my little family – Page 15 – everything He gives

six

December 23, 2016 MarthaKimball1 Comment

There were no gifts under the tree that year. We didn’t really even notice, which is a wonder for me, a gift lover. Our hearts were caught up in anticipating a baby. I was as any first time mom would be: nervous, anxious, excited, filled with wonder and worry and dread and joy all at once. It lent a whole new meaning to the Christmas story, to the Advent season, to the waiting for the coming of the promised One.

And then you came, so quickly, taking us all by surprise. I called the midwife at 6am on that December 23 morning, she said to take my time coming in, but I felt an urgency to get to the hospital. By the time we left the house for the 45 minute drive to the hospital, I was desperate to get there, contractions coming in wave after wave without a break between. We got there, checked in, chatted with the midwife for a few moments, and suddenly I was in transition. Within an hour or so of arriving at the hospital, you were born. In about three pushes, they laid you on my belly and I just remember your dark quiet stare. We didn’t have time to think about medicating, we didn’t have time to call family before suddenly there you were. The midwife sat down heavy in the rocking chair at the foot of my bed and said, “Wow. Now that’s how it’s done. You need to give classes to all these other ladies on the LND floor.” I felt proud, but the reality was, it wasn’t really because of anything I did. My labor with Noah was far longer and far more difficult with complications to boot. Its crazy how little of it is up to us, anyway. “Birth plans” and such–an illusion of control.

From day one until this day, six years later, it’s never been in my control. What a year we’ve had, you and I. In a way different than the other children, I feel like we grow up together–you, the firstborn, and I. You, the one who throws challenges at us that we are hardly practiced for, and we learn as we walk through them with you.

You amaze me as you grow. I can’t believe we are one-third of our way through our parenting journey with you. Only twelve more years until you’ll be free and ready to take off on your own little wings. I hate the thought! I can’t believe its gone already and I’ll never have it back, all those precious baby years with you, so tiny and so new. Yet each year with you is so much fun, as you grow and change and become more and more your own little person.

I love everything about you. I want you to know, you are so very special, my phoebe girl. God has mighty plans for you. He’s already working in you and through you. He has entrusted hardships to you at a young age, and He will be faithful to see you through. He will be faithful to carry you all the way. He may not remove the thorn, sweet one, even though we so wish He would. But He will bring great good from it, so much good that you will one day marvel with great joy and say, “The Lord is good to all,
and his mercy is over all that he has made…The Lord is righteous in all his ways
and kind in all his works.” (Psalm 145:9,17) ALL of it. All. We won’t understand a fraction of it, but we have this promise in black and white–He is good to all, He is righteous in all that He chooses to allow or cause.

You are still one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever received in my life, you are such a treasure. Through you God keeps teaching me that I’m not in control here–He is. I’m so so proud of you, all your hard work, your willingness to try things that are scary and difficult for you, your quick turn to repentance when you’ve done wrong, your courage and bravery and general usual state of HAPPY. I just love you so. I treasured our day together today, playing together, snuggling, just keeping it simple, thanking God for the gift of life.

I love you so

Mommy

now you’re four!

December 20, 2016December 20, 2016 MarthaKimball2 Comments

my dear sweet boy

never lose your tenderness. be brave enough, be strong enough to be a tenderhearted man in your generation. it is a beautiful quality of yours, something i love most about you, even if it is often misunderstood. it isn’t weakness or shyness to be tenderhearted. our Savior is tenderhearted, and maybe those with tender hearts see those that others pass over so quickly–the lost, broken, hurting. it takes tenderness to extend compassion. so don’t let a cruel hard world pound out of you your tender heart. stay soft, stay breakable.

my, what a year you’ve had. you have literally transformed before our eyes. maybe this is so unusual to us because our phoebe girl grows so slowly, but you are surpassing her this year. you are really growing up! you moved into your own boy room, and have since loved the privacy that gives you, even though you don’t love being alone in the dark of night. you’ve begun to battle nightmares almost nightly, and often come snuggle with us in our bed. it’s the first time, though, that i’ve really seen you turn to the Lord in prayer on your own. you are beginning to learn to pray on your own to your Heavenly Father, and not to be afraid to speak freely to Him.

this morning i said, “noah! you’re not three anymore!” and you said, in a distinctively more grown-up-sounding voice, “i know but i still call you momma.”

you love playing with your sisters, and do so well with both of them. your favorite things lately are to play that you are dogs, running around in the house and yard on all fours, and to play drums constantly to whatever music we have going in the house. you are addicted to movies much to my chagrin. 🙂 you have learned so much alongside phoebe in our first year of home educating, and i can tell you are so bright and eager. you still love to be tickled to tears before bedtime, as you always always have, and you love to be sung to. you love trucks and cars endlessly. you love to help me in the kitchen, really to help with any task.

i am so so proud of you, son, so thankful that God gave us you. you came quietly on this december day four years ago, but with so much drama somehow at the same time. what a champ you were as your momma struggled to recover in the weeks following your birth. i especially want to tell you that i’m very proud of you for the way you have loved phoebe in all her health battles this year, being protective of her and looking out for her. the way you told her you missed her while she was gone to winston salem. it’s not easy having to bend to someone with a special dietary need, and yet you do it quietly and with such a good attitude. thank you, son! your daddy and i adore you more than we can ever ever say and we thank God for the gift of you!

happy fourth birthday, my favorite boy with the best giggle!

merry + bright

December 19, 2016 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

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December rolls in and we hang stockings and hang Advent ornaments on our Jesse tree. We bake Christmas cookies and go to holiday parades. We snuggle up and read books and make holly wreaths. We watch Christmas movies, and I keep busy with gift knitting. We go to our favorite nearby pottery place for their holiday open house, pick out free pottery cups while listening to live music, and the kids play in the clay. We squeeze in as much time with family as we can. Brandon’s parents came up this past weekend after we got back from Phoebe’s procedure in Winston Salem. They took Noah for the day on Friday to the Polar Express and then spent the day with us Saturday. We pretended it was Christmas morning and the kids opened their birthday and Christmas gifts from the grandparents. Such thoughtful and fun imaginative gifts. Nain made dresses for the girls for their birthdays, and they together made Noah a remote-control Mater truck from a ‘build-a-truck’ store near where they live in SC. They bought all of the kids puppets and a puppet stage for their Christmas gift. Nain gave Phoebe a painting she made for her. Her paintings are extra special because they are bathed in prayer. She prays over colors and then begins to paint, then pulls out what she sees. This one was for “princess braveheart Phoebe,” which is their nickname for her, and appropriate considering the day Phoebe had had on Friday. I love it and I think it will always be a treasure for Phoebe, too. I’m thankful Christmas is a bit spread out all over this month. I’m thankful for our daily Advent readings that ground us and keep us feasting on God’s word, keeping our appetites hungry for Him more than all the material things and activities surrounding this season.

Now, I’m off because dinner must be made and things prepped for a little boy who is turning four tomorrow. I hope your season is merry + bright all the way to the end.

it’s beginning to look a lot like

December 12, 2016 MarthaKimball2 Comments

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Christmas! We are in full swing and leaning into the season. There are little traditions every year that we keep, one of which has become cutting a tree at a favorite farm tucked away in little ordinary, inglorious Rosman, NC just outside of Brevard. We went after church the first Sunday of Advent, and my parents tagged along. We had a quick picnic lunch together on a blanket, than tried to get a few family pictures. The past couple of years the farm owners have offered a hay wagon ride for free for the kids, which they love of course. Then we got to work picking a tree. I wanted a short and really fat one this year, and Brandon indulged me. For $30! It’s my favorite tree that we’ve ever had, I think. These sorts of traditions are more fun every year as the kids get older and are more involved. Nothing feels merrier than a fresh spruce twinkling in our living room, greeting us every morning while we sip coffee in robes by the fire.

Last year at this same farm. What a difference a year makes.

we celebrate

December 6, 2016December 6, 2016 MarthaKimball1 Comment

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Have you missed my posts just about our ordinary days? I have. There is lots of writing happening in my head, so much writing, so many things being learned and processed, but so little time to put pen to paper these days.

My heart needed to reflect on a little celebrating today. The day before Philippa’s birthday we drove my oldest daughter, Phoebe, to Brenner’s Children Hospital in Winston Salem, NC to their celiac center. We are about a year and a half into this diagnosis and life change, but we haven’t seen the progress we should be seeing in Phoebe, and it is time for a second opinion. So they day before Philippa’s birthday was spent driving 5 or so hours, and meeting with doctors, lots of talking about health history and numbers and bloodwork. Ironically, the day before I wrote this post we spent driving back and forth once again to Winston Salem for a two-week follow-up. The news about where Phoebe is and how she’s doing isn’t good, and my heart is heavy today. More testing ahead, surgeries, biopsies. More blood work. As any momma will tell you, it is so hard to go through a thing like this with your child. You’d rather it be you any day than them. How can you answer their questions about why God has allowed this and why He doesn’t take it away? These are the things that break your heart.

Yet squished in between these appointments and my momma’s heart revolving around all of this with Phoebe, a little girl turned TWO. How good of God, how appropriate of God to call us to celebrate and feast and give gifts in the very middle of our hard moments. He knows our form, He remembers that we are dust, He knows our frailty, and He knows that when we turn our hearts to rejoice and celebrate and feast, it really can tune our attention to all His manifold goodness.

And so, again today, as I try to catch up on pictures and happenings in our family, my heavy heart looks over these pictures of my littlest one and smiles. She is such a stinker. She was in the WORST mood OF HER LIFE on her birthday. I have no idea why but she really may have spent every waking moment crying or whining. We made her cake in the morning that day, then ran some errands. I let Phoebe and Noah each pick out a dollar gift for her from Target’s dollar spot. Noah bought her a little wooden firetruck, Phoebe bought her a few sheets of Elsa/Anna stickers. Later they wrapped their gifts to her and made cards. I really love encouraging them to give gifts to one another because as we all know, it really is better to give than to receive. It’s so fun to wrap up a gift and then watch the recipient open it with delight. And because what mother doesn’t shamelessly ~~force~~ encourage her kids to like one another? After naps, Philippa watched me ice her chocolate cake with “spinkles” (her request–they tasted horrible) and licked the icing off the spatula. She couldn’t wait to open her gifts once she saw them so Noah let her open his early. Poor thing, having to wait all day for celebrations!

My parents came for dinner and we sang her happy birthday and had cake and ice cream. She opened gifts, a rocking horse from my parents which she loved so much she didn’t much care about her other gifts. Should have saved that one for last. 😉 We got her a set of little letter blocks, and a stuffed peppa pig that talks when she squeezes it because she adores peppa. When she opened the sweater I knit her she screamed “NO!” and chucked it behind her. But I still love her and she will WEAR IT ANYWAY. As you can see, ~~I forced her~~ she wore it happily the next morning and I snapped a few pictures of her in it. Once in a better mood she has enjoyed it more. It is a bit bigger on her than I thought it would be so I may be able to get two winters out of it (woohoo!). I really do want to knit the same sweater for myself, such a soft and rustic wool, very warm and cozy.

My mom surprised the kids with a “singing machine” recently, too, and that has been the biggest hit around here. She gave a new pack of Adventures in Odyssey CDs, and they have been listening non stop. The microphone is making all of Phoebe’s dreams come true, and thankfully I can send them all to the basement where the cacophony is muffled nicely.

Anyway, I’m thankful that life is a peculiar mix of joy and pain, that God calls us to celebrate and rejoice over His good gifts even when we’re having a bad day or a hard year. As I read in Ann Voskamps’ advent book this morning:

“Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian.”
-G.K. Chesterton

There is so much joy to be had in Him even in the hard times. I hope wherever you find yourself today, you can find your way back to joy in Him. Our circumstances are unstable, as uncertain as shifting sand, but He remains unchanging. Hallelujah!

for my feisty girl

November 22, 2016 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

Two years ago today, this little feisty bundle with a shock of black hair came into our lives. You looked at me fiercely with grumpy little eyes when I first looked at you, already trying to boss me around. You wanted to nurse and you wanted it NOW. You haven’t stopped bossing since.

Philippa, you are full of vim and passion and zest for life. You love a good party, and you love to make everyone laugh. At two years old you now have a head full of white blonde hair. In the mornings I hear you yelling, “Mom! Momma!” from your crib when you’re ready to get up. You come running out and there’s no time for snuggling. Quickly you busy yourself playing with brother or sister. You love “can-cakes” for breakfast and you call your water bottle your “coffee.” You love to go outside and “ho-high” on the swing all by yourself, pushing away our hands if we try to help you on the stairs. The best moments are when you grab my face with your chubby hands and turn it roughly to the side so you can plant a big “tiss” on my cheek. Or when you wrap your squishy arms around my neck and say “hold on ti-ight!” Your snuggles are far and few between, but they are truly the best and your daddy and I live to sneak them in. Whoever you have in the moment is your favorite and you couldn’t possibly even deign to look at the other parent.

I miss our nighttime nursings, but love that we’ve traded them in for rocking in the chair, reading board books that you toddle over to me, while you suck your thumb and we sing hymns and little songs that you love. I love, love to hear you pray–“Dear Gah.. thank you for Noah” you always start with.

If you can’t tell, sweet girl, your daddy and I are just smitten with you. You can be feistier than Phoebe and Noah combined, if you want to be, but you are just as capable of equal measures of sweetness. Today at two years old, you have been grumpier than usual, and I wonder if we are entering those “terrible twos,” but thankfully, we have had a go at this twice before. We engage it with a lot more laughter this time around and hopefully a lot more grace. That’s the benefit of being baby #3.

We love you so so much, precious little biddle-e-dee, and always will forever and ever no matter what. You are one of the greatest treasures + joys of our earthly lives. We pray for you every day to know Jesus and love Him and use all your passion and headstrong ways for His name and His kingdom. We can’t wait to see what this next year holds in store for you and we hope you have a very happy birthday!

Love,

Momma

november light

November 18, 2016November 18, 2016 MarthaKimball4 Comments

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Thousands of acres of forest are on fire here in NC. The air is acrid and dry and we’ve been staying inside more than usual. The smoke seems to have blown in again today and our throats feel dry and scratchy. It’s hard to stay inside when the weather and light is so beautiful these early November days. The smoke makes everything hazy and makes the sunsets brilliant, and yet I can’t quite feel that it’s pretty, knowing so much of the state is burning, and we have yet to see any rain. We keep praying.

Yesterday it seemed to clear a bit and we walked down to our little neighborhood lake and explored in the last light of the day. Everything looks so different, open and quiet now that most of the leaves have fallen. I sort of love when the colors fade to shades of gray and brown. It feels like a clean slate.

It’s been a busy week of running around + unexpected interruptions. We’ve been looking to buy a home (our first) since early summer, and we are still looking for the right place. It fills most of the nooks and crannies in our schedule, and proves to be a pretty emotionally charged experience. Often draining–both because of the work that goes into hunting, seeing homes with kids in tow, getting excited and disappointed, looking again another day. We know God will provide in His time and way, and we look eagerly for it. In the meantime, I really am content right where we are. I feel wildly graced with the life I have been given.

But the pace this week has been wearing me out. When I feel all hustly and stretched too thin, it does something in me to just grab my camera and go for a walk with the kids in our neighborhood. There’s something grounding in it. I’m so thankful for where we live and so happy here, it is quiet and peaceful and feels mostly empty. Our neighbors tend to be retirees. Putting feet to the ground around my home, paying attention to the changes in the season, the critters preparing for winter, the geese that have flown off our lake and south for the winter–it helps to quiet me and settle me and return me to myself, somehow. It helps me to see my life with new eyes.

It’s hard to believe we are almost done with our first “semester” of school, Phoebe and I. She has done so well, and we’ve both learned a lot in the process. I love it and I think she does, too, though it fills up a good chunk of our week. (It’s still far less than putting her in public school.) I’m excited to take an extended break for the holidays soon and regroup. She is already beginning to read, which feels like a big accomplishment to me in only a few months of work. She absolutely amazes me with her curiosity, hunger, aptitude and ability. She is a voracious learner. She would sit and read books with me all day, and loves learning about anything and everything. I think it’s very satisfying for her to have a structured time of learning. I hope things stay this way and she always loves learning.

I’ve been furiously knitting, finishing up Philippa’s sweater (her birthday is in a few days). It’s taken about 3 days to dry and I plan to weave in ends and wrap it up tonight. I absolutely love it and hope she does, too. She snuck a peek at it while I was blocking it, but she doesn’t really know it’s for her. It’s so squishy and soft and nubbly and I want to knit one in my size. I finished my first pair of mittens for myself last weekend while I was away at a hermitage. I started the second mitten and didn’t stop knitting until it was finished, basically, within an hour or so, and that was really rhythmic and satisfying. I’m thoroughly addicted to this craft. Phoebe has been asking me to teach her and she is quite engrossed, also. I think she feels quite grown up, sitting next to me, the both of us knitting, like we are sharing a secret. She can’t get far past one or two rows before knots and slipped stitches, but she is watching me knit with a different sort of interest now and I know this will be something we will share in the future.

Brandon and I snuck away for a couple hours the other evening to do a bit of birthday/Christmas shopping for the kids, particularly looking for a little toy or something for philippa to go along with her sweater. We had such a good time together and always have a BLAST shopping for the kids. So much laughter and silliness and it felt like a date.

We visited my good friend this week to see her new baby, and take them a few snacks. The kids have so much fun playing together and it was good for my friend and I to just keep company. I snapped a few photos for her of the baby. I love him already. Its wonderful to be around a newborn again.

weekending

November 4, 2016 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

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Weekends are for making memories. Slow mornings, second cups of coffee, extra snuggling, knitting, adventures and spontaneity, gathering with church family to worship, taking long naps, then throwing everything in the car and driving up into the mountains for an impromptu cookout and campfire with friends. Watching children running through the long grass, because kids need wide open spaces, and turns out, so do I. Sharing a burger with the littlest, eating french fries cooked right in the fire. Watching the sunset bathe the landscape in rose gold, fade to gray, then seeing the stars come out. Pointing out Venus, Mars, and the milky way to the children. These are the things weekends are made of (sometimes) and I hope you have a good one!

trick-or-treat

November 1, 2016November 1, 2016 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

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As you can tell, I’m not a very enthusiastic mom about halloween. 🙂 I wish I was more creative in this regard, with hilarious family-themed costumes, something witty or smart, but it’s just not my strong point. I mean, I spent the whole day yesterday with my shirt inside out and didn’t even realize it until evening. This is where I’m at, people. Barely able to manage my own grooming. (I sure admire all of you witty, smart, creative fellow-moms, though!) Maybe next year? I just didn’t care that much this year to pull something together, especially being that we don’t plan to trick-or-treat with phoebe anyway. Thankfully, the kids didn’t really care either. She did want to dress up, so I told the kids they could dress however they wanted and we would at least go for a walk around our neighborhood when daddy got home. Philippa was not having it at all, though she wore the kitty headband for a few minutes before chucking it. Noah really wanted to be Batman this year, as opposed to last year when he was terrified of his costume. I had previously bought some special candy/chocolate that the kids can have, and so I told them each to bring their little treat bag on our walk and I filled it as we went. We just enjoyed a quiet evening and a beautiful walk, and came home to warm pork chili stew + fresh cheddar biscuits. I think we are the only family in the neighborhood with young kids, and we didn’t go knock on any doors, but one neighbor saw us and ran to grab some treats for the kids. Another drove by in her car to “catch” us and gave candy to the kids. Super sweet. As we walked up our driveway, our young-married-couple neighbors were just getting home, and so we chatted with them a bit and they gave the kids candy, too. So I guess we did trick-or-treat after all. It was the most chill and supremely simple halloween to date. We hope you had a happy one, too!

leaves like a quilt

October 31, 2016 MarthaKimballLeave a comment

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Can it really be the last day of October? I don’t want to see it go. I have barely posted this month, besides my faithful yarn along posts, which is probably more interesting to me than to most of my readers. Dear reader, I’m sorry!

My little corner of the world has been spinning rather wildly, and this month has been busy. The first two weeks of it, my older brother was in town with his son, and I tried to squeeze in as much time with them as I could. The kids and I have been outside as much as we can be. They’ve started this new rhythm since the weather has cooled and the mosquitoes have died down, running to play outside as soon as they are done breakfast until Phoebe and I start school. They are out most of the rest of the day if we are home. Phoebe and Noah and I have been reading Island of the Blue Dolphins for our chapter book, which has inspired much of their play. Coincidentally, someone gave us a tee-pee also, so Phoebe has been busy playing that she is Karana gathering abalones and watching out for the Aleuts.

I just can’t get enough of the color and the beauty of this season. During a walk one day to our neighborhood park, Phoebe exclaimed: “the leaves are like a quilt!” I’m so thankful for the perspective of a child! School has been going so well with Phoebe, I really love doing it. It is taking up a decent amount of my time and energy, thus my lack of blogging this month. We really love Phoebe’s co-op as well, the community we are all finding there, and I’m always amazed at how much she is learning and retaining. She has started a bit of music theory and learning to play a tin whistle, which she loves. Brandon and I are beginning to talk about Christimas/birthday gifts for them, as their birthdays are quickly approaching. I’m knitting each of them a sweater, which I really think I will feasibly have done in time. We’ve talked about giving each of them a musical instrument as well for their birthdays. Noah is dying for a drum, Phoebe has wanted a violin for some time. But we are still undecided.

We continue to hope for more improvement in Phoebe’s health, her diet, her growth, her eating habits. This month has been hard for me in that department. I realize my frailty, my weariness, my weakness. The pastor at our church yesterday was speaking about running the race (of faith) with endurance, and that part of what gives us strength for the race is the hope of Heaven. I was thinking about how my heart hurts and gets weary over this journey with Phoebe, and realized yes, this is part of it. This is not something that seems to be resolving easily with her, or quickly, and we wear out. We long for an end in sight, something we can fix our eyes on and run toward. Yet this is more ambiguous, uncertain. Our medical team is beginning to recommend more testing. She will go to Brenner Children’s Hospital in Wake Forest next month to see a pediatric specialist in Celiacs. I’m hopeful that we will have more help from there, steps we can take, things we can try, something.

We can’t trick-or-treat and don’t want to deal with having to rifle through the kids candy and pull out what isn’t gluten-free. I’ve just planned some simple and fun activities for us here at home, and found candy and chocolate that the kids can have from a local health store. We carved our pumpkin over the weekend and maybe will let the kids dress up and just walk around our quiet, mostly-old-folks neighborhood.

Anyway, so thats a bit of what our October was like, the best month of the year, and why I have been pretty absent in the blogosphere. I want to not miss these days, these moments. I want to capture it all, to write it down, to hang onto the glory of these days, each falling like golden leaves, slipping to the ground. Now, behind us, underfoot, all stretched out like a mosaic, like a quilt.

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