So much to say.. so little time..

I started writing this post two weeks ago.. and then I stopped! Things got crazy and I've been slow on the pick up. It pains me to not finish a post, but some of it sort of timed out during the last two weeks. Undeterred, I'm sharing it anyway! :)

Here’s how it began…

I have SO many things to write about! We are busy, busy, unfortunately, not with packing. While packing is ever looming on the to-do list, it very rarely gets priority status. One of these days that is going to have to change, I’m afraid. But hey, until the clock strikes midnight, we are still over a month away.. so who needs packing?

UPDATE: This is now false. We have started packing and we even have an official pick up day from the moving company! Scaaaaaaaarryyyyyy. As of this very moment, four boxes are packed. That feels good, but we still have a long way to go before next Friday. The good thing is, I find a well-packed box insanely satisfying so that keeps me going. You should see the first four :) Not a lick of breathing room for anything.

So then I continued..

I got my haircut this morning and the walk over is probably 15-20 minutes depending on how tired I am. I forgot, when I was deciding on what route I would take, that I would walk right passed the Boys Brigade Hall. The BBH is the building our church used to meet in when we first moved here. I came up to that building and took a peek at it, and I felt a catch in my throat as I remembered our early days here. That first Sunday when we were so kindly invited to lunch by three very special undergrads. I just remember laughing and laughing through my jet lag/culture shock haze. Those first weeks that were so unsettled and uncomfortable, and yet so exciting. Exploring our new little town, meeting people, discovering how if you were confused about something there was almost always someone at the ready to take you under their wing (perhaps all the while shaking their heads at the incredulous thought that you might be confused about such a thing).

I am trying so hard to just let myself be in denial. To ignore the fact that we are leaving. I keep thinking, ‘Why does this feel like such a big deal? I’m just going back to where I came from..’ And yet, it does feel like a big deal. If I ponder things for too long, I quickly spiral into despair over all the things I will be missing.. friends’ babies growing up, sunny days in the sand, lamenting the darkness together in mid-January at Bible study. It is exactly like when we moved here, but opposite. When we came, every little thing I missed back home broke my heart into a million pieces. Now, as we leave and I am accustomed to missing those things, my heart breaks to consider missing this place and these people, knowing it will never be this way again. It is fluid here, a university setting. People are always coming and going, and even if we stayed, all of our friends would eventually go.

I am treasuring, though. All of these last things and the goodbyes that are just beginning. I am storing up these special treasures and memories. I know they will be sweet and they will ache when I revisit them in the years to come, but I am thankful for them.

The rest of the post is not so time-sensitive. I think we are starting to move into the ‘please can we just get this over with’ phase. I am still finding myself caught off guard by the feelings that come with transition, but the need for finishing tasks and figuring out logistics is doing a good job at squeezing the life out of most of my thoughts. I predict it will take some time to sink in that life is really changing :) Especially since it may change again in about 8 months if the Lord blesses Ian with a job this year.

I am so thankful that I have three sweet guys to enjoy through all these changes! There is a baby that lives in this house who is threatening to turn 6 months old. He keeps us on our toes and is always at the ready with a dimpled smile. I have honestly never known such a smiley baby. He whole body smiles. It's awesome.

Note the playdough next to his head :)

This is old news, but he has joined us in the upright world! It began with an easy reconfiguration of the buggy..

And has expanded tremendously!

He loves being in the exersaucer, which has had to be raised since this picture was taken for our ever-lengthening child.

And big brother often plays with his toys right on the edge of that contraption, which is pure entertainment for little brother (and welcomed free moments for the parents!).

Since Aed tends to be an avid little reader, Asher often gets thrown into the mix regardless of what ‘level’ book is being read. I caught Daddy reading a Bob the Builder (or BtB as we covertly refer to him now so as not to excite a certain someone) book to them, and snapped a priceless picture.

I love love love those furrowed brows! :) It just cracks me up to imagine the various scenarios that could lead to such faces, but the reality is, big brother DOES NOT like it when little brother touches him! He gets very territorial when reading with a parent and gets ever so slightly bent out of shape if baby brother joins the fun. Most of the time Aed is really quite happy and affectionate towards Asher, but touching without Aed’s permission is a no no! :) Try telling that to a child just figuring out that he can swat and pat and grab and hold.

We are also well on our way into the world of solid foods. Asher has a pretty good handle on eating and seems to be following in mama’s footsteps in his preference of fruit over everything else :).

First time in the bumbo!

It did take a few tries to get him to warm up to the idea, but he will straight up yell at you if you’re too slow with the shoveling these days.

Aed is being a super-fun two year old and learning all kinds of things. He’s a great counter and managed to learn the alphabet song without us knowing it :) He’s starting to learn letters and loves pointing them out on our shirts and the cereal boxes. He is doing pretty well so far in dealing with our upheaval, but we haven’t really gotten to the hard part yet. We would so appreciate your prayers for our sensitive little guy. I wrote him a story to get him used to the idea of what is happening, but I think we will still have some hills to climb with him. I love his sensitive heart, but it is, like most things, a blessing and a curse.

Anyway. He loves being creative! Aed gets so excited when I get out the paints, but a few weeks ago I handed him a sheet of stickers and let him have at it..

And he was so sweet to let baby brother join the fun.

He kept showing him the stickers, telling him what animal it was, and saying ‘baby bruva’s havin’ it!’ So cute.

Aed continues to be obsessed with all things wheel-laden and for a few weeks loved having us build structures for his cars to go in.

  

And, continuing with his creative streak, he took some self-portraits! :) Here’s a fine one..

This kid cracks me up.

I will be back with more about some of the fun outings we’ve had recently. There is lots to share before we go, so here’s to hoping my writing fingers are up to it!

Oh, and by the way.. documentation that I push a buggy in a cold place

This is the ultimate farmer’s tan (if you can even really put it into the 'tan' category).. all the way down to my wrists! :)

A Brush with Paint

A loooooooong time ago.. before Aed was two.. before the haircut.. when Asher was still pretty fresh.. I thought it might be a fun activity for Aed to try his hand at painting. He’s not a huge fan of crayons, though he will play with them for a short time (and I mean play.. they usually end up on the floor being pushed or dumped or tossed rather than used for coloring). He sort of likes pens, pencils, and the magnadoodle. But, we just really haven’t found his artistic niche. Though with his current obsession with playdough, I’m beginning to think he’s just more of a 3-D guy. :)

We don’t have a great set up for painting (for children or adults, boohoo.. note the wicker furniture. Bumpy surface, impossible to clean), but I decided to go for it anyway and just hope I could clean up whatever mess was made. Sounds like a good plan, yes? :)

Turns out, painting is very exciting! I had cut bits of colored paper and shown him how to glue as well, so he could make a mixed media painting if he so desired.

(And really, before any of you self-proclaimed ‘non-artistic’ mothers out there begin to lament your lack of creativity-inspired activities.. I did NOT think it through this much when I gave him the paint, brush, and paper.. I pretty much just thought, ‘Well that could be fun’ and gave him stuff :) Blogging can make lots of things look much more sparkly than they really are.. Also, my child is no artistic genius. He glued way more paper to his fingers than he did to his painting :) Just keeping it real here.)

So we got down to work. He was really excited to have his picture taken..

But in the end let me get a sort of good one to show off his lovely painting.

We have some work to do on the quality of our art documentation :)

He didn’t do a lot of painting on the paper itself, but REALLY enjoyed smudging the paint around on the palate. (I see finger paints in our future!) The best part of the whole thing turned out to be watching the water change colors when we rinsed the brush. He asked me over and over again to ‘make watah boo gen.’ (Or in big people terms, make the water blue again.)

One thing I hadn’t considered would be the potential difficulty in doing this while I was holding Asher. I’m a pretty good juggler, but at some point Aed managed to get his hands on his brother when I wasn’t ready for it and Asher got to join in the adventure.

We delved back in to painting again this week on a rainy, grey day and it was loved even more this time around. Fortunately, Asher was sleeping, so avoided painting peril. We got to use lots of colors and Mama helped, so we ended up with a fun, collaborative painting to adorn our refrigerator. (I let him choose the paper.. he chose a scrap piece of yellow which is why part of it is cut off :)

It was so fun to watch his delight as we turned a red(ish) triangle into a smiley face, then gave him a hat, then gave him feet so he could walk, then gave him ground to walk on! I delight in his delight :)

Aed was SO proud of this painting. At various times every day he decides it’s time to ‘see smiles’ and runs over to look at it. He has taken the time to show it to many of his toys and has asked numerous times to take a picture of it. He gets such a kick out of seeing it and counting the smiles. It’s great motivation to see what we can come up with next!

The Beach

We still go!

Even though it is getting frigid and windy and, did I mention really cold?

A few weeks ago we had about a week of really nice sunny, warm weather. Unfortunately, during this wonderful weather, I was juggling two napping babies which meant it was more difficult than ever to take advantage!

After one particularly sunny day that included lots of nap refusals, I decided we just needed to get the heck outside. So we did. We tried and tried and tried to convince Daddy to come with us to the beach because it was SO nice outside. He was relentless in his claims of ‘needing to work’. I was skeptical of this need, but I suppose that very resolve is what has gotten us to this point of completion in his work.. so who can complain, really?

Off we went, Daddy-less, ready for some fun. By the time we arrived one of us was sound asleep..

One of us was feeling rather timid..

And, one of us couldn’t believe what a gorgeous day it was..

Before long the timid one had moved from Mama’s lap..

to full-fledged filling and dumping.

Which is a good thing, because about three seconds after we arrived at the beach the sleeping one woke up to kick his cute little feet in gentle gusts of sandy wind..

Aed loved playing with his bucket and was very focused with each scoop of sand..

I hear sticking out the tongue enhances concentration :)

And we had a wonderful time stripping off the jeans and boots (Aed’s, not mine.. I stayed fully clothed) and playing in the waves. After he warmed up to the idea, I could not get Aed out of the water. He threw the fit I knew was coming when it was time to go, but it was so fun watching him run through puddles and tide pools, flirt with college girls foolishly hoping for a suntan, and refuse to surrender his toes to those lapping waves.  

We may not get any more warm visits to the beach, but this was certainly a sweet one.

Here’s the scoop..

I wrote the last post in the midst of contemplation. We are processing, attempting to figure out how to transport our belongings, wondering how we will say goodbye and what life and these relationships will look like when we do. I completely overlooked the fact that I didn’t leave you with the slightest inkling (unless you already knew, of course) of where we were going or why we were going.

(Let me interject.. THANK YOU for your wonderful comments and emails of support and common understanding after my last post. We appreciated it so much, and I was far more emotional in reading and being reminded of all the wonderful friends and loved ones that we have than I was when I actually wrote that post! Thank you, thank you.)

So, here are those details.

First of all, it’s no big secret that overseas tuition is kind of absurd. Add to that a wonderfully horrible (though better than it was) exchange rate, and you get very poor graduate students. This was a pricey endeavor, and we knew that it would be. Coming into this year, some things changed for us financially that we hadn’t anticipated, so we started considering the possibility of moving back to the States sooner than we had originally planned.

Then, after three years of labor pains, Ian gave birth to this..

Taken on the evening after the first compete draft was printed. You can bet a celebration ensued. 

A completed thesis! Woohoo! When Ian took stock of his work for the coming year over this last summer, it started to look like he’d be submitting much earlier than we had anticipated. So we started considering the possibility of moving back to the States sooner than we had originally planned. (Seeing a trend?)

The next hurdle was (is) finding a job. It seemed a bit defeating to move back to the States with nothing to show for these last 4+ years of education (aside from the new title of Dr.! Hello! But, try telling that to the one who earned it..), but arguments were still strong that moving would be the wisest option for our family and our afflicted bank account.

In the end, we decided to cut 6-7 months off of our stay in St Andrews regardless of Ian’s employment status because the numbers just had a really good argument. They can be very persuasive. So despite the loss of physical presence at his school, Ian will still be applying for jobs and preparing for his defense in the spring. He will be back here at least twice - to defend and then graduate (if all goes as planned :) next summer.

We had such a hard time committing to this change. We had planned on finishing this school year and enjoying another summer before we moved on. It was a really difficult shift in thinking to start to consider our time here ending so soon.

So we will be taking up residence in a comfy little number in rural Indiana with wide open spaces and lots of bedrooms. We will be living with my parents through the spring and probably a good chunk of summer, until hopefully, we move on to a job for Dr. Church.

We are really looking forward to sharing our boys with their family who have missed them so. We are looking forward to a time of rest (well.. at least a little bit) after some very stretching and busy years. We are looking forward to sweet corn and watermelon (ok, maybe that’s mostly me :). We are heading back to where we came from. One step at a time.