, are the preparations I am making in my heart, mind, and spirit. With both Keziah's pregnancy and this one, I find myself entering more and more into a calm meditative state as I approach birth and the meeting of this new little one. I find I begin to withdraw from people. I talk less. I pray more. I seem to notice things in nature more. I've found this to be true even with an active two year old! Today Keziah and I sat in the grass and admired acorns for half an hour. I showed her how to take the hat off an acorn and put it back on again. We soaked up sun. We were both at peace. I anticipate these moments becoming more frequent in the weeks ahead. One of my favorite things to meditate on is a little poem I stumbled upon toward the end of Keziah's pregnancy. I find myself reciting this in my head often these days. I will start to say it aloud to the baby soon.

Frail newborn wings

Small voice that sings

New little beating heart

Dread not thy birth

Nor fear the earth -

The Infinite thou art.

-Richard LeGallienne

My birthday and some math!

Today is my 30th birthday! Happy birthday to me! No I am not depressed. I actually feel just fine about entering a new decade. So as a present to myself I am up early enjoying some time not being a wife and mother and having fun with math. Vi Hart (my favorite math blog) recently posted some fabulous videos that not only are about math, but about my favorite part of math, the golden spiral and Fibonacci. And they are all about math in nature! Biology is my second favorite subject, but the study of plants seemed to be the most boring part of Biology. If only we had studied plants like this! Anyway, I do not know Vi Hart personally but I am considering these videos a birthday gift to myself. I repost here for your enjoyment! (Of course I realize most of you don't care but I'm posting anyway). Happy Birthday to me!

Part 1:

Part 2:

Part 3:

Christmas and Birthday

Well December has come to an end and we are just now catching our breath. December is a crazy crazy month for us. Between lots of extended family who live far away and want to see us for the holidays, a hubby who gets no vacation time (hospitals don't shut down just because it's a holiday ya know), squeezing in our own holiday traditions, and wrapping up the month with Keziah's birthday, - well let's just say the month was as exhausting as it was exciting! So here are a few pictures to give you a glimpse into our holiday.

Christmas eve at our house wasn't actually on Christmas eve since Michael Paul was scheduled to work. But it was just as special. We eat a special dinner, light our final Advent candle, read the Christmas story from Luke 2, and open a couple of presents. One of the traditions my parents did with us and I am continuing is getting new pajamas on Christmas eve. Keziah loved these and pranced around the house saying "I cute" all night.

After we put the little one to bed, it was time to play Santa - something I've been looking forward to for years. The best part is getting to be the first one to play with all the new toys. Michael Paul had to give that new tricycle a good test-drive.

Christmas morning came and we had quite the smorgasbord under our tree. This shopping cart as well as a new doll stroller were the big hits with Keziah.

I have to draw your attention to her "superman" attire. She got big-girl panties in her stocking and insisted on putting them on over her pajamas. It was really cute. You can also see she was taking off with some of the presents and a few of the wise men from our nativity! So adorable!

But the biggest hit has turned out to be the fisher-price english tudor house that was mine as a kid. If you are close to me in age, you probably remember this house. And yes I still had every single piece of furniture and all the little family. It is in great condition and I am so proud to be able to pass it along to my own daughter. It just delights my heart to see how much she loves it. She plays with it for hours every day.

And as for my favorite gift, Michael Paul made this fabulous mantle for our fireplace. (Our fireplace didn't come with a mantle which I have always thought was odd and I've been asking for this since we moved in this house a year ago) It was up just in time to hang our Christmas stockings from it. My husband is quite talented!

And we wrapped up the month with Keziah's birthday. Can you believe my baby is two? Wow, how time flies. Last year we had a muppet themed birthday party and Keziah would have been content to have another. She has become obsessed with the muppets lately. And to be honest, we are thrilled. We love the muppets too and they are way cooler than most tv characters that kids get into. So here she is modeling her new muppet jacket:

Doesn't she look big? We had a small celebration since most of our family couldn't make it this year. (We've pretty much decided that in the future we are delaying the official party until January). But I did make her a chocolate cake with a bear on it. She's recently latched on to a stuffed bear and gotten into reading Care Bear books. So we did try to pull in something other than muppets. She blew out her candle all by herself and dug into her cake.

We thought this shirt was all too appropriate for digging into cake. In case you can't tell, that's Miss Piggy on her shirt.

We wrapped up the evening with a few gifts.

Keziah opened so many gifts throughout the month, we were kinda worried she would come to expect this as a normal event that's supposed to happen every few days. She has enough new toys to last for the next year for sure!

A fun month! But we are thankful to be back in the calm normalcy of everyday life. I'm looking forward to a few peaceful weeks before our world gets rocked again. Our little bundle of joy is just a few short weeks away from making his/her grand entrance. Hopefully I'll get a pregnancy update out soon. And an updated belly picture!

It's beginning to look a lot ...

...LIKE CHRISTMAS!!!!!

Our tree is officially up and our house is decorated.

Thanks to all the 'help' from a certain eager little girl.

We have been enjoying the advent season, lighting candles in our advent wreath, reading our favorite Christmas books and watching our favorite Christmas movies. Keziah is old enough to really get into it this year. She loves our nativity scene and often reminds me "shhhhhh, baby sleeping." But my favorite part so far was her bringing me the baby Jesus yesterday and putting him under my shirt while informing me, "baby need nummies." This is looking to be the best Christmas ever! I can't wait to see her reaction Christmas morning.

Michael Paul and I have jumped the gun a bit and gotten him an early Christmas gift.

Look closely at his hand. That's not an ordinary wedding band. Yep, that's a tattoo.

So there are three tattoos in particular that Michael Paul has always wanted, but for one reason or another has never gotten around to getting. And one of them was to have his wedding band tattooed on his finger. He figured since that one was partially a gift to me, he should have it done first. And so he did. A little early Christmas present for himself!

There's some back story here if you don't know Michael Paul that well. Since he is a nurse, he is constantly washing his hands at work and his sensitive skin and allergy to all types of gloves make the skin under his ring really irritated. So he really can't wear his ring at work. Even at home, most of the things he found himself doing in his spare time, from chopping wood, to working on our cars, to woodworking on his lathe, were things he'd rather not do with his ring on. Even playing guitar sometimes it would get in the way. So basically he was constantly taking it off, setting it somewhere and losing it. Thankfully it has always turned up. But we would go many days sometimes wondering where his ring had disappeared to. Not to mention, now we have a little raccoon -um I mean toddler in the house who likes to take off with shiny objects and hide them places. Suffice it to say, it was annoying always trying to keep up with his ring. So he decided to just make it permanent in the form of a tattoo so he wouldn't have to worry about it as much. He does still plan to wear his wedding band when he can. But it's nice that there is always a 'ring' on his finger when he can't.

It's mostly a gift for himself, but it is partially a gift for me too. Symbols are really important to me. Maybe it is because I am a concrete sequential type personality or maybe it is because I find it difficult to articulate the things that are most important to me. But to me the ring is a beautiful symbol of all the mysteries of marriage I could never describe in words. So it always kinda bugged me that Michael Paul spent so much of his life without wearing his ring. It's not that I felt we were somehow less married. It's just that I really like seeing that ring on his finger every time I glance at his hand. And now I always will.

So that is our fun Christmas gift this year. We have a few small things for each other, but mostly we are excited about Christmas with Keziah this year. Kids really do make Christmas so much more fun!

Happy Advent Everybody!

Six Months and My Predictions

Well, I am officially six months along and into the third trimester now. I have to say I am a bit bigger than I was with Keziah at this time. That's a good thing. I actually had trouble gaining weight with Keziah. And I'm trying to maintain some kind of milk supply since Keziah is showing absolutely no signs of weaning anytime soon. But she is getting rather frustrated with my short supply. Whereas a short supply during pregnancy encourages many children to wean, Keziah simply sees it as a challenge to take on. She seems to be certain that she can bring in more milk by nursing constantly. So it definitely looks like we will be tandem nursing come February.

Speaking of February, I thought it would be fun to make some predictions just to see if mama's intuition is in any way accurate. I could be completely wrong, but it's still fun to guess. So here are my guesses and the somewhat weird reasons behind them. First of all, my birthdate guess is February 26. Partly because I have a feeling I will go past my 17th due date. But my main reason is this: So we have this little antique calendar thing where you have to flip the card everyday. Michael Paul got it at an antique store several years ago and we were actually very good at keeping up with changing it.

Anyway, when Keziah came along, it didn't get changed for a few weeks and then it just felt wrong to change it. December 28 was the day that changed our lives forever. In a sense, time stood still on that day. Neither of us could bring ourselves to change it. So it stayed at December 28 for a full year. We even packed it away like that and moved it to NC with us and then set it back out still saying December 28. Finally on her first birthday, we decided it was time to start changing the calendar again. And so we did. The only problem was that in our new house the calendar was on a desk in the hallway where we didn't always see it and so sometimes we would forget to change it. Then we both just forgot about it all together. Fast-forward to early June when I find out we are pregnant again. Of course one of the first things I did was get online to figure out what my due date would be, and we found out we were expecting a February 17th baby. Of course I immediately thought to myself, well it will be a February twenty-something baby. Several weeks later, Michael Paul happened to notice our little calendar sitting in the hallway. We hadn't changed it since Feb 26. Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe something deep down in us knew that that date would be another "time stands still" date and so we couldn't change it. So now our calendar sits at February 26. Thus my somewhat hokey reason for predicting that day.

As for gender, my prediction is a girl. For one, I've always felt like a 'girl's mom' and would be perfectly delighted to have a house full of only girls. Secondly, Michael Paul had a pretty vivid dream a while back in which he found out I was having a girl. Michael Paul is not one to have prophetic dreams or to have pregnancy dreams. I for one have pregnancy dreams all the time. Both with Keziah's pregnancy and this one, I've had several dreams and sometimes it's a boy and sometimes it's a girl. So I don't trust my dreams. But I'm going to bank on Michael Paul's since he has only had one and it was pretty vivid. And thirdly, my sister is predicting a girl, so maybe there is some twin intuition there as well.

And finally, my weight prediction is 8 pounds. I don't really have anything to go on other than the fact that Keziah was 7 pounds 10 ounces and I think this baby will be a little bigger.

So there are my predictions. I could be completely wrong on all of them. But it will certainly be fun to see how it all turns out.

Halloween Fun

Keziah really got into Halloween this year. She's really into giraffes and ballerinas at the moment, so naturally she went as a giraffe ballerina!

I just love the way her little giraffe tail flopped around on top of her tu-tu.

And I'm pretty confident she was the only giraffe ballerina this Halloween as I basically combined two costumes for her.

We enjoyed Halloween at the huge Fall Festival that our First Baptist Church puts on for the community. We don't actually attend FBC. A huge church isn't really a good fit for our family. (We really love the intimate feel of our small church.) But you got to hand it to the mega churches for their family events. They have the budgets and space to really put on a spectacular event. This festival had EVERYTHING! Keziah had a blast. So many firsts all in one evening!

Her first bouncy castle:

Her first Hay-Ride:

Her First Pony Ride:

This was especially a huge hit with her. She LOVES all animals. She's never met an animal she's afraid of. She just squeals with joy over the sight of any animal. When she saw the ponies, she went crazy. The hardest part of the entire evening was waiting in line for the pony ride. Check out how she is only hanging on with one hand because she had to pet the pony as she rode.

And it was over way too quickly. Michael Paul had to pry her off the horse, which resulted in quite the tantrum until we ran to the next bouncy thingy which was this huge slide. Then it was all smiles and squeals of glee again.

She would have happily done the slide by herself if she could have gotten up the ladder. But Michael Paul went down with her anyway. He actually had to hold her back when they got to the top or she would have just dove right off by herself. This child is not afraid of anything!

We went on to do some more bouncy thingys including an obstacle course that she got stuck in. So Mommy went in after her. Then Mommy got stuck. Let's just say those things were not meant for pregnant ladies in heavy winter coats. Then I was laughing at myself so much, I just couldn't get over the four foot wall and all these eight year olds are passing me. Don't you wish I had a picture of that. I eventually got out.

Inside the gym was a special pre-school area including this roller coaster thing: Another huge hit for her!

And a little ball pit:

We even got an official family photo. It's really bad. Next time we'll do the official photo first! But I'll post it anyway

And as we left we got a bag of candy. To finish off the evening, Keziah got her very first dum-dum sucker. A fun time was had by all!