HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO "He Laughs"!

IZAAK.

The name means, "He laughs". God told Abraham, an old man at the time, that he and his barren wife Sarah would have a son. Sarah laughed. Many years later, when Sarah was 90 years old, God fulfilled His promise. And God laughed! Abraham and Sarah named their son Isaac, because "He laughs". I felt just that way when I found out we would have our 5th baby. God was laughing at my inability to fully grasp His power, and I laughed with Him!


***Reposted and edited from last year***
Three years ago, at precisely 1:11pm I gave birth to this unexpected miracle. He is the personification of God's healing balm in our lives, the means by which God gave us back the years that infertility stole from us.

Todd and I struggled to have four children. For fourteen years we fought a disease known as polycystic ovarian syndrome (PCOS), a hormone imbalance that prevents ovulation. My PCOS got worse over the years and after our fourth child was born we knew that we were done. There would be no more fertility treatments. No more children. And then one day I started feeling pregnant. We simply could not believe that it could happen. Todd even told me that he thought I must just be imagining it. But a home pregnancy test proved him wrong!

Through all the years of infertility I had hoped and dreamed that one day, somehow, we would get pregnant without assistance, you know, the old fashioned way. But the reality was that chances were slim. And that's when God stepped in. I can't even begin to explain how deeply infertility hurt me, nor how wonderfully God used this baby to soothe those wounds, and to heal the part of me that felt horribly, helplessly broken.

What a joy and a pleasure it has been to be Izaak's mommie.

Happy Birthday Baby Boy!

"Not Me!" Monday.

Welcome to Not Me! Monday! This blog carnival was created by MckMama. You can head over to her blog to read what she and everyone else have not been doing this week.

We were in Iowa last week for a family reunion. There is no way that I let my PMS get out of control. I did not make my little boys sit silently in their carseats for four hours while I tried unsuccessfully to nap to get rid of a headache. I did not at any point entertain the idea of jumping out of the moving vehicle in order to find peace and quiet. That would be insane. Not me!

There is also no possible way that, while driving my in-laws van, I stopped on a country road and let my very underage, 13 year old daughter drive the rest of the way home. Nope, I am a rule follower, and I would never risk someone else's vehicle in doing something like that. Nope, that could not possibly have been me.

So, what have you not done this week?

Phlegm! (That's Your Only Warning!)

What is it about bodily fluids and functions that people have such a hard time talking about? Or admitting?

I love coffee. I love it a lot. I have a Tassimo coffee maker that I named Valentino. Valentino Tassimo. (note: it must be said/thought with flair in an Italian accent, like you're talking about a great Italian dish! mwah!) Anyway, I was off to meet my best friend for lunch yesterday, armed with my first and only cup of coffee. As I pulled out of the driveway I took a big swig and a drop went down my windpipe causing quite a choking fit. The choking fit resulted in me coughing the coffee in my mouth back into my cup along with a bit of phlegm. YUCK! Thus horrifically ruining my only cup of coffee of the day. WHAH!

Now, if you've been around here long, you know that I'm a Twitter addict and my tweets update my Facebook status. So, in 140 characters or less, I told of the demise of my coffee. All I wanted was a little sympathy about not getting to drink my full cup of coffee. Had it been the end of the cup, no biggie, I'd have just tossed it without a second thought.

Well, Facebook mayhem ensued. Folks everywhere came out of the woodwork to tell me how disgusting it was. TMI. Yuck. Gross. People in America don't want to read about phlegm on Facebook.

Really?!

OK. So, maybe I'm just too well acquainted with phlem to see the problem here. I have severe nasal allergies to everything green. Phlem is a regular part of my day, more so than coffee. I take meds, but post-nasal drip wins out over even the best allergy medicine. It is what it is.

But really, what is the big deal? Surely I am not the only person ever to cough up phlegm. I can't be the only one that has cleared my throat and swallowed it. It's not super-intimate and private like sex. So why can't we just see that my coffee was ruined and give a bit of sympathy to a coffee lover? Hmmm? Ironically, no one batted an eyelash the day before when I tweeted about cleaning up my son's diarrhea on the carpet, which I find a thousand times more disgusting than phlegm.

It's only a bit of phlegm people!!! Get over it!!! It's not horribly disgusting (unless it's in your coffee). It's not private. It doesn't smell or taste bad. It's not TMI. It's just phlegm. Phlegm. Phlegm. Phlegm. Desensitize yourself to it already. Good grief.

Oh, and this is my blog I can discuss phlegm if I want. Feel free to comment and discuss the situation, even if you disagree, but don't tell me that it's TMI, because that just might push me over the edge into saying/tweeting the word daily or something really childish like that!

One more little note: if the phlegm in the coffee thing had happened to my husband, he'd have just sucked the coffee right down without a thought. I will only tell you how I know this if you ask.

Meanwhile, I learned the correct spelling of phlegm. :)

Some Things Were Meant Only to be Experienced.

Imagine this: it's about 10PM on a clear night in the country. The temperature is a mild 70 degrees with a tad too much humidity, but that's to be expected, you're in Iowa. There are about a zillion stars and a crescent moon hung in the sky. You're looking out over the cornfield, in the distance you can see the silhouette of the trees against brightness of the starry sky. And, everywhere you look you see the tiny flashes of fireflies, almost like a mirror of the sky, but more alive. Like living glitter on everything. And if you stand real still occasionally one will drop with it's light on, suspended in the air, easing itself downward, silently calling out for a mate just inches from where you stand.

Ahhhh! A summer moment to capture and hold onto, because you live in Colorado where it's too dry for fireflies. And your kids have only seen them a few times and never like this. What are you going to do?

I know! I know! Capturing moments... that's why you bought this really excellent DSLR camera. It can do anything!! You'll just put the shutter speed at 10 seconds or so and get a time exposure so you can see all the crazy little twinkles. Yes! That's the ticket. It'll be awesome! People will marvel at your photography skills!

So you drag out the tripod to the edge of the field, you get it all set up and aimed in the darkest spot where the fireflies are most visible, where it looks like the camera flashes at a rock concert from a mile away. Wait. The auto-focus won't work. There's not enough light to focus on anything. Change the setting to manual and move on. Take a shot, wait for the camera to process. Blackness. Nothing. Zoom in. Take another shot, wait. Blackness. Aim at the sky. Blackness. Check, yes, you have taken the lens cap off. Add more time to the shutter speed. Take another shot, wait. Blackness. Take the phone out of your pocket and turn on the video camera. Maybe you can record it live and see the twinkles, and relive the moment over and over. Again, blackness. Have your husband catch one and hold it between his fingers. Aim the camera at his hand. Take a shot, wait.
An amoeba shaped yellowish-green blob that doesn't remotely resemble a firefly, much less the magic and wonder of standing there watching them. Fail.

Put your camera away. Enjoy a few more moments before calling it a night.

Some things in this world were meant to cause us to wonder at the creativity and imagination of a God we cannot possibly fathom, and like a relationship with God, they cannot be captured and held and shown to others in an album.

No, some things were meant only to be experienced.

Wordless Wednesday - Tale of a Frog

Linked up to 5 Minutes for Mom

Wordless Wednesday - Rappin' Rock Star!