Whoosh, whoosh, whoosh

Good news! My doctor took me off bed rest on Thursday after only one week! When he found out that it had been almost a week since any bleeding, and when he heard the "whooshing" sound of a strong heartbeat, he decided that I'd had enough lying around and is letting me resume "light" activity. Praise God!

So, I have another ultrasound and an appointment next Wednesday and Thursday in order to keep tabs on things, but the situation seems to be looking up!Thank you, all of you out there who have been praying and sending encouraging notes. I have never felt more loved and supported than in the past week.

Lisa's first ultrasound was not scheduled for another 2 weeks; however, some events today necessitated an emergency trip to the OB/GYN. There is good news and bad news. First, the good news. Say hello to ß (Beta):

The baby's heartbeat was strong and normal, and developmentally everything looks on track. However, there is a problem. It seems that the placenta has begun to pull away from the uterus in one spot, causing quite a bit of bleeding.

The upshot of this is that Lisa's pregnancy has just jumped up pretty far on the "high risk" scale, and that Lisa is now confined to bed rest for the foreseeable future. There is nothing to be done other than pray and wait. Our doctor told us that he has seen babies in this situation come to full term, but that there is simply no way to know what will happen.

So, we covet everyone's prayers right now. Regardless of the outcome, we know that God is in control, and that is good enough for us. Even if we can't understand why certain things happen, we fully accept whatever He allows.

We're Still Here!

We really are alive, honest! Sorry about the long delay between posts, for those of you who check here regularly. As you probably know, we've been very busy and tired. We've actually had a lot of interesting things going on, not the least of which is that I'm pregnant again! We're extremely excited and are expecting "Beta" (ß) to arrive sometime in late June (Ian is "Alpha," the next one would be "Gamma", etc). So that's some good news for ya.

This week, Eric is in New Orleans for a conference where he's presenting a paper linked to his dissertation. Research is going pretty well, and he hopes and plans to start writing at the beginning of January. He's almost done!

Ian is talking up a storm -- not sentences yet, but about 20 or more recognizable words, which is making our lives a bit easier. It's so nice to understand what your child is trying to tell you sometimes!

Some other things we'd love to blog about right now, but simply don't have time on which to expand are:
* The exciting conclusion of IU football's regular season & possible bowl berth
* The hiring of Coach Lynch for said football team
* The holiday season and how we're trying some new things this year
* Exciting adventures with potty training

We won't make any promises, but we'd like to try to get to some of these topics in the next week or so. Stay tuned!

Ian goes to bed

Some more video for family and friends who are interested. One of our favorite daily rituals...

5K Update

I have to take a minute to brag a bit about my husband; I hope you all don't mind! On Saturday, we participated in Bethel's Homecoming 5K race, and Eric accomplished the awesome feat of running over three miles in 21 minutes and 35 seconds! That's more than two minutes better than his time last year, and is a very competitive pace. I am so proud of him! Even though he's been really busy with research for his dissertation, he's gotten himself out of bed early in the morning several times a week to prepare his body to compete, and he did an amazing job! My father-in-law, Nate, also beat his time from last year and came in at a little over 26 minutes. (Not too shabby, Nate! Good job!)

I ended up walking the race, while pushing Ian half the time in his stroller. (I was walking with my mother-in-law, Pam, who pushed the stroller the other half of the time.) We finished in about 42 minutes and Ian had a great time. By the end of the race, he was clapping his hands and singing as we fast-walked to the finish line.

Eric and I have pretty much decided that we're going to try to find a 5K to run in every year, no matter where we end up. It's just such a fun way to keep in shape as a family and have some sort of measure for our health. We have so much fun participating in the race that it makes all the work and sweat leading up to it completely worth it!

gDiapers

Thanks to a suggestion from some friends, we've made a mini-revolution of diapering in our family! They're called gDiapers, and they're.....wait for it..... flushable!!! No more stinky poopy diapers in our trash cans, and no more filling up landfills with disposable diapers that will take at least 500 years to decompose! Apparently, conventional disposable diapers are the third largest contributors to landfills in the world and yet only five percent of the world's population uses them. Even though we were only using 30-40 disposable diapers per month (because we use cloth diapers during the day), that was still at least 360-400 diapers we as a family put out there in the last year alone. And to think that most diapering families use on average 2500 disposable diapers a year!

At any rate, after much consideration and research, we decided that the best thing for our family was to switch to gDiapers for at night and while travelling. And they really work well! They're kind of a hybrid between our cloth diapering technique and regular disposable diapers. They have cloth covers (gPants) with velcro fasteners, water-proof polyester snap-in liners, and environmentally-safe "pads" that get pressed into the liners, which are then either flushed or composted when dirty or wet. We've even been able to switch from using pins and plastic pants with our cloth diapers to using the gPants with a cloth liner instead of the flushable liner. This also makes potty training much easier since we can much more easily take off Ian's cloth diaper right at the toilet, without having to mess with pins and whatnot.
We've been fairly happy with the results, too. The gDiapers are really an ingenius invention that could possibly change diapering as we know it. They certainly changed our lives, and in the process, also made us more aware of our waste in general. I was reading in the book of Genesis some time ago, and in chapter 2, verse 15, it says, "The Lord God took the man and put him in the Garden of Eden to work it and take care of it." In the original Hebrew language, "work" has more of a meaning of "serve" and "take care" has more of a meaning of "protect." Adam's first job was to serve and protect the land that God gave him! How does this not apply to us, as well? This earth is a gift from God, and we are responsible for serving and protecting it as best as we are able. Therefore, we've become really convicted in this area about making sure we're not polluting the land with our trash, and have stepped up our recycling habits. Our next step will be working on a good compositing system so we can throw away even less waste. It's all a process, and I'm sure God has more steps to take us through!

October Update

As you can probably tell by the long blog hiatus, life has been pretty uneventful. We've been busy, of course, but nothing really exciting or interesting has happened lately.

Eric is plugging away at his dissertation and was able to run the first two subjects of Experiment Three for his thesis this past week. He feels really good about how things are going and thinks that, at this rate, he'll be able to accomplish his goal of finishing up by next spring. He's been working really hard at searching out potential job opportunities for us for when we leave Bloomington next summer and has found some intriguing possibilities.

I'm wrapping up the first fall session at the IEP, and the second session starts the week after next. Next week is our big "Week Seven", which is full of exams and whatnot, which means that my schedule gets upended and, hence, so does our family routine. Flexibility is the key!

Eric and I have been running a lot lately, getting our bodies ready to compete in the Bethel College Homecoming 5K race, which we also did last year. I think we'll both beat our times from last year, and hopefully make a dent in the standings. We've been enjoying this warmer weather -- it makes for nicer running in the morning -- but we're also ready for it to cool down so we can turn off our air conditioner and leave it off for awhile! 88 degress in October is ridiculous!

Ian is suffering from a nasty chest cold, which I think I contracted today. (Fun, fun!) He's got all four of his first molars in, and is working on a fifth. He's eating everything in sight and having a lot of fun being independantly mobile. Playing outside and "going bye-bye" are some of his favorite activities. He's also graduated to a "big boy" bed -- we took off the front of his crib and turned it into a daybed, with a little guard rail to keep him from falling out. He loves getting in and out of bed by himself, and does really well with going to sleep when he's supposed to. That kid loves his sleep -- thank goodness!

All in all, things are well with us.

Ian tells a story

Here's a video of Ian from the other night. He's gotten into "telling stories" at the end of the day. We can only make out a few words here and there, but it's fairly entertaining (for us, at least). In this video, there's a little speech at the beginning, followed by some playing around, and then a concluding speech at the end. Enjoy, Grandmas and Grandpas and Aunts and Uncles!

Fall is here

Summer has finally decided to let loose its grip and allow fall to bless us with its presence. My fall crocuses are in full bloom, the weather is a sunny and crisp low 70's, football season is in full swing, and our fridge is stocked with apple cider. After almost seven years of marriage, my husband has persuaded me that it really is a wonderful time of year. And I truly believe it is. While I used to view fall merely as the precursor to winter (my least favorite time of year), I now see it as a time of reflection and repose. It's the time of year when it's so incredibly pleasant to both sit outside and have a hot drink at the same time. Yes, summer is passing, the fields and my flower beds are beginning to surrender themselves to the earth, and the winds are beginning to be a bit more blustery, but it's also a time of new beginnings, especially since we're in academia, where the "new year" essentially begins at the end of August. It's a time to look ahead at the work to be done and revel at the fact that we have so many interesting things to look forward to in the year ahead! Let's just say that, this year at least, I'm enjoying the wonderfulness of autumn just as much as my husband.

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Here are some pictures of Ian and Eric enjoying our morning excursion to Apple Works, a somewhat local apple orchard with a cute petting zoo and all kinds of wonderful apple-y goodness!

Indiana vs. Indiana St.

To me, this is one of the most beautiful pictures I've seen in a long time (I pieced this together using multiple shots from my humble little Nikon COOLPIX 2500):

There is something special about a nighttime college football game. This one was particularly meaningful given the passing of Hep this past June, as well as ongoing construction of the North endzone enclosure. It was nice to see the team come out and destroy Indiana State 55-7 on a day when #5 Michigan lost to 1-AA Appalachian State.

Kickoff for the IU-ISU game was after 8:00 pm, and it didn't finish until nearly midnight (curse you TV timeouts). Ian tailgated with us until 5:00pm. At that time, some friends from church picked him up and watched him until church the next day. Lisa and I took advantage of being Ian-less and went to BW3 for some hot wings after the game (mmmmm.....wings at 1:00am...it is wonderful).

Speaking of Ian, much to Lisa's dismay it appears that he is already showing signs of wanting to be a QB. I can imagine Lisa wanting to charge on the field and slug anybody who tries to sack her son.