The greatest privilege

Alfie boy is sick today. He’s had a high fever and in between medicine and doctor visits he has pretty much just wanted to sleep on me and eat. Missing family get togethers and waiting to clean up the Christmas hurricane feels like absolutely nothing to me today. Snuggling my dear sick baby is my greatest privilege. I love this darling boy with all my heart.

 Mary and Martha

As I was driving one day the spirit taught me something new about this story.

I can be Mary and Martha in the story. But I get to choose each day. I am not a Martha as an identity.

Sometimes we feel like Martha had to do what she was doing and Jesus didn’t really appreciate the fact that someone had to prepare the meal. This is not trusting Jesus though. He told her “only one thing is needful”. If we trust him the way we claim to, we must believe this.

That with my crushing to do lists and the expectations of all the world on my shoulders only one thing is needful. Even the things that feel nonnegotiable like feeding many hungry visitors do not rank with Jesus.

Only one thing is needful.

If I choose the better part it will not be taken from me and I live with peace even in the midst of letting all

Those expectations take a backseat to the one persons expectations that matter. Jesus’ expectation that I sit at his feet and know him.

This is the true application of boundaries.

What my belly means to me

 I am so grateful for my squishy belly. When I see it I remember I am so blessed to have been able to carry 6 amazing kids in it. I am so lucky to have access to plentiful food and to have been able to nourish all my kids. I am made this way on purpose right now. I am a comfortable place to land for my little kids with a little extra cushioning, a little extra food storage for the baby. These kids are my greatest accomplishment and my greatest blessing and I am so proud that it shows.

Some Leoisms

 This shirt makes me look Ridicleas!

All this movie is just about romance! Blah! (Although Leo usually loves romance! He will ask in a movie if the characters are getting married and get so excited if they are :)

What did dad’s lip taste like when you first kissed him?

Phoebe Belle

 It’s so cute that Phoebe likes to hold hands. Mine, Esther’s, Domes, her friends’. I love it so much 

She gets indignant. She likes to rave about how she has Seven stupid hours of school! 

Phoebe is very cute with Dome! I love to see them teasing each other and playing together.

Phoebe was chosen as Belle for her schools production of Beauty and the Beast. I didn’t have any doubts that she would be. She worked so hard on preparing for it and she sings so beautifully and acts so passionately! I love to hear her singing the songs all around the house now! She is learning so much and she is going to be absolutely incredible!

Esther is funny

 Tonight Max had an orchestra concert. It was amazing by the way! I’m so proud of him and the incredible musician he is! 

Esther and Leo were being extra silly, jumping in the seats in the auditorium and talking and having a hard time being respectful. I gave Esther a very serious look and said it was time to settle down and sit down and listen. She replied in a whisper, “ I’m just trying to have a little fun mom!” I said, “ no fun! We need to be respectful” Esther was so surprised and mad. She sat and glared. I had to laugh. She was so indignant that I didn’t want her to even have fun at the concert 😂

Ripples in Ecuador

 It is very easy for me to feel that my life is not having a big impact. I live a pretty small life really. I especially often feel sad that I did not have the chance to get to know my nieces and nephews in Ecuador very well. It is strange how comforting it has been to me to find that I have left a few ripples in Ecuador no matter how small they may be. For example, Dome grew up eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. I remember preparing them for our kids and Karina trying it for the first time. I never would have expected her to adopt them. I was feeling so inferior. Also Dome loves Harry Potter. Who introduced that to her? Cristhian after he stayed with us and caught our love for it like a virus 😂. Dome knows all about dr Seuss because I brought her books as a little girl and who knows, maybe that is part of why she loves to read. Maybe I’m giving myself too much credit here, but the idea that maybe all those people who seemed to dislike me so much actually adopted one or two small customs from me makes me feel very happy. Maybe all the judgment I felt was not really what they were thinking at all :) maybe to my dear nieces and nephews I did make a small difference. I wanted to be part of their lives and I feel so sad that we weren’t much, but maybe we were in small ways and that makes me happy.

It takes a village

 The other day Phoebe came home with a big homework assignment. She was so frustrated. She thought her teacher was so mean to ask something so hard if her. “Doesn’t she know I have a life outside of school???”

I commiserated with her but I told her I was glad she had the assignment. I told her if she practiced now it would be easy to type by the time she was maxs age.

Fast forward to tonight. I got discouraged. I was feeling that I just want to take care of my 7 kids (I’m claiming Dome). This work is so important, but instead of having a village to help me I feel like I have a village of people demanding I take care of them too and I can’t do it. I put my face in my hands and mentally shook my fist at God and said, “ you promised you wouldn’t ask more of me than what I could do!”

Then he answered back, “I never said that”

And I thought a minute and realized he didn’t. He asks us to do what we can’t do all the time.

Then in my minds eye I could see little Phoebe frustrated about typing her story and I realized it was just the same. If I don’t give up and I keep trying to do all these truly impossible tasks, my capacity will actually grow.

Natalie Hansen, Grandma, my ministering sisters, my primary calling, etc, etc, etc I haven’t been taking care of any of them but Feeling so stressed about all of them. 

Im going to keep trying. Phoebe could have closed her computer and said “I don’t care what my teacher says. It’s impossible and I’m not doing it” but she didn’t. She kept trying.

I want to be like Phoebe

No Dome is not our Au Pair

 Also no I am not going to send her over to Natalie’s house to clean. She’s not my servant. She is my beloved niece. She doesn’t need to earn her keep and I don’t order her around or tell her what to do.

No she isn’t here illegally and she doesn’t need the school to sponsor her (they were adamant they wouldn’t). 

She would like to learn English. She only has a few months and we are working hard every day to make the most of it. She would like the other kids to say hello to her. She wants to come to college in the US because she can ride her bike to seminary here without being robbed or worse. She deserves to be safe. It isn’t Gods plan for her to live in a place where she can’t leave her home.

She wishes she had had the same opportunities my kids have had. Like orchestra in school and piano lessons and choirs. She in excited to be in cantus but it’s also so scary to try it for the first time when the other kids there are experts at music now. She is so musical but she hasn’t had the chance to learn yet.

Would people talk to and about her differently if she was from Michigan. Yes. Yes they would. I am tired of getting all this crap from everyone.

The more a part of Ecuador I become, the less I like my own culture and the less patient I feel with all these stupid questions.

Impressions of baby Alvin

 Alvin is a little dear! We all love him so much!

He sucks on his bottom lip

He sleeps all night at least a couple times a week

I think Sammy taught him how to sleep. This summer Sammy was taking him upstairs and lying him down for his nap. He taught him to fall asleep without being rocked to sleep. Sammy has a gift with him.

He wakes up so happy and smiley

He is super tranquilo. He almost never complains or cries

He is remarkably strong. He rolled over front to back at 4 weeks old and back to front before 3 months. He loves to stand. Everyone says he seems like an older baby.

We took him to Yellowstone at 2 months old which was the drivingest trip we ever had. He did amazing! He never complained about the car seat for a minute the whole trip.

When he was a little tiny baby instead of crying he would let out a little scream. He still does that sometimes. It’s so funny and cute.

He is the most adored baby of all time! He is held by someone almost always

It’s not fair

 I was looking at Alvin tonight and feeling so very in love with this sweet baby! He is so beautiful he just takes my breath away every time I look at him and I was just thinking it’s completely not fair that I have been able to fall in love with 6 sweet babies when so many women I know have not had that blessing. Almost everyone I know wanted more children. It is hard work and I’m exhausted in every single possible sense of the word, but snuggling my baby is worth it all and so is each moment I get to spend with all my older kids too. I love them all so very much! 

We went for a hike today. We got lost so it ended up being 3 miles which doesn’t sound far except I’m still building up my strength and I wanted to carry Alvin so I was too tired to be much help to anybody else. I was so proud of Sammy for encouraging Leo and telling him what a great hiker he was when Leo was tired and complaining and ready to quit. I was so proud of Leo for not quitting even though he wanted to, he summoned his inner strength and pushed through. I was so proud of Phoebe and Esther who were both so tired and thirsty they were crying but after realizing there was nothing to be done about it they stopped complaining and ran the rest of the trail! I was so proud of Max who drove all the way up to bogus basin and back like a champ and found a good attitude even though we sprang this hike on him the morning after he got in from a TSA trip where he has been sleep deprived all week and all he wanted was a quiet morning at home. Alvin loved the forest and look a very peaceful nap and woke up extremely interested in looking around at his new surroundings :) My kids are the best kids in the world ❤️

Two weeks post partum

 Javier went back to work today. Having 6 kids means there is not really a minute off to ease back into this. I started the morning driving my kids and a bunch of others to civ camp and back and helping Phoebe and Esther and Libbi set up a cookie stand in the park at the same time. I’m really overwhelmed one moment and feeling like I’ve got it all covered the next and very grateful every moment that my recovery is going so well! I couldn’t have managed physically if it had been more normal. Emotionally I’m hanging on okay :) Alvin is a dear and despite some sad crying in the car he is growing cuter and fatter every day and he is a precious reward for all the hard work.

Alvin Zach Bucheli

 Our precious last baby was born two weeks ago. I have never coped well with the end of pregnancy and this time was no different. I asked my doctor for an antidepressant but just the same I was crying every day and just so excruciatingly uncomfortable and in so much constant pain for the last couple weeks I thought I would never survive. Alvin’s was breach up until 37 weeks and that meant that I was having these incredible contractions. They felt like mid labor but they did absolutely nothing. I was losing hope and giving in to despair. I felt sure I would die in labor ( that had actually been a pretty consistent fear all through this pregnancy or that the baby would die) Then just 2 days after 38 weeks when I was asking myself if God still loved me and cared about my well-being, my water broke in the middle of the night and just came out in massive gushes. We woke Max up and let him know and left. We got to the hospital in plenty of time. I was able to get an epidural before it ever got too painful and I had the easiest possible labor scenario I had ever had. I felt that I didn’t have a hard labor left in me. When Alvin was born the doctor let Javier deliver him and they placed him on my stomach and I just sobbed. I didn’t die and he didn’t die and that easy labor felt like proof that God still loved me and was willing to bless me. His breach position which caused me so much misery also made it so he hadn’t been putting as much stress on my body in the weeks leading up to birth and my recovery has also been the easiest it has ever been with even engorgement and after pains being minimal compared to the other pregnancies. I know that when I have had harder births and recoveries that didn’t mean that God loved me less but this time I was just so emotionally wrung out and coping so poorly that it feels like such a tender mercy for it to go well. It’s hard to explain how much it meant to me. My RA flared up pretty badly just the day after Alvin was born and even with lots of steroids has stayed consistently painful but I’m functional and that is all I need. Pain is just pain as long as I am able to be awake and moving I am so grateful. 

Alvin is a darling! When we saw his face Javier and I both had a hard time pinpointing who he looks like but we felt that we had seen his face before. As they say there is only one mold for Buchelis :) looking at the baby pictures it’s very true. He looks like everyone :) 

we didn’t have a name picked out and we were struggling so much to choose one. We were talking through some of our options and we asked our little newborn, “ do you want to be Matteo?” To which he scrunched up his face like he was angry. Then we asked, “do you want to be Alvin?” To which his sleeping face broke out in a big smile. That was enough for us! Sweet boy chose his own name :)

I felt that I had forgotten all the good parts of having a newborn. I remembered being woken up all night and being in pain and emotional but I forgot that when that baby woke up in the middle of the night I would jump up to see him because two hours felt like it had been too long. I forgot that feeling his fuzzy head against my neck was the most comforting joyful feeling in all the world. I forgot that my heart would overflow with love when I looked at his face. And I forgot that he would smile and all my cares would melt away. I got a picture of him smiling like an hour after he was born! He has been so calm and easy going and smiley since then and a couple days ago he even smiled at me with his eyes open! He is going to be a very happy boy and I feel deeply for the first time since we decided to have a baby that God wanted him to be here with us and that he has a plan for him. This has been my greatest worry through this pregnancy, that I was asking for a blessing that God didn’t intend for us to have in the middle of a time when so many people outside our immediate family really needed support that I wasn’t able to give them once I got pregnant. There is no question to me now that Alvin was worth the sacrifice even if it did mean putting our family first for a minute, he needs to be here and he is a great gift.

 Charity: where are those 4t snow pants?

Leo: I know what happened to them. Last night I was walking in the road and I saw a trash can and I put them in it. Mommy told me to do it so now they are in the trash can.

Snowing in May

Leo: Mommy, it’s Christmas!!!! We have to go find our Christmas tree!!!

Mother’s Day Leo came out of primary with a card for me behind his back. As he ran to give it to me he said, -“welcome to Mother’s Day!!”

Earlier at home he had another card behind his back, as he pulled it out he said, “pwesenting…”

Looking at a dinosaur book

Charity: this is a dimetrodon 

Leo: yes a die dinosaur. If someone kills it it will die.

Esther before Mother’s Day asked me very nonchalantly what my favorite flower was while she was coloring one day. I looked at the sunflowers Javier had just given me and responded Sunflowers. She went in coloring without any sign that she heard me. Later that night when Javier was reading her a bedtime story she started sobbing to him that she had made me a Mother’s Day present and chosen the wrong flower. She was devastated that she chose a tulip! Luckily Javier told me the story and the next day out in the yard I took a look at our tulips and proclaimed, these tulips are the most beautiful flowers I’ve ever seen! I think they must be my real favorite flower. Esther’s eyes lit up for a half a second but she quickly composed her face and didn’t say a word. If I hadn’t known I would never have noticed. On Mother’s Day she gave me her beautiful tulip frame with a picture of herself inside and it was so precious I told her my new favorite flower was an Esther Flower ❤️ that made her laugh and smile too. what a sweetheart ❤️❤️❤️

Leo: Phoebe your hair smells terrifying

Leo (looking at clothes on manequins in the store window) Mommy look at the clothes on those bones

Leo: 🎵 a dirty no good down to the bum🎵

Leo: if mommy and daddy die, they won’t be able to put the password on the tv

Esther was explaining her 1st grade math to Leo. Leo: what does five eleventy thousand equals?

Leo pulled some of the pills off our couch and made a little ball. He carries it around the house with him and sleeps with it at night. He calls it his fuzzy and he loves to rub it along his cheeks or lips. Inevitably he loses it since it’s so small and he will panic saying, “I lost my fuzzy! Help me find my fuzzy!” Somehow amazingly he always finds it!

Thank have Leo the job of putting all of the girls dollhouse stuff back in the dollhouse and at first he wanted to organize it, but after realizing it would take longer that way, he said “ok, I’m not gonna orgasize it - organi- orgasize it”

Prince in movie: have a good day ladies

Leo: I wish he said, “ have a good punch”

Leo to Alvin: we love you Alvin, we never even hate you and punch you in the face

When Javier has whiskers I don’t like to kiss him because it scratches my face. One day we saw a man in Costco with a very long beard. Leo said, “look mom! No one would ever kiss him!” Luckily we were far away from him 😂

Leo: Mommy you said I can live with you as long as I want to. Well I’m never getting married! I’m going to live with you forever!

Charity: well that sounds great to me. Or even you and your wife can life with us forever

Leo: okay that would work. But I am never going to kiss somebody. I will grow a big beard so she won’t want to kiss me!

Leo: mom when you are old I will hate you a ton

Leo calls it bath-tize

Place your confidence in your character, not your results or others opinions.

Leo: I HATE stalking people! It’s the worst time of my life!

Leo: Sammy let’s play Harry Potter. You be Quirrel and I will be the face in the back of your head

Marriage

 When Javier and I got married I thought he was perfect. I was thinking the other day about how our love has matured over the years. We have been married for 16 years now and I could never have dreamed back then how much more I would love him now. I look back at the last 16 years we have definitely seen each other at our very worst and our very best. We’ve gotten mad and been impatient. We have broken each other’s hearts again and again. We have also nursed each other when we were sick both short term and the long term, chronic illness kind. We have made huge sacrifices for each other to achieve their goals. We have raised all these beautiful kids together and chosen the way harder path every single time in order to fulfill our dreams. We have worked so hard together. We have had so much fun together. We have  made big mistakes and forgiven each other for them. We have supported each other in grief and crises of faith and mental illness. Over all that time we have chosen each other again and again and again. Chosen to keep coming back for more even when we were so mad or hurt that we wanted to just quit. I guess that is where I feel this love so deeply. I’m just so grateful that in spite of everything we have been through together that he is still here and that he is is still choosing me. I am so grateful that we didn’t give up when our lives were hanging in the balance and that we have made it to see the harvest of all those love seeds we have been planting all this time. Right at this very moment it isn’t hard at all. Javier is my rock, my love, my reward. I tell him every day he is the only person in the world I really like (which is *sometimes* a joke). I think he is perfect in every way just like when I first married him except now I know for sure he isn’t, I just don’t care. He is mine and he is my perfect in all his imperfection ❤️

Starting over

 How strange it seems to me that now when Max and Sammy tower above me, I am starting over with a baby so small, he fits inside of me.

At this moment when we are beginning to plan ahead for college tuition and missions, we are also starting over with  hospital bills and diapers.

Now that all 5 of my children know how to ride a 2 wheeled bike, we are starting over with a human so helpless we will move his legs in bicicle kicks to help him burp.

With my house so full of music, of singing and piano and cello, we are starting over with the music of coos and babbles.

As we are beginning to sleep through the night about half the time, we are starting all over again with up all night every night.

Just when I was starting to feel so competent and knowledgeable, a new baby brings feelings of so much insecurity and vulnerability.

I loved every second of all our babyhoods. I am so unbelievably excited that we get to start all over again. Kissing tiny fingers, watching for new smiles. I can’t believe how incredibly blessed we are to get to do it all over again with a new sweet boy.

Christ the Redeemer

 We have Carolina, Carlin, Amy, Jaime, Joshua, and Jessita visiting and it has been wonderful. They came for Jaimitos wedding last week and we had a wonderful time seeing their love. It made me feel so grateful for Javier and remember all the miracles which have brought us to this place where we love each other so much. Last week in Utah I had a moment on my own sitting in front of a small Christus in the conference center. My eyes filled with tears as I felt his love for me and recognized how he suffered all the pain of the world so that he could know our pain and help us to carry it. His arms are stretched out to us. I love him dearly and I’m so grateful for his love and patience with me as I learn these lessons again.

Phoebe 10

 My sweet Phoebe. That girl is changing so much and so quickly. I wasn’t ready for that. I was thinking she would be like Max and Sammy and start to grow up in a couple years but it’s happening sooner for her.

Phoebe is a spitfire. She makes a big deal about hating school and always talks about “7 stupid hours a day” but she is a happy girl and my guess is that she probably likes it better than all that :) she has a wonderful group of friends with Libbi and Sadie and Jenna. Besides those three she has a ton of other good friends. She is always mentioning someone else who gave her a friendship gift or who she wants to invite to her birthday party. She is a very social, funny, sweet girl.

Phoebe still loves to write and draw! She had an assignment to write a journal from the perspective of a mountain man. It took on a life of its own and ended up several times longer than in was assigned to be. It was amazing writing too! Everything she writes is incredible actually! That project was especially funny because another boy in her class (Andrew Petty) was also writing his longer and it became a competition. I think Phoebe was genuinely writing for the love of the experience but she also got very competitive about writing more than Andrew :)

 I’m so proud of the way Phoebe has looked after her cousins this year. At the beginning of the year, Liam was struggling to make a friend. Phoebe was so aware of him and they included him for months at every recess until he was able to make a good friend. Phoebe is always aware of Libbi too and careful to make sure she is always there for her when she feels up to playing. She will drop everything at a moments notice if her cousins want to be with her.

Phoebe loved girls on the run this fall, basketball this winter and she is loving soccer this spring. Last spring she took a dance class and soccer. I was able to coach her for 3 or 4 seasons and I loved that so much! Javier took over this season and that has been a little sad for me but I am also so excited for Phoebe and Esther to get to be coached by their dad! He is amazing and I’m so grateful that if I can’t do it they have a much much better coach and get to have that special time with him. I love the way Phoebe is always excited to try something new and she isn’t intimidated to join in with other girls who have played a long time and be a beginner. I’m so proud of her!

Esther 7 1/2

 Esther has had a wonderful blossoming year! Last year school was such a challenge for her and going was a battle every day. This year she has loved school! She is conscientious and eager to please her teacher. She has a couple of really good friends, Jade and Hero that she talks about every day and looks forward to playing with. She has enjoyed reading mysteries especially the Hilde Cracks the case books. She is the sweetest big sister and daughter! She and Leo play for hours when she has time and she will teach him And explain things to him so incredibly patiently. She’s already a little mother. Leo was earning kinder eggs for not having accidents one week and he shared them with Esther every day. He had to finish his dinner to get it though and she patiently fed him and coaxed him Into eating every night. She was able to do what Javier or I couldn’t. Esther is on Javier’s soccer team this spring and she is loving it so much she told me she wished she had soccer practice every day.

Leo 4 1/2

 Leo is pure sunshine! He is the happiest funniest little boy and the light of my life! He loves to say prayers and whenever he does he comes from wherever he is to hug me through the prayer.

When I bring Leo to my doctor’s appointments, every time they call someone back they call their name, “Elizabeth!” Then Leo will whisper to me, “ I know her. That’s Elizabeth” every person after he will quietly whisper their name after the nurse and look at me knowingly.

Leo already loves his little brother so much. All day long he is hugging my belly and talking about the songs he will sing to the baby and the things he will teach him. 

At the beginning of the year it was hard for Leo to go to preschool. He wanted me to stay with him every time and I did. Sometime after Christmas everything changed. He would still love for me to stay but he wants to go even when I can’t. While we drive there he will say, “this is taking so long! I’m going to miss all the fun!” He worried a lot at the beginning of the year that he hadn’t made a friend. Now he is friends with everyone at school and plays with everyone.

Comforted

 I went to a family history meeting this morning. Feeling so depleted I struggled to make myself go and worried that a family history meeting would just make me feel guilty about something I don’t have time for. Instead the meeting focused 90% on the Savior and I felt some of these questions that have been weighing in my heart lighten. The speakers talked about choosing to walk with Christ and something clicked in my brain that if I make the choice to spend time in the scriptures and the temple, these feelings of distance with the Savior will go away. I thought about how I passed out this last week. Basically my blood pressure got too low so my body brought in all the blood from the periphery of my body and focused it in the essential functions that would keep me alive. I realized that in this time of struggle, I need to shift my focus to the Savior if I want to keep my testimony alive. I have been trying to not think about him because remembering all the miracles he performed has been making me so sad but without him the work of the church is just busy work.

After the meeting Christina Mennear sat with me for a half hour and was so generous with her empathy and I felt something heal in my broken heart. She gave me great advice too but just seeing me for a moment and being a friend had an impact I don’t think I can overstate. 

Tonight Natalie Hansen invited us over and we talked about all these questions. What is faith? Why do I not believe that Christ will help with our problems? It was healing to talk with her. 

Afterwards I drove to the airport to pick up my cousin and I realized several things. For the first time in many months, I had a picture of God and the Savior in my mind and they were loving me and concerned about my sorrows. I have been imagining that they didn’t care but as I prayed in the car I felt their concern. Also for the first time in awhile I realized that I was thinking about others and wanting to alleviate their suffering. I’ve been feeling so guilty that I haven’t been able to make myself care about other peoples problems lately. That feeling brought me a lot of hope.

Help

When a woman is expecting her 6th child, people assume that if you made it this far you know what you are doing. On the one hand, maybe everything will be okay when the baby is born. I’m trying not to obsess because this is possible. On the other hand, if things go badly there will be no one to help. Because :

No one can come over and make my hands able to function

You can’t drop off self worth to a woman who isn’t able to care for her children

You can’t warm up something that will make me stop crying everyday

In a lot of ways it’s true that we won’t need any help. The freezer is full of meals. Esther and Leo won’t need to be babysat, they will have their brothers and sister home to help them with anything but they are actually capable to find whatever they need. 

The things that could go wrong are not really things anyone can help with. But that also doesn’t mean we are going to be okay.

For scripture study tonight we watched the video where Jesus calmed the storm. The trouble with the disciples was that they didn’t trust him. They asked him why he didn’t care they were dying. That is me right now too. I don’t trust him anymore. In a way I totally do. I believe he has our best interest at heart and that we can trust him to save us ultimately and that he loves us perfectly, but since losing my brother I just don’t believe he cares much about the suffering in the short term. I don’t know how to reconcile the Christ who brings peace in the storm and heals the blind man to the Christ who can allow my brother to die. I feel like I can’t ask him to help the baby to live or to heal my rheumatoid arthritis. I have lost all my confidence that he wants to save us in the short term. But there is evidence that he does too. He helped Max find his phone 3 weeks after he lost it. I know he did that for him and for me. I felt his peace that he would help. He is the only one who can help me this summer. I know that for sure.

Essentialism

 I am listening to a great book right now called essentialism. At first it seemed sort of comical to me since my life had grown so small this year. What I realized though is that I am living these principles. I am pretty sure I actually already listened to this book in June so Charity from the past probably made her decisions based on this good advice even if I can’t exactly remember. What we did though is cut out all our extra commitments to make space for our big goal, another baby. Once I got pregnant and my health fell to pieces I had to cut out even more. It helps though to realize that I did this very intentionally. I wanted this baby so much and I knew he was so much more important than soccer or volunteering at the school or babysitting for other people or anything else. Pregnancy does weird things to my brain, making it foggy and depressed, etc. but I am here on purpose even if it’s hard to remember where I started. I know I will be myself again soon and I will be so grateful for all I accomplished during this time ❤️ 

Self worth

 Im really struggling to feel my self worth. There is so much I can’t do and it is really hard to feel that I have any value at all if I can’t do anything. Writing these posts feels like just whining but it helps to write down the hard parts. I know no one is reading it and that makes it feel okay to put it in words. My children and my husband love me extravagantly, more than I deserve. I love them extravagantly too. They are my very joy and meaning. But everyone else feels absolutely impossible to please. Sometimes I wonder what it is about me that people dislike so much. I feel like I am a kind person but I also have a nagging feeling that there is something I do to upset people that I don’t understand. I am somehow unloveable no matter how hard I try to be supportive and loving to everyone. Right now I feel intensely disconnected from all people except my husband and children. I am grateful for them! They matter the most and if they are all I have I am still beyond blessed!

Valentines Day

I was putting Leo to bed on Valentines Day when Esther came in and said she had to show me something. I was tired and told her she had to wait till Leo fell asleep but she was insistent. So I went with her and she brought me to the laundry room and I saw Javier standing outside in the snow with a microphone. He serenaded me for Valentine’s Day! It was so sweet and so romantic! Phoebe and Esther and I hung out the window and listened as he sang to us. My phone was dead but I hope that memory lives in my mind forever. Javier, my sweet husband. Valentines Day is so stressful with such high expectations and conflicting expectations. I’m so grateful for sweet Javi and his willingness to do something heroic for me. I love him more than I could ever explain. He is the only man in the world to me and he does so much to make my life so happy.

Very honest

 My idea behind writing this post is that it will help me sort out some tough thoughts I’ve been trying not to think. I may end up deleting it at the end. Or if I can end this somewhere halfway positive I may keep it. At this moment I am worried about having this baby. I cannot see a way through where I will be able to really take care of him. When I hear about my sister up every hour with her 4 month old I am absolutely confident that my body will not allow even half or that and be able to function. I have done that 5 times so far and I was able to live through it and although it was difficult it didn’t break me. This time, I’m pretty pretty positive it is actually not possible. I don’t think there is a steroid dose high enough to get me through that. Javier is planning on waking up with the baby every time right now, but I’m not sure how practical that idea is either. He will still need to work every day. 

My big kids have had a tough week. Everyone is saying they don’t get enough attention or in the big boys case they are just angry with us in general which I’m taking as evidence that they need more attention but how do you give more from maximum capacity? I find myself crying. I’m hurting and I’m exhausted and I’m so worried we have taken maximum capacity and signed up for a baby which no one has the bandwidth for. We don’t have any support really. I mean we do. My parents are so sweet and willing to help but goodness, talk about maximum capacity. They give it new meaning with all they have in their plates. I wouldn’t add to their pile for anything. 

I do remember that I coped with these fears during each other pregnancy also (minus the debilitating ra) and they seemed silly once we had the baby and our capacity just grew. I hope that happens again this time. I hope we experience a miracle and I recover from this flare and I am well enough to care for the baby. I hope I survive. 

I am generally too tired and busy to give much attention to these fears but they live somewhere in the back of my mind while I’m driving to school and listening to two or three people talking at once all day and when I am taking another nap because my eyes won’t stay open anymore and I can’t lift my arms. It doesn’t feel like anxiety but writing it all down it looks like it doesn’t it? 

We have already seen some beautiful blessings because of this sweet baby boy. The kids have all matured so much this year and become so much more aware of others. They have taken so much care of me which I feel bad about but I also believe it is developing empathy and an awareness of what needs to be done. I am proud of them! Leo and Esther love the baby so much already. They both talk about him all the time and love to hug my belly and feel him kick. I know the older kids love him too. They are just more grownup about how they show it. My mom always said that babies raise good teenagers and I know that the teenagers will help raise the good baby too, just like my siblings helped raise me and we all did with Soph and Maddie and loved that above all things. 

I hope this baby will bring greater love and unity to our family and help my boys and girls to feel completely confident in caring for babies and younger children and to grow up to be good spouses and parents. I hope we will have the energy to enjoy all the joy and sunshine he will bring to us. I desperately hope he will be healthy and easy tempered and a good sleeper. 

In the meantime I think it’s good I’m busy and tired and can’t think about it too much because before I know it he will be here and everything will just turn out how it is meant to and we will just figure it out then. Oh and also my nieces are coming for 3 months like a month after he is born so that’s a little unique too. I’m excited for that and also hoping it goes smoothly and doesn’t break us.

Rheumatoid Arthritis

 I was diagnosed with Rheumatoid Arthritis back in June. Up until then I had a diagnosis of Sjogrens disease and an expectation that I would receive another diagnosis someday as it unfolded and made itself more clear. It made a lot of sense. Pain in my hands and exhaustion have been my leading symptoms from the beginning. When I first got pregnant, I was sleeping literally all the time. I was only awake for a few hours a day and I noticed a big improvement in my autoimmune symptoms, but when the pregnancy exhaustion waned all heck broke loose. In the few months since then, I have lost a ton of function. Through the holidays we had our sweet Ecuadorian cousins visit and a lot of family drama on my side of the family and I pushed myself way too hard. I got through those couple weeks on fumes and by the time it was over the damage was pretty evident. My hands were in bad shape and so were all the other joints in my feet and legs and arms, but my hands for the first time were limited. They kept getting worse and I was losing actual function. We went bowling and I couldn’t hold the bowling ball, then a few days later I was trying to open a water bottle and the pain was so severe I gave up trying. My hands hurt all the time. I couldn’t put the pain in a box and forget about it like I have always been able to do before. It demanded some attention. I went to the doctor and was prescribed a heavy dose of steroids. I thought “great, this will fix me and I can go back to living my life”. Not so. It didn’t fix me. I’m a couple weeks out from that dose, already tapering down and I’ve lost even more function in the last few weeks. I had to get a tool to help me open Leo’s carseat. If I walk around the house barefoot I can’t stand the pain in my toes. I can’t unload the dishwasher because the plates are too heavy. 

I am a danish woman and I have always been so proud of the fact that I am as strong as a man. Now I can’t lift a plate. There have been times I could bear this cheerfully and times when it has scared me to death. What will the future look like. What other losses might be around the corner. With all these changes I couldn’t keep it a secret anymore. I had to tell my family and some people at church. I feel embarrassed and confused as I try to explain it but everyone has been very kind. Their concern has both lifted me and made me wish I had kept it secret a little longer. It feels more real when people know and I don’t like that. My kids of course have known a long time. They are lifting plates and opening water bottles for me everyday. 

Some days I get feeling down. There is so little I can do and I’m trying to rest up and get on top of it which really helps actually. But I start to feel like I am stuck, not accomplishing anything. Today as I was getting ready that song “ Strong” popped into my head. These are the words “he made you strong, strong enough to make it through whatever comes. You’ll be amazed what you can do. You’re a force. You’re a fighter, a precious child of God. He made you strong!” I am so grateful for that song. I sang it over and over again and I remembered that there is more than one way to be strong. Not just lifting things that are heavy. God has helped me to show great strength in the difficult moments of my life. I have been amazed by what I could do with his help many times. It gave me courage and confidence for this next chapter. I hope I won’t be facing this new child with so much disability. I hope I will be able to hold my baby and care for its needs and the needs of my other kids. But come what May, I know that God made me strong enough to cope with whatever lesson he needs to teach me and so I will submit and I will watch his plan unfold with confidence that he knows what he is doing.