July Pictures

Such a nice brother.

Happy 10th Birtdhay to Ruby!  Her friends decorated the lawn!

Bryce Canyon Porter Reunion.  It was so much fun!  We loved being with our cousins!

Simon's awesome outfit.  Light sabers, hero cape, snake around the neck, belt, scarf.

Ruby got a week of horse riding lessons for her birthday.  She was in heaven!

Humbled

This post has been swimming around my mind for weeks.

A combination of busyness, fear, and not knowing exactly what to write or how to say it have kept it from reaching print.

It is not a comfortable season to have my weaknesses continually before me, creating seemingly impassable stumbling blocks each time I make a commitment to work a little harder, sacrifice a little more, be a little better, overcome another bad habit.

But I know that it is important, a gift.  A chance to be humble and let the Lord help make weak things become strong. 

I feel so, so weak.

It is hard to have hope that I could ever be strong in these areas that have haunted me my whole life. 
It is hard to fight off the feelings that I am entirely responsible, that I have to do it on my own. 
It is hard to know what to say when people say, "How are you?"

"Actually, I've been fighting dark thoughts and personal demons on an almost constant basis for several weeks."  Somehow that just doesn't come out.

So instead I say, "I'm fine, how are you?"

And really, I am.
 I AM happy. 
I have a great life and lots of little things to make me happy. 

But I AM hurting.  I am hurting inside with fear of losing control or fear of hurting someone I love or fear that I will never be able to take care of this body and this home and this family in the ways that I know to be ideal.

I am hurting physically.  I stand up and it hurts.  I move and it hurts.  If I do anything strenuous, I pay for it the next day.  I am always so, so tired. 
And my baby has stopped sleeping through the night and I felt that getting sleep was my one saving grace.  The one thing keeping me sane. 

I am feeling abandoned by my husband who is hurting in his own ways and cannot bear for me to be having problems.  I know he does not mean for me to feel this way.  I know he may feel similarly abandoned by me.
It is just so hard when we are both struggling at the same time. 

I feel lonely.
But I know I am not alone. 
I am not alone.

One night as I lay half-asleep between night wakings of sick kids and husband I felt the Spirit whisper:
"Do not be afraid, trust me, everything will be okay."

Another day I felt myself slipping into despair and the thought came, "Get back into the light."
And I did.

And sometimes when my body aches, I can actually feel thankful for it, knowing that each little twinge of pain is a chance for me to think of Jesus and what he did for me. 

When I drove our loaded down van through canyons to get to our family reunion I thought there might be some guardian angels keeping that old beast running for us long enough to save up for a car that actually fits the family. 

I hesitate to post about this, but I sense that there might be someone else out there feeling the same way who  might need to know that they are not alone either. 

...

At Three

She can go potty all by herself.
She can fasten the top buckle of her carseat.
She can brush her hair.
She can fold towels.
She is learning to follow a chore chart.
She loves babies and puppies and ponies.
She is learning her colors.
She likes pizza and pasta.
She loves to play with her "fens" (friends).  Her favorites are Adella, and cousins "Mewin" (Merin) and Maggie.  She also loves Ruby, Daisy, and "Timon" (Simon).
She likes to sing and dance.
She likes to hold bugs and worms.  She'll baby them and carry them around until they are pretty much dead.  Sometimes she'll even play with them after they're dead.  She grossed out Daisy one day by carrying around a dead fly she found in the swimming pool.  She thought it was "cute".
She is more demanding than she was at two.
She is a big girl, but she is not big enough to give up her pacifiers.
She tried it.  She snuggled her seahorse and her puppy for several days. 
But she quit sleeping.  She would get to the point where she was so desperately tired and say, "I don't need my seahowse and my puppies anymowe.  I need my pacis."
And we would try to talk her through it.  We'd tell her that we knew it was hard, but we wanted her to try.  We didn't want her to have weird teeth and she was a big girl who could fall asleep without pacis.
"I not big!  Me yittow!"
We held out for several days, trying to comfort her in any way possible.  We dealt with grouchies and tantrums and late nights and no naps. 
But one night at midnight, we had all had enough. 
As I went in to tuck her in yet again, I sneaked a couple of pacis onto her bed without her seeing me.
A few minutes later, I heard her call me yet again.
The pacifiers were nowhere to be found. 
She had a big smile on her face.  She handed me her toys. "I don't need my seahowse and my puppies."
"Why?", I asked
"I fine my paci's!" She announced as she pulled them out of her lap.

The seahorse and puppies have been put out of reach but not out of sight.
Maybe she'll be ready at 3 and a quarter or 3 and a half.

Cause, after all, 3 is still pretty yittow.

...

He's just so cute!

Going through pictures for my other posts I came across some shots I just had to share.  We're just enjoying him so much! 

 Thanks, Aunt Melissa for the adorable outfit!

May 21st

 That belly makes me think: "Gus-Gus."

 She's still great at being Mommy #2.  Here she's reading her first big novel: Smells Like Dog.

 Cousin Decker who is a couple of weeks younger.  Finally, a chubby Porter cousin!

 First time swimming.  He cuddled in the sling mostly.

 I think this is my favorite one of all!

 Sometimes his little toy rings end up around his arm.

 His blueberry chewy binki.  He'll suck on anything!

 #1 and #7

What a great big brother!

Sarajoy's Birthday is Still Coming...

For months, whenever we would talk about a party or have a get-together, Sarajoy would ask if it was for her birthday.  We'd tell her it was coming on June 29th.
"Junie-ninse" She'd say.

Recently she made reference to her birthday coming to the door.  I wondered what her little mind pictured about her birthday coming. 

We've spent a lot of time talking about it because it was going to be the day she said goodbye to diapers and pacifiers forever. 

I felt prompted to potty train her a couple of months ago, but we've all been talking up the paci thing.
She's going to get balloons and tie her pacis on and send them up to the cloud babies. 
And then she's going to have a puppy party with a puppy cake. 

We were all pretty excited for her big day.  Ruby had helped me pick out some great gifts, the neighbors had donated their old Fisher Price dollhouse, I picked up a bag of tiny stuffed dogs at a yardsale that I thought I'd hand her one-by-one as she sent her pacis into the sky, and I bought a glowing seahorse that plays nice music for her to snuggle with.

I could write a whole post about whether this will be harder for her or for me, but I think it is obvious. 
I'm not looking forward to life without her pacis.
This is a child who puts herself down for naps.  She sleeps through the night.  We ALL love her pacis.
So I'm hope, hope, hoping that puppies and a glowing seahorse will suffice.

But Junie-ninth has come and gone, and she sleeps now with her pacis.  The little dogs and seahorse are still hidden away in my bedroom.

We're all a little depressed about the whole thing.

Simon got stomach flu on Friday the 22nd.  It took him most of the week to recover.
Dallin got a wretched sore throat on Tuesday.  He still suffers miserably.
Sarajoy got a sore throat on Wednesday and didn't eat for that evening or all day Thursday.  She stayed in bed all day with a low-grade fever.  I took her in on Friday, but no strep.  She seemed a little more chipper.  And she ate two bowls of eggs.
A few hours later, she neatly deposited those eggs on her bed.  She didn't cry or say a thing.  We just found them later due to the smell.
She'll seem better for awhile and then throw up again. 
She is so cute, even in sickness.  She'll sit neatly on a stool at the toilet and wretch, then sit up and dab her mouth with a towel.  "Mommy, I fow up."  She says matter-of-factly.
And she was concerned we'd be upset when it was coming from both ends so she threw up on the floor and made a mess. 
She was feeling well enough on Friday night and Ruby and Daisy were SO disappointed at not having her party that we gave her the dollhouse.  All 4 of the younger kids have had so much fun with it. 
Saturday night we gave her her puppy gifts:  A book called "Mother's Milk" that talks about all kinds of nursing babies, A stuffed dog with puppies that magnet to its belly, and a little pack of tiny puppy figurines that I'm hoping will encourage her to work on her chore chart.  Ruby also gave her a cute littlest pet shop set with baby animals and a carriage.
But we're still waiting for her to feel well enough to eat cake and give up her pacis.

I guess its kind of exciting that her birthday is STILL coming...

But Sulley got sick Friday night (sooo sad)
Daisy was down on Sat, but hasn't thrown up...
Brandon came home early from church feeling sick....

Hopefully the day gets here before Ruby's birthday on the 7th.