Chicago!

It is such a blessing to be part of a family that really enjoys spending time together. Take for example my trip last weekend to Chicago with three of my favorites -- my sister-in-laws, Lauren and Kayla and my mother-in-law, Lori, who is just "mom" to me now. This was our third annual "girl's weekend" and like past years, we had a blast. It was also nice for me on the heels of the miscarriage to get away for a few days and not have to worry about dishes, diapers and everything at home. Bob came over and stayed with Rob and Liam so they had a fun "guys" weekend too.

Once we got to Chicago, mom planned a ton of fun for us -- shopping (she paid, even nicer :), a {clean} improv comedy show, dinner at tasty restaurants, a Chicago chocolate tour, a trip up the Hancock Tower, pedicures and cupcakes to round out the weekend. We stayed right downtown too which made it even more fun to feel like we were part of the city life. A big highlight for me was brunch with my college room mate and dear friend of almost (!) ten years and her sweet baby, Mae. They live in Chicago and were gracious to come and meet us and spend some quality time together. This was the first I'd gotten to meet Mae even though she is over a year old! 

Overall, we had a lot of laughs and made some great memories together. I'm pretty sure we won't soon forget the 100+ middle school kids showing up at our comedy show! Turned out fine, but we were pretty unsure about them at first. 

I'll let some pictures (yes, I'm really enjoying Instagram on my iPhone!) do the rest of the talking about our weekend. 

Our first shopping afternoon ended with a trip to the Ghiradelli chocolate shop. Definitely a shopping necessity!

Sisters at Argo Tea -- my new favorite place

And with mom

One stop on our chocolate tour -- chocolates made for the Queen of England! 

Another stop -- Chicago's famous Frango chocolates turned into ice cream.

Another chocolate stop -- chocolate filled "bao's" (a Chinese dumpling). Amazing.

And finally, artisan chocolates at Fannie Mae. 

Instagram shot from the top of the Hancock Tower

Outside of Sprinkles cupcakes

It's good to go away, but always better to come home to this sweet face who missed his mama!

Sweetest little girl, Mae! 

One of the beaches on the 30 miles of Chicago shoreline. Yes, I listened to the recordings at the top of the tower!

The view toward Navy Pier

Love these girls, Mae and Ashley!

Family Fun Day

In honor of Mother's Day, Rob planned a family fun day for us. He originally planned it for last Friday, but in light of the miscarriage we were going through, that day got postponed to today. Rob doesn't have his French class on Friday so he was home from teaching by 10 this morning and away we went. 

We started out at WonderLab, a science and play space here in Bloomington. It is the perfect place for Liam since it has lots of different things to do - bubbles, air tubes, climbing structures and his favorite, the huge water table. This time, he learned how to put the balls onto the track that shoots them up in a stream of water and down again into a whirlpool. It's hard to describe, but really neat and fun to play in. 

A little blurry from my phone, but you can see how much he loves watching the ball go up 

Busy, busy as usual! 

Outside WonderLab they have a beautiful garden with a pond, walking trails and all kinds of flowers and plants. We surprisingly managed to get Liam to smile for a picture! Lately he has been really adverse to the camera. 

Love my guys

 After WonderLab, we got some lunch at Panera and took a picnic to a park. We've been having gorgeous weather and today was no different. It was so nice to sit in the shade and enjoy lunch together. 

Yum, M&M cookies!

Swinging, just before Liam took a tumble and got a scraped knee, a bonked head and we headed home for naptime. 

After naptime, Rob grilled up a huge steak we had in the freezer (thanks mom and dad B!) and made a salad. It was so nice to have him cook for me! 

Waiting to dive into that steak. 

 We finished off the night with ice cream with friends and bubbles in the backyard. 

In light of everything that has happened this week it was so good to have a full day together as our little family. I really am doing well and am processing the miscarriage. It's hard, but God is good and I'm so thankful to have the family that we do. 

Unexpected Grief for Mother's Day

Whenever I dreamt about being a mama I never really thought about the fact that it is always entirely possible to lose a child. This past week that became a reality as I, we, our little family, lost an itty-bitty baby to a miscarriage. 


A little back story: we've been trying to get pregnant again for about seven months. Each month that passed it got a little harder and I freaked out a little more. We got pregnant with Liam so quickly that it seemed strange for it to take so long the second time. As March ended, I made a conscious decision to stop being in control of something that in many ways was completely out of my control and simply trust God with the process. We found out May 2nd that I was pregnant. 


Of course we were thrilled and immediately started dreaming and planning. A quick internet calendar told us a possible due date would be December 29th which for our family calendar is just about perfect. Rob and our families would be on break from school and we wouldn't have to travel anywhere for the holidays. We could stay home, snuggle our new baby and have people visit us. We did the slightly inadvisable, but still good thing, and told just about everyone at church and our families and friends. 


And then it started. Just a tiny spot of blood that turned into a lot of blood and well, you can guess the rest. Two days of me laying on the couch and in bed, thinking, praying, asking lots of people to pray, trying to manage the slowly rising despair that we were going to lose this baby as the blood refused to stop. Then, confirmation from the doctor on Sunday afternoon that our baby was gone. 


Throughout those days that held many parts of light and dark, truths about God clicked into place for me. In Bible study we've been reading through Trusting God, Even When Life Hurts by Jerry Bridges, which of course was part of God's perfect timing and plan. After many semesters of being in this Bible study, this is the book that we're reading in what to date has been my greatest trial. This book is so rich and full of scripture and truth that I think had I not been right in the middle of it, I might have responded to this trial very differently. I had just taught the class on Wednesday night before my bleeding started Thursday morning on the chapter entitled Choosing to Trust God. Thursday morning the material was so fresh to me that I was able to sit up and say out loud, "Lord, I choose to trust you. No matter what happens, no matter my emotions, my fear, my own failures, I choose to trust you." The peace didn't come immediately, but throughout the day as I worked hard to choose to trust and to capture emotions and thoughts that were not of the Lord, peace came and as I laid my head on the pillow that night I said with full sincerity and assurance, "Thank you Lord for this good day." 


How was I able to say thank you for a good day that involved going through the loss of a child? Certainly not on my own strength. Only by God's great mercy and his Holy Spirit in me was I able to have joy in the midst of suffering. 


Of course not every moment of this trial has looked like that. There have been many tears between Rob and I as we worked through this. Little moments of sadness come creeping in. Grief is a great thing that simply does not go away because we wish it will. I know there will be many days of sadness. 


However, there have been many good moments that have come out of this time, and while I know the sadness is still there underneath, the good moments far outweigh the grief and for that I am so thankful. Liam of course has been the greatest joy. I think in his own little-man way he understood that mama was sad and hurting and he comforted me. He gave me extra hugs and kisses. He snuggled before bed. He played. He made us laugh out loud by just being himself. He made me keep going. I think this would have been completely different without him. The joy of already having one child who needs you doesn't erase the sorrow of losing another, but it helps to keep you going. He still needs to eat. He still needs his diaper changed. He still requires a lot of work that helped me look beyond myself and not stay sitting in self-pity and despair. After we found out that we lost the baby, it was in many ways a relief that I could get up and wash dishes and make food for us. Just going about a routine and working is like a balm. 


This trial also taught me that I need to just be with Liam. So many days I spend rushing from one thing to another, trying to keep a clean house, make a great meal, etc. While those are important things, they are not the most important thing to my son. One morning Rob was gone and we had so much fun with mama laying on the couch making Liam's stuffed mouse talk in a funny voice. I realized that wasn't something I normally did with him and I want to change that in my relationship with him. I wish that I hadn't needed to go through this to come to that conclusion, but it was a good thing that came out of this trial. 


The other good thing about this trial was that our faith as a family was strengthened. Yes, our prayers for God to spare our baby were not answered and we don't understand that. We probably won't understand that this side of heaven. But that doesn't mean that God is not good. That God is mean. That God doesn't love us. That God is not sovereign and in control of our lives. He loves us in ways we can't even imagine, even if that means taking our baby. This is a very hard thing about God to understand and I doubt that we ever will fully understand it. But walking through a trial that brought us to our knees and to a place before God where we were desperate, strengthened our faith and brought us closer to God and each other instead of pushing us away from him. He wants us to come to him in all circumstances, good and bad. He wants us to trust him in the big and the small, and that is one thing we certainly learned over the past few days. 


Finally, another sweet thing that came from this trial was being part of the body of Christ. Knowing that people around the country were praying for us was so comforting. Our church family brought us meals, offered to watch Liam, hugged us, shared their miscarriage stories with us and so much more. It is so humbling to be on the receiving end of tremendous love, but so good. This is what the body of Christ is for. Going to church this morning to be with the body was the only place on earth I wanted to be today. Thank you to all of you who were Christ to us these past few days. 


If you've made it this far in reading, thank you too. :) I process so much through writing and just putting all of this into words has been very healing already. I felt like I needed to share this story with a bigger audience to give the glory to God in the midst of trial. He is the one who gives and takes away. He is the one who opens and closes wombs. He is the one who does not change like shifting shadows who we can trust in all things. 


Please continue to pray for us as you think of us. Losing a child, no matter the age, is a very sad thing and I know it will change me as a person and as a mama forever. I doubt that mother's day will ever look quite the same to me in light of this loss this weekend. I pray that your own faith will be strengthened by our story and you will say with us, to God be the glory, great things He has done. 

Catching Up!

How is it possible that a month has passed for this sad blog?! No way around it, it has. May is here in its lovely glory and we are right in the thick of it.
I spent most of April working to pull off a kids consignment sale at our church. This is my third year on the committee and I love it. It is so much work, but we have a great team and they're my friends so it's fun to work together. The sale goes on for three days and I think I worked over 40 hours. We made over $13,000, 30 percent of which goes to our moms group at church. I sold a few things, but spent more than I made, but oh well, I got some cute things for Liam. 


After the sale, I attempted to recover by spending an entire Sunday afternoon sleeping, but then it was back to real life. Liam and I spend a lot of time outside at the park, hanging out with friends, reading and playing. Rob finished his semester last week and we enjoyed a few days of family time before he went back to school on Tuesday for the first summer session. He is teaching a Spanish class and taking a French class for his own requirements. This teaching assignment was truly God's blessing to us as it will fill the gap in what Rob gets paid during the year while still giving him July and August off. We're already looking forward to our family travels later in the summer. 


We also had the joy of having my mom visit Friday through Sunday. It was a quick trip, but we packed it full and had a lot of fun. Liam loved having her around and they spent a lot of time playing together and taking funny videos. We hadn't seen mom since February so it was great to have her here. 


In the midst of all this I came round to this century and got an iPhone. We debated for a long time about it, but in the end it seemed like the right thing to do. It doesn't add very much to our bill, but it gives me great opportunity to do face time with our moms and send lots of videos and photos to them. I'm slowly learning my way around it, but am enjoying it. In fact, all the pictures posted here are from my phone and Instagram. It's fun to have neat ways to take pictures when we're out and about. 


So here goes! And stay tuned, hopefully May will bring more time for blogging... 

Mama and Liam waiting for Grammy after dinner on Saturday 

If you remember from our wedding, peonies are my absolute favorite flower and they are currently blooming everywhere. We found an elusive peony farm here in town where you could pick a dozen peonies for $4.50! Mom and I were in heaven. 

Messing around with Instagram. Leftover sheep salt and pepper shakers from Easter and my favorite clock

Someone found an empty flour bag....good thing it was {almost} empty! 

Favorite bathtime activity -- papa and the guitar 

Liam's new look -- funny face! 

Bubbles! 

More pretty peonies to go with my plate wall 

Hipster in baby aviators 

Hanging out with Grammy and her phone with videos of Liam 

Watching the diggers! Any kind of digger, bulldozer, cement truck, bus, etc. is a huge hit with Liam. Someone needs to make a parents manual of the real names of these vehicles. We drive around town and I hear myself saying things like, "Liam, look at the big lifter thing."