2 hours in an airport.

I'm in an airplane right now. It's still insane to me that I can be online in an airplane 10,000 feet in the air.  I'm on my way to Orlando for a conference for 3 days. Until this morning I was ridiculously excited to spend 3 glorious nights alone in my own hotel room- eating, sleeping, exercising  reading, and learning on my own schedule.  Even my type A personality has worn tired of the strict schedule the Wood family is required to keep. Le sigh.

Anyway, this morning I started to get anxious. I'm not a big fan of flying in the first place; I;m not terrified I just don't really enjoy it.  I'm sad to be away from my baby who is days away from taking his first steps and no longer nurses. I told Matt that if he stands up and tries to walk I wanted him pushed down immediately. I was joking. Mostly. I will be pretty bummed if I happen to miss his first steps, though.

Even more than all of that is Levi. My sweet, spunky, spirited, beautiful Levi.  Sigh.  I get so nervous when I have to leave him. I'm not really sure why since I'm not really much better at calming his meltdowns these days, but I'm always sort of waiting for a phone call from home. And when the phone does ring from home, I always fear I will hear the tell-tale screams in the background.  I just. I worry.

So I found myself sitting in a practically empty airport 2 hours before my flight was to take off.  Apparently Wednesday @ 2pm isn't a hugely popular time to fly in January... who knew?  I picked up my Kindle and started reading a book I had downloaded earlier this week in anticipation of my quiet time.  The book is a conversation between two mothers, one younger and one older, about mothering in community, about the guilt and frustrations that can come along with mothering. And more importantly, about some hope for the future.  And then, BAM. I'm in tears. I did my best to quietly wipe my tears before anyone could see, but each page brought new waves of emotions.

When I hit the chapter about "Out of the Box" children I couldn't contain it any longer.  They were talking about me. About my first-born.  And it stung.  Whatever labels might be placed on Levi someday, I'm realizing that my first job is to love him and parent him with the Grace that I desire. The grace we all receive from God.

One of the author's says, "May times we heard the words, 'You aren't spanking your children enough!' And yet my darling little Nathan, who we later found had ADHD and OCD, always responded to me when I was gentle, loving, and filling his cup. He needed patience, and he needed me to like him, and believe in him."  Ouch.

How often am I not showing my child that, through all of his behaviors, I love him and like him?  That I am on his team.

Everyone has ideas about how Matt & I should "handle" Levi and his behaviors.  Some have even suggested that most of his behavior probably just has to do with "us" since he doesn't meltdown during x, y, or z.  I try to respond kindly to those suggestions, to remember that others don't live with him, that Levi feels comfortable melting down with us, that we are generally the ones that are bringing him to challenging situations. Anyway, no matter how well intentioned they are, we don't always feel encouragement or community from friends and family when it comes to that sort of stuff. Having a kid who's "out of the box" can, in fact be really isolating.  It can be lonely in this section of motherhood, and reading about someone else's experience with similar emotions was really liberating and validating.

No matter what evaluations, doctors, or tests say, Levi needs to know that Matt & I are happy with him. That we are proud to be his parents. That we are on his team.  Because you know what? Sometimes this world is actually really scary and overwhelming, and when you're 3 and things feel out of control all the time?  How else might you respond?

For the moment our life with Levi is filled with skinny jeans, lots of squeezing, a good schedule, solid sleep that we can't mess with, lots of preparation for new things, and the occasional meltdown that leaves me curled up in a ball and crying. But it's also filled with laughter at his antics, the joy that comes from hearing him laugh, awe at his natural musical and athletic talent, and a heart that bursts with love for my first born.  And you know what, that is all okay.  This is where we are right now.

As much as all of this thinking makes me want to go home and squeeze him until he makes me let go, I know the next few days away will be good for me. And hopefully good for Levi, and Matt, and Jonah as they enjoy a few days of "bro" time.  Deep breath.

losing it. episode 1.

I've been on Weight Watchers for a little over a month now, though, to be fair/honest, the 2 weeks of holidays were sort of a crap shoot for points tracking and I basically reversed all the progress I had made in the 2 weeks prior.  So, for the sake of argument, let's just say I actually started the 1st week of January. ;)  No seriously, that's when I restarted my tracking, working out, and keeping track of my progress.

I get some odd looks, especially from my husband, when I talk about weight watchers.  While I understand I'm not "obese" or in a risk zone BMI-wise, I am pretty horrendously out of shape, and about 20 pounds over my resting, non-pregnant weight.  I reached that weight about 2 months before getting pregnant with Jonah.  It took me a while post-Levi and I don't plan to take that long this time. Jonah will be ONE next month (omg) and I will be on my way to my happy weight. 

I have some pictures, but I'm not brave enough to post them yet. Maybe I will be able to once I have a progress picture to compare it to. For now, 3 weeks in, I am down just about 5 pounds. It's not a great loss but it's in the right direction and I'm okay with that. 

So there it is. Out in public for everyone to see. I am currently 18.7 pounds from my goal weight.  I want to be at my goal weight by my birthday (5/1); that gives me 3+ months. I think that's realistic.  Here is my plan:


- Mondays are my usual weigh-in days, and I will aim to keep track of my progress on here.

- Working out: I want to run 3xs a week but I'm going to give myself some grace here.  I will promise to be active 4 xs a week.  I would love to be able to actually run a 5k this spring, we shall see.

- Eating: I will be continuing with WW for the foreseeable future. It helps me keep track and be accountable.  As a family, we are going to be experimenting with going gluten free during the time that we Daniel Fast (for lent).  This will be a huge adjustment for the whole family (Levi especially).  I'll get into more details about the gluten experiment in another post, but stripping down our food choices to whole/naturally occurring foods has been a huge help in the past. Actually, it was how I dropped the last 14 pounds of Levi weight 2 years ago.  That whole plan takes place the 2nd week of February!

Any thoughts? Tips? Are you in the same place? What are you doing right now?  Share with me!  Let's encourage each other, cause God knows this is hard!

Saturday was perfect.

Oh, here's just a ton of pictures. This weekend was lovely. The only thing missing was my husband. We had sunshine, a cool breeze, sidewalk chalk, neighbors, friends, grilled hotdogs, birthday celebrating, and intentional relaxation. Amazing.

Levi took sidewalk chalk drawing very seriously.

He has a thing about dirty hands lately.

Our neighbor came outside, so Levi showed him how to draw on the sidewalk.

All in all, it was a fantastic weekend. I wish Matt was here, but he will be home in approximately 3 hours. :) I had an amazing birthday. Thank you to everyone who made a point to post on my wall, send me a text or e-mail, call, or wish me a happy birthday in person.

Life is good.

-ktw

Im tired.

So I know I have to post tonight. I'm tired and feeling unmotivated, so here are some bullet points about my day:

* Levi has cried every single day this week when leaving him at daycare. It kills me inside. This morning was the worst as he was crying, "No mama! Gock! Gock!" (Which means go on a walk). I tried explaining that any other morning I would rearrange everything for a Gock, but he didn't understand the urgency of my morning appointments. It was gut wrenching.

* What stunk even worse was that I won't see him until tomorrow morning. I taught my first class tonight, so my Dad and Bert picked him up and played with him till bed time.

* I leave for vacation 3 weeks from MONDAY!!!!!!! Matt is off work for 2 whole weeks and we are ecstatic!

* My first class was fun. I gave myself a headache after 3.5 hours of class and dismissed them with an assignment. Seriously, who designed a 4.5 hour class on a Friday night?

* We had a crew of teenagers from the middle and high school come to the church to do work for "Global Youth Service Day." They were all very sweet and did a great job and a ton of work! Yay!

* Tomorrow Levi and I plan to walk to the little league park to see all sorts of cousins and friends in their little league "parade" and maybe catch a game. Levi apparently went to a game with my dad tonight and LOVED it. Good times!

Sad bullet points:
* A friend's baby is in the PICU with pneumonia. I feel awful. :( It's gotta stink to see your baby all sick and helpless. I'm sending so many prayers he way.

* A very dear family friend passed away last night. It was sudden but not unexpected. It's going to be a long road of mourning for his family and mine as well as our congregation.



I will close with this random tidbit- Target "grocery store" is like a black hole. I go for some groceries and inexpensive milk and leave with a new pair of sandals for Levi and other random "end cap" clearance items. Le Sigh. They get me every time.

night!

-ktw

Curbside-to-go and some Yankees.

Yup, it's a hot date night for us before Matt goes out of town. Matt's playing his guitar at the moment, so I wanted to take a minute to write (see, it's gotta be like day 5 by now, right?) and recap a little story from this morning.

So I'm driving Levi to daycare and I come to a red light. There's 1 car in front of me that is just a bit too close for me to slide next to and take a right. Whatever, I'm not in a huge rush. Well, apparently the car that pulled up behind me was because the kid (eh, he was probably my age, but we'll call him a kid) driving starts honking and waving his arms. When I look in the mirror and try to use "international rear view mirror driver sign language" to tell him that the car in front of me is in the way... he flipped me off. Now listen, I know Levi is still to young to know what that means. And heck, he can't even see far enough over the back seat to even see the driver behind us. But that, that just made me mad. So, what did I do? I gave the man a hearty thumbs down. In cases like these I generally think it's better to just use shame.

Anyway, the car in front of me hears the honking and tries to move out of the way so I inch up a bit. Dude! The kid behind me gets right up on my bumper. Really? It's not going to help me take a right so please chill. He's still back there waving his arms and yelling and, at this point, I'm fairly certain he will probably have a heart attack from all the commotion.

Soon enough, the light changes and I took a right. He follow. Closely. We quickly come to another red light where he rests comfortably right up on my bum. Once the light changes, he slams on the gas and squeals around me, staring at me the whole way as if to prove some point about my inefficient driving.

As Karma would have it, the light about 50 yards up was red too. And if you think I didn't get a chuckle as I mumbled to myself, "race ya to the red light," well, then you'd be wrong. When that light turned green he squealed off again, presumably to terrorize some other car.

I couldn't help but wonder, what is so important? Maybe he had a partner in labor somewhere? Maybe he really had to go to the bathroom? My intuition says nah, he was just in a hurry. Why? Because I've been that guy. I don't flip people off or ride up on their bumper (because I'm scared of rear ending someone mostly) but I do often get all worked up and yell and flail like a fool over things of little importance- including someone not turning fast enough. You know, because the 45 seconds I have to wait really do make a difference.

The whole exchange, which may have lasted all of 2.5 minutes, made me think of a John Ortberg quote: "Be the kind of player people want to sit next to." (From, "When the game is over it all goes back in the box") Sometimes, though I'm not proud of it, I'm really not the kind of player I'd want to sit next to. I'm sure that boy behind me has good qualities- though flipping off a car, in the direction of a toddler, over a slow right turn probably isn't one of them.

Moral of the story? Still figuring it out. Slow down? Be nicer? Take the plank out of your own eye? You decide. Oh, and read some John Ortberg while your at it.

-ktw

I'll just publish this one instead.

I just wrote a very whiny post about Matt going away this weekend. I saved it as a draft and probably won't post it.

In reality, I need to appreciate that he has a job. That it's a good job. And that we are taken care of, have insurance, etc. I need to understand that there are people who have much worse situations.

Does it kind of suck to have him gone on my birthday... again? Does it kind of suck that he has worked late every night this week and will work late again tomorrow night? Sure. Am I entitled to being a bit whiny? Maybe.

But, in the long run, it's really not a big deal. In the grand scheme of things, it's sort of silly.

So, I'm a bit whiny but I'm getting over it. I am teaching my first class Friday. I'm going to enjoy dinner with the girls and meeting up with friends on Saturday. Sunday will be church, lunch with my family, and the youth. I'll be busy, I'm hoping Levi will be happy, and Matt will be in New Jersey. Not Afghantistan or in the hospital or something else that's much worse than having a husband who occasionally needs to leave for 3.5 days to sell the heck out of some t-shirts.

Yep, I think I will leave the complaining post unpublished. It's just not the sort of thing I need to be putting out there. No one wants to be around a Debbie Downer. ;)

On Sunday I will be the big 2-6. Woot! I'm going to enjoy this weekend. I'm also going to enjoy some sort of celebration with that husband of mine. Whenever we get around to it!

-ktw

Some sentences about life.

I didn't write yesterday, sue me. ;) I went out on a work date last night and there was no internet. I guess it's better anyway because I would have spent more time on facebook and blogging that I would have on finishing my lesson plans! I did get my lesson plans finished, though so ya'll should be proud of me. I guess I'll just tack on an extra day to my "month of blogging." Whatev.

Anyway, today was a pretty normal day. That is, with the exception of a potentially amazing opportunity presenting itself to Matt and I. We have been praying and hoping for a new, forever house and will go tomorrow to talk to some people about possibly getting one. That's really all I can say at this point because it's really preliminary and in the very beginning stages. Sorry if it's annoying when people do that, but I'd love your prayers if you think of them.

It was over 80 degrees today for the first time in, what seemed like, forever! I picked Levi up from daycare early-ish and went to my dad's to let him run around in the back yard and play on the swings. He was dripping sweat, bright red in the face, with hair looking like a mad scientist. Haha. He wouldn't drink much water for me, but he drank 4 full cups of milk. GAG! I can't imagine drinking milk in heat, but I'm not much for milk anyway. Whatever, it kept him hydrated. We stayed to have some pizza with my dad, Bert, and Zach.

After tubby-time and potty time it was bed time. Phew! Now it's Yankees time and I'm off. Oh, but not without an adorable picture from Easter. Y'all this is too cute for me to handle. When did my baby become a little man? :(



It was a nice, normal day. Nothing out of the ordinary, nothing too stressful. Just a day to get some work done, enjoy the changing seasons, and enjoy my family. Pretty good day. I'm really going to enjoy this summer!