]]> http://www.keithlovesbethany.com/2020/04/12/easter-2020/feed/ 0 http://www.keithlovesbethany.com/2018/10/09/isaiah-22-months/ http://www.keithlovesbethany.com/2018/10/09/isaiah-22-months/#comments Wed, 10 Oct 2018 00:55:55 +0000 http://www.keithlovesbethany.com/?p=8673

We joke that Isaiah is our “Boss Baby.” But, really, he is. He loves dressing up and telling everyone what to do. He is eager to be treated like the 40-year-old man he is deep-down inside. He wants to eat at the table without his high chair and standing on the chair so he is the same height as his father. He talks quite a lot and recently added, “Me” to his vocabulary. He mostly uses the word to redirect the attention to what he wants us to do for him. K2 strides through the room with an intricate new lego creation? “Me!” Dad starts slicing fruit for a salad? “Me!” Evangeline starts reading a chapter book? “Me!” as he thrusts a board book into her hands.

Some of his other words that we can understand:

• “Roaaar” for a lion
• “Woof” for dogs…and cows
• “Daaaa” for Dad
• “Yes”
• “Ball”
• “Hot!” used both for spicy and overly warm food
• “Joy” for his cousin
• “Mima” for Jemima
• “Caw” for cars and really any vehicles
• “Ing” for swing
• “Bob” for his mother (used only on select occasions)

He hasn’t start saying “No” yet, which is interesting.

He loves dressing up and swinging in the backyard and playing with water and pouring toys. And he LOVES reading books and being read to.

We had a wonderful time with Grami, Grandpa, and Arthur this summer. I’m starting to edit the pictures; in the meantime, here are some portraits from the back porch where we spent so much time laughing and talking and playing!

Ran across these pictures from January. Makes me look forward to cooler temperatures and children rough housing in the backyard!

We are studying Westward Expansion this year. Here is the edible map that Evangeline and K2 made of the Louisiana Purchase (white frosting) and Lewis & Clark’s expedition (green line).

We started school work again on July 30 after a one-month break. The first week was rough in that the kids, especially K2, were not interested in scheduled days and limits on playing with Heather’s kids who are currently living across the street. To be honest, I also struggled with fatigue and sickness stemming from a variety of sources. Still, we made it through and have a nice routine running now. I am grateful for the past years of mom showing me how to teach phonics/spelling and history/science, and for a couple of seemingly divinely appointed conversations with older women who are homeschool veterans–Veronica is the one who suggested having a “babysitting” schedule for Isaiah wherein each member of our family is in charge of playing with him for 30 minutes so I can work with other children and Debbie who told me about the DIVE Math program (online lectures from a Christian math instructor out of Texas that correspond with Saxon math) so now Evangeline is receiving the expert instruction she needs and wants.

One big change this year is that Keith does not leave for work until 8:45 or 9 AM. We front-load the morning with individual Bible reading, family worship, breakfast, and read aloud with Keith. He has so far read The Dangerous Journey and Hind’s Feet on High Places. We have also been able to share time with just the two of us, sipping coffee, talking about the Word, and working out for about 30 minutes a day. This means, naturally, that I don’t start on academic subjects until 9 AM; the ramification is that we haven’t finished school until at least 4 PM any day. But the time in the morning is just so good I wouldn’t trade it for anything!

K2 is taking off on his little guitar and we have about four worship songs and/or hymns that we can play together–the Keiths on guitar, Evangeline on mandolin or violin, me on piano, and Abraham trucking along in- and out- of tune on his harmonicas! :-)

I am still looking at writing programs for Evangeline, and hoping that Emily can send along another Bible reading program for our individual devotion times. We read through the New Testament this summer through her church’s program and it was amazing! For my own memory, here is the curriculum line-up:

Evangeline

• Music: Violin
• Bible: AWANA
• Math: Saxon/DIVE
• History/Science: Westward Expansion unit study (loosely based on KONOS and largely pieced together by my mom based on living books)
• Typing: (Rachel and Katy told me about this free program!)
• Literature: Little Ladies Bookclub
• Spelling/Grammar: Logic of English Essentials
• Writing program: pending…

K2

• Music: Guitar (self-directed lessons on YouTube as well as lessons with Keith the Elder)
• Bible: AWANA
• Math: Bob Jones
• History/Science: Westward Expansion unit study
• Literature: he is reading through a list of adventure/boyish chapter books that I assembled
• Spelling/Grammar: Logic of English Essentials
• Science: Hands-On Enrichment Class with a veteran home school mom (he can’t get enough science!)
• Soccer

Abraham

• Bible: AWANA
• Math: Bob Jones
• Literature: I am currently reading aloud to him through classics like all the Beatrix Potter stories, Charlotte’s Web, A Cricket in Times Square, Henry Higgens, etc
• Spelling/Grammar: Logic of English Foundations

The baby is one year old. Just like that.

When we heard Isaiah rustle this morning, Keith and I were still curled up in bed. He asked me if he should bring Isaiah in for nursing. Keith often brought the other kids in for that first feeding of the morning in bed. Yet I never nurse Isaiah in bed. I always walk down to his room. I don’t know why. I responded, “Sure.”

Isaiah ate and then promptly pulled off, wrenched away from me, tried to climb off the bed, grumbled at me for saving him, launched into Keith, then hurled his body back to me with a growl.

That’s why I don’t nurse him in bed in the morning.

Later, Keith and I reminisced about the last year. I thought of the beautiful and quick birth, Evangeline’s joy at seeing Isaiah crown. Then, I thought about hemorrhaging and wondering on the gurney if I would be able to mother my own children after all. And then being transferred to the hospital for one of the most traumatic 24 hours of my life. I remembered the physical anguish some weeks later of intense gastro-intestinal pain due to the antibiotics they involuntarily put in my body during the hospital stint because I had a slight fever. I thought of the fear when Isaiah would not nurse until a lactation consultant saved the day with a nipple shield. Then there was the wrestling to get him to nurse without it. I remembered how I couldn’t pull Isaiah away from the breast for three months or he would scream. Not even when he was sleeping, and the dawning realization of how something was really wrong. I remembered eating only turkey, ground lamb, pears, rice, and sweet potatoes for several weeks in an effort to stop the screaming with a spartan diet, and watching my body slip away to a size I hadn’t seen it since college. Then the pangs of disappointment that diet could not untangle the storm inside my baby. That nothing could untangle it other than time. Dr. Ross said to pray over him, out loud. I did, over and over. I remember all the songs Evangeline would sing to Isaiah in mostly unsuccessful attempts to get him to not scream on the 30 minute drive to Bible study, and then back again. My mother-in-law wearing him in a wrap as he screamed and writhed so I could get a bit of rest. I remember the little brown journal my friends made for me before Isaiah was born, full of encouraging words, poems, verses and how that brown book became a symbol of the sister-love that tethered me to God, to earth, to Isaiah when my soul felt lonely and his crying made me weep.

Keith remembers the 3 AM coffee runs to McDonalds with Isaiah screaming in the carseat, and then driving the glimmering roads of our sleeping city for a several hours so I could sleep, with Isaiah screaming in the carseat.

There has just been a lot of screaming.

Less in the last nine months and more growling and grumbling, and some great smiles. More recently, unhindered belly laughs.

Darkness can be long. But morning comes. Sometimes it dawns slowly, but it comes.

If you are a parent, you know what I mean when I say that despite all of these hurdles, I love this guy to madness. I look forward to the years to come with hope.

I look backward today because its his birthday. And these memories are real and so they must be remembered even though they are hard. Someday this year will actually have a halo glow that comes when time has worn the edges off our sharpest memories; then, I will primarily remember his legs in their dimpled chubby glory, the way he used to “bow” to Evangeline before falling into her arms for  a hug, his growls when he tastes something he likes, and the softness of his body curled into mine and the rhythmic sucking of his meal-taking in the velvet night.

I am not sure how to end this post. So I will end it the way I end each day with this boy—with prayer spoken out loud, with hands laid on his body, in faith:

Thank you, Lord, for giving me Isaiah Lewis Miller. For every detail of his birth and his life thus far. Thank you for knitting him together in your fearful and wonderful way. Grow him into the man you want him to be. Keep him safe in your Spirit. Bless and keep him, from the top of his soft head to the bottom of his round toes. Amen.

We have been waiting with baited breath for the year we would have a fourth grader and qualify for the “Every Kid in the Park” program with the National Park Service. Evangeline printed her pass a couple weeks ago! Our first trip was to Montezuma Castle National Park and Montezuma Well.

Oma joined us for the day; she is excellent at making fieldtrips constant learning experiences by reading the signs out loud, asking probing questions, and delighting in the experience so the kids pick up on the excitement. There’s still a lot of grandmother in her as indicated by indulgently treating us to lunch at a darling eatery near Verde Valley called Cricket’s Dessert and Sandwich Shop (as a mother, she would have packed a simple lunch from home).

As for the park: the “castle” and nearby pueblo community built into the rock was incredible. Hard to believe the people who engineered these buildings and farmed and traded on this verdant spot on Beaver Creak had vanished by the time Christopher Columbus took his famous voyage across the Atlantic. My mom remembers coming here in the 1950s and climbing up into the castle. We had to be content with a view from the bottom!

Another highlight of the trip was signing the kids up for the Junior Ranger program. I remember doing that program as a kid and loving the activities. My kids were no exception!

After lunch, we headed over to the nearby Montezuma Well. It is a naturally occurring well that is fed by underground water from the Mogollon Rim and propelled by volcanic movement. The well was also a site of old cliff dwelling people. There is no fish in the well for the obvious reasons but there were plenty of ducks as well as interesting creatures like water scorpions and leeches. The well has pressed through the travertine and created a natural tunnel that empties water into Beaver Creek just on the other side of the canyon holding the well. The kids really loved exploring in the cool green respite of the creek bank.