6 Months Old

I wanted to post this on our Elizabeth Sunshine's half birthday last Wednesday, but I was very busy that day and then forgot!  Better late than never. 😏

Six months ago our sweet Lizzy Bee was born into her daddy's arms.  What a blessing she has been!  We really can't imagine life without her now.  She is an easy going, chill, relaxed little soul, with dimpled little hands and elbows.  She has a very strong grip, and likes playing with her ear while she nurses.  TJ is by far and away her favorite, and she worships him with fan girl devotion.  It's precious and hilarious!  If I'm holding her in a room full of people all chattering away, wherever TJ is she focuses on his voice and listens with an intensity comical to behold in such a wee person!  If I can't quiet her when she is distressed, her daddy always can.  She finds a special joy in his touch and voice, and I love it.  I totally understand her crush on him, and can relate!  Lol.

Bella adores her baby sister.  Every night she has to say good night to her.  "Nigh-nigh Baby!"  she says in her sweet toddler voice, and gives her a big kiss.  Every morning when she gets up, she has to run and see "Baby sister."  If she happens to wake early enough while we're still in bed, she'll crawl in with us and we'll wake up in the morning to see the two little angels sleeping peacefully cuddled in each other's arms.  One of their favorite activities is tandem nursing.  Once I caught them holding hands as they both nursed me at the same time.  They are BFF's forever, those two!

It's so interesting to note the differences in personality of the two sisters at such an early age.  Isabella is a go-getter, always wanting to run and climb and do and see everything.  Elizabeth is content to watch the world go by.  She has an intensity in her gaze that's almost surreal; when she stares unblinkingly into your eyes, you get the feeling that she's reading your very soul!  Isabella is high strung and easily frustrated and upset; we have been working with her on this.  In fact, I've started making her do time-out when she throws a screaming fit, and this has worked wonders to calm her down.  Elizabeth is cool as cool can be, and even when she's hungry or tired, she squawks and squeaks and tries desperately to tell me about it before she finally bursts out crying.

Every day I thank God for the privilege of raising these two precious girlies!  I'm going to bawl my eyes out when they grow up.  Babyness is such a fleeting, precious phase!  I'm going to stop wasting precious minutes with them by being on the computer, and go kiss my babies.

A Crappy Day

I had a shitty day yesterday.

No, the cat didn't get run over.  No, the babies weren't fussier than usual.  It was a good day, really--but shitty from beginning to end!  Let me explain.

Early in the morning I had to clean up some homeless person's crap in my parking lot.  I really should put up a sign, "Pooping Prohibited" or something to that effect!

That afternoon, I was chillin' on the couch watching Happy Days with my girls and snacking on fresh strawberries, when Bella looks up from the corner of the couch with a very distressed expression on her little face.  "Dirty mama?  Yucky?  Soap?" she says.  I look, and lo and behold, she's holding up two handfuls of fresh poop.  Ewwwwwwwww!   Of course I assumed it was her own, so after thoroughly cleaning her little hands, we went straight to the diaper changing table.  Dry diaper!  Oh dear, maybe it was the cat....a random pile of poo is in my house!  I thought.   But I searched and searched and could neither see nor smell anything.  Mystified, I figured it would show up at some point.....

About an hour after that, Elizabeth begins to squeak and squawk angrily.  She does this squawking thing that isn't a cry, it's a unique sound of pure annoyance she does when she wants attention.  I look, and her onesie is soaked with poo up to her shoulders.  Ewwwwwwww!  I scrubbed and cleaned and changed and wiped, till my baby was clean and giggling.  Funny how the smallest babies still don't like to be dirty!

Remember the mystery poop from two paragraphs ago?  We were relaxing after a long day and TJ stretched out on the couch, when he jumped up with a howl.  He had discovered the missing poop of course.  Boy am I glad I keep sheets covering my sofas!  Apparently the cat decided to take a dump on the sofa.  She's never done that before, but she's pregnant now and looks about ready to pop, so I didn't murder her immediately--just put her outside.  I threw away the sheet--thankfully it was one I didn't like and that didn't fit our beds.

To top all of this off, TJ called me twice during the course of the day to tell me two poop stories from work.

Yes, it was a very shitty day!

April Showers Bring May Flowers!

I have discovered the fact that if I don't get up at 5 a.m. and do a bit of writing, no writing gets done at all!  Early mornings I'm in the zone, I have my coffee at hand and the whole world is quiet, and  I have lots to say.  Afternoons--after doing my parking lot jobs, feeding and cleaning up after the babies all day and teaching ABC's and colors, and hanging out with mommy friends and maybe cleaning one room of the house--per housekeeping goals--there's no writing left in me at all and all I want to do is put my feet up and watch the latest episode of The Goldbergs.  (Except I can't, because TJ would kill me if I watched it without him!  Best. Show. Ever.)

It is the magical month of May now, and the whole world is waking and changing and growing.  Our grass is just about ready to mow for the first time, and I think I'll do it today because my sister Heidi is coming to visit me, and I want the yard to look all pretty for her.  We love going on long walks in the evenings with the girls in the double stroller, and it seems like all the world is a-bloom with flowers.  One neighbor has a solid bank of magenta roses fencing in their yard.  Another neighbor has the most gorgeous magnolia tree I've ever seen.

Little Lizzy Bee is five months old now, our pride and joy and little Sunshine.  She sleeps through the nights most nights, in her own little bed.  She loves her big sister Bella, and is patient with Bella's attempts to be helpful and take care of her.  Once I caught Bella trying to stuff three binkies at once into Lizzy's mouth!  You can't have too much of a good thing, right?  Or so Bella must have thought.  Elizabeth is doing her darnedest to crawl, and howls in frustration when all she can do is point her diapered bottom in the air and rotate as if on an axis.  Her legs are very strong and chubby, and I kiss the dimples in her baby hands every day!  She wasn't planned and has delayed our debt-free climb by a little, but I wouldn't trade her for a bazillion dollars and can't imagine life without her!

Monday morning I went to traffic court for my speeding ticket, and it was enlightening, educational, and quite a fun experience actually!  About a hundred other fellow lawbreakers were there as well as me, and the judge was a grizzled old character who looked like a veteran of ten thousand traffic cases.  He obviously tolerated no nonsense and had little patience for those of us who were repeat offenders.  About 18 cases were called up and heard before mine, so I had time to get over my initial nervousness.  It was actually rather amusing: after hearing case after case of failure to appear, driving without license, suspended licenses for repeat offenses--one little old lady with a walker was charged with driving 106 MPH--it was anticlimactic when I was called.

"Jenna Elizabeth Greer, you are charged with driving 35 miles per hour in a 25 zone.  How do you plead?"

"No contest."

The judge actually looked up from reading the records (he obviously saw I had 12 years driving with a squeaky clean record), and actually smiled.  "Would you like to know your fine?"

"Yes sir."

"One hundred twenty four dollars.  Any other requests?"

"Traffic school please" (so this wouldn't go on my record).

"Granted. Dismissed!"

And that was that!  What a blessing.  He knocked over $200 off my fine--thank you sir!  And thank you God for looking out for us.  We really didn't want to be set back so far on our debt paying goals.  Oh and wow does it put the fear of the law in your heart to watch all those poor souls get handed $400, $600, and $900 fines for everything from failing to have your license with you while driving, to failing to appear in court.

In other related news, we have decided after much discussion and prayer not to take our trip to Kansas next month.  It would set us back at least $2,000 and I had a long conversation with Aunt Kathleen, and Grandma is deteriorating so rapidly she no longer recognizes anyone, not even her own daughter she sees every day.  So she would never know the difference if we didn't come, and it would definitely be a hardship for my little family.  We made the hard decision and feel very happy and at peace with it.  Grandma is going to heaven, and I know God will take good care of her there and she will see Grandpa again.  She is probably very happy about that!  I know she was when she was still cognizant.

Yesterday I drove out to Shafter for a fun play date at Amanda's house.  Miranda came too with Reagan and little Oliver (who she's babysitting for a friend), and Amanda was the perfect hostess as usual, despite being 7 months pregnant and looking ready to pop.  Olivia, Reagan, and Bella had a grand old time splashing and playing in the kiddie pool and wagon full of water, and eating a delicious lunch at the little picnic table, while we mommies chatted up a storm about all things baby and relative (pun intended). I love my support group!  Especially Miranda--I don't know what I'd do without her.  She watches Bella for me so I can clean homes on Fridays, and we see eye to eye on almost everything so it's easy to trust my babies with her.  Plus she's just plain awesome!

Also yesterday Bella came out with a four syllable word.  She is so smart!  I put her in the little pink and purple swimsuit with the tutu that I bought for her before she was ever born. It's the first time she's been in a swimsuit since last summer, and she is much more self aware now at 19 months.  I showed her her own image in the floor length mirror, and she stared, fascinated.  "Aren't you adorable?" I said.  She started running her little hands down the pink and purple fabric, and said with an exaggerated accent, "A-dorable!" Then she repeated "Adorable!" several times while looking at herself in the mirror.  She cracks me up and amazes me more every day!

Well, I'd better get the dishes done and the house put to rights before the day takes over and passes me by.  Dear TJ did my porter work this morning because he had to leave early, so I had more time than usual to write and catch up a bit.  I'll save my soapboxes for next time!

Bittersweet Memories

I have been feeling quite nostalgic lately, and looked up some old journals I saved from ten years ago.  The year 2007 was fraught with emotion caused by the deaths of ten different people I knew, including my own only brother, and their ghosts will haunt my memory forever.  I suppress the feelings as much as possible for the sake of my own sanity, but sometimes auld lang syne is too strong for my protective walls and grief seeps in through the cracks.  Ten years ago, at age 19 I was going through the most horrifying, harrowing experience of my entire life so far--the loss of a family member, my brother Nathan Stoeppler.  God only knows what it felt like, because I was too numb to feel.

There were good memories too!  The Greers came into my life in a significant way at that time, and it's fun reading what I wrote about their middle son, TJ....my longest lasting crush who I finally married just to teach him a lesson for being so sexy.  How young and immature we were in those days!  Little did we kids know what the future held, that cold rainy weekend in January of 2007.  The below entry is copied and pasted from an old hard drive.

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January 4, Thursday

The Greers stopped by on their way home from Fresno and spent the night with us.  They arrived at 5 pm, as I was starting the barbecue.  It was good to see them all again!  They had taken all the bench seats except one out of the van, and had a mattress in the back for tired drivers.  They told us that on the overpass of 99 and Lerdo Hwy, Mitch and Mikki had such a pillow fight that the rear doors popped open and their stuff came flying out!  Talk about unconventional.  I'm glad they didn't come flying out!

It was a very stormy day today, with driving rain in the afternoon, and as I grilled the chicken the rain recommenced.  Nathan and Ben set up a canopy over the barbecue, but the chicken still didn't cook very well until Ben suggested putting the lid on. 

Supper was merry; I sat by Amy.  Afterwards while she and Mom did the dishes, T.J. decided to teach me some things about music that I didn't know.  First he showed me some stuff he'd just learned in music school, like the ranges of different singers for example.  According to him, tenors are usually low F to high B flat, while sopranos are only G below middle C to high G.  I kind of knew that already, but it was interesting.  T.J. is an interesting fellow.  If he knows anything about something, he thinks he's an expert.  If he doesn't know something, he just shrugs his shoulders and purses his lips in an attitude of profound ignorance--"I don't know, and you don't know either!"  I asked if he could read music, and when he said yes, I tested him on a simple piano piece.  He was confused or something--I don't know what was the matter--but he insisted that middle C was a D!  Now I am no music expert, and am always ready to learn something new, but I know my middle C like I know the back of my hand.  Even Daddy knows where middle C is!  Even if the bar was bass clef and not treble, that note would be E, not D.  However when I pointed that out to T.J., he was not convinced.  The argument waxed strong and hot, until I was beginning to doubt my senses, and wondered which of us had the marbles missing.  So I pulled out my theory book, and commented, "I'm going to win this argument and lose a friend."

"You're gonna lose both!"  was his instant reply.

I was right, and when I saw he saw that and he began to sputter and turn red, I hastily shut up the book and escaped to the kitchen.  What is it in me that makes me have to correct people?!

The Greers commenced passing out gifts right and left soon after they arrived.  They gave us a crank operated grater; bags full of toys for the little ones; various miscellaneous items; and a huge stack of beautiful hardwoods.  Amy gave me a little stand full of cards with verses and parts of verses, and I went through them quoting the rest of the passage or verse.

"You know all those already!" she exclaimed.  "Go give them to someone who doesn't!"

Then I came to Psalm 19, and she stopped my recitation with a smug smile: "No, no!  Say Psalm 119!"  I wish I had a picture of the look she got when I started right in, quoting, "Psalm 119, Aleph.  Blessed are the undefiled in the way, who walk in the law of the Lord. Blessed are they that keep His testimonies and that seek Him with the whole heart..."  I finished Aleph and said, "Do you want me to say the whole thing?"  (I didn't say I could say the whole thing! J) 

Then we gathered around the piano and spent the rest of the evening singing to the Lord!  That was a lot of fun.  They taught us some new songs, and we sang old songs too--"Just Over In The Glory Land"; "Leaning On Jesus"; "I Shall Not Be Moved", etc.  We badly needed a melody.  I am alto, so is Amy, T.J. is a very loud and enthusiastic tenor (with no thought of how he might be overwhelming everyone else!), and Ben is bass.  

After running out of songs (and air), we sat around the comfortable living room, talking, until ten pm.  Nathan complained that every time company comes, he has to sleep on the sofa, which (he says) is lumpy and uncomfortable.  Whereupon the boys gave us an utterly comical imitation of Nathan's complaint, T.J. putting on a most sorrowful face and falling over Nathan, while Ben was the picture of misery!

January 5, Friday

Ben & T.J. went to play basketball with Dad and Nathan early this morning, and they all seemed to enjoy themselves.  They came back bursting with the news that a semi truck had taken out the local Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurant.  According to them, it demolished the place.  Thank God no one was killed or even hurt!  (Note: not only was the KFC never rebuilt, it is still an empty lot, and I remember this every time I drive past it. --Jenna 2017)

Breakfast was jolly.  Nathan and Ben constantly had their heads together on what they called 'Mad Scientist' experiments, namely chemical rockets shot off with a compound that included vitamin C.  The experiments failing, Nathan shot off several of his homemade powder/magnesium rockets, which are pretty impressive--especially at night.  Then we all took a walk around the fields to see the sheep, and the Greers finally gathered themselves completely into their van and left at 11:30--an hour later than they intended, as usual. J

January 7, Sunday

Nathan and all the little ones were sick, so we had to stay home from the meeting at the Lindvalls'. L  May the Lord's will be done!

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That last entry chilled my soul and tightened my stomach just now when I read it.  We did not know--I had no idea--that Nathan was not sick with the flu like my little sisters were that fateful Sunday.  For some reason which I will never know, his brain cancer had just kicked into full gear, and in about three weeks we would take him into emergency with a golf ball sized tumor.

I had no idea that the cute teenager who was able to push my buttons, and who knew an awful lot about music and washing dishes and random shit like that would grow up, lose his know-it-all ways, and become such an incredibly amazing person that I would fall head over heels in love and that we would have two beautiful little girls together (so far!)

I am glad we don't know the future.  It would be too much to bear!

Singing around the piano, 2007

Nathan and TJ arm wrestling!

Nathan was ridiculously strong and muscular.  And TJ was lots skinnier back then :-)

Someone actually took a shot of the music conversation described in my journal!

Jesus Paid It All? I Don't Think So!

It is 5:30 a.m. here in central southern California, on Easter morning.  However it's 3:30 p.m. in Israel, so the traditional time for Jesus' resurrection is long past--making early Easter morning services quite inaccurate.  We should be celebrating Easter at 7:30 on Saturday evening!

The subject of resurrection and immortality makes a fascinating study.  It is so interesting to note how almost every religion and tradition of men down the ages from the beginning of recorded history shows an unceasing search for immortality, whether through scientific or religious means.  Unfortunately, traditional Christianity has strayed away from the simple, correct definition of immortality in the Scriptures and has mixed into their theology so many teachings from famous church fathers and philosophers such as Augustine, John Calvin, Luther and others, that often it's hard to distinguish what is really Scripture and what is actually superstition imposed on the Bible.

One of the reasons I am writing this blog is to preserve online my thoughts on true religion and Christianity, so that if something should happen to me and my husband before our children are grown, they should know what we believe is right and God willing come to their own conclusions of the truth in spite of the teachings of most churches.

The death and resurrection of Jesus Christ is central and vital to Christianity.  There are four main subjects that my husband and I have studied and prayed over thoroughly and extensively over the past few years, and eventually I'd like to address them all in this poor little journal.  They are:

✡  Original Sin
✡ Hell and immortality
✡ Atonement
✡ God's Sovereignty

Wikipedia is remarkably accurate and concise when it comes to defining concepts and terms.  Quote, "Penal substitution derives from the idea that divine forgiveness must satisfy divine justice, that is, that God is not willing or able to simply forgive sin without first requiring a satisfaction for it. It states that God gave himself in the person of his Son, Jesus Christ, to suffer the death, punishment and curse due to fallen humanity as the penalty for our sin."

I don't want to go into too much detail here because I want to keep this blog short and interesting.  Suffice to say that we believe this is a false view of God and His mercy, and interestingly enough this view did not become prevalent in the church until the time of the Reformation, 1500 years after Christianity's birth.  Here, again, is what Wikipedia has to say on the subject, if you want to read further. 

According to the Bible and a correct understanding of God, the hymn Jesus Paid It All is inaccurate.  If Jesus actually paid the full price for sin, then there is no room at all for God's forgiveness.  How is it forgiveness if the debt is paid?  If I owe you $100, and someone else pays you $100 for me, you still got your freaking $100 and didn't forgive me at all.  

Romans 6:23 says "For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord."  This verse is heavy with meaning, and in one fell swoop debunks two of the fallacies taught by the church today.  That is, penal substitution and the traditional teaching of hell (which I will save for a later blog post).  Jesus died the death instead of us--substitutionary atonement--that we might live forever.  He didn't "pay the price" for our sins.  No one could ever do that!  God forgives  us our sins, and doesn't kill us because of Jesus.

This is a very simplistic explanation.  I hope to go into more detail later, but I must stop for now.

In the news on the home front, Bella did the sweetest thing yesterday evening.  She was extremely tired, and after her bath and goodnight kisses from TJ, I took her into her room to put her to bed.  She looks at me and says in her sweet little voice, "Baby?  Nigh-nigh?"  She wanted to say goodnight to her little sister!  I brought her back out to the living room where Elizabeth was cooing away in her bouncer.  Bella kissed her and said, "Nigh-nigh Baby!"  TJ and I melted into two puddles of rapture at our little girls' love for each other.  It's so precious and amazing!  TJ said to me, "I think we've done it right [as parents] so far!!"

Bella reading to her sister