Livia is becoming surprisingly efficient at applying face paint. I’m trying not to plan her future career based on the whims of Liv-at-five, but still. Wouldn’t it be cool if she worked in the movies someday? She could get her mom onto the set to watch the action. She might win an Oscar for makeup. You never know.

These are the ramblings of a tired woman on a Friday night. I can hear car doors slamming for a movie and game night next door (no, not there, a tired woman lives at that house too). I feel very unhip and old and boring at the moment. Blogging on a Friday night. BLOGGING. Oh well. Hope these shots entertain you on a Friday as well.

I present: The Many Faces of Livia.

Oooo. Scary.

And sweet.

Super silly.

And serious.

Then find a piece of stationery, lined paper, graphing paper, recycled paper, back of a receipt, whatever you can find…

And write someone a letter. A love letter. An I’m sorry letter. A letter of thanks. A note to say how missed they are. A tale of your day, the weather or what your Great Aunt Bertha or coworker or creepy dude on the playground actually said to you last week. A rhymed couplet, scripture verse or haiku would be lovely as well.

I’m not posting again until ten people have commented that they’ve written and mailed a real, honest-to-goodness letter.

God bless you. Long live snail mail.

The garden produced a radish. I was pretty excited and then surprised myself by how much I enjoyed photographing the sole veggie the garden has produced (so far). Jeremy and I split the radish. It was spicy.

Shiloh visited the vet’s office for some vaccinations. During some sort of fecal, er, retrieval, I was reminded why I didn’t want to be a veterinarian: Shiloh’s pathetic puppy cries from the backroom were hard for me to hear.

Mom took Liv for the afternoon and gave me some delightful rest.

While Mom had Liv, Jeremy had a kidney stone. Still has it, as far as we know. A visited to LincCare confirmed the little bugger and at the moment, Jeremy is managing the pain. We appreciate prayers for the stone to pass quickly.

We’re moving on to watch a little Deadliest Catch now that Livia is asleep. ‘Night, y’all.

Shiloh is fun and sweet. Livia is fun and sweet. Baby birds and springtime are fun and sweet.

But Shiloh also requires extra work on our parts.

Mostly he requires extra work because Livia isn’t handling the new addition quite so well. Our sensitive kid, while fun and sweet, has been a pistol of naughtiness recently.

I’m freaking wiped out by her bad behavior.

I post pics and brief descriptions because I like the subject matter, but life isn’t always fun and sweet. Sometimes life is stressful and ugly.

My world doesn’t look the way I want it to. I never planned on having my child turn five without having a brother or sister to share life with. I never figured Jeremy and I would have just one child. And when people ask if I have other kids, my mind flits to the baby I lost over two years ago before I say in a fake cheerful voice, “Nope, she’s our only one!”

Many beloved friends are pregnant right now. It’s an incredible challenge for me to express excitement for them while still grieving the fact that I’m not pregnant. I’ve realized it’s okay to both hope and mourn at the same time, yet it’s hard to do both in a practical sense.

I’m not always sad about infertility. And I’m not always hopeless. But today I’m feeling the sadness while I wonder about the future. Will I be pregnant again some time soon? Will we adopt more children? Only my sovereign God knows.

(Quick, someone post of a picture of something fun and sweet.)

Not blog-surfing is better for me than blog surfing.

That’s what I discovered during the season of Lent. Well, that and the fact that announcing my plan for a spiritual journey might have actually stunted the journey before the first step was even taken.

I had great hopes for Lent. I wanted to pair the denial-of-self notion with forward steps in my understanding of God and my knowledge of Scriptures. Now, on the other side of 40+ days, I can’t say I increased my knowledge. I pretty much marched in one spot during that spiritual journey. Like many of my aspirations, it started out with a bang and ended with a whimper.

As to the avoidance of blogs, news, and Facebook (FB deserves a category of its own, doesn’t it?), it was an interesting undertaking. I’m a blogger and an avid student of All Things Pop Culture, so I actually did feel denied during the Lenten season. By the first Sunday—my respite day as a reminder of the future celebration of Resurrection Sunday—I was absolutely craving the Internet. In that one day I had to work hard to not completely ignore my family as I made an attempt to eat up all the blog posts I had missed in the previous four days. But something changed as the days passed. I began to miss other blogs less and less. I don’t say that flippantly, as though I’m not part of a valuable community, but it’s true that I didn’t really miss what I wasn’t aware existed. (Very similar to our experience of disconnecting from cable TV actually.)

Still, the no-blog-surfing rule wasn’t easy. There were a small number of times I missed out on important joys or heartaches of friends, and I felt a bit left out by learning of events days later. By Wednesday every week I felt highly annoyed by the whole exercise, and then by Sunday, when I could finally feast!, I didn’t really want to. Lent brought up the concept of you-always-want-what-you-can’t-have and as a result I saw myself as fairly spoiled. I’m so used to getting what I want, at least in little ways, that it was a very strange thing to deny myself of anything! In post-Lent days, I’ve realized that it’s common for me to want what I don’t have. In truth, self-denial and long-suffering are two practices I’m not well-acquainted with. It was the moments where denial was hard, where clicking on that one link would’ve been so simple, where I was reminded to turn to God for the power to push through.

In general, I live my life on my own, sometimes forgetting that I am a child of God, the Creator of the universe, Alpha and Omega, you get the picture. I seem to ignore the amazement of Christ’s sacrifical death for my sins and plug on through my days on my own strength. I don’t need to live that way. The Bible is pretty clear that God gives grace and wisdom and strength to us when we need it. Giving up blog-surfing for Lent wasn’t the biggest challenge I’ve ever faced, but it was a worthy reminder that 1) I need God a whole lot more than I think I do, and 2) I am a wuss when it comes to giving up my creature comforts.

There was one huge side benefit to this year’s Lent observance: I felt free to be more creative. By turning off the voices of other bloggers, I found my own again. I felt free to write, free to take photos, free to share those thoughts and pictures with the world. I also read A LOT more.

So, while I don’t plan on giving up blog land quite so drastically as I did during Lent, I think I may limit my time online in a big way. I cringe at making a grand announcement here (“No more Internet from 8:00am to 8:00pm!”) but I wonder if I’ll actually enact a change without an announcement. Hm. It’s something to think about.

If I had the stamina to do so, I would write something about Lent—why I’m doing it, why anyone should do it for that matter, and how it prepares us to celebrate Good Friday and Easter Sunday. But the past few days have been rough family-wise and frankly I don’t want to explain much to anyone at this point in the evening.

Livia is sick. Again. As in viral illness, vomiting, fever and constipation. Tuesday night was incredibly rough and Jeremy and I ended up with around 2 hours of sleep apiece. Last night was better, but still involved a child waking in the middle of the night—a child who then didn’t exactly embrace sleep at that point. Now both Jeremy and I are feeling run down. This is a serious issue for prayer, friends. We’ve had various illnesses in our household for the past 3-4 weeks and it is really wearing on us now. Blah.

For Lent I’m taking a break from blog-surfing. I’m skipping Facebook and ignoring my Google reader in order to do some spiritual focusing over the next 40+ days. I’m excited about spending more time reading the Bible, reflecting on Truth and doing what God asks of me. So forgive me for not commenting on your blogs; it’s nothing personal, I’m just not reading them. When the opportunity arises or when I feel creatively compelled, I’ll continue to post here. I’ll also continue to check my email on a regular basis.

I am feeling kind of random tonight. I had great intentions: January was all about stories in photos and February would be all about writing. In fact, I had toyed with the idea of not posting photos at all this month and focusing on painting pictures with words. In theory, it is a lovely, achievable goal. In reality, I haven’t posted anything this month. And tonight is nothing special, just a small post to break the malaise I’m experiencing. The picture of the seed pod, with kids playing in the Haymarket in the background, definitely represents my somewhat random state of mind this evening. Ooh. Know what’s good for random? Ing. Here goes…

Baking a 9 grain bread from Hodgson Mills. And I must say, my house is
Smelling divine. I’m
Looking forward to
Spreading some butter on a hot slice of bread in about 30 minutes.
Reading quite a bit of the Twilight series and
Trying to decide exactly what I think about Edward. Right now I’m
Thinking he’s annoying and controlling. But I still have Book 4 to go. I’m also
Trying to get back into reading scripture. I want to know the Word of God far better than I do, so
Studying John is now my goal. I’m also
Working on Tim Keller’s prayer study for my small group with Redeemer. So far, so good. Finally, I’m
Getting sleepy and
Desiring some good time with Jeremy this evening. Enough
Blogging already. ; )

This month I’m going to attempt to tell stories in photos. Apart from this little explanation of what I’m doing, I’ll try to remain wordless. Those who know me in person know that I am rarely wordless, even in the format of blogging. Hey, there’s a first time for everything, right?

Questions regarding DPP:

1. “Does it have to be a picture you took on THAT day?”
2. “Do we just post them to our own blogs?”
3. “I am not really a very good photographer, and I don’t know how to use the camera very effectively. Still, I am tempted. But wary. Do I really want/need to add this to my December???!!!! :) On the other hand, one doesn’t need to blog if one doesn’t want to, since one is posting pictures every day.”

Hmmm.

Answers:

1. [Big smile]
2. The general idea is that you allow others to see the month of December through your eyes—and that you challenge yourself to:
   1. Post every day through December 25 and
   2. Use your camera on a regular basis

   So nope, you don’t have to take a photo every day necessarily. I do (except that time I was in the hospital…) take pics every day, but that’s just the way I like to do it. And yes, you do post it to your own blog. I’ve had blog-less friends in the past who simply posted them to the Flickr group site (TBA).

3. I definitely think you should join up! This is a very lightweight and fun blog project with guidelines, not rules. Most folks I know don’t end up with 25 posts by the end. No guilt though. Just fun.

Today has been a good blogging day. Granted, none of my post ideas ever made it out of my mind and onto the blog, but still. I think I’m slowly coming out of my blogging malaise. Perhaps I’ll have a great blogging day soon and will actually type something original. Oh the excitement. Until then, a meme from Bethany’s blog will keep it real.

A: Attached or Single? Attached. Seriously, seriously attached.

B. Best Friend? There are many, including the attached one. There are dear friends near and far, in familial and non-familial form.

C: Cake or pie? Cake, preferably chocolate. Though I may be changing on the chocolate factor. I made a mean carrot cake (from Dorie Greenspan’s most excellent recipe book) for my mother-in-law’s birthday.

D: Day of choice? If Saturday includes a date night, then I totally love that day.

E: Essential Item? Insulin pump. Not everyone can claim that, eh?

F: Favorite color? Blue or green or yellow or red. I really like them all.

G: Gummy bears or worms? Worms. I took a bowl of gummy worms to a Redeemer game night awhile back and learned that adults *really* dig gummy worms. I was hoping to take some home but yeah, that didn’t happen.

H: Hometown? Lincoln, NE.

I: Favorite indulgence? Dessert when I eat out.

J: January or July? July—what a silly question! Sunshine, warmth, the ability to be outside in the sunshine and warmth. Total no-brainer.

K: Kids? One beautiful, charming, sweet and feisty kid.

L: Life isn’t complete without? Community.

M: Marriage date? June 13, ten years ago.

N: Number of brothers and sisters? 2, plus 2 by marriage.

O: Oranges or apples? Apples. When my computer begins to behave itself again, I’ll post some pics of apples from my parents’ tree and the delicious apple muffins I made from the new Zion Cookbook. Yum. (Thank you, Karen Hunt.)

P: Phobias? I’m not a fan of tight spaces. I don’t like getting stuck in really large crowds of people and I don’t like the elevator at the capitol building AT ALL. My all-time worst memory of claustrophia occurred in Old Tucson, AZ, in a haunted house. Why I went in that place I do not now—I don’t even like haunted houses—but the situation went from kinda dumb to downright horrifying when the guide led us through a pitch black tunnel. With Halloween sounds blaring in our ears so we couldn’t hear one another, we had to hang on to the shoulders of the person in front of us and stumble over stairs, down inclines and around tight corners in the deepest, darkest black you can imagine. Let’s just say I had to work very hard to not completely freak out. Once we hit the light our guide said he had good news and bad news. Bad news first: There’s no way out, you have to go back the way you came. Good news: I’m just kidding. Little did that guy know there was no freakin’ way I was heading back through the tunnel.

Q: Quotes? “I doing pubic speaking.” Livia, on the potty a few days ago.

R: Reasons to Smile? “I doing pubic speaking.” Livia, on the potty a few days ago.

S: Season of choice? Spring.

T: Tag 5 People: Uh, Bethany, are you up for another go-round? Kristin, and Adam on Kris’s blog, Renae (to encourage more blogging), and Kerri (because a tag is always a nice induction to blog world). I’ve never ever ever tagged anyone before because I hate to leave people out. So if you want to do this meme, have at it. Consider yourself tagged.

U: Unknown fact? I have very few unknowns in my life because I’m an extrovert. So I’m going to keep those precious few unknowns unknown, thank you very much.

V: Vegetable? Why not? Anyone know what the question is asking?

W: Worst habit? If I want to feel good about myself, I’d answer with “chewing my nails” because I just stopped that habit a few months ago. If I want to be real with the world, I might admit being of a fairly critical nature. I can be downright judgmental and pessimistic if I don’t keep praying for self-control and a right perspective.

X: X-ray or Ultrasound? I’ve had about four ultrasounds, most of which revealed wonderful things about the human body. So ultrasound it is.

Y: Your favorite food? Pad Thai, chips & dip, peach cobbler with ice cream (which I made tonight, so it’s on my mind).

Z: Zodiac Sign? Didn’t know it until I was a high school senior and our student teacher, in a moment of stellar educational expertise (I say, voice dripping with sarcasm), had us go around the class sharing our signs. I probably thought the Zodiac was from the devil back then. Now I’m just not sure how knowing my sign enriches my life.