Ear Tubes

Please pray for Hunter. He is having a minor surgery tomorrow morning to get ear tubes placed into his ears.

I am absolutely amazed at the size of the tube. It is so much smaller than I expected! It is just wide enough to make a small hole in the ear drum and just long enough to ensure what is behind the eardrum is able to exit the ear. This picture shows the size of the tube relative to a penny. It is tiny, people.
Seeing the tube eased my fears a little as well as made me appreciate the skill of the surgeon who must navigate incredibly small places to do his job. Please pray for our doctor, that he would be able to preform this surgery quickly and that it would be "routine."

We are hopeful this process will help Hunter not only to stop having infections as often, but also that it will help him to hear and understand better which will ultimately contribute to his verbal ability. Hunter is talking a lot and seems to understand us quite well. However, his hearing test on Tuesday showed he has partial hearing loss. We are hopeful that with this procedure his hearing will be restored!

Hope in Tragedy

Where is your hope in tragedy?

I listened to an awesome sermon this morning online, since several events precluded me and Hunter from attending church. Last week, Josh & I were working in the nursery and we missed the sermon. So I listened to last week's sermon entitled, "Unexpected Death and Unimaginable Comfort." Our pastor has been going through a series on death and it has been quite timely for our family.

As most of you know, we suffered a miscarriage on Christmas Day. Our sweet baby came into our lives and left way too soon. It has been rough to say goodbye so quickly to our child. We have decided to name him Patrick-- Josh & I both felt he was a boy, though we don't know that for sure. Josh & I were engaged on St. Patrick's Day in 2007 and we both love the story of St. Patrick.

I find great comfort knowing Patrick is with God and that he has a perfect body in Heaven. This is not how God intended the world to be. We look forward to glory where there will be no more suffering, no more tears, no more death and we will get to be with God for all of eternity. Though I am sad I never met my dear son I am so happy for him to have escaped the pains of this Earth. Now he gets to stand face-to-face with God.

So back to this sermon. Chris outlined the stages of grief and described why it is good to grieve. And then he talked about the hope we have as Christians as we grieve. I want to invite anyone who has suffered a loss of any kind in their lives to listen to this sermon. I found great comfort in hearing that it is normal to grieve and healthy, even. And my heart longs for heaven all the more after hearing the description of glory that is to come.

Here is a link to the sermon.

I know not everyone has the time to listen to a whole sermon, so here are the notes I took:
1. We must dwell on the stunning promise and dramatic implications of immortality
II Corinthians 4:7-12
We have the treasure in jars of clay: a clay pot with diamonds, rubies, emeralds inside the clay pot.
We are mortals. We are prone to cracking, and eventually we will return to the dust from which we came.
We will all contend with death.

2. We must embrace the utter necessity and profound propriety of grief
I Thessalonians 4:13
Grieve-- you have to grieve. You must grieve. It is not an option.
Each person who is grieving in a healthy way is going to pass through all the stages of grief:
1. shock & denial
2. pain & guilt
3. bargaining: often with God
4. loneliness & depression (realization that life is not going to be the same) --> sometimes this takes a while
5. Reconstruction
6. Acceptance and hope --> reaching the "new" normal. It will never be the same, but it is a new normal.

--> process can take days or months or years. Every person deals with it differently.
We need to understand this is a natural process. We need to walk with people through every phase, not jump to the end.
--> we have to let people grieve.
BUT we must not grieve as though we have no hope.
--> HOPE in what? Not just hope that things will be better tomorrow. Not just hope that we will forget. Hope that is placed in someone. Hope that is grounded in a future beyond what we can even see in this life.
--> Even though death is painful and hard and fills us with grief, there is hope of a future glory.

3. We must cling to the awesome promise of eternal glory.
II Corinthians 4:16-18
The things that are unseen are eternal. This world that we live in is not a myth. This world is real, the pain is real.
--> the very struggle we are facing now is preparing us step-by-step to ponder more profoundly the weight of glory that awaits us.
--> The pain is real, but when you get to heaven it will seem like an instant!
--> gaze upon that which is unseen: our soul and the reunion of our soul with our body "eternal weight of glory."
--> what gives us significance?
--> our comfort in spite of our profound loss comes from knowing the faithful love of our savior, Jesus Christ.

Where is your hope in tragedy?
There is reality of sin, the fall, death in this world. This reality is transformed by the promises of eternal life.

Pajama Party

STL got about 8 inches of snow overnight last night. Josh was called in to work at 6:30 a.m. to shovel the snow on campus. But after he finished he was given the rest of the day off! We have enjoyed hot apple cider, the movie Cars with Hunter, and Starbucks pastries from the nice girls that live below us!!!

Hunter loved the movie. For at least the first 20 minutes he just kept saying, "Car, Car, Car." Adorable!

Hunter on a Plane!

We flew to New Mexico for Christmas this year. In Hunter's 18 months of life he has flown three times already. The first time was when I flew to my friend Aimee's wedding when Hunter was 6 months old. I held him in the bjorn through the airport and he did great on the plan cuddling me and nursing during take off and landing. The second time was just a few days before his first birthday. All three of us flew to San Antonio, Texas to attend a family reunion. This time the three of us flew to Lubbock, Texas where my mom picked us up and took us the rest of the way to New Mexico.
Every time we prepare to fly, I get stressed out that it is going to be hard to keep Hunter happy, or that it will hurt his ears, or that I won't be able to carry everything through the airport. But every time Hunter has done wonderful. This was by far the best, though. We flew southwest and ended up having three seats to ourselves the whole flight there, even though technically Hunter was supposed to be on one of our laps. I guess the flight wasn't completely full, and who wants to be the poor soul forced to sit in the aisle with an 18 month old? So, yay for us, we had more room than we thought.

Our flight took off at 6 a.m. so that meant we had to wake Hunter up at 4 a.m. Check out his sleepy eyes:Our flight back we had the third seat for most of the trip, but not all of it.

STL Snow

I got Photoshop for Christmas! YAY! I am having such a wonderful time editing photos and learning how to use Photoshop!! It is an excellent program. Here are some of my pictures from last week when it snowed here.

19 months old!

Hunter is 19 months old today! He shocked us all yesterday by weighing in at 27 lbs! That means he has gained 2 and 1/2 lbs in the past month. WOW! It is such a relief to know he is gaining weight again. He is 33 inches tall, meaning 1/2 in growth this month.

Hunter is learning new things everyday. He is excellent at mimicking sounds and so his vocabulary is growing by the minute. Most of the time when he is asking for something or showing us something he sticks to one-syllable, usually the first syllable of the word. He can say words that have multiple syllables, but when it comes to using them he usually just says one. So funny.

His favorite toys are blocks, books, and colors. He is pretty good at entertaining himself for a little while now, which is why I am able to write this post! ;) He loves to know how things work and press buttons. He whistles a lot now. What a skill! He loves anything musical and he continually impresses me with his rhythm. He LOVES anything and everything Thomas.

3 Stories from the past week:
1. Today we were getting on an elevator in my school library and he pointed to the buttons and said, in his typical mono-syllable form, “butt, butt, butt.” He was so excited to recognize the buttons and know how to refer to them that the utter shock and horror on my face probably really confused him.

2. The other night at the dinner table we were going around asking Hunter to name all of us. “Daddy!” he said proudly when I pointed to Josh. “Mommy Mommy” he said when Josh pointed to me. Then I said, “What is your name?” He got very serious and said, “Choo choo!”

3. Hunter has been so affectionate recently. He gives hugs throughout the day and now he has gotten really good at giving kisses, too. When I ask him for kisses he presses his lips to my cheek and then turns my head and presses his lips to my other cheek. He goes back and forth about 4 times. We aren’t sure where he learned the European style of kissing, but it is so cute!!!

Hunter's new word

Hello my long neglected Blog. I have missed you. Look for more updates soon, but for today, here is a video of my adorable baby boy. His vocabulary is growing by the minute.