Introducing…

I would like to introduce you to our son, Shiloh James Rush.  He’s due on November 20th, 2008.  Shiloh is the name of the first place the Arc of the Covenant and the Tabernacle came to rest in the Promised Land.  It was the place the prophet Samuel was given to the Lord and raised under the care of Eli.  It represents God’s peace and rest.  We chose James in honor of my dad, who passed away ten years ago this November (the month Shiloh is due in).  James Taylor was his favorite musician and I can remember listening to his cd’s over and over again while riding in the car with my dad.  Now when I sing “Rock-a-bye sweet baby James”, it’ll take on a whole new meaning.

If you are having a hard time seeing him in the picture, you are looking at his whole body profile (view from the side).  His head is the white circle on the left, his arm curls in under his face and his leg is the line on the right.  He looks like he has chubby cheeks just like his older brother and sister did.  He weighs in at only 12 ounces right now, but he’s growing fast.

The Conclusion is…

It’s a BOY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  That’s right, the baby has definite boy parts.

And in other news…we’ve sold our house - pending inspection and appraisal, of course.  What a day for the Rush Family!!!  After only two weeks on the market we got a full price offer.  I think God wants us to move as much as we do.  He’s totally taking care of every single detail of this move.

So now we just have to pack up our house and choose a baby name.  Any suggestions?

Girl or Boy???

Tomorrow’s the day!  The big ultrasound day!   So, girl or boy?  What do you think?

Sappy Mommy Moment

Any parent, and most non-parents, should appreciate this.

For our 7th anniversary I made a cd for my husband full of songs that are about our stage in life. I first did this a few years ago, and I just made a second one this year. We were listening to it tonight at dinner and there are a few songs on it about daddies and daughters. During one such song Ellie turned to Colin and said “You are going to miss us when we grow up and move away.” And Colin said “Yes, I will. Very much.” Then she just blurted out “And I’ll be sad too. I know because when I said it tears came in my eyes!” And sure enough, her eyes were welling up with tears. How he’ll ever give that girl away I don’t know.

Maternity Clothes

When I see pregnant women I think, “How cute!  I wish I could be that cute in maternity clothes!”  I’m not sure how they do it.  I went to Motherhood Maternity this weekend to exchange some clothes I thought were too big.  So, I retrieved the capris and shorts in a smaller size, went into the fitting room and realized that I could barely squeeze myself into them.  There would be no growing with those pants.

And then I realized that when I am pregnant I am officially a non-size.  Halfway between one size and the next.  So, I am left to wear the bigger and more comfortable size.   And no amount of growing makes those big clothes look good on this pregnant body.  They say “You’ll grow into them”, but I won’t.  I am destined to look horrible in maternity pants - like I’m a high school skater, or like I’m wearing Depends.  I spend all day hiking them up only to have them bag and sag when I walk.

However, I love maternity shirts.  They are cute and make me feel like I’m actually pregnant.  And they are making them so well now that they no longer feel like I am wearing big garbage sacks or mumus.  So, maternity clothes industry, kudos on the great shirts, but get to work on those pants.  I’m tired of looking like I’m starring in the Saturday Night Live skit “Oops, I Crapped My Pants”.

Tales of a growing belly

I had a doctor’s appointment today. I’m trying to get my head around this baby thing. I heard the heartbeat. I listened to the advice. And yet, I am still having a hard time understanding that I actually have a growing human in me.

However, if I had any doubts, they are gone. My pants don’t fit. My shirts don’t fit. Some of my pajamas don’t even fit. My belly is growing, and it’s growing fast. There is no doubt, even from passersby on the street, that I am definitely pregnant. 16 weeks and growing.

So, I thought I’d finally share some of the crazy pregnant stories that I haven’t felt good enough to share yet. Most of them only moms will understand. Like how I went to a friend’s house for dinner last week and grabbed a piece of bread with butter on it. There must have been some kind of drug in that butter because it tasted so good I just wanted to take a huge spoonful of it and eat it like cookie dough. Or how I can’t get enough meat. Sausage. Steak. Roast Beef. Sloppy Joes. Hot dogs. Anything meat-like, I have to have it. Or how I put my kids down for a nap today, laid down to rest and didn’t wake up until my son came in the room three hours later and said, “Mommy, I think it’s time to get up.” Or how I cry every time I watch 7th Heaven, listen to country songs about daddys and their children or say hi to my mom as she walks in the door. I can’t help it. It’s like the hormones come streaming out of my eyes.

I am also having trouble making my brain work correctly. Two people talking to me at the same time was once easy for me to deal with. After all, I’m a multi-tasking mom. But my mind just shuts down now if there is to much input. Packing is almost impossible. The job is so big my mind cannot handle it. I don’t know what to put in a box and what not to. I think I’m making my house messier by trying to de-clutter and pack up unnecessary stuff.

I’m sure there will be more. Going to the bathroom 20 times an hour, dropping things, tripping, waddling around like a duck, eating an entire watermelon and 12 hot dogs on the 4th of July… It won’t end until November. Like the presidential campaigns.

Going Home

I have finally been cleared to talk about this.  I’m going home.  Or, what I consider home.  After a very hard year for our family, my husband has gotten a new job at his old high school (where he used to teach, not where he went to school) and we’re moving our family back home.

I can’t even begin to express how excited I am to be moving.  We have met some wonderful people here and Colin will definitely miss his job, colleagues and students; however, this is what we need.  It’s what I need.  It’s what my kids need.  Family, friends, familiar places…we have missed you all and are so excited about returning to the very place we left not even 12 months ago.

To Stephanie, Christie, Nicole, Leah and all the other amazing people we have shared life with up here - Thank you for walking us through this year with grace and compassion.  We have had a hard time here (and some very fun times) and we appreciate how you welcomed us into your families and were so willing to help in our times of need.  Especially in these last few months.  Our family would have been lost here without all of you.  You have been our church, our friends and our network of support.  Thank you for considering us part of your families.  We will miss you.

To those of you in Vancouver…see you soon.  We are so very excited to be Thunder again, to live near a Win-Co, to have family within a 15 minute drive, to have a MOMS group (and a whole metro area) filled with friends to once again raise our kids with.  My list of things I am excited about goes on and on.  Most of all, I am excited that the Lord provided the perfect opportunity and the needed time to give us the confidence that it is His will, as well as ours, leading us home.

Anyone want to help us move? 

Thank You All

I have been asked to update you all on how things are going here.  First, I want to start with a laundry list of thank you’s.  Thank you, first and foremost, to all of you who have been praying for me.  I would not have made it through this time without you.  I don’t think anyone will ever know (including me) just how much your prayers carried me through.  Thank you also to those of you who encouraged me.  The emails, comments on my blog, phone calls and cards we all wonderful.  It’s good, when you feel isolated, to know friends are out there caring about you.  Thank you to those of you who made dinners for us.  All of you from Olympia to Vancouver to family who stayed with us, dinners have been more of a blessing than you can imagine.  It’s just one thing I cannot handle right now, and your generosity has truly blessed our family.  And thank you to all of you who came over and took care of me and my family while I have been so sick.

Then last time I blogged I was in one of my lowest times of my entire life.  I felt hopeless, alone and very overwhelmed.  I found myself at a point of not being able to function at all.  Luckily, I have an amazing husband who stepped in and rounded up family and friends to come to take care of me and my kids while he worked.  Somehow God gave him the strength and energy to work long days, take care of me, and do all of the things around here that I usually do.  He does the dishes, gives the kids baths, takes them to church, goes grocery shopping when necessary and does the entire bedtime routine with the kids.  He has also been seen doing laundry and putting milllions of toys away.  And he has managed to do it all with an amazing attitude and a constant smile.  He is eternally patient and giving.  What would I have done without him?

Like I said, he called in family and friends to help.  And those family members and friends are angels.  They feed my kids, get them dressed, deal with their little person drama and do everything I used to do as a healthy mom.  They even took care of me, cleaned my house and made us dinners.

As for me, I found myself without anything to cling to.  So, I went away.  Family came and I packed a bag and got myself to the nunnery.  Literally.  I spent three days at a Benedictine Priory near where we live.  What an experience.  They call what I did a “personal retreat”.  And what a retreat.  The sisters want each person who visits to be able to hear from God in the way they need, so you are left very much alone.  I had a room with a bed and a sink and a bathroom down the hall.  Nothing planned, no distractions, no one to talk to.  Just me and God left to wrestle like Jacob.  I spent a lot of the time sleeping and throwing up (after all, I am very pregnant), but the other time I spent reading Beth Moore’s book “Get Out Of That Pit”.  I was a little hesitant of easy Christian answers, but that’s not what it was at all.  God spoke to me directly through that book and restored my hope in a way I cannot even explain.  Those three days were extremely boring, very hard, and life-changing.  Since then, God has been continuing to work on my heart and head, and he’s slowly bringing me back to living in truth and hope.

So I came back from that with hope, a renewed outlook, and an extremely queasy stomach.  Just because I felt better emotionally, didn’t mean I felt better.  I’ve been sick.  Really sick.  Worse than with either of my other two pregnancies.  Let’s just say, if I only throw up once in a day, it’s been a good day.  And even though I’m almost 13 weeks, the sickness is still going strong.  We are hoping for it to end after 14 weeks, like it did with both my other kids.  I could still use prayer for that.  We still have people helping, since I get sick and tired easily, but I really am doing better overall.

I’ll keep you updated more regularly now - since I’m no longer zombie-like, and I have a little more energy.  Thank you to everyone out there who cares about me and is praying me through this.

I need prayer

This pregnancy is not like either of the other ones I have experienced.  I am struggling with morning sickness all day, yes.  And I am tired, yes.  But I am also fighting major depression.  Depression like I’ve experienced before.  It’s like I can look at my life from the outside in and see what’s going on, but I don’t know what to do about it.

Once, when I was given strange anti-nausea medicine at the hospital, I had a true and scary panic attack where all I could think about was how horrible life was going to be.  Every thought was doom and gloom and misery.  It lasted about three minutes until I finally called a nurse for help.  I feel like I live inside those three minutes right now.  And I don’t know how to change the thoughts in my head, but I know I need to.

My husband is on spring break right now and he’s taking care of our kids.  But Monday is coming.  And I’ll have to do it.  Right now I could sleep all day and all night - except for the hour I lay awake in the middle of the night unable to fall back to sleep.  I cry a lot, about everything.  But mostly about feeling alone, feeling out of control, and feeling like somehow I am being punished.

Some people ask why I blog about such serious and personal things.  For me, it’s because I have no one to talk to about it.  I feel very alone.  So this is my only way of reaching out.  Family, friends and all those I know I can count on are very far away and the friends I have here are either busy or dealing with their own set of stuff.  So, this is my outlet.

In the end, I just need prayer and help.  So, I am asking for both.

Oh, the misery…

A few of my friends have been blogging about this lately, so I have decided to join the conversation. A few weeks ago my husband and I got a very unexpected Easter surprise. Things were going peachy keen and I was planning a trip to California for April, a Trip to Minnesota in June, a trip to Maine in July and a trip to Paris for the summer of 2009. And then it didn’t happen. You know girls, the thing that happens every month didn’t happen. For eight days it didn’t happen and I began to panic. So I told my husband. And he began to panic.

I went grocery shopping and decided to get a test…just to see. I honestly didn’t think it was possible that the test would be positive. Contraceptives should be reliable. And I have plans. And I get sick, very sick, when those tests turn out positive. Well, it did. It was positive. And contraceptives are not reliable. And my plans will be different. And I am sick. Very sick.

So, I am going to have a baby. A new one. In November. And the misery of the first trimester has begun. If you can imagine how horrible morning sickness could be, apply that to the whole day and you would have the first trimesters of both of my past pregnancies (and now this one). I know one day I’ll be excited about this baby. I know babies are blessings. I know these weeks will pass. I know all of those things because I have two kids already. However, I also have to take care of those two kids while being sick and home alone and some days I wonder just how long this can last and just how long I can take it.

Kids are hard to raise, especially when they are in your uterus.