Thursday, March 21, 2024

Enoch's One Monthiversary

I'm sitting here realizing it's hard to know how to blog honestly five kids deep, especially when my oldest just turned 6 this month. If I write about how beautiful family life is, it is true but misleading. If I write about how hard and exhausting this season is, it is also true but misleading. It's both, always. It's beautiful. It's crushing. You can feel yourself being obliterated, but you also know in your bones that it's good. That being obliterated actually means you're changing more into the shape God wants you to be, and it's better and truer than who you were before.

Life is whizzing by; none of the things that made it go so fast before Enoch have disappeared, and his presence has added more fullness to each day. The kids are fed and loved and taught; books are read; conversations abound. Feet are muddied and pants are torn and brownie-mint-blueberry tea is made at the play kitchen. Bikes are ridden down hills and the baby is snuggled a great deal. Meanwhile, I'm experiencing the growing pains of trying to learn how to live at rest with a constant tornado of activity and laundry and creative messmaking that there is absolutely no way to keep up with anymore. I've always been a manager--I manage life, see, and all the things always get done. Except they don't anymore; I've crossed the threshold. No matter how hard I work or how organized I am, I'm simply incapable of meeting my previous standards. Finite. Worn out. In over my head.

There is so much to be grateful for--but who knew that slowing down and breathing deeply enough to sit in gratitude, to truly give thanks when your personality is under fire and sleep never feels like enough (never is enough), would be such a hard lesson? Perfectionism dies hard, I'm afraid. I don't know how to let go of things, or what things are even the ones to let go of. (The easy one is a nice neat house. That one's obvious, even if it's not my favorite.)

And so here we are in this very moment. I have a snuggly baby sleeping on my lap, beautiful and wonderfully made and a cause for my deep thanks. I have a husband tearing the house apart and leaving trails in his wake as he pours more hard work into our home, improving it bit by bit by bit (current project: moving the office to the laundry room and the laundry room to the basement so that another bedroom is opened up). I'm surrounded by the happy sounds of busy kids, and sometimes the sounds of their conflict which needs my intervention. I'm giving up our homeschooling routine to write about it all, which almost certainly is more of a struggle for me than it would be for most.  It is good. And hard. So life goes, yes?

But this post is meant to be about Enoch. The world he just entered is a complex one, but he doesn't know it yet. He just knows that it is good to be fed and snuggled, good to be kissed and to learn the shape of your family's faces. Good to have a mama to walk the floors with you when you hurt and a daddy to give you prickly-faced affection even if it makes your eyes go squinty. And it is good, all of it. 

Enoch was born with a nice bit of hair (which has since receded amusingly) and delightfully squishy cheeks. He is barrel-chested and sturdy-limbed with a startling amount of fine blond hair on his shoulders and belly and thighs. He is placid and sweet; a perfectly snuggly baby, not one of those who was born impatient because he can't walk yet. He started smiling at me 2 weeks in and strikes Rundy and I both as someone who will grow into a gentle giant. He favors Tadhg in his looks, but alas, the past week or so it has seemed more and more likely that he'll favor him in his digestive troubles, too, poor little guy. The other children still line up to hold him. He fits into our family just right, and we are all so, so glad he's here. Having a new child never gets old, not really. Not when you learn more and more how much they are each their own person, and how quietly wonderful it is to get to know them as the months go by. Enoch is the fifth, but I no less often have moments of catching my breath at his preciousness. 

So welcome, son. We love you deep and wide.

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The Officially Official Photos from the day he was exactly 1 month:











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First bath in the tub.






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The rest of the first month all in a muddle, a.k.a an excessive number of photos of Enoch (of course--he's new!!).



























If Ye Olde Blog Resurrects

 it can only mean one thing.

There's a new baby. 

Didn't blog the pregnancy announcement, didn't blog the birth, but I'll be hanged if I don't keep doing my silly monthiversary posts (even if this season of life means I take the photos on the monthiversary day and don't put up the blog post until a week later).

As I was gathering photos of the past month with our new boy, I was sucked into scrolling through the most recent few hundred family photos that just sit collecting dust in the ether. That led to being struck by wistfulness that I can't blog anymore; I have so many wonderful pictures of life and children and funny things and lovely things, charming things and painfully (yes, already!) nostalgic ones. But then I have to become resigned to it again--my blog is currently just for monthiversaries and broken-record written regrets that I can't blog anymore. Rinse and repeat. 

Ah, well. 

Maybe someday when the babies stop joining us there will be time again and I can go back and wish myself into old photos of the children when they were little. But until then, here we are.

The Pregnancy

As usual, appointments and ultrasounds and a marathon starting at 6 months when my back starts giving me grief. And like with Tessa, the being-pregnant part lasted a good bit longer than I would have chosen. I think I'm just one of those people whose babies like to stay in for 42 weeks if they're given the chance. The last 2 weeks were like trying to summit Everest every day keeping up with life and the other kids and surviving my own body, but at least the stories are true--no one is pregnant forever. 



The Birth

Pretty sure a lot of people were praying for things to go well. And they did. Active labor was short. I was able to do the whole "Rundy, I think it's time to go to the hospital" thing for the first time ever (actually, it was him telling me he thought it was time because I wasn't sure and didn't want to go too early...). No Pitocin, no hiccups, no anything complicated. Just a slightly hairy drive to the hospital in the wee hours the day after Valentine's Day and a new son born into the world just an hour after getting there. My blessed OB showed up for me in the middle of the night even though she wasn't on call. Our new boy was our biggest baby yet by a good bit, and also the easiest to get on the outside. Holding his solid, wailing little self, I was overcome by such joy and relief at how he had come that I actually laughed. Laugh-cried? So grateful that God was so kind.



The Baby

Enoch Abel was born on February 15th at 2:10 in the morning. 10 pounds, 22 inches. Enoch means dedicated, consecrated, trained, disciplined, and Abel means breath or vapor. 

Welcome to Here and Now, little Enoch. May your breath here be for God and for good all your days, however many they number.


The Homecoming













The First Days

There's nothing like 'em. Sleepy, comfy, utterly exhausted, and snuggly.





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"He Pooped! A Series in Three Parts"




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