New Camera, Cicada Shells, and long long car trips

 This year, for Christmas, Josh presented me with a little card, that stated it was redeemable for a really nice camera.

 I had been daydreaming about the Canon eos rebel T2i ever since my sister got one on eBay 2 years ago. It's amazing.

Josh and I have had very different philosophies when it comes to photography. Josh feels like it changes the moment by being observed, like quantum mechanics and knowing collapsing the wave function. He thinks photographing life interferes with living it. And as he points out, “if you photograph your whole life, when do you have time to look at it all?” 

I am in the opposite camp, “This 50^th variation of the 6 week old grimace must be documented...”

So the camera voucher for Christmas surprised me <3

Chilling in AL....

If you are as obsessed with photographing your kid's everyday life as I am then this camera is so worth the cost (used on ebay, still a decent chunk of money) even if it means pinching the grocery/clothes/household budget for 6 months.

{{Digression on the awesomeness of this camera: while some of the outdoor pictures in this post are with my old pocket camera, all my indoor pictures are now taken with the new camera. I can actually take photos in indoor lighting in the evening (usually when all the daddy-kid playing is happening), instead of having a blurred out humanoid shapes or shell-shocked kids after a flash. And best of all, instead of a 3 second reload times between shots (usually when my kids attention span would fade, or instead they'd sit frozen with their picture grimaces expression for 5 seconds, I can actually get a series of expressions, capturing their real everyday expressions. Now I just have to be really really careful not to break it.}}

 Because you can get little interactions like this....

She was very pleased to have the cicada shell bestowed upon her.

She gave it to Mariam, who sensed the honor of the gift....

Jenny was also thrilled to get to wear it.

Although I don't know if this series of pictures justifies my philosophy of documenting all the memories or Josh's philosophy that documenting life cuts into actually living, because I honestly didn't know Aunt Mali was passing around a cicada shell while I was taking these pictures. Only afterwards, looking through them, do I realize that's what was going on. Um....changing the subject....

Aunt Mali really got the kids excited about getting ready for bed. She turned the toothbrushing and the Pajama-garbing into royal rituals, in which they were all ceremonally knighted afterwards. Jenny and Keziah were the princesses, and Isaiah got to be a knight (he rejected the title of prince for that of a knight). Later that evening when they were skyping Josh (who had to fly back to AZ earlier due to work), they reported their recently ennobled status to him. He asked them who he was, and they answered “Duh King”, on which the King made a royal decree that all the princesses and princes had to go to bed (it was their bedtime). “But I'm a knight” Isaiah explained, Josh then decreed all the knights had to go to bed too. “But he has to guard us!!” Jenny explained.

The knights and the princesses did all eventually get to bed.

The kids would all cluster round for skyping Daddy. Mariam would hold the computer, and just repeat “Daddy! Daddy!” over and over again.

The kids had a blast, hanging out in Alabama with their Grandmommy and Grandaddy and Aunts and Uncles.

Mariam especially enjoyed hanging upside down.

They went on walks, scouted out the local parks, and were introduced to "Voltron, Legendary Defender," had their first piano lessons with Grandmommy, and even got to explore the library.

Uncle Elijah helped (meaning, did all of it) drive us back to AZ, Jenny started singing “Sweet Home Arizona” (her own variation) as we buckled into the car.
 
 It was quite an adventure, including almost running out of gas in middle of the night in rural Texas surrounded by red blinking windmills and a giant reassuring cross (we made it 20 miles with the empty light on, to a town of a single gas station with a few dozen houses), and a mirage cow (which Elijah saw after being awake 24 hours straight, necessitating a 1.5 minute frolic at a Chic-Fil-A playplace while Uncle Elijah napped in the car), as well as a 10 minute frolic in a snowstorm in the AZ mountains. I had been freaking out about sliding off the road, and Elijah had the idea to enjoy the snow while it was there. Little brothers give you perspective on life...

When we got home, the kids were excited to see Daddy again, and become reacquainted with all their toys. Keziah in particular has a very maternal streak for all her (and her sister's) dolls. She lines them up and tucks them into bed with the utmost care. 

Mariam started using new words, unprompted. On the road, when we got pizza, I was startled to hear a little voice in the back saying “pizza! Pizza!”, I looked back, expecting to see Keziah saying it, and it was Mariam.

Mariam also continues to enjoy slapping people in the face.

not the moment I was trying to capture....

Like everything else she does, her violent actions are accompanied by extreme cheerfulness. She might tease or hit her siblings, but always with joy and never with malice.

This one was...

She remains, in her core, a little sweetheart.

Isaiah lost his first tooth. That is, he bravely let mom pull it out because his new one had already come in behind it. Daddy took him to Walmart to get some legos as a reward afterwards, here he is building them, with an admiring audience.

I'm a bit behind on updates on all the kids, but I hope to post on that soon.
Little Sadar #5 is doing well, hanging in there and kicking, I'll be 31 weeks tomorrow. Thank you so much for all your continued prayers!

Thanksgiving 2016

Thank You

Thank you so much to each one of you who prayed for our little baby after the hemorrhage at 11.5 weeks. Its been an eventful 10 weeks, adventures in faith and waiting, with a midnight ER trip, my first full-fledged panic attack, and various scares and joys, as the hematoma grew and shrank and grew. Many times we thought we'd lost her, but every time we went in for an ultrasound, her little heart was pumping still.

We just heard back a couple days ago, that the hematoma is gone. At 21.5 weeks, Baby continues to grow, and suck her thumb (she's been doing that on every ultrasound), and I can now feel her little kicks.

Thank you to all of you who prayed. Thank you for all the words, all the love & concern, all the help, all the hugs. Your prayers mean more than I can say.

Thank you to the God who continues to sustain her life in my womb, giving us already twice the time we thought we had with her.

Thank you everyone. I love you you all!

Thankyou God. 

Of Jenny's Decision & Rodian Language, also a Prayer Request

This is the blog post I had finished writing last night, ready to post when I went to internet today. A lot of things happened today, and I have a prayer request I'll share at the end.

Hello everyone!

 Mariam makes her mad dash for freedom. Everyone does their part to keep her in the picture....

Not quite at the Big Canvas Print for the Living Room Wall level yet...

Mariam continues to be such a constant source of cheerful joy. She beams while she eats her food. She beams as she runs up to give out hugs. She beams while she tears library books, and climbs up on the table in 20 seconds, to throw people's breakfasts down onto the floor.....

She still does her little signature random clapping and  and bursting into laughter to liven things up whenever its too quiet.

She's so sweet that our budding theologian thinks she is sinless. Jenny explained to me "Mariam hasn't sinned yet, she doesn't know any better [to hit her sister, etc]".
Mommy, on watching Mariam wallop Keziah over the head with a Captain America action figure, disagrees.

Jenny has had a lot of interest in sin lately, and on choosing not to sin.

Rebekah visited last month, and at some point in the visit, we of course got into an argument. (full disclosure, I can't even remember what it was about, and yes, I was probably being a punk) Jenny came up to Bekah afterwards to question her about it.
"Why were you fighting?"
"Your Mommy was being a punk"
"No, Aunt Bekah, you were being a punk" (solemn pause) "Why did you fight?"
"Look Jenny--your mommy is my sister. And don't you fight with your sisters? Sometimes you fight with Keziah and baby Mariam."
"Yes, I did. (Pause) But Aunt Bekah, I decided, I am not going to make mistakes or sin or fight any more. You have to decide, Aunt Bekah."
"That's nice Jenny."
(Long pause -- Jenny keeps staring solemnly at Rebekah)
"Aunt Bekah, you have to decide."
(Rebekah playing dumb, covering her eyes with her hand to avoid Jenny's gaze.) "Decide what?"
(Jenny is undeterred. Bright solemn eyes staring intently at Rebekah.) "Aunt Bekah, you have to decide to not make mistakes or sin or fight any more. You have to decide, Aunt Bekah.”
At which point, Aunt Bekah starts laughing under the pressure, and hand-in-hand with Jenny, returns to apologize.

She told me about how Jesus had died for us "when we were sinful, and now we are not sinful anymore"
"Well, Jenny, Mommy still sins sometimes"
Jenny was aghast. "No! You need to decide!"
Later, I tried to drop the bombshell gently, that she still sins.
She responded with conviction, "But I decided not to!!! I decided not to be sinful anymore!"
After certain events transpired, in which even Jenny recognized she had sinned, she told me brokenly "But I did not want to be sinful anymore. I wuhpented"
Hopefully it doesn't crush Jenny too much to acknowledge she isn't going to be perfect this side of heaven....

On the subject of heaven, I explained we can't take anything to heaven with us. Jenny protested “But I was going to bring my heart to heaven, because thats where Jesus is.” She thought about it some more. “I was going to bring the food in my bewwy to heaven, because its alweady inside of me”

The kids like carrying their food with them everywhere, alas, which the state of the carpet reflects.

Mariam continues to be fascinated with water. Whenever I am trying to swirl a cloth diaper in the toilet, she eagerly comes up behind me, trying to join in on the fun. Mommy cruelly removes her, and goes back to frolicking in the toilet water with the fruits of her labors. Mariam does not understand why it has to be this way. But mommy says it must me, and trusts that one day, Mariam may too have the joy of swirling diapers in the toilet.

Ever since Mariam started walking, and ever since I strapped a pair of shoes on her feet, she sees herself as a big kid. The other kids got icecream cones at MacDonalds? Mariam vocalized the injustice, till I absently handed her mine, expecting her to take a few bites. She was so pleased. I turned my back on the stroller for what felt like a few moments, dealing with the others. When I looked back at her, she had eaten the entire thing.

Josh brushes each of the kids' teeth at night, and with the priveleges of icecream and shoes now bestowed into her, mariam confidently toddled up, climbed the footstool, and looked expectantly at Josh.

She has her own little toothbrush now, and Josh faithfully brushes all 6 of her teeth, right along with all the big kids. At night, Josh gives the kids all a drink of water after prayertime. I was feeding her a bottle, when she pushed it out of her mouth, slipped off the bed, and toddled over,pushing past older siblings to the cup to get a drink. The sweetest thing is how pleased she is with herself after these things, and her little toothy grin she bestows on the world afterwards.

Heady with these successes, she tried to wriggle out of my arms and as we were coming down the concrete stairs to our apartment, and walk down the stairs like a big kid. I held on. It was clear she was a little insulted as I set her down and the bottom of the stairs. She turned and climbed a few of the stairs, just to show me she knew how....

Keziah's vocabulary continues to expand and correct itself (I wistfully heard her switch to "Isaiah" from her little quirky "Izezzy"), and she has also been playing (and rough playing) with Mariam a lot more. When I'm driving, I hear them laughing together, and at red lights when I look back there, Mariam and Keziah are talking and laughing together. With Mariam's walking, Keziah seems to have embraced her as peer.

Keziah will chime in a word or two as the big kids recite Psalm 23 for candy, which will earn her an equal portion, which she receives with her little trademarked crinkle-nose smile of joy.

She loves Hannah E. Harrison's "Bernice gets carried away" and loudly demands "Duh BERNICE BOOK!!" It's also one of the sweetest children's books I've ever read, it's still good on the 49^th reading, and that's saying something. I think there's something about a introverted grumpy little cat that resonates with Kuzzles soul. She's our resident little introvert, craving order and quiet in her world.

When asked, she stocked up the entire shoe shelf, even putting similar (missing matching) shoes next to each other. “NO BABY NO!” she hollered later, defending her work from the inevitable slide towards entropy, that is Mariam Sadar.

Here she lined up a family of ducks, and was quite pleased. In the background, you can see some of her work on the shoe shelf.

She is very insistent that she is NOT a baby, when I absent-mindedly call her that as a term of affection. “No, I em a toddwer”, and another time “I em not coot. I em pwitty”

Isaiah continues to request “Star Wars, duh one wiv Luke in it” for his weekly allotment of one movie on Saturday afternoon.

After spending about 2 years of hoarding the red megablocks from his sisters, to build “big red iron man” he has now moved onto a different art form, which he has now been making daily for over a month. To Jenny's dismay, it uses up even more of the red blocks, as it is a star destroyer.

The blue ship on the right, I thought was just random blocks, until Josh pointed out Tantive IV, Leia's Corellian Corvette ship that gets boarded by Darth Vader in the first few minutes of Ep. IV: A New Hope. I was impressed, as despite having seen Star Wars since I was 9, still don't know the shapes of any of the ships other than a Star Destroyer and the X-wing.

Even given the one-week-between viewings, he has entire conversations from Episode IV memorized. Every day, he wants Josh (or me) to be Han in the cantina, when Greedo confronts him and consequently gets shot. He will usually show up, gallantly supply you with a blaster built from megablocks, then stick you up with his own megablock blaster, and greet you with a string of Rodian gibberish. The proper response is “Yes, I was just going to see your boss. Tell Jabba I've got the money”, to which he'll respond with even more Rodian gibberish, and if you can't remember, or skip a line, he'll feed you the lines (even if you miss a single word, he'll patiently feed you the line till you say it correctly) “I haven't got it with me” and “Even I get bored [sic] sometimes, you think I had a choice?” The next line of Rodian gibberish he unfailingly includes 'Jabba' in, which just shows how well he's memorized the Rodian sounds, given that he can't even follow the subtitles, and yet he is very particular about which syllables go where. Josh was the first to notice Isaiah was actually getting at least some of the Rodian gibberish right. We were all very impressed with Isaiah's memory. His favorite part is having you shoot him, and he slumps over dead. However, he is very insistent that Greedo didn't stay dead, he came alive again.

On the subject of Star Wars, here is Jenny sporting 2 sock buns. Isaiah is especially pleased when Jenny wears her hair like this.

I need to make her a little Princess Leia dress to go along with it. Because nothing says toddler play clothes like white....

 
The kids overall seem to be doing a lot more playing together, and are gradually accepting Mariam as one of the pack, and not just the baby. Mariam always wants to be in the thick of things, to be accepted in their games as an equal.

Which is timely, as baby Sadar is due to make his/her first appearance sometime in early April :)
Jenny has been very excited about this, and has been following along in pictures from my fetal development book.

Her favorite picture is “duh one where baby looks like Admiral Ackbar”, and she seemed kind of disappointed when I pointed out that baby had passed the Ackbar Stage.

Isaiah was just fascinated that the baby is currently naked. “But why does duh baby not wear clothes?” he asks, with shock and some admiration, I think, relishing the newest Sadar's breaking the house rule of No Running Around Naked. (Jenny's current attempted loophole for this is “but I was not running”).

So that's the blog post I wrote last night. Today, at 11 ½ weeks, completely unexpectedly, I started hemorrhaging. We went to the doctor's office, I was bleeding so much, I had very little hope. When the ultrasound technician first brought up the image of the baby, I started crying, thinking I was seeing my dead baby. And then it moved. That was the first miracle. Then the technician measured the baby's heart beat, that was the second miracle.
The doctor diagnosed it as subcorianic (I have no idea if that is spelled right, or if I've even remembered the word right, but I can't handle googling right now) hemorrhage. A condition that some babies make it through. All we can do is rest, wait, and pray. So I'm asking for everyone's prayers.
My in-laws have taken us into their house, are watching the kids, and babying me. I'm lying here, eating freshly cooked liver, in peaceful room, with my laptop, praying.
No matter what happens, I know God is holding our baby. That God knit this little one together, and that He treasures it, and loves it, and is holding my womb in His hand.
Please pray that the baby will stay in me, and live, and get to squish play dough with his/her siblings.
I am so thankful for each one of you reading this post. God is holding all of us.
~Hannah