Tag: personal

Posted in musings

Remembering grace in a busy season

Posted on by kristinabean

It has been a long summer.

Work has been a lot busier than normal, and my supervisor has been out for most of the summer, so I’ve been working pretty substantial amounts of overtime most weeks. While I really do enjoy my job, it is hard for me and for Paul when I need to put in extra hours – it cuts into our time together and our time for sleep, leaving us feeling tired and overwhelmed.

On top of that, I’ve had trouble keeping up with my body’s changing demand for thyroid hormone, as I’ve hit the second trimester and my weight gain has accelerated. Every 4 or 5 weeks when I go in, my dosage has been increased – but my lab results don’t look any better (and even look worse) the next time around. So my mind and body have been operating at a slower speed than normal, and by the time dinner is done I am ready to fall asleep. All my normal “leisure activities” (like reading, writing, photo-editing, and crafting) have totally fallen to the side!

And along with the boys I’m starting to have a bit of cabin fever from being cooped up from the heat. This must be how Northeasterners feel at the end of a long winter… but honestly I’m just tired of having to do some sort of water play to make even the mornings bearable. The boys have so much energy all the time; Rondel especially just wants to run and run and run. So we go out early in the morning and again before bedtime, and I try to take them to spashpads, so they can move as much as little boys need to move. It has been nice lately that the monsoons are coming in, and the rain has cooled everything down a bit (at least for a few hours at a time, anyway).

I suppose all of this is just meant to be an excuse for not writing as much lately… it’s really been a good time, just a busier time than normal 🙂 I’ve gotten to learn and stretch myself a lot at work, we’ve introduced puzzles with the boys to their great delight, and my husband has still managed to do really well in his classes and network with his professors. I’ve still had good time for prayer and Bible reading, thanks to the light rail, and that has been a huge blessing and a source of strength when I’m really tired.

So there is a lot to be thankful for! And this is what I’m going to try to remember, and focus on, when I’m worn out and another day of responsibilities is starting: that God’s mercy and compassion are also new every morning, and that His grace is sufficient for my needs.

Posted in musings

daydreams

Posted on by kristinabean

When I was in junior high and high school, I often daydreamed about being a sort of modern desert hermit. When driving through the open desert, especially the higher and hillier desert, I would imagine how a home could be built right into the hillside, letting the earth insulate the space from the extreme heat and cold of the desert environment. There were always goats, in these daydreams, foraging on the desert wildlife and providing me with their wool and milk; I suppose there was a well, too, but I don’t really remember that part of it. And it was always just me.

Partly I was inspired by the history of the native people of the Southwest – by their ingenuity, creativity, and sheer stubbornness in surviving in such a hostile climate without the comforts and amenities of modern life. I was (and still am) amazed at how they not only scratched out an existence from the dry sands of the desert, but did so with time and energy to spare for the creative labors of decorative pottery, weaving, storytelling, and dance. Sitting in my air-conditioned car or pulling food from a refrigerator seemed so cosseted and disconnected from reality compared to the struggle of living in the desert without electricity or running water, and I yearned for that connection to the land I lived in.

The other fuel for my daydreams was my intense introversion and shyness. I liked other people, or at least I didn’t dislike them, but I didn’t really feel a need for them on more than special occasions. Alone, I would have my work and my books and time to be with God – what more did I need? And I saw that in the city, I could never really be alone. Being alone in a city is either accomplished with the intentionality of a retreat (imbued with purpose and direction) or falls upon you with the calamity of social awkwardness and isolation (implying your inferior value in society). There is never the calm content of focused solitude in one’s work or rest, never time for aimless wandering of the mind in exploration of some new idea, never silence in the constant stream of trivial conversation babbling by. But in my desert refuge, I thought, I could find all those things without the stigma of being a loner and a loser, absent from the crowds because no one wanted me present.

To be honest, I still feel the appeal of a desert hermitage. I have a more realistic view of just how much hard work it would require, and I have family responsibilities that would seriously interfere with living a solitary life, but I would love to get out of the noise of the big city and be more intimate and familiar with the land and sky from which physical life is drawn and nourished. For now I will focus on living well for God where I am – but maybe someday I will live in my naturally-built, off-grid, sustainable home and enjoy the stillness in the air as the sun goes down.

Posted in musings

overwhelmed

Posted on by kristinabean

My coworker’s son is going to need a liver transplant. How does an 11 year-old deal with something that life-changing, or a parent cope with something that threatens their child’s life in such a serious and ongoing way?

I need Thee every hour, most gracious Lord.

 My own worry for them is bleeding out into the everyday stresses of life: my margin is slimmer, my patience worn down, my emotional capacity almost brimful. I completely melted down in front of Rondel yesterday – sobbing uncontrollably, unable to pull myself together – and it’s been a constant battle to respond to the boys with compassion instead of anger. 

No tender voice but Thine can peace afford.

I’m going to need extra wisdom and efficiency at work to handle what needs to get done, and extra grace to deal with the anxiety of training on a new robot this week without my supervisor there to buffer the social aspect. I’m going to need extra patience and love at home to continue deepening my relationship with my children instead of focusing on correcting their behavior and allowing my anger to escalate. And every night I’m exhausted to my bones and to my soul – this pregnancy isn’t helping at all! – which makes it harder to find the time for the solitary creative activities that replenish and nourish me, or for the opportunity to connect and rest with my husband without the boys.

I need Thee, oh I need Thee – every hour I need Thee.

My hope in this time – which is very hard for me although I don’t like to say so because it is obviously so much worse for other people, like my coworker and his family – is that God’s faithfulness never fails and His compassion is renewed every morning. I may fail and fall and hurt the things and people I care most about, but He forgives and gives me another chance to love and be gentle and seek to understand. Weathering this storm can make us all closer and our family stronger, if I seek God through it – and I hold onto that belief when it feels like I’m falling apart with everything around me.

Oh bless me now my Savior, I come to Thee.

Posted in musings

prayers for a sick child and a fearful parent

Posted on by kristinabean

It seems fitting, as my supervisor’s son has been sent to the best children’s hospital in the area from the (quite good) children’s medical center nearer to them, that today’s morning prayer would focus on the brokenness of this world and our hope of redemption and healing in Christ.

“…my spirit fails; my heart is numb within me… Lord, make haste and answer, for my spirit fails within me… In the morning let me know your love for I put my trust in You.”

“At daybreak, be merciful to me, O Lord.”

“For thus says the Lord: …as a mother comforts her son, so will I comfort you.”

“He heals the broken-hearted, he binds up all their wounds.”

“The sufferings of the present are as nothing compared with the glory to be revealed in us.”

“You are our life, O Lord.”

And I pray that my supervisor would be able to cry to God with the Psalmist for answers and mercy and love, achingly honest with his emotions and fears; I pray that he would know the tender comfort of God as of a mother to her nursing child; I pray that God would heal his son now but also bring to them eternal hope and life in Jesus. A desperately sick child is a terrifying situation for any parent, and without a stronger hand to lean on and a greater heart to trust, my supervisor is bearing all the weight of that anxiety and fear and helplessness on his own shoulders. Right now, he needs the comfort of the One he does not know, and I pray that he will find it.

Posted in family life, recipes

breakfast for dinner – real life on a regular day

Posted on by kristinabean

I’ve honestly been too tired to get out my camera and aim for the beautiful or cute shots of the boys for a while now, and it’s been compounded by the fact that our only real outdoor play options (where the lighting is ideal for pictures of toddlers who rarely hold still) involve water, which is decidedly camera-unfriendly!

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Lately, however, I’ve been inspired by Jennie’s Real Life series of black-and-white shots over at Where My Heart Lies, and I thought, you know, black-and-white pictures are much more forgiving in low-light settings, and if the bar is set low enough so that even the mess is considered valid subject matter, then maybe I can still take pictures even in this season of life. The floor may more often than not be a colorful canvas of crayon art, and the sink may typically be full of dishes, but we’re still playing together, reading together, eating together, and surviving each day together, so it’s worth capturing the truly everyday moments no matter how inglorious and small they might be.

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Yesterday, as has been the case for the majority of days in the past few weeks, my queasiness peaked in the afternoon, making dinner prep the absolute last thing I wanted to do. I didn’t have a plan and nothing sounded remotely edible but I knew that if I postponed dinner any longer I would have two ravenous toddlers at their emotional breaking points over a lack of food, so I went to a standby that I actually hadn’t made in a while: whole-grain pancakes!

This recipe is from the book Hearth and Home, which my mom owns; I recall the book as being a collection of recipes, thoughts, and short anecdotes, and I don’t really use anything from it aside from this recipe – but it is definitely a good pancake recipe! The unique element of it is that you start with whole unground grains: wheat berries, rolled oats, cornmeal (I don’t trust my blender with whole popcorn kernels!), or whatever else you have around. My current favorite is 1 1/4 cups of wheat berries and 1/2 cups of rolled oats; different combinations don’t affect the taste so much as the texture of the finished pancake. The blender does the work of grinding up the wheat berries and other grains or flours, so that you are working with and eating the freshest possible whole grains. Despite having no added sugar, some warming spices make the pancakes feel sweet, and they are thick, hearty, and filling. You might have noticed in the picture above that I added some fresh blueberries to one of the pancakes, too!

Blueberry pancakes with butter and a drizzle of maple syrup – mmm 🙂

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the first batch, catching the sunlight through the kitchen window – aren’t they lovely?

And now for the recipe, short and simple. Make sure you have a heavy-duty blender; otherwise, just use 2 cups of the flours of your choosing instead of the whole grains.

Blend 1 1/4 cups whole wheat kernels and 1/2 cup rolled oats with 2 cups milk, for 4 minutes on high, until smooth.

In a separate bowl, beat an egg with 1/4 cup of oil (I like coconut best but I used vegetable tonight because I’m all out of coconut oil, sniff). Pour the blended mixture into the bowl and whisk together. The blender just doesn’t seem effective at this when the egg and oil are added on top of the flour mixture, for some reason.

Whisk in 1 tablespoon baking powder, 1/2 teaspoon salt, and 1 heaping teaspoon of some warming spice mix (pumpkin pie spice blend, or just straight cinnamon, or something along those lines. I have a blend called “sweet spice” from a local baking store and I have no clue what is in it in what proportions but it’s good!)

Then just pour onto a griddle to bake! You may need to adjust the thickness of the batter to get it just right for you, but with this specific grain mixture I haven’t needed to.

After you pour a pancake out, before it cooks very much on that first side, you can add customized add-ins like walnuts, bananas, blueberries, or even chocolate chips. I’m a huge fan of these specialty pancakes but everyone else in my family prefers them plain, so I can’t mix the add-ins directly to the batter; this is a good hack to work around it.

So there you have it, breakfast for dinner and I’m completely unashamed 🙂 When you’re pregnant, exhausted, and queasy, just getting relatively healthy food on the table is an unqualified success, I think! Realistic expectations for myself, that’s what I need 🙂

Posted in family life

Finding an OB

Posted on by kristinabean

For my first two pregnancies, I did my prenatal care with a nurse midwife through a birth center, aiming for a non-medicated delivery. With both of them, for different reasons, I had to transfer care during labor and gave birth in a hospital with an epidural. So this time I thought I might as well prepare for that by choosing an OB for prenatal care, so that I could establish some history with my delivering doctor before the delivery!

From previous experience I knew which local hospital I wanted to deliver at (they are very well-equipped for non-medicated labor), which helped narrow the list down a little, but meeting and selecting a new doctor is still rather nerve-wracking for me! I decided to try first a pro-life, Catholic practice, but I was nervous that it might be an instance where a principled agenda excluded a general compassion, courtesy, and quality of care. Maybe I’ve been reading too many cynical articles lately… but that was one of my fears.

Last month I met the PA who will be alternating visits with the OB, and got a good overall impression of the office, but I didn’t actually meet the doctor until yesterday. And all my fears were proven unfounded. I have never been to a practice more respectful of me, the patient, as a human person.


Before the general examination I told the doctor that I was quite anxious and had a hard time physically relaxing during exams, and he first asked if they tended to be painful and then if I was a praying person. When I said yes, he literally prayed that the exam would go painlessly and that I wouldn’t have the anxiety, and thanked God for the new life inside me – and then proceeded with the gentlest Pap smear I’ve had in my life. (My mom always did say that male OBs were gentler!)

It blew me away.

All the little details of the office show the same respect for human dignity: the courtesy of the staff, the friendliness of the medical assistants, the closets for storing personal items and clothing during exams, and the timeliness of care (my whole appointment, including wait time, was 30 minutes – at other OBs I have waited longer than that just to be called back).


It brings me peace to know that my baby will be seen as a blessing and a gift even if they have special needs, that birth control won’t be pushed on me while I’m still in a postpartum haze, and that they care about the wellbeing of my whole person and not just my reproductive parts. This kind of care makes even the thirty minute drive worthwhile 🙂

Posted in musings

doctors, thyroids, depression, and pregnancy

Posted on by kristinabean

My favorite doctor ever is my endocrinologist. She’s actually a physician’s assistant, but to me it’s pretty much the same thing. I think she’s the only doctor I really enjoy talking to and trust unreservedly – and it kind of makes sense, considering I’ve been seeing her for seven years and through two pregnancies. And when you’re pregnant with a thyroid condition, you really get to see your endocrinologist a lot! I am in there every 4-6 weeks through the whole pregnancy, as changing weight and hormones affect the dosage of thyroid hormone I need, so Marie and I have developed a fairly good doctor-patient relationship 🙂 She sees my lab results come in and knows who I am without having to look up the chart to remind herself; I see her and know that I’m going to get my questions answered and my concerns addressed in a friendly, competent way. (I am hoping to eventually find an ob that I trust in the same way!)

Yesterday I went in for my first appointment of this pregnancy with a host of concerns that I thought might be related to my thyroid condition: my increased fatigue (although it’s always difficult to tell how much is first trimester tiredness and how much is thyroid fatigue), my chills, my decreased appetite, and my increased moodiness and depression. They’re all part of the vaguely non-specific cloud of thyroid symptoms that could just as easily be caused by the pregnancy itself, or life stress, or something entirely random. I was hoping they were thyroid-related because then she could just increase my dosage and they would get better! But unfortunately my lab results looked great – they were even solidly within the much tighter range Marie likes to target during pregnancy, and at a place where I knew that I wouldn’t be having thyroid-related symptoms if I were not pregnant (after seven years of monitoring your TSH levels, you start to know where your body feels best, and that’s honestly pretty much where my labs were). Because she is an awesome doctor who considers her patient’s concerns as well as just the lab numbers, however, she did increase my dosage slightly in hopes that it will help; as it will need to increase anyway when I start gaining weight, there isn’t much risk of going too far and triggering hyperthyroidism, which has it’s own issues for me and the baby.

What it means for me practically, though, is that I’m going to have to get intentional about things like exercise, sleep, and spiritual quiet time, since I can’t blame my mood issues (which have always stabilized during pregnancy in the past) on low thyroid hormones. It’s not easy to work those things in when I’m exhausted and down, but it’s going to be important for my physical stamina later in pregnancy as well as my mental well-being now, so I need to come up with a routine and make it habitual. Sigh. It’s hard to get up and do something I don’t really want to do when I don’t even have the energy and willpower to do things I enjoy and want to do, like writing here or reading a good book, both of which have fallen off since the pregnancy hormones started wreaking havoc on me.

Have any of you dealt with this general fog and malaise during pregnancy? How do you cope with it best?

 

Posted in family life, phfr

{pretty, happy, funny, real} – memorial day weekend

Posted on by kristinabean

We packed a lot of activities into one weekend!

Saturday was our fifth anniversary – but my sister’s husband’s brother (who is also a friend of ours) was getting married that evening, so we dropped the boys off at my parents’ house Friday night for a sleepover so we could celebrate a little early. The next morning I woke up early, being somewhat incapable of sleeping past 6am, and made cinnamon rolls for an anniversary surprise 🙂 He ate six of them over the course of the day, so I think they were a success 🙂 and I ate the other six between that day and the next, shh! So that’s a bit of {happy} and {real}:

I didn’t take any pictures at the wedding, in part because the cameras honestly tend to detract from the ceremony in my opinion, but also because corralling two toddlers with no practice in sitting still through long events took both my hands, all my skill, and most of my patience. Fortunately they had a foyer area where we could watch the wedding without any of our noise disrupting the event! My sister, who was a bridesmaid, said she couldn’t hear anything; the wedding planner, who kept darting in and out of the foyer, seemed to think otherwise by the looks of exasperation and disapproval she kept shooting our way.

And in general, despite the fact that it was an exceptionally nice wedding and reception, and was set up in a very family-friendly way (as I had anticipated, knowing the couple), the attitude of the other guests made it really hard for me to enjoy it. Maybe all those older women were childless, or had forgotten what it was like to have young kids – but I got a larger dose of judgmental glances at that reception than I have ever gotten before. If you really want to make someone feel uncomfortable enough to leave, just keep shooting nasty looks at them… but if you want to be courteous, come over and express whatever’s bothering you and maybe it can be addressed. It didn’t help that our kids were the youngest there. We had a lot of young children at our wedding and reception, and I would have loved to have more – it is weird to me to celebrate marriage, the covenant that leads to new life, in a child-exclusive way – but there were only a few here, and I think the others skipped the ceremony and came late. Sigh. I don’t think I want to attempt that again; my social anxiety is bad enough without the blatant disapproval of others pushing it home.

Sunday was another story altogether, though. Since my sister and her husband were in town for the wedding, we had a family party at my parents’ house, including my uncle, his sons, his girlfriend, and his girlfriend’s daughters, whom I hadn’t met before. Again, I didn’t take many pictures, but it was mainly because I was too busy swimming and eating to think about it! It was good to be with family, to relax, to be free to be ourselves and let the kids be themselves, and to remember the love of family which matters more than the passing judgments of strangers.

I did get a few shots of my husband and Rondel swimming together, while Limerick was napping! The boys absolutely love the pool and spent hours in it throughout the day, with whoever they could persuade to accompany them.

On Memorial Day itself, we stayed at home and recovered from the weekend. I was intending to clean but after doing three loads of laundry, washing a couple batches of dishes, and vacuuming the floors, I was pretty much exhausted. I keep forgetting how much less stamina I have in the first trimester! The floors were in desperate need of vacuuming, though, so I’m glad I at least got that done. Next in line? The bathrooms. (Always the bathrooms… I hate cleaning the bathrooms, so they get put off, and then they get horrible, and then I want to do them even less, but then I finally do them and it is such a weight off my shoulders.) I had found a good routine for housecleaning over the spring semester, but my schedule has completely changed again and I have two fewer mornings at home, which makes cleaning more difficult as the boys are more tired and needy in the afternoon and dinner prep needs to be done. I’m sure I’ll figure something out before the schedule changes again, though!

Head over to Like Mother, Like Daughter for the link-up today! There will probably be a lot more beauty and happiness there than in this rather rambling and complaining post of mine – but I am glad and thankful for the special times we’ve had thrown in with the challenging ones this weekend.

Posted in family life

marriage and anniversaries and slogging through the hard times

Posted on by kristinabean

I wasn’t able to write this up and post it on our anniversary this past Saturday (I’m blaming the pregnancy fatigue), but I did want to post it before the days slipped too far away!

Saturday was our fifth anniversary – the first real “milestone” anniversary we’ve reached together – and it made me think about all that has already happened in our marriage, and where we are now. We’ve packed a lot of things into those five years, between my husband’s school, my job, finding and buying our first home, and having two kids (with another one on the way)! There hasn’t been much time to get used to things being a certain way before they change again; even though we’ve had the same basic setup now for over a year (two kids, classes for my husband, and 30 hours/week of work for me), the exact schedule changes every semester, and we’re forced to rethink childcare and daily routines for both ourselves and the boys. I’m usually up early every morning to work (I try to start at 6:30am), and my husband is usually up late every night doing homework (often not coming to bed until midnight) – so lately, at least, our time together has been limited, sporadic, and fleeting. It’s the kind of environment that breeds misunderstandings and resentment, with both spouses feeling tired and overwhelmed, isolated and worn. I described it to a close friend as feeling as though we have no margin, as though we are using every resource and drop of energy we have just to keep things going.

And yet, somehow, we’ve kept our trust and love for each other strong. Both of us have striven to prioritize family time whenever possible, and to pick up the everyday tasks of cleaning and organizing as we have time and energy (although, I have to confess, my husband is probably more sacrificial of his time and energy in those things than I am…). For the most part, we understand each other’s strengths and weaknesses, and can support each other through those things; especially when we see each other at the end of our rope, we try to pick up the burden to let the other get rest. My husband is especially generous with his time when he sees that I am getting exhausted, which is something I am incredibly grateful for! My personality tends toward suspicion and jealousy, but instead of letting my husband’s late-night study sessions give rise to paranoid fears in my head, I remind myself of the character and heart I know him to possess, that he has proven to me time and time again. In short, his love acted out in the simple tasks of everyday life gives me assurance in the times when we can’t profess and renew that love in deep or romantic ways, and I hope mine does the same for him.

I hope there will be a time when life isn’t pulling us in quite so many different directions, when it will be easier to create consistent routines that build in space for family time and couple time to strengthen those most intimate relationships – but I am sure that the trust and love developed now, if we keep striving towards that end through the difficulties of it, will be a blessing for us no matter what happens.

Happy anniversary, wonderful! There is no one else I’d rather live life with than you.

Posted in musings

peanuts

Posted on by kristinabean

When I was in elementary school, I loved peanuts. Especially the kind roasted still in the shell, papery and crumbly at first, then rich and buttery on the inside.

My grandma used to love peanuts too, and every time she came to town we would buy a bag or two to set out on the kitchen counter. I remember what a treat it was to stand around the counter with her and whoever else was around (my mom working in the kitchen, perhaps, or my dad sharing in the snack), crushing the shells and slipping out the brown nuts, accumulating a pile of dusty debris, the slow process of unshelling the perfect companion to conversation.

She must have held those moments dear as well, because every summer when I would go away for summer camp she would send me a care package with a bag of peanuts. Every summer, every time, without fail. To get a care package to a week-long summer camp on the other side of the country reasonably early in the camp requires much forethought, but she never let me down: I could always count on her peanuts and Maria cookies.

We don’t eat peanuts much together anymore, and haven’t for years. I had forgotten all about it until Rondel discovered roasted peanuts this week, actually. Her diverticulitis makes it much less enjoyable for her! But I’m glad I thought of it again, that I have those simple rituals of our relationship to remember. Because things don’t have to be complicated or extravagant to be important, and love colors even the most mundane things with beauty and value.