Sunday, May 21, 2006

siberiangrits

Isaiah's growing well!
It has been a while since we gave an update on Isaiah, so I thought that I would take a minute to do so before getting us both ready for church. One thing that I did not have any comprehension about before becoming a mother was how you have to do everything twice (not just for the baby); for instance, it's time for breakfast, so I feed Isaiah then I eat; time to get dressed for church, so I dress Isaiah and then I get dressed; bathing at the end of the day, etc. I find that the only time I have truly to myself is in the shower. :) But don't get me wrong, I wouldn't spend these moments any other way than with my precious little man.

We went to the health department this past Wednesday for a check on his weight. Praise the Lord Isaiah weighed in at 8 pounds 4 ounces! He looks so much healthier, which you can see from our picture albums on our yahoo pictures site. He is smiling a lot and cooing and gurgling. He often seems to be looking at my hair when I'm changing him or feeding him as if he's thinking how wonderful a handful would be to take with him. His physical therapist comes once a week to check his progress and give me ideas of how to encourage his development, particularly in his legs. She was quite impressed these last 2 weeks as Isaiah has lifted his head well while lying on his stomach and remained alert throughout the session. He even loves to look at himself in the mirror--it's so cute!

Last week Thomas entitled a post "sanctification", but I think that I could have used that title again. I love being a mother and spending so much time with Isaiah, but sometimes it is very difficult. It's not difficult because he's overly fussy or a burden or anything like that, but rather because I am often faced with my own selfishness, which I didn't realize ran as deep as it does. It's hard work to "be there" for someone else's every need, and it requires some sacrifice at times. The Lord has used Isaiah in many ways already in his short 3 1/2 month life, but I think that one of the main ways is to teach me how much I think of myself rather than Him or other people. Being a mother has also driven me to my knees, and not only in the ways that I expected. I pray more for my mother now, and I appreciate her even more than I did before. I also have even enjoyed the middle of the night prayer times (when I can stay awake) during Isaiah's feedings. (I never thought that I could function on such little sleep--The Lord is gracious!)

Well, I could go on, but all that really needs to be said is that my sovereign God works all things for His glory and for my good, and I wouldn't have it any other way. I am thankful that He plans my steps and makes my path straight because I probably wouldn't have picked for things to happen the way that they did, but again, I wouldn't have it any other way.

-Cristy

Saturday, May 13, 2006

Sanctification

You may notice that our blog address has changed, not to mention the format, not to mention that all our old posts are gone...sigh...

Well, here's what happened.

Some of you reported to us that there were obscene comments being made on our previous blog. This is true, but understand that it was being done by "bots." Bots are little computer programs that scour the net looking for ways to mess up people's blogs, websites and email inboxes. In the case of a blog site a bot can automatically find the "comments" section of a blog, and then automatically make posts to it. Apparently that's what happened to our blog site, and therefore that's why there were obscene comments with links to trashy websites. As soon as this was brought to my attention I jumped to remedy the problem. I could just delete the comments, but the bot was still going to continue attacking our site.

So I downloaded the new blog software that had added security features that would prevent bots from attacking the site. Without getting too technical...with the click of a button I completely deleted our old blog, and all of the previous posts...sigh.

So I figured that since, providentially, we were starting from square one again with our blog posts, that I'd take the less stressful route and simply use blogger.com.

So please feel free to visit us here and keep up with our lives.

-Thomas