show me the money

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 06:02:08 -0500

“it’s kind of strange. i don’t feel like i’ve seen God show up in an amazing, big way lately.” i recently had this thought. not that God is on trial and has to show up in amazing ways. but God really does show up like that for marnus and me. often. and it had just been a while, i felt, since we’d seen anything big.

leave it to God to one up me on my own thoughts... (because he’s a big, extravagant God who loves to lavish and surprise his kids.)

i’d been going back and forth for 2 months, following up on a medical bill we had for $500. why we had the bill is a blog entry i’ll probably never write that has to do with crappy insurance and an i-wish-i-could-stick-it-to-the-man attitude explosion. the bottom line was that we owed the lab $500. they said we had 5 days left to pay it, or they would send it to collections.

awesome.

i’d recently gotten in touch with a real person at the lab. gail. god bless gail. gail told me to send in a letter with why i felt we didn’t need to pay the bill along with a copy of a certain stack of papers. she would see what she could do to get our bill reduced.

i was happy to write a letter. we even offered to pay $200 as a compromise with the lab. we felt that was a fair amount based on the situation. i mailed our letter with a christmas stamp and prayed for the best.

wednesday morning (after our statesboro/savannah/broken car adventure, which cost us about $430) i got an email from gail. god bless gail. our bill had been reduced to $0. yes! $0!

sweet baby Jesus. i couldn’t believe it! especially after we’d offered to pay $200. they didn’t want anything!

it’s like God was saying ‘hi. i’m totally still here. i totally still have fun things for you. i am totally still showing up in big ways in your life.’

it was awesome!

God is awesome!

have you ever seen God show up in a big way for you?

on the road again

Fri, 16 Dec 2011 05:32:35 -0500

the first 4 months of her life, kayla was a mini-terror in her car seat. oh, i’m sorry. am i not supposed to say that about my daughter? well. it was true. any time we strapped her in, she would scream like she was dying. as if we were doing the most cruel, unnatural and incredibly hurtful thing to her.

a 5 minute drive to publix. screaming like a banshee. a 30 minute drive to work. you’d think we were torturing her. an hour drive to visit nana. forget about it.

the screaming actually led us to cancel our planned thanksgiving trip to tampa to visit my dad’s family. the thought of 8 hours in the car with the holler-from-hells-bells was enough to embrace a thanksgiving at home. with no family around.

have you ever been in a car with a crying baby...who won’t stop? talk about raising heartbeats, astronomical blood pressure and not a few unsightly arguments between parents. let’s not even mention the cell phone being thrown across the front seat and breaking into pieces. no. let’s just not go there.

i’m not sure what possessed us last weekend when we decided to get ambitious. perhaps we were tired of being tethered to a 30 minute radius of our house. we never have been a couple to sit around too long without a little spontaneous travel, and friends in statesboro had invited us down for a christmas shindig.

statesboro is 3 hours from our house. on top of that, we were having brunch in atlanta with my family that morning. so really, it was a 4 hour drive.

and you know what.

it worked.

kayla did great!

we could not believe it. she cried about 15 minutes (cry. scream. fuss. make puppy dog eyes in the little mirror...) and then she stopped. and sucked her hand. and fell asleep. the magic sleeping baby fairy was smiling on us that day. or perhaps kayla had finally learned that a car seat is a car seat. and it’s a part of her life for at least the next 3 or 4 or 5 years. so she might as well learn how to enjoy it.

after we made it to statesboro and spent the night, we decided, heck, we’re only an hour from savannah. let’s go! another hour in the car. and she aced it. and the drive back home was going splendidly as well...

until the front CV join on our awesome subaru broke. in the middle of nowhere in middle georgia. sigh.

thankful for roadside assistance from allstate. thankful that it was light out when it happened. thankful that despite being told it would take an hour and a half for the tow truck to come, it only took 20 minutes (very thankful for that one!). thankful for a night in a hotel. with cable. and a king size bed. and incredibly thankful that we were in such a small town that the mechanic had no other work ahead of our car. and we were back on the road again in less than 24 hours.

and kayla slept most of the way back. and talked to her animals the rest of the time.

and there were two very happy parents in the front seat. with two cell phones completely in tact.

happy miracle-iversary!

Fri, 25 Nov 2011 10:30:52 -0500

black friday is a great day for many people. amazing deals. saving money. huge crowds. oh, the insanity...

but black friday is a special day in our family for a very different reason. this is the day, 12 months ago, we discovered we were pregnant! after waiting, “trying” and praying for 2 years and 11 months, we were finally carrying a little baby of our very own!

i get tingly all over just thinking about that day...on a little whim of a thought, i decided to take a pregnancy test. after taking them, off and on, for 3 years, you condition yourself to not get overly anticipatory about such things. you also condition yourself to not take them very often. it’s emotionally draining. (and expensive - although if you want to know a much less expensive option, message me, and i’ll tell you how we stocked up.)

when the test came up positive!! the joy! the disbelief! the “is that really true?!” thoughts! i was literally shaking. i ran down the stairs and declared the good news to marnus. we were both in happy, disbelieving shock for weeks. and weeks. and weeks...

so

here’s to remembering a day like no other.

here’s to celebrating miracles.

here’s to KNOWING God is in the business of healing.

happy miracle day to us!

and here’s to MANY more miracle days for families believing for their very own.

baby girl crafties

Thu, 24 Nov 2011 09:35:11 -0500

i’m addicted to pinterest. there. i said it. i feel much better now. (follow me!) i decided recently that if i was going to be addicted, i needed to at least produce some fruit for the time of my labors.

i committed myself to completing at least some of the projects from my boards. (notice how i didn’t set a firm goal, like “complete all 18 of the diy dresses and shoes and bows i’ve pinned.” as much as i like goals, i’ve learned that having a baby changes life. and time. and goals for crafts are just silly. and stressful. so i set the goal of completing at least some of them :)

for one of my first projects, i decided on shoes for baby girl. kayla has very narrow feet - go figure, not sure what genes she inherited to get those (wink wink). and baby shoes are ridiculously overpriced. and the baby can only wear a pair for about a month until she needs the next size up anyway. so baby shoes seemed like a fun and logical choice.

there are a TON of free baby shoe patterns out there. but i chose to follow this cute (free) pattern for kimono shoes. i love the clean lines and that they are sort of modern rather than cutesy-cutesy. after making them, i realized they almost look like TOMS. but they’re not. the pattern also did not call for any elastic. or pleating. (two sewing ventures i was not prepared to tackle for a project meant to be simple and quick.)

i adjusted the pattern slightly to make the sole narrower. i didn’t change anything for the topi piece pattern, because i knew a narrower sole would simply make the top pieces curve around more, thus making the top opening skinnier, also a good thing.

these didn’t require a trip to the craft store (also a plus!). everything i needed (some fabric scraps and fusible webbing) leftovers from previous projects. (as a side note, who says that - “i just had these things lying around”? don’t you have to be martha stewart to say that? but it’s true. i really did have these things just lying around...and i’m not martha stewart.)

i raided my fabric scrap drawer, which was very fun. picking out the coordinating fabrics was my favorite part. then i set to work. it took me about 2 hours, total, to make 2 pairs. the second pair was of course much faster to make than the first. and of course i didn’t have 2 hours carved out and set aside for this. i just made them while baby girl was napping, in between loads of laundry, making lunch and unloading the dishwasher.

here’s the result!

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pretty cute, right? i think so. i’m really happy with the way they turned out.

and, lest you think i’m some kind of crafting genius, i actually wanted the pink and black shoes to be black on the OUTSIDE and pink on the INSIDE. but i got carried away with my sewing, humming right along through the pattern and instructions. and about halfway through, i realized i had sewn the shoes opposite of what i’d planned. too lazy to undo what i’d done. so pink shoes it is. still super cute. yes. but not exactly what i had in mind.

for the safety 1st folks. i know. buttons are a choking hazard. currently they are just glued on the shoes. but i plan to throw a couple of stitches in there later today for security. and a little common sense also tells me that my baby girl has not yet discovered her feet. therefore she does not play with them. therefore she will not pull off the button. common sense also tells me that kayla is no where close to having the hand dexterity to pick up a tiny button and put it in her mouth.

but i still plan to sew the buttons in place. just in case.

have you made any of your pinterest projects?

not as crazy as i thought i was...

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 07:16:56 -0500

some of you may know that i’m deaf in one ear. (yes, really. i don’t know why people think i’d make something like this up. when i was little, kids used to whisper cuss words in my deaf ear to see if i was lying. sad, i know. but don’t worry. i am so used to my hearing problem that i barely think about it anymore. honestly!)

but i know you’re curious. here are a few ways my hearing impairment impacts normal life 
- marnus is ALWAYS on my right side, so i can hear him.
- i pay attention to where i sit in a room, so i can hear.
- i don’t enjoy surround sound as much as the rest of you.
- and i sleep GREAT, because i put my working ear in the pillow and don’t hear anything else! sweet bliss!

did you know that in order to tell where a sound is coming from, you need two working ears? that’s right. it’s called sound traingulation. i learned pretty quickly after my hearing loss (when i was 14) that i couldn’t tell where a sound originated. if someone called my name in a crowded room, i couldn’t tell where the were. today, if marnus calls me from another room in the house, i can’t tell what room he’s in. if an ambulance comes down the road while i’m driving, i can’t tell which direction he’s coming from.

bummer, right? (as a side note, my eyesight is better than 20/20, which helps a LOT!)

i used to think that sound triangulation was the only repercussion (pun completely intended) of my hearing problem. but recently, i’ve learned something else. and it has made me feel so much less crazy than i thought i was.

see, despite the fact that i can only hear with one ear, i actually hear everything. i mean, ev-er-y-thin-g. tapping fingernails. smacking gum. ticking clocks. sniffly noses.

i know. i know. little noises probably annoy you, too. but for me, i literally cannot concentrate when i hear these sounds. and i used to write this off as one of those quirky things about lisa.

until a few days ago. (sigh of relief. i’m not a complete looney tune.)

people who can only hear with one ear, i’ve learned, have an incredibly difficult time filtering out sound. the brain brain can’t tell which sounds are important - marnus talking to me. and which sounds are not - the drip of the faucet in the kitchen. the hiss of the gas on the stove. the kids playing outside. the ice cream truck 4 blocks away. the brain hears them all and treats each one as equally important.

no wonder i love a quiet house!

interestingly enough, this also explains why i abhor crowded restaurants. movies with overwhelming surround sound. live concerts. (sheesh. just thinking about these places has sent my blood pressure up!) my brain is truly overwhelmed because it can’t tell which sounds i want to hear. and which sounds i don’t.

can i tell you what a relief learning this has been? i’m not as crazy as i thought i was. i actually have a medical excuse for my sound sensitivity. tiny noises really do make it hard for me to concentrate. and loud, busy areas really are overwhelming. it’s amazing how freeing this has been for me as a person. truly!

thankfully i’m not the type to lock myself away in a quiet, padded room for all eternity. but it does explain why the thought of having a quiet, padded room is incredibly appealing ;)