Catch Up

Since I wasn't blogging for awhile, allow me to catch you up:

For his eight month birthday Noah decided to have a cage pillow pen wrestling smackdown brawl with all his fluffy friends. The aftermath:

 

The sad thing is, even though he was wrestling inanimate objects, I'm not sure who ended up winning.

Whilest I was not blogging several other things of note occurred:

• Justin got his second 4.0 in nursing school. Am so very proud.
• I threw up... lots.
• We saw our first ultrasound of new baby Ririe.
• I threw up some more.
• I took on the Ladies Spring Tea at our church.
• I had 8 migraines, which caused me to throw up.
• Noah progressed to army crawling faster than the Flash can run.
• And I threw up.

10 pounds later, I am still blessing my God for working miracles in our lives. There's just much less of me to worship Him.



Announcement

I am aware that it has been nearly an eternity since I have blogged. It is difficult to write about anything else when there's a quite large something on your mind that you aren't allowed to blog about. However, the secret is out, so I can once again, merrily tap-tap-tappity on the keys.

There I stood at home plate staring down a pitcher, who I can only imagine had my utter destruction in mind. He'd already thrown a nasty twelve foot arc that only by grace was called a ball. I'm sure he was quite secure in his belief that before him stood another little girl, a bunting pansy, a softball wall flower. Poor lad couldn't have known that before him stood an Abi. A real Abi, the kind they don't make every day of the week, the kind they watch because she has no good in mind.

I glared. It's a bad habit. There's some wickedness in my subconscious that demands in the midst of battle I glower like a Greek in the face of the Persians. I'm sure it is no where near as terrifying as the picture in my mind. In my mind this is the glare that sent a thousand ships back the way they came, tails set firmly between their legs. In reality, Justin snickers every time he sees it and tells me how adorable it is. But I persist never-the-less, and glare I did with intense ferocity at said unsuspecting pitcher.

He let the ball fly, I swung the bat, and from the recesses of my primitivity came a grunt that would put Sharapova or Williams to shame. And that ball went. Far.

After I easily hit first, I turned to my brother-in-law and begged him for a pinch runner. He got the ump's attention, but kept throwing me strange glances. There was some atrocious to-do about getting me a runner, and in the end I don't imagine the rules were followed by said ump. Finally, my husband stepped in and defended my honor: "Give her a break! She's Pregnant!"

Well, that wasn't subtle. Nor conducive to game winning. As half our bench scraped their jaw out of the dirt, confusion ensued. It was a clever way to announce it, but I imagine the inning might not have ended on the next play if we weren't all so flummoxed.

So yes, I'm pregnant. And wishing I were dead. While quite amazing at hitting softballs, Abi's are not very good at being pregnant.

I'm sure amidst the first pregnancy as Eve held her swimming head over a hole and wretched up every good, bad, knowledgeable, and stupid fruit she had ever eaten, Adam (annoyed his own self at having to pull weeds all day) commented, "Well, that's what you get, Miss 'I-gotta-try-that'." And she promptly kicked him in his sheep-skin covered jewels, just to be sure she would not have to endure this havoc again any time soon.

Sister-in-law

I'm very shy. This may come as a shock to those who only read my blog. But it's true: take away my keyboard or my pen and paper, and suddenly I'm utterly, socially awkward. I don't know how to carry on conversations, and I am not terribly good at being friendly. Throughout my middle school / young adult life I was told that being quiet is a fault. No, being unable to experience reality in the way you want because you cannot engage people in dialogue is a fault. Being quiet is a rare gift. Those two things are very different.

The point is this: I'm rather fond of my sister-in-law. She probably doesn't know it, but I think she is sweet, and fun, and very bright. If I were capable of making friends, I think I would try to make friends with her.

And this is why. This appeared on her facebook page last week:

"Not much makes me more upset than being told I'm a grumpy pregnant lady. Maybe, just maybe, I'm grumpy because you're a Weiner, and I just so happen to be pregnant at the same time?"

 

Brilliant.

Spring Rain

The drought has ended. The spring rain of baseballs has returned to soak our dry and weary land with their precious entertainment-giving flood.

The end of college bowl games to opening night of the MLB season is the sports dead zone. Absolutely nothing of interest to decent sort of folk. I've heard rumors of something called March Madness. The only madness is that this kind of basketball-ish behavior can persist for an entire month. Just play a final and end it. I know the NBA is playing. But in terms of real sports, nothing what-so-ever of interest.

(If you are a basketball fan, you must understand I never had a chance. At the tender young age when wee lasses are so impressionable [which I recognize is almost every age] I hugged my friend dearly as she sobbed in her little golden tutu. Her daddy decided to go to watch the Utah Jazz in the NBA finals instead of coming to see his baby girl dance in her ballet recital. I immediately concluded that any sport which could cause human beings to be so callous to their own little princesses could not have any value to the human race. I now know that people go to football games instead of their son's little league games, I know they flock to the stands of baseball games as young tuba players look expectantly to the audience hoping mommy might come. But basketball suffers one further blow to it's morality: it has LeBron James and Kobe Bryant. With such upstanding individuals as the stars of a culture, I don't understand how anyone who attends a basketball game can really stand to look at themselves in the mirror the next day.) Cause I'm not dramatic at all.

But the drought has ended. And with what a glorious rain: Boston leading the AL East with 5 and 2! What brilliant hope! Noah is thrilled too as you can see.

In My Defense

At the end of a non-majors creative process class I taught one student wrote in his paper that he couldn't understand why anyone would ever study dance at a university. He was a chemistry major. A nice proper profession. I wrote out a brief defense of my decision, the field, and aesthetics in general on the back of his paper. He never came to pick it up. In the off chance that a chemistry major I knew two years ago for the span of a semester would ever stumble upon the blog of a dancing, Christian mom, who looks vaguely familiar, I now present my case.

The chemistry major, the aspiring scientist, the undergraduate physicist, enters the lab with the goal of conducting experiments. They learn how to make rational science happen. However, the goal of this practice is not truly to follow scientific method and prove a hypothesis. The undergraduate student does not produce original research. They recreate the experimental process of their predecessors. Success is not determined by the actuality of the results proven, but whether those results match previous endeavors. You can know if you have made a mistake. You can know how it should all turn out. As far as I understand it, the undergraduate scientist does not have to think, they have to replicate and regurgitate. I don't begrudge them this bliss. It is not a dangerous road.

The first day I entered the modern dance department as a Sophomore in the program, I had to create three movement phrases and manipulate them into a short work. These works we then combined with other students to make more complex pieces. The first day I was a dance student I fashioned something the world had never seen before. Original research, at 19 years old! It wasn't brilliant; it won't appear in experimental theatres along the dark alleys of New York, but it was new. And it mattered.

There are those who believe art is unnecessary, that we cannot live without experimental pharmacology, but could endure the millennia quite happily without Poe, Forsythe, and Cage. I propose quite the opposite. At this point, the young scientist can make no contribution to the field that will in any way prolong our lives. How could he/she when original research doesn't really occur until masters or even doctorate work? Even the most accomplished physicist, the leading minds of our time, our Hawking, our Haroche, our Gurdon and Yamanaka cannot cure us of our mortality. We all still die.

When I first read Bukowski, I flew. When I first moved with Koester and Handman in ways I had never imagined, I thought perhaps I understood immortality. Yet, it was when I first created, fashioned and sweated, built and devastated, when I took that thing from nothingness into fullness, that I transcended. I locked eyes with my God and understood a small breath of what it must be to fashion a gazelle and watch it run, to carve a waterfall and feed a valley, to mold a child and hear "I love You" from her lips. Science continually reminds us that we are dying. Art has a far better chance of making us immortal.

Ellen Dissanayake is credited as redefining art as "making special". Art takes the everyday, the ordinary, the plain, and makes it special, a little more alive, a little more lovely. If this is the case, I choose a short life without penicillin, I choose a minute reality without genetic engineering, I choose a brief flicker on this planet free from mechanical lungs, spinal rods, and slicing needles, if it be a flicker more beautiful. Of course I don't have to (and haven't) lived without science. But I don't have to (and haven't) and won't live without art.

Screaming in the Night

Three nights ago, I woke up to Noah fussing. I waited for him to get it out of his system, flip to his other side, and let the sleepies steal him back to a land where I assume he dreams of bananas monkeys. No theft to dreamland occurred. He kept right on crying. With a sigh I threw my legs out of bed, padded into his room, and let my eyes adjust to the dark. I gave him a pacifier and pulled his head out of the corner of the crib. He was still a mite bit unhappy, but I had to go to the bathroom.

From behind the closed bathroom door I heard it. It was the kind of screaming we usually associate with some combination of zombies and apocalypse. It was the kind of screaming that means needles, and death, and turnips are only moments away, their sharp pincers snapping. And it would.not.stop.

I scooped up my Little Man. Screaming. I stroked his head and bounced. Screaming. I sang, pleaded, prayed, tried the paci, tried his monkey friend, tried changing his diaper. Screaming. At this point Justin came in and asked, "What on Earth is wrong?" The side of me so consciously aware of the fact that it was after midnight spat, "Well, if I knew I wouldn't be holding a shrieking little banshee at 2:00am." The side of me that actually speaks and loves him so completely cried, "I don't know!"

Allow me to share the ridiculousness of my own mind in the seconds that followed:
   He's never screamed like this before, ever. Something is really wrong.
   He's ok. Babies cry.
   Not like this. Hormonal pregnant women being tortured with cruel implements don't cry like this.
   What if I have to take him to the ER?
   What if they find something wrong?
   What if they don't, and think I'm a bad mother?
   What if they take one look at my over-sized Bradley Hathaway t-shirt and Yellowstone      Huckleberry shorts and won't even let us in the hospital?

About this point, Justin had put Little Man in his car seat and was swinging him back and forth. In a few minutes he was calm enough to stop crying. A couple minutes after that he went back to sleep. He survived until morning, and lived a semi-happy day. . . And no one had to see my Huckleberry shorts.

And Justin once again proved that I married up.

FYI: it's teeth. He's cutting teeth on the top and just wants to be sure everyone in the valley knows how miserably unfair it is.

Noah's first Easter

I love Easter week. When I was little it heralded Easter baskets filled with candy, beautiful dresses and curly hair, singing at church, dyeing eggs, and Easter egg hunts. Easter was a day where it seemed like everyone felt a little more special, looked a little nicer, smiled a bit more. I hope Easter means all these things for Noah (well, maybe not the curly hair and dresses). I imagine we will spend hours together coloring eggs with blue fingers, tromping through the grass searching out chocolate-filled delights, and dressing up special in a wee suit and tie. He'll get an Easter bunny and just snuggle it to pieces. He'll get a basket and giggle with delight. But I hope as he grows, he will realize just why we can have such joy on Easter morning, that in the near memory of our laughter, our singing, and our ever-present hope is the bitterness of Good Friday.

As a little girl I knew why we had Easter. I knew the story of the Last Supper, the garden, and the trial. My little heart had cried when I heard how they beat Him, how they cursed Him, how He hung and died for my sins. With childlike faith I knew the story, and I thanked my Jesus. Yet, I feel it is only with age, as we begin to understand the bitterness of mortality, the hurt of life, and the true extent of our own darkness, that the Goodness of Friday becomes real. As Friday becomes all the more painful, Sunday becomes all the more miraculous.

I was happy on Easter as a child. I long for Noah to find that same happiness. Now, on Easter, my joy is inexplicable. I still love Easter egg hunts and dressing up with curly hair. So much more, now, I love that my Savior lives. What hope! What life! What jubiliation to know the story, and to know it is true! It isn't that I want my baby growing up too fast. He's doing that fine on his own. But I do hope that as childish happiness fades, true joy will be revealed in his heart. That he will find Easter his hope, his chance to face his living God and worship with a heart that knows what a costly price was paid, and what a victorious Savior we love.

Come on!

Sometimes it is the simpliest commands that are nearly impossible to follow. In the dark forests of my sin nature, the Mirkwood of all my nastiness, anger, and spite, stands the Dol Guldur of the enemy's stronghold: Impatience. (If you have never seen The Lord of the Rings I really can't imagine what we have to talk about.)

I am neurotically obsessed with the clock. If I went to one of those blessed contries where time is a suggestion and meetings occur when everyone arrives, I would probably turn into the Incredible Abi-Hulk. Off I would rampage into the jungle to uproot trees and clock myself in the head with stone mountains. It appeared most viciously in class. Anything the professor said after the class had ended according to the clock was really just wasted breath. As they rattled on I would begin to fume, my skin would bubble with glowing gamma-ray muscles and my eyes would flame green. It didn't matter if I was desperately interested in the topic or debate, or if it was life-shatteringly important to the rotation of the cosmos. If the clock was violated, darkness ensued.

It seems ridiculous, but this is the battleground of my spirit. Impatience is not loving. Impatience does not seek the best for another. It is self-serving, anger-enducing, and mind-numbing. I have appealed to my Captain on multiple accounts to help me deal with this vice. However, the problem is, when you ask the Lord for patience, He doesn't just zap you with His sparkly patience wand. He gives you situations in which patience can grow... The very same situations in which I go all Hulky. I am almost loathe to ask for patience now. Almost. There is still enough of me that loves my God to wait for my patience.

I am constantly trying to understand what I am really saying when I tap my foot at someone, when I check my watch, when I feels my skin start to bubble in irritation. Truth is reality from God's perspective. The truth is: Impatience declares human beings less important than time.

The "love" chapter in Corinthians 13 starts the very definition of love with patience. And so I wait on Him to make me new.

Don't talk to me

Because I know I haven't blogged in two weeks, but am too tired to think of anything. I made this list in the throes of pregnancy.

The top five things a pregnant woman doesn't want to hear:

1. "I didn't have any morning sickness at all. I just love being pregnant."
     Really, good for you; I spent the first five months thinking I might just throw up my own toes.

2. "You're glowing!"
     Are you telling me this sucker is nuclear?

3. "The day before I went into labor I taught a pilates class, and took kung fu, and ran a marathon, and won an academy award."
     Well, good for you; the day before I went into labor I ate a plate of nachos and took a nap.

4. "I delivered the baby at home in the bathtub."
     Umm... no. I want legalized opiates readily available. And I'd like to take a bath again sometime... ever.

5. "Can I touch your belly?"
     ... There's just too many retorts available for this one. I can't pick my favorite.

Bullseye

So when Abi is up to bat this coming softball season, perhaps a new jersey design is in order; something more like this:

We had our first practice of the season Sunday afternoon. In the ear-freezing breezes my father-in-law pitched softballs to us in turn. The very first pitch he sailed gently, leaf-on-the-wind style in my direction. I crushed it, probably flattening one side of the ball from the blow. Or maybe it was the contact with my father-in-law's shin that dented the ball. A second pitch came flying. This one seemed nye on determined to obliterate the pitcher's second shin. Once is a fluke, twice is bad luck. It couldn't happen three times.

Of course it couldn't. Because my father-in-law still has some strain of gazelle-like agility that barely skittered him out of the way of my third swing, which was headed straight for that knee of his, which needs replacing.

And it doesn't matter how much you swear up and down that you didn't mean it, after three bone shattering hits a man starts to get nervous. The poor man will probably jump every time I open a bag of chips at a barbeque now.

I really didn't mean to. Which you can tell the five inch red and blue welt on his tibia.