Sleeping in her own room...beginning to let go...

I put Ilyana down in her own room to sleep tonight. She's still in the swing, but we are beginning to attempt to make the transition into her own room in her own bed. She's been in our room since she was born, and she often sleeps with us for at least part of the night.

It didn't seem to phase her a bit when I put her to bed. She went to sleep as peacefully as she always does with a small cry-cry. Head turn-head turn. Sleep.

But I have to admit that it was a bittersweet moment for me. Don't get me wrong. I am ready to get more sleep, and I am ready to be able to go to bed without any worry of disturbing a little one, and I am excited for her to grow (most of the time). But, it marked a first of a lifetime of "letting go" experiences as her mom. And I wasn't sure that I was ready...Today, it's moving into her own room. Tomorrow, it will be kindergarten, and next week, it will be moving away from home. I get teary just thinking about it, and I know I am being a little dramatic. (It might be the long-term sleep deprivation talking.)

I bless her to be everything that God has planned for her, whatever that means. But part of me wants to be able to hold her close, smell her sweet stinkiness (her feet sweat a lot), kiss her head and make her into a small "burrito" with a swaddle blanket (which she is beginning to hate, by the way.) I will cherish these days of her smallness. I choose not to wish them away in the name of more sleep.

At the same time, I will begin to release her to what is next...even if today that just means swinging in the next room and probably ending up in bed with us for at least some part of the night. I will not hold this precious one back selfishly from her destiny. She is not ours...we just get to enjoy her for awhile. She's got a perfect Parent (not Chadwick...just to clarify...he's with me.) who can hold her and love her much longer and better than we can.

So tonight, I trust that she is swinging in the hands of the Father, and hopefully we'll all get some good sleep.

A blog resurrection...

I realize that there has been precious little action (actually no action if we are to quibble about details) on this blog for several months. And it has actually been declared "dead" by the one follower that we are aware of (Chadwick's mother...aka MamaNeuf/Omi).

But, I have come to declare that the blog is risen. It is risen indeed.

I recently watched the movie "Julie & Julia" (which I would highly recommend if you like to cook and love to eat butter,) and have been inspired to write again. Maybe I should be embarrassed that my inspiration comes from a movie, but despite my desire to be deep, reflective, and well-read, I have to be honest and say that I mostly leave the deep thinking and heavy reading to my husband while I dine on a steady intellectual diet of "Girly" movies and "The Biggest Loser." Then, I just wait for Chadwick to share all his deep thoughts with me so that I can talk about them later even though my information is second hand. It's just one more reason why we make a great team.

So the Neufelds are back...at least one of them (me). I don't have a particular challenge/goal for myself like Julie did in the movie, and I certainly have no aspirations of getting a book deal out of this or having a movie made about our life. I do know, however, that life passes by and, while a person may feel that they will remember the details, emotions, and events of a season, the reality is that it slips away quickly as the next season begins. (I already can't even remember all the specifics from my fourth grade schedule from last year.) I would like to record snippits (is that a word?) of our day-to-day thoughts & activities so that we can remember this stage. I sometimes wish that my mom had written things down so that I could read about the life my family lived when I was growing up. So maybe someday these posts will be a gift to Ilyana. If not, it will be give me a chance to process my current life as a stay-at-home mom who has been a teacher and lives in a high school residence hall. We'll see...

...but Ilyana if you are ever reading this...you'll be happy to know that today, Tuesday, January 12, 2010 you are 5 months & 3 days old. You are wearing a yellow sleeper with hearts on it and sitting on the couch beside me chewing on a pink plastic pretzel. Not to mention sliming everything in sight. Very developmentally appropriate. Good Job.

Two months...

So, we're not terribly regular posters on this blog. We'd like to be, but we're just not.
Our beautiful Ilyana Grace turned two months old yesterday.
On Thursday she rolled over for the first time. She smiles, eats, poops, and sleeps. She is quite the baby.

Name the baby!!!!

In the spirit of crowd-sourcing aka consulting large pools of random persons, we are currently welcoming submissions for names for the Feldling, the deadline, of course, being anywhere up until ten years after they are born.
To get you started here is the list submitted, most welcomely, by my Aunt Florence, who, random trivia, selected/proposed my name. Well done!
Boys:
Gabriel William
Sawyer Luke
Elijah Isaac
Samuel Owen
Micah Thomas
Easton Scott
Brock Wyatt
Xander Jayce
Hudson Keith
Simon Blake

Girls:
Hannah Quinn
Morgan Leigh-Anne
Mia Dianne
Lydia Jane
Zoey Dominique
Heidi Katherine
Anna Elizabeth
Kyra Faith
Caybree Grace
Isabella Hope

And with that to inspire you, submit away, dear friends, submit away...

Nesting

Nesting. It's what they call the compulsive need to clean out every nook and cranny of your living space prior to the arrival of a child (by arrival, of course, I mean birth.)

We had been out-of-town and busy for the last two weeks or so, and when Monday morning hit this week, I was ready to nest the day away. It's easy to forget, however, in this stage that your body is toting around an extra person and about 20 random pounds that hopefully will go away quickly when aforementioned extra person no longer needs internal toting.

So anyhow, yesterday morning, I eagerly emptied out closets and cleaned things up that haven't seen a cleaning in two years or so. It felt great. I was going strong. Moving. Lifting. Crates of canned goods couldn't stop me. So I just kept plugging away at it...feeling good about how much progress I was making. Until about 7:00. Crash doesn't quite describe the wall that hit me or that I hit when I sat down to eat supper. Pregnancy does some strange things to you, and apparently, I don't have quite 9 hours of straight through cleaning in me these days. Every part of my exhausted body began to cry out over the injustice done to it during the day. Needless to say, I spent the evening lying on the couch and hobbling back and forth between it and the bathroom.

So, a word to all you women out there who are 8 1/2 months pregnant, your mind may tell you, "You can do this," but your body just might not cooperate.

A few pics...

This picture highlights what we have all known for a long time, the chances of our child being "normal" are slim. We'll have to hope for the emergence of recessive genes.

Here is my pregnant self at about 36 1/2 weeks along.

If we can't hope for "normality," we'll just have to settle for happiness.

A posting furlough...

We have been on furlough from posting anything on this site.
So hello again...the Neufelds are back.
I had great intentions of doing the weekly or at least bi-weekly updates of pictures so that I would have a record of what this pregnancy was like week-by-week, but apparently, follow-through is not one of my strong points, but despite having no photographic record of all the weeks since our last pictures post, I am still pregnant.

Here is a small update on where we are at right now...
We had been a little concerned last week because the midwife told us that I was measuring small, and they thought that the baby might not be growing enough.
But our kid is already a champion, and Baby Feldling got an A+ this morning in our ultrasound. He or she is hanging out right at the 49th percentile of size for being 33 weeks along. 4 lbs. 12 oz. currently. (Although I did eat two cookies today so we might have hit 13 oz. by now. :-) The baby also has a very long femur so we are thinking that he or she may take after Daddy in the height department.

In other news, our nursery is coming right along. We painted a few weeks ago, and the school installed new flooring last week. We have a crib and changing table, but they are still in process.

So little Feldling...we already love you like crazy, but we aren't quite ready for your arrival just yet. You can keep hibernating and growing where you are for a few more weeks. Daddy is just kidding about the kicking anyway. He loves it even more than I do. (In addition, if you were born right now, you would probably be nameless. We are still stumped.)
So we'll see you in August. Early August we hope...

Most of these pictures were taken on Saturday, June 20 at Melissa and Lyle's house.