Thankfulness: Five Reasons Why I Love our New Home

Despite our wonderful visitors and friends coming up to see us, I have had an overwhelming sense of isolation with our new home being so far away.  Rockport is the northernmost tip of the north shore of Boston.  Though beautiful, peaceful, calm, quaint, and charming, it is 25 minutes further from Gordon-Conwell friends and 15-20 minutes further from the city.  My tendency is to get anxious and overwhelmed, feeling as though we made a mistake with this move (though we didn't have any other options when we had to make a decision).  So, I have started looking for reasons to love our new home in Rockport to remind myself of the goodness of God in His provision of this home for us.  So thus commences the List of Reasons Why I Love Rockport.  Here are the first five:

1.  We have to pay for trash by the bag (or by the year) - and drive our trash and recycling to a transfer station - this was frustrating at first, but I'm now choosing to be thankful for it because it has made me realize how much more I can recycle than I previously thought.  So yeah for green.

2.  We live by Ralph Waldo Emerson's old house, and a home where Alexander Graham Bell lived for a summer while conducting experiments. :) I love the history here.

3.  We have 2 small patios, so it is a great blessing for me to be able to enjoy being outside some while Jude naps - this makes me feel less cooped up.  I am thankful for that.

4.  Jude has his own room!  It's so nice to not have to whisper all the time!

5.  I can walk to the post office in about 5 minutes; I can walk to the ocean in about 2 minutes! :)  As much as I love the ocean, I feel like it is such a blessing to be able to enjoy this weather, blue skies and being in such a beautiful place before we move overseas.  We've been trying to walk to the ocean each day while the weather is still warm.

 

Great friends, wonderful visits, huge blessings

We have had an amazing 2 weeks in our new home with some wonderful visitors.

My mom came the day before we moved to help with our move.  She was an AMAZING gift and blessing to us!  I have no idea how we would have done it without her - with Greg finishing his seminary classes the day before we moved, packing with a 6-month old, selling much of our furniture, unpacking, all while I was studying to take the SAT 4 days after our move for a job!  My mom and Greg unpacked almost everything!  And it's really special to have sweet memories with her in our new home.  A huge thanks to my daddy too for parting with her for those 5 days as I know he was wishing he could be here too helping and playing with Jude!  We love you both!

Our dear friend, Joey Chiang came to visit us for 4 days.  It was such a blessing to be with him in our home.  Greg and I were so refreshed by his visit and it made us miss the Chiang family all the more!  Only wish Jenni and Austin could have been here too!

We were so happy that Chris Taylor came to visit too!  Chris is a great friend of our from Gordon-Conwell and he just got back from spending most of the year teaching in Africa.  We were so thankful to have some quality time with him over a good food and good wine.  Come back regularly, Mr. Taylor :)

Homemade Baby Cereal: Whole-Grain Brown Rice

At six months, their digestive systems can now process more whole grains.  So I stopped using boxed cereals and started making my own.  I bought a big bag of whole-grain brown rice follow this recipe for "super baby porridge" out of the super baby food book:
• I grind 1/4 cup of brown rice at a time in my Cuisinart blender.  Grind for 2 minutes.  Important to grind for the full two minutes to get it to a powdery texture.  I did multiple batches of about 3 cups total and put it all in a mason jar and store it in the refrigerator.


• Bring 1 cup of water to a boil in a saucepan on the stove.  Add 3 Tbsp of ground rice, whisk in, cover, turn heat to low, and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring regularly.  That's it!   This is what it should look like:
• That makes enough for about 3 servings.  So I let it cool and then separate it into 3 containers and put in the refrigerator.  Then each morning, I just get one out, add a thawed cube of banana or peach to it, thin it with a little formula and it's ready!
• He hated it the first two times I gave it to him!  I don't know if it was the texture or the taste, so that's why I started adding a little fruit to it and now he loves it! 

solid foods project: 6 months

It has been a long time since I have updated the solid foods project, so I thought I would catch you up on what we are doing.

• CEREALS:  After about a week of rice cereal, we switched to oatmeal cereal since the rice cereal seemed to be constipating for him.  This seemed to help a good bit.

• 5-MONTH FOODS:   We did 2 meals/day - one after his 10:30am nursing and one after his 4:30pm nursing.  
• 10:30am Oatmeal cereal
• 4:30pm  One of the new foods.  On the first day of trying a new food, I would switch and do the cereal at this feeding and the new food in the morning so that I would have the day to watch for any allergic reactions. 
• I cut the foods into 1-inch cubes, steamed all of them (including the fruit) before pureeing. With the exception of avocado and banana, all fruits should be cooked for babies younger than 6 months.  Then I put into storage cubes to freeze.  
• To thaw, instead of using the microwave, I have started getting the cube out in the morning and putting it in a container in the refrigerator to thaw during the day.  Then I add a little formula or breastmilk to thin it out.
• Using the 4-day wait rule, these are the foods I introduced.  
• sweet potatoes
• pears
• peaches
• plums (made him have a poopy diaper every day)
• carrots (Earth's Best jars - from what I've read, you should not make your own carrots until baby is at least 7 months old.  This is due to the possibility of carrots containing nitrates which baby food companies can test for, but at home we cannot).
• I just rotated these foods along with avocado and banana until he was 6 months.

• 6 MONTH FOODS:
• He nurses five times a day, and still only two solid food meals a day.  I might add a third soon, but I want to make sure it doesn't lessen the amount of breastmilk he gets.
• 10:30am nurse, then homemade whole-grain brown rice cereal (will post the recipe next) with bananas or peaches.
• 4:30pm nurse, then a rotating food (from the below list, using 4-day wait rule for new foods).  Fruits do not have to be cooked anymore, just pureed.  We rotate these with previously introduced foods.
• peas
• butternut squash (he spit up a lot with this - so we're putting a hold on it and will go back to it later.  not sure if it was the squash or something i ate.)
• mango
• papaya 

Jude eating uncooked, pureed peaches for the first time - he LOVED them - like a birdie opening his mouth and dive-bombing for the spoon!
• I picked up a couple of things at Whole Foods that I'll be introducing over the next month or so - I'll post as we start those!  
• Whole grains:  whole grain brown rice, millet, and oat grains
• Legumes:  fava beans and lentils
• Fruit:  Mango and papaya
• Vegetable: butternut squash and peas

our third wedding anniversary

a lot of life has happened in the last three years - we got married and moved up to Gordon-Conwell together two days after our honeymoon.  We made it through 3 years of seminary (4 total for greg) with both of us being students and God providing in amazing ways to sustain us for those years - each month providing exactly what we needed.  We had our first child.  And we are now in our second home together and preparing to move overseas.


i have grown to love my husband more than i ever expected.  some people have asked me when i knew that i wanted to marry greg and my answer has consistently been: "the day i married him."  i was so fearful, so unsure because my expectations for a husband neared perfection.  yet that day - that gloriously sunny 80degree cloudless blue sky august 5th day in Austin, Texas - God knit my heart together with Greg O'Brien's.  and though our marriage is not perfect, i think i married the most wonderful man on the earth.  i cannot imagine a better husband, friend, partner, challenger, leader and protector. he knows me much better than i know myself, is not afraid to speak truth into my life, and loves me without reserve.  i am so grateful for marriage - for in it, God has shown me more of Himself, revealed more sin in myself, and deepened my love for Christ.  


and while a lot of life has gone by since that picture on august 5th - lots of joys and blessings and wonderful moments, but also many difficulties, sadness, tragedy, and pain - life is even richer and deeper than it was three years ago.  And by the grace of God, here's to many more!

August 5th, 2010

We took wine and a blanket and Jude to the beach for a late-afternoon start to the celebration.

Then we went to The Black Cow for appetizer and drink:

Then we put Jude down for bed at our great friends, The Arnoults' apartment while we went to dinner at Finz in Salem.

Jude is 6 1/2 months old!

It is so hard to believe how quickly time is moving.  I feel like he just turned four months and now he is 6 1/2 months old.  It is SUCH a fun stage - he is just the happiest, sweetest, most content baby!  He has adjusted well to our new home, which I am so thankful for - it is much noisier because we live on a main road with lots of cars and trucks passing by and we have the windows open all the time since there is no A.C., but surprisingly, he hasn't had a problem sleeping through it.

He is still not rolling over :( - We're working on it, although I am enjoying these last days of no mobility!  (The top picture is what he does when I try to practice with him - he puts his arms by his side and lifts them like he's going to fly, and rocks back and forth like a fish on dry land!)  But he is sitting up a little with some help, blowing raspberries, laughing a lot at himself and us.  He thinks sneezing and coughing is hilarious :)  He is loving solid foods and is a great eater.  His favorite things right now are his feet, his jumperoo, Sophie the giraffe, and his bib (not wearing it, but eating it and squishing it in his hands :))

He absolutely loves being outside (just like his mama) and so we are soaking up living by the ocean and taking lots of walks to see the water, the rocks, the ships, etc.  He saw his first lobster catch yesterday too! 

This child loves peaches.  I mean LOVES them - this is the first time I fed him uncooked peaches - just peeled and pureed and he was like a little birdie opening his mouth SO wide and dive-bombing for the spoon!

He loves sitting in his high chair and watching me cook - he's so entertained by everything and I feel like he laughs at me the whole time I cook :)

This is the latest picture of him:

We're all Moved!

It has been a whirlwind of a month.  Big events of the month of August for us:

1.  Greg and I celebrated our 3rd anniversary on August 5th.

2.  Jude turned SIX MONTHS OLD on August 12th!

3.  Greg finished his seminary classes on August 14.

4.  We moved to Rockport on August 15th.

5.  I took the SAT for a tutoring job I'm applying for on August 19th.

6.  My mom was here helping us with the move from August 14-19.

7.  Our dear friend Joey Chiang was here visiting us from Aug 22-25.

8.  Another wonderful friend of ours, Chris Taylor, was here visiting on Aug. 26th.

And now we are finishing unpacking, looking for jobs and trying to enjoy the last bit of summer here in Massachusetts.  I have several posts to catch you up on this last month and will hopefully be posting them over the next several days!