this time last birth....

I've been thinking bunches lately about this whole waiting period of "when in the crud is this baby going to get here already?" It reminds me of waiting for Sawyer to get here, and I can't help but be completely overwhelmed by gratitude for life & all that comes with it, good & bad.
this time last birth we were...
.....living at my parents house while they were on their first mission, a huge blessing, but also extremely frustrating to me as my nesting instincts took over my brain & made me want to rip carpet & wallpaper up & redo their entire house
...anxiously hoping that by some miracle something would happen with Matt's job so that I wouldn't have to go back to work after I had Sawyer
...completely obsessed with a certain other baby of ours & I personally couldn't imagine having enough love in my heart for Matt, Charlie AND a baby (seriously, I really thought that)...driving a minivan, which frankly sucked, but was very serviceable, and was an incredible sacrifice on Matt's part because he sold his beautiful truck (man, I love him!)
...rather more fat in the face than I am now. With Sawyer, and with Abram, my main goal was to keep it under 200 pounds (please remember that I am six feet tall). With Sawyer I succeeded, with Abram not so much, I was 201.4 today. wowza. But I like to think that it is due to the fact that I have a higher percentage of muscle, and it weighs more than the fat, right? Right? Because although my hands & feet look rather hobbit-like this go-round, at least my face seems to have escaped the swelling....unmedicated. On my part at least, and I'm so super excited to see how a little Wellbutrin XL does to combat the icky postpartum I experienced with Sawyer
...super uninformed. Super ill-prepared. But we made it okay, Sawyer is still alive & clearly didn't suffer too much from our lack of any idea as to what we were getting ourselves into.

But really, can you ever prepare for something that life changing? You have no idea how different things will be, you can't even imagine the love, frustration, humility, anxiety that you will go through. But especially the love. I have come to understand so much why the family is "central to the Creator's plan for the eternal destiny of His children". How else could we have any idea of how much He loves us? Of how easily He will to forgive us if we just are even a smidge repentant? Of how much He wants to "open to you the windows of heaven, and pour you out a blessing, that there shall not be room enough to receive it"?

(one of my favorite photos courtesy of the lovely Laura Dugovic)

I talk all the time about how cool I think my kid is, but that really just scratches the surface. It's a futile attempt at explaining something that I cannot even wrap my brain around, let alone my words.

And I cannot wait to see what having Abram will bring into our lives. I cannot wait to find out what kind of a person he will be. When I was about 13 I met a cute boy named Abram. He was nice & we watched 4th of July fireworks together on his trampoline at a joint family barbecue. But the thing that I love about this name is that to me it speaks of potential. Of the potential that we can have once we "let go & let God." I hope that our son will get this concept. Of how much better and easier our lives become when we stop thinking that we can control everything, that we know better & just trust that we do have a Heavenly Father who knows & loves us. Heck, I hope that I will one day get this concept. I'm such a control freak, even in conceiving this baby. I know I had to be put through the wringer with those two miscarriages to come to understand that His timing is vastly more important (and correct) than my timing. I was trying to plan having a baby around our vacation schedule for Pete's sake!

Anyway, I'm just so grateful to be given the opportunity to attempt to raise another child of God, man, what a responsibility! It's kind of ridiculous, actually.