4 months! (very late)

Although I am really late posting these, I did take these when you turned four months! :)

I love your chubby hands

and your cheeks

and oh my word, those kissy lips

and of course your baby blues

Yes oh yes I love you!!!
Your naps are getting much better when you can actually take them (when ej doesn't wake you up lol) but night time sleep has gotten much worse. Instead of doing a seven hour stretch I am lucky if I get a 3-4 hour stretch. You also are waking up during the night and not wanting to go back to sleep. Mommy is very very tired and the house is pretty much always messy. You still dislike the car and scream when we go pick up Austin from school. You nurse well but you are really wanting to eat food now. You dive bomb everything I am eating! Santa is bringing you rice cereal! :)
You are 20 pounds now and wearing 12 month onsies, In separates you can still get by with 9 and 9-12 month. You are on the largest setting on most your diapers now too.You are my big big boy!!!
As far as your personality goes, you are extremely demanding. You get bored very easily and will scream until I entertain you. You know how to make a mommy work! You love snuggles and you love being tickled. Your favorite things are diaper changes and when we sing the itsy bitsy spider. You do not like you excersaucer and being put down!
We have some rough days but I wouldn't trade them. I just love you so very much!

redeemed and reborn. Amazing what nine months can do.

Nine months. I have been a single mom for nine extremely long months. Hard months. Breaking months. Building, humbling months. Months of me surviving and failing. Hard, hard months. The physical and emotional difficulties of being a single mom to three boys is indescribable. It is absolutely maddening and shattering. Some of it has been hell on earth for me. Honestly. But some of it? Some of it has been God breathed grace. God given strength and peace beyond belief. And learning and growing and a lot, a lot of refining.

Refining hurts. Big time.

God has shown me so much about myself in the last nine months. Like my very own rebirth, I am finally coming through this new. Changed. I am no longer blinded to the fact that I am terribly far from the person God wants me to be. The wife God wants me to be. And most especially the mother I am suppose to be. The friend and servant I am suppose to be. In pretty much every area. And that hurts to realize but it is also wonderful. Because I want to be better. And I am working on it and God has shown me things I never knew about myself or about Him. He has taught me much in these nine months. And I am so thankful.

And now I get to put them to practice.

Adam and I are back together and are committed to making our marriage work. We aren't living together again yet but can't wait to actually make that part final. My lease is up end of January so we will be moving then.

I didn't blog much about our separation and that was intentional. But I want to say this, there is nothing, and I mean nothing, that can't be redeemed. When we first separated I gave our marriage to God and asked Him to protect it, rebuild it, redeem it. And He has. To watch everything unfold has been incredible. If we are willing, truly willing, to let God restore an area of our lives, I believe HE will. And He has in my marriage. And He has is in my life.

Refining is painful sometimes beyond words, but I stay true to my belief in river rocks. It takes such a force, such bumps and scrapes, to make us smooth and more like Jesus. So here I am. I have a long ways to go, we have a long way to go, but I am ready. Whatever it takes.

Thank you all for walking this journey with me and being so very supportive. It simply means the world.

I feel like after being told for years to "be still", I am finally, finally being told "it is time, my child, it is time". And I am so ready.