The Great Blizzard of 2020

 [a.k.a That Time Debbie Suddenly Was Grateful That Sugarplum Wasn't Cooperating With the Just Getting-Her-Little-Self-Out-Here-IMMEDIATELY Plan]

Until this past weekend, I'd been feeling really relaxed about Sugarplum taking her time joining us on the Outside. Christmas is coming. I have lots to keep me busy. But then, my brain broke (or something like that).  Twenty-four hour days suddenly have room for what feels like three hundred seventy-eight hours. I'm ready to be done waiting, wondering what will happen, dreading the pain of getting her from in to out. And simultaneously I've had a sinking feeling that she's terribly comfy and snug and has no plans to exit anytime soon. (It doesn't help that Tadhg's typical response when I ask him when he thinks the baby will come is a thoughtful, "Mmmm....six months.")

I knew there was supposed to be a snowstorm last night. Seven to twelve inches or something paltry like that--not enough to keep me from wanting to go into labor anyway. C'mon now. We have snow tires.

But then we woke up at 5 AM to bedroom windows that looked like this (you can't see it clearly, but the whole lower half of the window is obscured by snow on the roof): 

And kitchen doors that showed me this: 

And after dawn, a world that looked like this: 

(That lovely little slope in the photo below? That's our ride to the hospital.)

Due date a day away or not, it's amazing how nearly three feet of snow can change an expectant mother's perspective.

When our boys woke up, they were a bit flabbergasted. Tadhg immediately had Plans. Pippin was sober and a bit distrustful of all that white stuff.

They peered tried to peer out all the windows.

After breakfast, all my manly men ventured outside.

After some initial exploration of the barren wilderness, the real work began.

Rundy is such a good daddy. He works with them. He plays with them. Then he brings them in and makes snow ice cream with them. Tadhg knows he has a good thing and put it simply when Rundy stepped outside. "I love my dada." 

Snow ice cream was enjoyed by all, then free entertainment arrived in the form of our Snowplow Elf neighbor with his trusty tractor. He plowed us out as the boys watched, agape (but not so agape that they couldn't multitask and keep eating ice cream). 

So really, now that our driveway is plowed and our van is no longer a lovely, gently sloping hill of snow and a Crazy Person has driven by in a normal car to prove that our roads are, after a fashion, driveable... I'm starting to feel antsy again. 

C'mon, baby. We're all ready for you, Sugarplum.

Time Travel Post: Pippin's 1st Birthday Party

Well, Sugarplum Baby could arrive any day now and I'm just sitting down to scrawl out my first catch-up post. (If she comes as late as I fatalistically suspect she might, there's a slim possibility I could get all 7 MONTHS of catch-up done before she arrives...). 

Back in May, our little Mr. Pip turned one. I can't separate who he is now 7 months later from who he was then, but in any case he is a delight to us. When he was an infant, over and over again the word that came to mind for him was simply and wholly sweet. Now, though he's still sweet, his personality has morphed more than I ever thought a baby's could and the words that come to mind when I think of him are clown, goofball, ham, etc. He is amusingly clumsy, frighteningly unaware of physical consequences for bodily choices, enraptured by an audience for his jokes, and such a jolly little chum. Full of sincere politeness, he consistently says "you're welcome" instead of "thank you." He is obsessed with balls and cars and music and our foam alphabet puzzle. He is only JUST starting to mature (a bit) out of his need to have both hands filled with toys, food, what-have-you (it's second nature to split a cracker in half now so he has something to fill each hand). One of my fondest visual memories is Pippin wandering around under our apple trees all through the late summer foraging until he could come tromping down the hill with a bitemark-covered apple in each hand. He loves Tadhg profoundly (and becomes profoundly indignant because of him). He is sensitive to all manner of injustice and is theatrical about expressing himself when wronged. 

Most of all, he is a good, good gift from our Father, and the sparing of his life is just as much a miracle now as it was the moment after he was cut out of my womb hale and hearty and ready to be alive. 

We love you, Pilgrim. 

______________________________________________________

PS -  Thanks to Caleb and Cadie for almost all the photos! I was too busy fussbudgeting my way around during the party to take any myself during the party proper. 

PPS - It's strange posting photos of Pip so late; he's changed so much since and looks so much more grown-up than in these photos. And he has HAIR now! Wonders never cease.

(The photo below is mere documentation of what happens to my fridge anytime certain Purdy relatives come to my house for birthday parties or otherwise. This example is quite tame.)

Because our boys have so many aunts and uncles, parties are limited to just-family now because just-family fills up all the nooks and crannies of our house. 

Both before the party officially began and again after cake and presents, a whole posse of partygoers headed out into the wild.

It was a good first year of life for our Pip.

Freeze-Frame: Two For the Price of One (And One is Just for You, Abigail)

Lucky you, you get TWO freeze-frames for the price of one. Tadhg's spitting out funnies at a fast clip these days, and this is a good place to catch it all for remembering when I'm old and gray and he's a big strapping man. 

There was a time several weeks ago when I was afraid I wasn't going to be able to hear all of the amusing things running through his head any more; literally overnight, he went from clearly articulated speech (for a 2-year old) to a severe stutter which significantly impeded his ability to communicate. After researching it a bit and talking to a speech-language pathologist friend, I learned that such things can and do indeed happen; they can last for just a short while or for years. Because Rundy had a stutter when he was a child, I was buckling down and trying to prepare myself for this to become our new normal. But, boy, was it hard to hear Tadhgie struggle so much with things that used to just float right out without thought. One day driving home in the van, he was trying to tell me something and stumbled over himself so thoroughly that he finally gave up and just said glumly, "I can't use my words." Poor guy. 

But--thankfully for all of us, Tadhg most particularly--his stutter vanished in the same mysterious, overnight fashion in which it had arrived. After two weeks just about on the dot, he was speaking like his old self. 

And now we can all still enjoy a hearty supply of anecdotes. 

FREEZE-FRAME #1 (For Abigail in Memory of Our Dear Old Dad)

Tadhg has a propensity for worry/caution/safety which he comes by honestly. Some of it was taught ("Stay away from the road," for example) and some of it just spills out of him by sheer heredity. Both Rundy and I have some worrier in us, but the Grandpappy of All Worriers was my dad. Tadhg definitely inherited some good old fashioned Gary Johnson tendencies.

The other day as we were eating breakfast he was staring fixedly up at the vaulted ceiling in the kitchen. There are boards suspended in air spanning the length of the whole kitchen; from these hang our light fixtures and onion plaits. (Eventually, Rundy will be covering the boards with old barn wood to make it look like a faux beam.)

Tadhg, looking intently at the someday-faux-beam, suddenly said, "I think Daddy did a good job nailing that up."

Pause.

"I hope he did so it does not fall on us."

FREEZE-FRAME #2

One of the most curious things about having a child whose mind and capacity for language are growing like weeds is the fact that sometimes they say things and you have absolutely no idea how they appropriated the vernacular they just used.

Current favorite example?

We were just sitting down to eat supper. Rundy was filling Tadhg's plate. He asked Tadhg if he wanted some more sauce on his rice to go with his chicken. 

Soberly, Tadhg replied, "No, because I'm a very simple man."

Freeze-Frame: Married Off

Someday--hopefully before the new baby comes (in just over a month!)--I will catch up on the months-worth of photos I have hanging over my head and get my blog up to date. Poor Pippin hasn't yet gotten his first birthday memorialized, and that was in May. MAY.

Until then, I'll continue to pop on here sporadically to give little slices of life with Tadhg and Pippin. 

Here's today's.

I was working in the kitchen. Tadhg and Pippin had been industriously mowing the lawn which is apparently covering our whole downstairs with one of these and one of these. (This is a normal sibling ritual. Inside, outside--doesn't matter a whit.)

Silence for a bit, then Tadhg came walking into the kitchen with Pip padding after him. 

He announced soberly, but with the hint of a grin, "We had a wedding! I married Pippin. Because we wanted to, and he said yes."

Brotherly love right there, folks.

Morning and Evening

 C. H. Spurgeon - September 5

"Hast thou entered into the springs of the sea?" 

Job 38:16

Some things in nature must remain a mystery to the most intelligent and enterprising investigators. Human knowledge has bounds beyond which it cannot pass. Universal knowledge is for God alone. If this be so in the things which are seen and temporal, I may rest assured that it is even more so in matters spiritual and eternal. Why, then, have I been torturing my brain with speculations as to destiny and will, fixed fate, and human responsibility? These deep and dark truths I am no more able to comprehend than to find out the depth which coucheth beneath, from which old ocean draws her watery stores. Why am I so curious to know the reason of my Lord's providences, the motive of his actions, the design of his visitations? Shall I ever be able to clasp the sun in my fist, and hold the universe in my palm? yet these are as a drop of a bucket compared with the Lord my God. Let me not strive to understand the infinite, but spend my strength in love. What I cannot gain by intellect I can possess by affection, and let that suffice me. I cannot penetrate the heart of the sea, but I can enjoy the healthful breezes which sweep over its bosom, and I can sail over its blue waves with propitious winds. If I could enter the springs of the sea, the feat would serve no useful purpose either to myself or to others, it would not save the sinking bark, or give back the drowned mariner to his weeping wife and children; neither would my solving deep mysteries avail me a single whit, for the least love to God, and the simplest act of obedience to him, are better than the profoundest knowledge. My Lord, I leave the infinite to thee, and pray thee to put far from me such a love for the tree of knowledge as might keep me from the tree of life.

Freeze-Frame: My Feathered Boy

Tadhg was standing up in his seat while I washed him up after breakfast. He looked up at the vaulted ceiling quizzically, then burst out, "I'm goin' to jump up to the 'ky!"

"Do you think you can fly like a bird?"

"Yes, I can." 

"But you don't have feathers. Can you fly without feathers?"

"I DO have feathers!"

"Where are they?"

Soberly, "On my bott'm." 

Boys are so strange.

Freeze-Frame: What She's Up To

On our way home from church just now, Tadhg jabbered a mile a minute about whatever crossed his mind. I've been feeling Baby Sister move a lot today, and as Tadhg paused for a breath I commented to Rundy that she's been flip-flopping like a little fish. Tadhg, understandably, needed to be assured that his new baby will not, in truth, be an actual fish. 

"She's not flip-floppin'," he argued.

"Then what is she doing?" I countered.

"She's workin' on computers."

In case any of you wondered what happens in the womb--now you know.