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!

Things to note.

{Collage made with my current favorite thing: the free Picasa program}

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.

Rivers' birth story.

This was me the day Rivers entered the world. It was also my due date, March 26, and the day of my last blog post ("The Labor Liturgy," how timely!). I was in labor here, but didn't know it yet for sure.

Backstory to the birth story: I decided at about 36 weeks just to consider laboring naturally. I called my sweet friend Lauren who's a midwife in Nashville (and who also makes an appearance from time to time on TLC's Baby's First Day...totally awesome) and asked her if she thought I was crazy to decide so late to do this. The conversation I had with her was the beginning of a spiritual journey for me that I'm convinced God instigated and saw through to completion the day I delivered Rivers. I knew I wanted to try to go "all natural," but I never could place why. None of the usual answers seemed to fit for me; I didn't feel like I had anything to prove, and I didn't so much even want to prove it to myself (though that was a part of it). So when Lauren started talking about fear, something clicked. That was it! I didn't want to be afraid anymore. If childbirth was something God created and made our bodies to do perfectly on their own, I didn't want to fear it, and I realized I had feared it for a long time. I could go into all the spiritual parallels God brought to my attention, but it's 11 p.m. and, you know, I've got a newborn. And two toddlers. I need sleep.

Anyway, once I figured out why I wanted to consider going naturally, it was like the Lord went into overtime encouraging me to do it. And that's what it was...encouragement. He was putting courage in my heart to face what I feared. It felt like every day in my Scripture reading I was finding verses about fear, and they were (and are) so beautiful and precious to me. I also read a book on the Bradley method (and then--much too late!--wanted to take Bradley classes. Maybe next time.) and watched the Ricki Lake documentary "The Business of Being Born", both per the advice of my friend Mary. Again, these things were an encouragement. Around this time I subconsciously moved from the vague mental state of wanting to deliver Rivers naturally but also kind of expecting to give in and get the epidural to deciding that that wasn't an option for me anymore. More importantly, I decided (with the courage He had put in my heart!) to trust God in the middle of my fear.

So, that was a long backstory. Moving on.

I spent the entire morning just incredibly frustrated. I was frustrated at being pregnant, I was frustrated at having to watch the clock and analyze contractions, and I was frustrated more than anything that I didn't know for sure if this was labor or not. I raged around the house for a while and finally sat down to eat for the first time that day at about 1:30 p.m. At this point the contractions were about 7-ish minutes apart, and I was just so annoyed. They eventually started coming between 3-4 minutes apart, but because they weren't exactly 3 minutes apart or exactly 4 minutes apart, I still couldn't decide if it was real labor or not! (I realize this is pitiful and ridiculous.) Anyway, at about 2 p.m., I started bleeding a bit and could tell the contractions were intensifying. I was so worried about getting to the hospital too soon, but I didn't remember where in the progression of labor bright red blood came in and Tony was extremely concerned that he was going to have to deliver his son in the car or something. So we decided to go ahead to the hospital, and--as you will see--I'm way glad we left when we did (around 2:30). Normally, it takes about 30 minutes to get to the hospital, but it was rainy that day and traffic was terrible. I remember second guessing our decision to leave when we did about 5 minutes into the drive, but then almost immediately after two things happened almost simultaneously: I got really at peace with our decision to leave and my contractions got a whole lot worse. I opened my eyes about twice that whole 45-minute car ride.

We got to the hospital about a quarter after three. I had a contraction walking to the door and had to stop and hang on Tony for a minute. We walked in the main entrance and met an empty desk with a small paper sign that said to go to the ER desk for assistance. Going to the ER in labor on a Saturday...bad news.

I thought we were going to bypass the whole signing-in process because I had asked my doctor weeks earlier if I needed to pre-register in order to avoid what was about to happen. Turns out, there must have been some miscommunication somewhere because I was not in the system. So we stood. In a packed ER waiting room. With some very worried people who thought they were about to witness a birth. And they really almost did.

I had maybe 5 intense contractions during our time answering questions at the desk. Each time I leaned against the wall like I was doing a calf stretch and breathed. I can't remember if I was moaning yet at this point. In between contractions I paced a little and tried to help answer the questions, hoping against hope to hurry this crap up! The lady behind the desk was amazingly emotionless. She told us that she tried to call the transport team for a wheelchair to take me up to the labor and delivery floor, but no one was answering (again, it was a Saturday and apparently there's never any need for transporting people on Saturdays).

After 15-20 minutes (or 8 hours), we got signed in and some angel of mercy came with a wheelchair. Sitting down was not comfortable, so the couple of contractions I had on the way there I think I got a little loud. I remember closing my eyes and moaning and then feeling the man pushing me start to jog and yell at the crazy people ambling along in front of us. I also remember telling him thank you because the breeze from the speeding wheelchair felt so good.

We got to the room and I got in a gown and crouched on the the bed, trying to find a pain-relieving position. Tony asked the nurses if I was going to have to have an IV (I didn't want one), and the nurses said that I would have to if I was past 6 centimeters. I remember thinking, "Great." I got into bed after the contraction was over and got checked. I was just hoping to be at around 8, but--praise the Lord--I was completely dilated and had a bulging bag of waters. I was so incredibly relieved to hear that I had already passed the transition phase. And also, because I was so close to delivering, they said they didn't have time for an IV. 

Sidenote: Because I decided so late to attempt natural labor, I felt completely unprepared on the prayer side of things. I didn't know what specifics to pray for, so I prayed that God would cover those things. I had to walk in the trust that He would take care of all the little things I didn't know to pray for. And he so did! Like the IV matter, and even standing up in the hospital waiting room going through transition. That pain, as intense as it was, probably would have seemed even more so if I did not have those distractions. (And the fact that the really intense labor lasted only about two hours. Everything was so fast.) God proved Himself faithful a thousand times that day, and it was so sweet to look back on the events and realize that.

Back to the delivery room. I was 10 centimeters dilated, but my water hadn't broken yet. The nurses had called my doctor and they told me it would be twenty minutes before she got there. I remember looking at Tony after a few minutes and, in all seriousness, asking him how long I could just lie there at 10 centimeters. I was also ruining the neckline of his shirt grasping it during each contraction.

Finally my doctor came in, threw her scrubs on--loudly joking about what size they were (she's like that, and we love her)--and coming over to break my water. I was worried because it was medical intervention and I was trying to avoid all of that, but it wasn't done in order to speed up labor or do anything unnatural. So she did it and the next contraction I pushed. Hello hellfire. That was pretty awful. After that first contraction, my doctor told me the baby's head was turned and was pushing against my bone. So the next contraction, I pushed and she turned his head. She told me if his head hadn't been turned, he would have been out already. That gave me the motivation to push good and hard on the third contraction--screaming, I assure you--because I wanted this over. I had to hold at the last second because the cord was around his neck, but the doctor untangled him and I pushed one last time and he was out and on my chest. The weight of a newborn on top of you has got to be one of the most wonderful and gratifying things in the world. He was beautiful (of course), and had a headful of hair. I held him skin-to-skin for a while and even nursed him before they took him to be weighed and measured. He didn't even have his bath until all of our families got there and were in the room with us. It was a wonderful night.

I will definitely, as far as it depends on me, labor and deliver naturally again. The experience was wonderful, just as wonderful as the other two, but in a different way. I could feel everything--everything--and this made the ordeal of birthing a baby seem so much more intimate. That sounds odd, I know, and I know I wouldn't know the difference if I had kept on having epidurals...but I'm glad I know the difference now. As the third baby, Rivers needed his birth story to be special. And I think it is, because it is the testimony of my journey with God through fear. And the memory of it all will always be one more monument to His great faithfulness, provision, sovereignty, care, and love.

6 days old.

First time we packed all of them in like sardines across the middle seat. 

I think it's time for a van.

Praise God from whom all blessings flow!