We've Moved!

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I would love for you to follow me there!

Love you all!
Baci Baci Baci

Jac

Try

This music video has been circulating around Facebook and everywhere and I finally got a chance to watch it the other night. Whoa! I've been a huge Colbie fan since I saw her as an opener for some 80s band years ago. The message of this song and the power of the video is so so good! With social media taking over our lives and this constant pressure to look "perfect," whatever that word has come to mean, I'm so thankful for this reminder. Hoping it's something we as women can genuinely embrace and not simply momentarily support. I like you! Do you?
Baci Baci

pondering … 10 months

Where did ten months go?! People always warn you that life speeds up as you get older. But no one could have really prepared me for how quickly this time would just fly by. This little man is not so little, he is chatty, incredibly mobile, and full of his little personality; and what a personality it is. I wish I could remember every little moment: every hand clap, every smile, every stubbornness, all of it.
I always think about the verse where it says "Mary pondered all of these things in her heart," referring to Jesus as a baby. I think that is such a great way to approach all of this. I cannot remember every single tiny detail of every one of Hudson's days, but I can remember moments. And you can bet that I will continue to ponder and treasure all of these little things in my heart.

Pause and Reflect

We just got back from an incredible twelve days in Montana! The time was sweet, the air was CLEAN, and the memories will never be forgotten. Time with family is so sweet, and while we get a ton of time with my side, we don't get nearly as much with Jake's and it was just so sweet to all be together for almost two weeks! I'll get some photos up this week, Jake got some AMAZING shots! But, my time out of this crazy city made me realize how fast life is going.
My baby boy will be ten months old this week! TEN MONTHS! Where did this time go? How is he trying to walk, and talk, and feeding himself, and already moving a million miles a minute? I don't want to look back and see a blur of our life, I want to remember moments, the tiny things, the huge things, all of it.
With that, I've decided to start every week off with a few moments of pausing and reflecting. Each Sunday I want to take some time to look back on the previous week, whether it's the messy hard stuff or the exciting thrilling stuff, I want to be able to look back and at least have these weekly snipits to remember. I hope you all can take the time to be still for a few moments each week and reflect on the many things going on in your own lives.
Baci Baci,
J

taking time

These last few weeks have been crazy. I feel like I reflect on snipits of our life and often feel this way. There is always something to do. There always will be something to do, but life is short. We only have one. And when I actually take 5 seconds to pause and reflect I realize it is flying by; and I'm left questioning if we're spending it the way we really desire to / should be.
Rest is an art, it is acquired. It is different from laziness. And for me at least, it requires a lot of work. "Come to me all you who are weary and heavy laden and I will give you REST." What is this rest? Christians are commanded to keep the sabbath, as much as we are to not murder, lie, steal, we are commanded to rest. And if we've broken one commandment we've broken them all. So why am I vigilant to keep these other areas in check while completely negating this.
We're getting ready to leave for a 10 day trip to Montana to visit Jake's family. I feel that the timing of this conviction of needing rest for our family is not coincidental. While I am sure there will be a million things we want to do, I know that we absolutely need to take time on this trip to be still, to be out of this crazy city, and sit before the Lord, not with much to say, but with much silence.

Malibu

Thursday we had a little family date day and brought Hudson to the beach for the first real time. He and I had tagged along on a photo shoot Jake did when he was two months old but this was the first time he could really enjoy it.

I love the ocean. I dream of living there. I could sit and watch the waves forever. It is so strong and powerful, but so peaceful all at once. The beauty of God's creativity is just so real to me there.

Anyways - we had a blast. Hudson LOVED it. Watching him discover the sand and sink his little toes in and watching the waves was amazing. He is such a little adventurer and just couldn't get enough. We will be spending a lot of time at the beach this summer.

Enjoy your three day weekend!

Baci Baci!

  

He is His

Since getting pregnant I have preached to myself that this baby is God's. I had to preach it to myself throughout pregnancy and the fear of what my body would or would not be able to do as it grew this tiny human. I preached it to myself throughout my time in the hospital to bring him in to the world. And I've preached it to myself every single day since.

My baby boy is God's, just as I am God's. He is good and in control, and even when life is hard and the circumstances are horrendous, He is STILL good. He truly does work all things together for good for those who love Him and are called according to His purpose.

But I have never had to fight so hard to believe those truths as I did in those first five weeks of Hudson's life.

This not so tiny peanut was born at a healthy 8 pounds 8 ounces. (I'm still amazed that I was miraculously able to carry and birth him at all!) In the first day he lost 14 ounces, not too big of a deal for a newborn as they lose all the fluids they have in their system. We took him home happier than I could have dreamed and went along learning how to take care of this tiny little person. We brought him in for his newborn screening beaming that we certainly had the cutest baby in the world (something I still standby).

He hadn't gained any weight back but everything else looked ok, and we'd go back in a week just to be sure. A week later he still hadn't gained the weight and wasn't pooping. Never did I ever imagine I would be praying so much for poop. We went in two to three times a week for the next month.

That month was honestly a whirlwind, I was an emotional mess as I saw his pediatrician more than any new mom should, lactation consultants, specialists. There was talk of surgery, a genetic condition, and things that I honestly can't even remember. I was up basically 24/7 trying to feed him because he was endlessly hungry, but everyone told me I was feeding him right and just to push through.

At the end of the month when we finally saw a new doctor, they explained that our precious one month old needed to be hospitalized as he was formally diagnosed with "failure to thrive." I've never broke down so quickly in front of someone I'd just met. Despite all efforts to comfort me, there was simply nothing that could make this easy. Nothing they could say would make me feel less inadequate to be raising this baby boy and that I had done something terribly wrong. It was the first time I had been to an appointment without Jake - so I just sat there holding my baby and crying out to God that He would help me believe that He was good. Thinking through it now still brings me to tears.

We spent a solid week at Children's with truly the most amazing doctors I've ever met. They were gracious and compassionate in ways I'd never seen before. They were more knowledgeable than I could have hoped for and talked through everything with me until I fully understood what we were looking at. The Lord used them in amazing ways to give peace in a situation that was simply tumultuous. We were able to stay with him the entire time, through every test, every night, all of it, it was our new little family working through our first huge trial together.

After countless tests, weigh-ins, measuring food intake, and so on, we were blessed to come to a very simple conclusion. He just needed more food. Looking back on it now I feel so foolish for not putting it all together more quickly. Not enough was going in, nothing was coming out, and no weight was being put on ... put more in. But in the haze of exhaustion, hormones, and a doctor filling your mind with the idea that there was a much bigger problem - we missed it, the doctors did too I guess, and by the grace of God it was an incredibly simple fix.

I had wanted so badly for Hudson to be exclusively breastfed, it was just my thing. And it was a thing I had to give to the Lord. When you're at the point of being hospitalized and you find something that will fix the problem so simply compared to what you were anticipating, you take it. When you realize it's either have an unhealthy baby who's not getting enough food, or add more food than what your body is making - the decision was clear - challenging, humbling, and difficult - absolutely. But clear none the less. I'm so thankful that we've been able to maintain breastfeeding and bottle feeding this long, it's only the grace of God. And this not so little chunk is up to a beautiful 18 pounds 8 ounces.

Even now as I sit and watch him sleep in his crib, all 19+ pounds of him, I still have to preach to myself. I am just entrusted with him for these brief moments. As he grows and skins his knees, and is hurt by others, and is faced with his own trials, I am blessed to be the one who gets to be here to hold him and comfort him, always remembering that he is His first, and He loves him more than I ever could.