That Elusive Smile

The beginning of a baby's life is always the hardest for me. The lack of sleep, the crying, 10,001 dirty diapers a day and the complete loss of personal space and time. I know they are cute, generally smell good, and are very cuddly. But until around 6 weeks of age they are little more than a very demanding house plant, all take and no give. Yes, I do love my babies and would fight to the death like a mother bear for them. And, yes, that is how I feel about house plants. But I get a little frustrated, as I'm sure many mothers do.


And then, when you least expect it, it happens, their first big "I know who you are, and I love you with every fiber of my being" smile!

I know that it's goofy and toothless, but for the first time it's for me, instead of just a reflex to tiny gas bubbles in his tummy. And that makes my mother's heart sing!

It's a Boy!

We're home! This is our second day home with our new bundle of boy, and Jeni asked me to post an update. So...in case you haven't heard, this is how it went down...

Tuesday night we returned home from college group. Jeni had been having contractions about 10 minutes apart - but this was nothing new. We went to bed despite the activity. Jeni had gone to bed with contractions many times, only to wake up in the morning disappointed that nothing materialized. At 12:10AM she was still working on sleep and attempted to roll over to find a less uncomfortable position when she heard AND FELT a loud pop! She cried out in pain and soon discovered her water had broken. Somehow the combination of the rolling over and the baby stretching was enough to break her water...AND break her tailbone. We just didn't know it at the time.

During the brief (depending on who you ask - don't ask her) ride to the hospital, it was clear she was in the throes of deep labor. We got to the hospital at about 12:35AM. When the nurse checked her, the baby was all but out the door. They desperately tried to get her to breathe easy and not push so the doctor could get there - yeah right! Fortunately the doctor arrived "soon" and after a couple of pushes, Zayin Jude came into the world! He was born at 1:00AM - she was in labor for less than an hour!


I know you're gonna ask, so Zayin is pronounced just like it looks - "ZAY - in". Think "sayin". You can wiki or google Zayin for the meanings and significance, but in summary it means sword and sustenance and represents completion and rest as the 7th letter of the Hebrew alphabet. See Ps 119:49-56 for the "Zayin" section. Jude means "praise".

We're home and still struggling to reverse Zayin's days and nights. Our first night home was terrible! Jeni is also on crutches - not from the broken tailbone, but because her pelvis separated during labor. Not fun for her - not that a normal recovery would be fun.

Micaiah was the most excited one to see Zayin in the hospital (his face lit up and he exclaimed "I LIKE IT!").



Charis already has it planned out - she thinks she is gonna have to raise the other kids herself! Thankfully (for their sake) she will not have to. Since we've been home all she wants to do is play old Super Mario Bros. games with me.



Anya thinks he's just so cute and loves to hold him until her 3 second attention span runs out.




They are all still a little amped from all that parent-less time, but we are SO thankful for my parents, Jeni's mom, Noah and Sarah, and David and Monica, who all took shifts with the kids.

That's our past week in a nutshell. Once we get Jeni a donut pillow to sit on, she'll no doubt do some blogging of her own - which will probably involve correcting a lot of what I just typed. Thanks for all your prayers and support!

The Results are In!

Well it looks like our family is going to be an even numbered one(though
we will still always be a little odd). To the 37% of you that guessed we were going to have a boy - great job, please feel free to gloat! And to the 62% of you that thought we were having a girl - Well, I wouldn't buy a lottery ticket any time soon.

I do have to admit part of me is a little sad that this will be the end of our girl era, but the other part is relieved and happy. I didn't want Micaiah to have to be sandwiched between all those girls. Now he will always have someone in his corner.

Everything on the sonogram looked great, so thanks again to everyone that has been praying.

Update

This is just a very short post to let all of you know where I've been. Unfortunately, once again, I have cascaded into the dark, abysmal depths of "morning" sickness. If this is anything like my other pregnancies I will probably begin resurfacing around the 6 month mark. I am hoping and praying (a lot) that I will regain some human-like qualities before that, oh too distant, point in the future. Thank you to all of you who are praying for us. I will post more when the room stops spinning and lets me off.

Here we go!!

Well it has been far too long. I intended this post to be about what I have been up to in the last couple weeks, but instead I'm posting about what we will be doing. We are embarking on yet another adventure. We just found out, yesterday morning actually, that we are expecting our 4th child. I know that it's not "kosher" to start telling people until you are much farther along, but I hate waiting. I have absolutely no patience with my own secrets. And what could be more fun than telling people on Christmas?

I especially like coming up with "unique" ways to tell our families. When I was pregnant with Micaiah we made t-shirts for the girls that said "Big Sisters' Club" on the front. The back of Charis' said "Member since 2004", and the back of Anya's said "Future Member 2007". Then we just sat back and waited for people to catch on. (it took a while) This time around we didn't exactly have time to plan much so for my family we sent a text (please note that we were sitting in the room with all of them and my family loves to text). The text read "Merry Christmas from the Nadvornik 6...yes that's right...count again". My Gramma was the first, and for a long while, the only person that got the text. It seemed like hours until everyone else started to get their texts and began to react. My mom was the very last because she was too intent on telling a story to look at her phone. It was priceless when she finally did read it. Much hopping and shrieking was involved.

We then left my family's house and went to Greg's. Every Christmas we line up in front of the tree for a big family photo. Greg offered to take the picture and instead of saying "say cheese" he exclaimed "say Jeni's pregnant!" Here is the resulting photo. Notice that only 2 out of the 11 other people in the photo even noticed. The rest of them thought we were joking and just kept smiling. I guess that's bound to happen when sarcasm and joking are your 1st and second languages. But everyone was excited to have a new member of the family, as are we. And though we are a little overwhelmed by the thought of all that is to come, we are really looking forward to our next big adventure!