7 Quick Takes, Vol. 62

Linking up with Jen, Friday-style. We'll see if this actually gets finished on Friday. :)

1. I am the luckiest girl in the world. Somehow, this (our awkward/embarasing/totally wish we could forget it slow dancing to Matthew West's "When I Say I Do." We ended the night with an even worse rendition of Rascal Flatts' "Bless the Broken Road."):

HA! I don't even have any (terrible, terrible) dancing pictures on my computer, so you get this one instead!

turned into this:

Monkey Face

and this:

Baby Selfie

See how I did that? Linking up with Grace.

2. Overall, things on the baby front are going well. Even though it is hard to judge in the very early sleepy newborn phase, Peter seems like he's going to be a "good" baby. He sleeps well. He eats like a champ. Best of all, he can be soothed pretty easily -- unlike his never not temperamental sister. He's a snuggle bug, so I think that once he wakes up a bit more, he's going to love the ol' Moby while I'm busy chasing Clare. His first go 'round in it yesterday was a big success, so that's hopeful.

Sleepy Newborn

3. Last night, though, was . . . rough . . . to put it mildly. Let's just say that the toddler was up as many times (or more?) than the infant. And that, as a result, Mama didn't exactly get a restful nights' sleep. Yes, I'm going on caffeine today. Why do you ask? (And yes, I should be taking a nap, but I'm dealing with that exhausted but not sleepy feeling.)

Did you know this thing has buttons? (From Monday)

4. Today, meanwhile, has been Charles' first day back at the hospital (and so, the kids' and my first day alone). So far, so good. We're all dressed, fed, and the house hasn't fallen too deeply into disaster. As scary as the first day alone with the kiddos is, I'm actually glad that it has come early both times we've done the new baby gig. Getting through it in the early days gives me a lot of confidence that I can get through it on any day. We can and will find a new normal and settle into a new routine. I just have to be patient. (There's that stinkin' word again.) [Grrr...as soon as I typed that, of course, I got the "my preceptor is keeping me for awhile" phone call. Blah! Still got it . . . just for longer than I'd like!]

Post nap bedhead selfie.

5. And Clare, oh Clare! She's already a great big sister. She's really into showing us Baby Peedow's eyes and socks and mouth, telling us that he's very soft (so true!), and trying to make sure that his paci (that he rarely gets/takes) is readily available. But she's still getting used to our divided attention, which is a challenge. We'll get through it, but it has definitely been the roughest part of the transition.

Paci Patrol

6. I think there is a lot of value in encouraging women to be easy on themselves and their postpartum bodies. God did a great thing with them, and it takes time for the ol' bod to recover and return to its new normal, whatever that might be. Add in sleepless nights, breastfeeding, etc., and well . . . we (not so) shockingly don't exactly bounce back in 2.3 seconds flat. All of which is a preface to my story from our first family trip to Target. In typical second child fashion, we loaded the kids into the minivan and headed out on some errands Wednesday afternoon. We had Clare in the front of the Target cart and the infant seat in the basket. As we were considering our options for wares, a fellow Target patron comes over and comments on how I've "pouched out" and turns to ask Clare if she's going to be a big sister soon, clearly without seeing/processing the infant seat right behind her. So, there you have it. I am miraculously 4-5 months pregnant days after childbirth. I'd also qualify the story as an example of why you should be cautious about assuming women are pregnant. But I digress . . .

7. On that note, I just wanted to echo a hearty "Amen" to almost everything Colleen said in her post this morning. So, basically, this take is a long way of saying, "what she said."

Have a lovely weekend.

7 Quick Takes, Vol. 34

Linking up with Jen and the rest for 7 Quick Takes.

1. One of the things I'm really, really enjoying about Denver is the chance to spend time with Charles' family. We see his brother and nephew a couple of times a year, but we/I see the others pretty sporadically. It has been nice to see all of them more regularly. And seeing teenage boys dote on a baby(ish) girl is muy heartwaring.

2. Speaking of his stellar siblings, Charles' brother decided he needs some bonding time with Clare before he starts back at school on Monday, so he's Bear-sitting while Charles and I go to dinner and a movie tonight. An out-of-the-house date night is long overdue, so I'm mega excited.

3. And my sister sent Clare a new puppy book that we opened this morning. Needless to say, I think we've already read it 10ish times.

4. Ahh!!! I don't know why I keep forgetting to blog mention that we "called it" and declared that Clare took her first independent steps on Sunday evening. She walked from UncleGodfather's coffee table to the waiting cup of milk he was holding with no prompting, stabilizing, or forcing! I saw it, but Charles was outside and only got to hear. After I ran out and told him, of course. She's getting a bit more confident with a few daily steps, and I think we'll have a walker before we know it.

5. Of course, she's already a climber. Yesterday, I stepped out of the room for a minute and a came back to find her on top of allllllll her puppies and babies. 'Cause a girl can never have too many puppies, I guess?!? Crazy dog lady in the making.

6. The plan for tomorrow is to spend the day up in the mountains and I can't wait. A little getaway. Lunch in a cute cafe. Cool mountain air. Sounds like just what the doctor ordered!!

7. Tomorrow is my father in law's 75th birthday! Happy Birthday, Don!! We're sorry we're here and not there to celebrate with you, but we'll see you next week!! Love, love, love you!

Have a lovely weekend, all!

Rocky Mountain Hi!

(I just couldn't resist.)

So, I sorta fell off the blogging wagon long about 10 days ago. I had this awesome (in my head) post to write (still planning on it), but decided that a lovely evening with extended family >>>>> working on a blog post. Sometimes, my priorities actually are in order!

Anyway, blogging got put off and off and off through the madness:

That week, I laundered and sorted, and packed and loaded up alllll our stuff in St. Louis. And cleaned and scrubbed and wiped and polished and obsessed over the house. Successfully got our full deposit returned to us (woo to the hoo!), and got outta Dodge. (Read: rant about our former landlord lady is forthcoming.)

Then, we made the long, loong, loooooooooong drive through Kansas, to Denver, Colorado. No sooner did we cross the border than we hit a monster thunderstorm that rocked through CO on Saturday. Thunder and lightning? Check. Pounding rain? Check. Tornado warning (waited out at a truckstop)? Check. More pounding rain? Check. Driving 45 on the interstate with limited visibility? Check. Baby who is sick of the carseat and letting us know it? Check? No fewer than three ugly car accidents (and associated rubbernecking)? Check.

After exhausted screaming comes a nap with your puppy.

By the time we got to our place-for-the-month in Denver, we were beat. No. Beat is a drastic understatement. At least Clare fell asleep in the car outside of Denver and stayed asleep through a transfer to her pack-n-play.

Thank you God for getting us here safely and for that little Clare-transferring miracle.

Sunday was mass and lunch with Charles' siblings and their families. His sister has 3 dogs and is dog-sitting 2 more. Clare was in hog puppy heaven. And trying to get ready to send Charles off to his new rotation on Monday. You know, minor detail.

Our first pager. Presumably not our last. Royal our.

Yesterday, Charles started up his new rotation (so far, rotation = love) and I got us somewhat organized at the house, so it feels more livable (instead of crap scattered everywhere Ashley insane driving).

[Instagrammified] My little bookworm undoing all of my organizing.

After allllllllllllllll of that, I finally feel human and my typing fingers are feeling itchy. :) In other words, I'm baaaaack.

{Also, linking up with Medical Mondays (From a Doctor's Wife and Your Doctor's Wife), since this whole thing is, you know, the result of the Med School journey!}

Love Story, Part II

Part I is here:

When last we left, Charles and I had failed to meet for nearly a decade of our lives . . .

Just before Easter 2008, I agreed to be the RCIA sponsor for my best friend/RCIA sponsor's younger sister, who had been baptized Catholic, but never received the sacraments of First Eucharist or Confirmation. Unlike lots of places, the Newman Center at that time (since I don't know how they do things these days!) ran RCIA more-or-less year 'round. As a result, she and I started attending RCIA sessions on Sunday evenings a week or two after Easter.

I (obviously) didn't know it at the time, but Easter was on Charles' (March) birthday that year, so we must have finally met at the beginning of April. I remember the day. A good friend of mine from when I studied abroad was in town visiting family, and we met for lunch that Sunday afternoon. It was a warm, sunny April day in Phoenix, perfect for eating outside, which we did. I was in a happy, tired, sun-drenched mood when I got to RCIA.

We always sat in a circle for RCIA, and when we got there, I was surprised to notice a cute, blonde guy across the circle. Which proves that I have never, ever thought of Charles as a redhead, even though everyone else does. Colorblind, thy name is Ashley. Anyway, I decided he must be too young for me, and I kinda put it out of my head. Or at least tried to.

Catch that? I finally met the guy!!

Then, one week, maybe the next week, he sat by me during the RCIA session, and we shared some laughs. I decided he was definitely cute. And nice. And clearly a good Catholic boy. About this time, I friended him on Facebook and learned 1) that we had several mutual friends and 2) that he wasn't actually really young. In fact, he was my age, minus six cougar-ific months. By then, I convinced myself that he was, indeed, cute, but that he had the potential to be a really good friend. I didn't want to blow that with some stupid romantic entanglement that would, inevitably, end badly. No, I've never overthought anything. Ever ever never.

Also about that time, I remember talking to an RCIA team member who I knew from my own jaunt through RCIA (a post or 10 for another time), who was going on and on about all the great people who were RCIA sponsors that year, including Charles, and my heart did that stupid beat skipping thing. By now, I was working really hard at not liking him and doing a fair-to-middling job of it.

Meanwhile, according to Charles, he thought I was cute, but didn't think it was even possible.

So, Mother's Day rolls around. Meaning it has only been like a month, but girls, you know how it is when you're developing a crush on someone; things go in slow motion and fast forward all at the same time. My sister and I had gone to Prescott to spend some time with each other and with our dad. We talked about boys the whole way up, but I was so convinced that nothing was going to happen with Charles that I never even mentioned him to her.

We made it back to Phoenix in time for me to fulfill my obligation to serve the 7pm Mass. There was no RCIA because of Mother's Day, but I did get a little wave before Mass. I decided, for sure for sure for sure that nothing was going to happen. All I got was a wave! Not even a "Hi"!! Clearly.Not.Happening. After that, I joined the young adult group for a drink and fellowship at a local brewery. I was sitting there chatting with some friends when Charles walked in. He said, "Hi," to one of the people I was talking to, and I smiled and said, "Hi," to him. I got a "Hi" back, but things moved on. It was a big group.

Somehow, we ended up standing close enough to converse. He asked me a question about RCIA. Except that he says I said something to him. Regardless, we started talking and continued talking (with a couple of friends--one of whom had to later confirm for him that I was interested) for a couple of hours, until I couldn't put off getting home and going to bed any longer, since I had to get up early the next morning. Before I hit the pillow, however, I posted on his Facebook wall, because I'm that cool late at night. It was something like, "I had fun talking to you tonight. I hope we can do it again sometime." Subtle, too. The wall message turned into a couple of private messages turned into a phone number exchange turned into plans for Monday night.

That was that. We went to the movies on Monday. We hung out on Tuesday. I don't remember why, but we didn't hang out Wednesday or Thursday, but we talked. I'm pretty sure that every day that we've been able to talk to each other or see each other since then, we have. We got engaged just over two years later, got married 51 weeks later, and had a baby 52 weeks (and a day) after that.

I didn't ruin that awesome friendship with romantic entanglement. I got so very much more.

My dad calls us two peas in a pod, and I think that works rather nicely. We may not be grand gestures people, but we certainly are happy together, raising our family, and doing it side-by-side.

All we had to do was meet.

La Familia

 

Love Story

In honor of our second anniversary, which is today, I thought I would do the requisite and type up Charles' and my love story. Except that the story isn't really that great. C'est la vie. I'm typing it anyway.

You know the scene from You've Got Mail where it shows Tom Hank's character and Meg Ryan's character occupying the same sliver of New York City, crossing paths over and over but never meeting? If you don't, I apologize, I couldn't find a clip on YouTube. Anyway, that was us. But without NYC.

We both graduated from high school in 2000 (old, indeed), and trotted off to the same university. Not too surprisingly, we didn't immediately run into one another among the 45 million or thousand or whatever other students. He didn't get his college career off to an auspicious start, and deciding that Tucson wasn't the right place for him, moved back to Phoenix at the end of the year. I made some friends, studied abroad, finished in four. You know, we lived our lives.

We walked along life, blissfully ignorant of one another's existence.

Fast forward to about 2007. Ifinishedcollegeandwenttolawschoolanddecidednottobealawyer. Heworkedandgothisassociate'sdegreeanddecidedtogetseriousaboutschoolandgointothemedicalfield.

At that point, I was living in an apartment in a large-ish complex a couple of miles from ASU while I was a 3L (3rd year law student). He was living in the same apartment complex in his second year at ASU pursuing a biology degree, working in a neuroscience lab. We both attended the Newman Center on campus. He remembers following a car from the apartments to the Newman Center and mentally noting that someone else in the complex went to Newman. He's convinced it was me, but admits that he isn't really sure that it's not an invented memory, inserting my car into the scene. I'm pretty sure I remember seeing his truck in the parking lot, but I also don't know how real it is. Regardless, the car's owners remained unknown to one another.

The next year, still at the Newman Center, we were both regular attendees of the 7pm Mass. I started serving as an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion. I had been participating with the Young Adult group for years. He began volunteering and doing other service work with the Young Adult Group. Result: mutual friends. We both attended a series of catechesis lectures from the associate director of the parish. Late in the year, I started serving a different Mass. The team of servers for that Mass was frequently led by Charles' then-roommate.

We never met.

One particularly memorable non-meeting was at a party we both attended. Both of us were driving (read: sober), but an attendee who was not had too much to drink. The results were particularly memorable. Since everything ended okay, and since I don't even know this individual, I'll spare the details. The important (to this story) thing is that later, that event came up in conversation. He started telling me about it, and I gasped that I was there, too! After a little recounting, we realized that we must have been mere feet from one another that evening.

We still never met. As far as I can recall, we never even saw each other.

I've spent a lot of time pondering our not meeting. For a time, I wondered why we never met, in spite of ourselves, especially those last couple of years. Were we thwarting some bigger plan by not meeting? Or thwarting it by coming perilously close to meeting? Now though, I am increasingly convinced that God blinded us to one another until the time was right for us to meet. I understand free will enough to know that there isn't a "plan" in the sense of the future being spelled out for us, but I do know that God has goals for us (Heaven) and wants us to have the best chance possible to attain them (vocations). He's looking to help us, if only we'll listen.

During that time, I was feeling particularly antsy about being single. One particular time during prayer before Mass, I got the distinct message from God to be patient. I misinterpreted it at the time, but looking back, the answer is obvious.

*****

I didn't plan to do this in two parts, but I think I'll leave it there for now. I probably won't get around to posting the second part until next week. We might be two married years old today, but someone will be one tomorrow.

I'd call it a cliffhanger, but . . .

(Link to Part II)

Spoiler

{Andplusalso, because great minds think alike and all of that, no sooner had I hit 'publish' on Monday than Grace did the same thing. And turned it into a link-up . . . so, more better love stories there. Part II is set to run on Monday, for the two non-related people who might care.}