What we've been up to.

So thankful to have a "day off" from pressing calligraphy project deadlines. I'm loving the business--and the work--but I can't say it doesn't make me feel super stretched to the limit. When I actually sit down at my drafting table and work, I really love it. But usually I wake up and in the torrent of hormones that is the state of my pregnant body, I want to pull the covers back over my head and forget about responsibility. And just that feeling makes me feel like a failure.

When we moved to Memphis, one of the extremely sweet and providential things God did for us was place us at a church where vulnerability in relationships is championed. Our pastor has a long history in counseling, and he is sincerely interested in his staff and their spouses and how they're getting on with life. Since life and I  haven't been the best of friends recently, so I went to talk with him last week. There were no "Five Steps to Happiness" given, or quick and simple answers to my hormonal vacuum, but to share my frustrations and fears with someone other than Tony (who feels what I feel and isn't completely objective (as he shouldn't be!)) was so relieving. And since that simple talk with Joe--and the big burger, large fry, and chocolate shake he made me go buy afterward to enjoy in silence--I have felt a big difference. I think the key is sharing our struggles. When I try to muscle through without God's help (because I should be able to do this by myself, dang it!) or the help of the people that care about me (because I should be able to do this by myself, dang it!), I fail. Every time.

All that to say: be honest with yourself, with God, and with others about your struggles, and I think you'll find, like I did, that you're not alone. What a beautiful truth. 

On to kid pictures!

Our big, bottle-holding baby. We've never had a bottle-fed baby before, and I must say, it is nice to occasionally plop the kid down on some pillows with a bottle and do what you need to do.

 Handsome, handsome little man:

We found out Baby Four is a boy! Name still TBD.

 I caught this look of Judah's after nap one day, and it is just the perfect representation of what that time of day is like:

 We played outside. One day. Several weeks ago.

 This girl is an artist, hands down. It is innate in her little person, and I love it. Today we went to Target and Judah picked a foam sword. Elizabeth picked a pack of mini gel pens. So her.

 An example of what she draws: a keep-out sign for her bedroom door. Hmmm....

 She also likes to put Judah in drag. I laugh, Tony gets irritated.

 We found out my sister's baby is a GIRL! Hooray for pink things and little girl clothes!

Last Saturday we braved Chuck E. Cheese for the first time ever. It was surprisingly not the Apocalypse! Also, while we were there, two ladies from my church (including my pastor's wife) were at our house cleaning. How blissfully wonderful. That might have contributed to my extremely relaxed approach to the Chuck E. Cheese madness.

 And this is what we call all played out. 

That's what we've been up to! Off to read up on how to make fondant for Judah's Buzz Lightyear birthday cake. He turns three on Friday! Maybe if I keep this up there might be a post about it. Here's hoping!

Some updating.

Hello there, sweet friends who actually still read this. We are--all six of us--still alive over here. Blogging has taken an extreme backseat to living, which seems completely to fill up my time on its own (imagine that!). Things are very slowly settling down though. Here are updates on us:

• We moved into our very first home the day before Christmas Eve. It was a crazy, crazy time, as I'm sure you can imagine. The kids' first night here was Christmas Eve. It will most certainly be a holiday we will never forget! God is so good to me, even in the little things. He knows how I work. If I get too excited too early, it wears off and then I'm left with blah. I kept wondering why I wasn't jumping out of my seat every time I thought about moving into our house. I just was not that excited. Ready, but not excited. Overwhelmed, but not excited. Looking forward to what I hoped it would mean for our family, but not excited. You get the picture. But since we've moved in, I've seen the kindness of the Lord at work in this small thing in my heart. Because instead of being prematurely ecstatic, I have slowly and sweetly been realizing specific things I love about our house. I know that my coming about it this way will make my thankfulness grow permanent in my heart. I am so grateful to the Lord for working in me this way about something that is so near and dear to me as a wife and mother: my home.

• I am almost 21 weeks pregnant (I always want to round up the weeks when I'm pregnant, ha.) We have yet to find out whether this sweet one is our second baby girl or our third baby boy. We've had issues with switching insurance, otherwise we would probably know already! It's funny how stuff changes with consecutive pregnancies...I would have been losing my mind if I had gone this long without knowing with my first one! We had the date planned and I literally could not sleep the night before. With this one, our precious fourth, I am so much less anxious. I still want to know, absolutely, but I'm not flipping out. Don't even really know why! Perhaps I have a few other things to distract me during the day....

• Elizabeth is almost 4 and a half, Judah is almost 3, and Rivers is almost 10 months. They are my discipline and my joy, my tears and my laughter. They are the the low and high of every day, the worst and the very, very best. Hard to explain, but maybe you've been there too?

I really did not intend to do a lengthy, pictureless post, but I was already at the computer and waiting for something to download and there you go. I had lost my good camera's battery charger, so there is a depressing lack of quality pictures from Christmas and the move-in. Found it when we moved though, so there should be some pictures on here the next go round. 

I'll leave you with yet another link to Kingdom Poets. I couldn't help it--T.S. Eliot is the most recent post, and not only that, but the excerpt featured is one of my most favorite of his. Maybe THE most. Feed your soul, and I hope I'll see you back here soon enough.

"The dove descending...."

Elizabeth's birthday.

We started the morning with birthday decorations and a few small presents she could open without Daddy (who had had to leave for work already). She got scissors--yikes?--construction paper, stickers, and a small dry erase crayon kit. Then there was this...

Monkey Bread. Too good for its own (or anyone else's) good.

It's the Fisher Family Birthday Breakfast.

[Author's Note: I'm going to go ahead and apologize for the many, many collages that are inevitably coming your way in the future of this blog. They just make everything so...organized. Bliss.]

Then there was the renting of a never-before-seen morning movie (Rio), which they loved and have since watched at least four more times. We definitely get our money's worth out of rented movies.

Then it was on to birthday Slip 'n' Slide fun!

And then there was this:

But I think he's okay....

(Oh hey, Buddy. How could I leave you out?)

After the outside fun, Tony brought home Chick-Fil-A and they had a picnic. (I took my food and the sweating baby inside.) Then there were a few bites of ice cream, a cartoon or two, and then it was naptime. Well, it was naptime for Judah, anyway, as Elizabeth used the "But it's my birthday and I can't sleep" line and got out of it. (Sigh.)

UPS delivered our gift to Elizabeth at around 1:30 p.m. We put the big box on the kitchen table and she endured hours of agony (I tried calling it "practicing patience," to no avail) until Tony and my parents got home and she could open it. Hello Loving Family Grand Dollhouse! I must confess, I was pretty excited to play with it too.

After she opened her "big present," we left to go eat dinner. My parents kept the boys and we took E to Osaka for some delicious hibachi (extra emphasis totally necessary). I was watered up for it all day, and kept thinking how awesome it was that she wanted to go there and not somewhere like Chuck E. Cheese, though I have an ominous feeling that that day's coming.

She fell asleep on the ride home from dinner, but woke up enough to get sung to [sorry; that sounds so grammatically awful] and open up a few more presents from BeBe and Bear. She got three new rooms (the laundry room, bathroom, and living room, which only has one chair [huh?]) to get her dollhouse started. She's been playing with it ever since!

I know everyone says this and that I've said it at least 3 times in my life previously and that I'm going to say it countless other times in the future, but I CANNOT believe she's as old as she is. I can't believe it was four years ago that we were doing the baby thing for the first time: going to the hospital, experiencing childbirth and bringing her into the world, nursing, changing diapers, taking her home ("We're allowed to just walk out of here with her?"), sitting around while she napped and feeling like surely there was more to do with a baby (oh, just wait, little Rachel), watching her smile, sit up, stand, cruise, walk. Hearing her laugh and begin to talk. Those were such sweet days. And now we've had four years of sweet days, and Lord willing, a multitude of sweet days to come. Praise God for such a daughter.

Happiest of birthdays to my best girl!

Sweet faces.

Real Life: Family Beach Pictures.

So we tried to get a family picture before we left the beach a couple weeks ago. None came out "just right," but I think I like these just as well. Judah is in various stages of escape, Tony is trying to contain him, I'm attempting to fix everyone, Elizabeth is struggling between her desire to pose and her desire to play in the sand, and Rivers is just being himself...a great baby. The result is a series of pictures that I think captures this stage in our life perfectly. Enjoy.

The progression of a kiss.



The upside of rainy days.

Mondo puddles!

After the many days cooped up inside, weathering the storms that have ravaged the South this week, tonight we decided to make the most out of the perpetual sogginess. We went over to a nearby park that has wide open fields, hoping for some serious mud and puddle action. We were not disappointed. As per usual, my expectations were reversed...instead of freaking about a drop of water on her shirt (her norm), Elizabeth was beside herself with the prospect of getting dirty ("Getting dirty is fun!"). Judah's excitement, on the other hand, waned at the thought of actually stepping in a puddle. He did catch on eventually, though I'm sad to say my visions of mud-covered children were were never realized. They were both content to make pretty polite splashes, which was kind of sad. I'm hoping to make this a Memphis storm tradition, so maybe the more we do it the more they'll warm up to it.

Elizabeth's Before/Clean Picture:

 The After-She-Fell-Down-in-a-Puddle Pictures:



That was the anticlimactic extent of the damage.

And here's Judah right when we first got out there, saying "Ewww!"

 Warming up to it....

Or maybe not. Here he's saying "Noooooo" because I asked him to jump.

Now he's saying "Hold you!" [which means "Hold me!"]

I really, really like this kid.

And this one.

I told you she was excited.

We took a walk around a pond and found some dirt piles, which I have to assume were left there just for toddlers (and daddies) to play on.

Hooray! A successful scaling of the dirt mountain!

Big muscles. Love how Judah is looking at his sister for a how-to.

 Dancing...or something.

 I discovered a little too late that the flash might not have been a terrible thing to use at that time of night.



Fun evening capitalizing on saturated Memphis!