Introducing..

Sage Lydia Tidyman

*Born on Wednesday, November 14 

 7 pounds / 7 ounces
20 inches long

We are so blessed!  Sage came last Wednesday, just shy of two weeks early.  She is healthy, beautiful and very loved. 

It's amazing how much time I spend marveling at how impossibly small the finger nail on her pinkie is and how her yawns can be so impossibly big.  She has such strength in her legs and in her head.  At 5 days old, she can already hold her head up a little and look around.  And her lungs....oh my!  Baby girl has got a set of lungs on her!  We did not expect this, Mr. T and I being so soft-spoken.  We put in a request for a baby whose cries sound like a kitten.  According to her Uncle Joey who pegged it so accurately, she sounds more like a pterodactyl (read: flying dinosaur).  Oh and her chompers...don't get me started on her chompers!

There are so many ways she is delighting us.  I love the way she holds her little hand up to her forehead and furrows her brow.  She looks just like Mr. T does when he is looking over our bills.  I smile at every little piggy noise she makes when she is nursing...her velvet skin...her coos and gurgles...

I love her.

My body is so tired, but my heart is so full.

Truth be told, so many blessings I experience with Sage are coupled with the memory of the beautiful women I have met during this pregnancy who have loved and lost a child.  It's a heartbreak that brings me to tears.  Mr. T and I are so very humbled by the opportunity to care for her each day.  We know that it is a gift.

I am coming to realize more and more that whether in times of great heartbreak or times of great joy, we all need God's grace to wash over us.  When life is so overwhelmingly hard, his grace covers us in peace, healing, and comfort.  When life is so full of joy, we need his grace to remember that his praise should always be on our lips, to cast aside petty complaints and to enjoy to the full the great blessings he has bestowed.  We all need God...no matter what each day brings.  And God is faithful.

On that note, I think I'll bring this to a close.  I hear little squeaks and know they'll need some attention.  I'll write soon on how Sage came to this world.  It's a great story!

*We're getting the word out so late because we don't have the Internet at our house and we've been too busy to get to a computer and I stopped sleeping sometime around last Wednesday and I pretty much look like death warmed over and I'm so tired that sometimes people ask me her name I have to rack my brain to remember what we chose for her middle name and...okay, I'll stop now.  Thanks for your understanding.

In Between Waking and Dreams

Conversations with your spouse come in many forms.  There are silly ones, serious ones, business conversations and ones centered around nothing in particular.  As of late, I've discovered that some of my favorite conversations with Mr. T happen when I wake him from a deep sleep.  The words he utters in between waking and dreams entertain me to no end.

The other day we went to bed and I got a major case of the "itchys".  Convinced we had bed bugs, I got up, turned on the lights, retrieved fresh linens from the closet in our bedroom and hovered over Mr. T waiting for him to wake up so we could remake the bed.  I waited and waited and waited for a solid 38 seconds before growing impatient and giving him a little nudge.

Mr. T:  "What's wrong, honey?"
Me:  "I think we have bed bugs.  I'd like to change the sheets."  (granted it is very late at night)
Mr. T:  (not fully awake has the following conversation with himself)  "NO, please no!!!!  Ugh!  It's all in her head.  Alright.  It's okay.  I love her.  Ugh!" 

I was quite amused by the little pep talk he gave himself.  He threw off the covers and we changed the sheets.

Mr. T:  "Feel better now?"
Me:  "Much.  Well, all except for the pillow cases we didn't change are still itching me."
Mr. T:  (sigh)

A couple of nights later, I got up to use the bathroom - big surprise there.  I turned to walk back into our bedroom and stopped short in my tracks.

Me:  "Honey?"
Mr. T:  (snoring)
Me:  "Hon-eeeeeeeey??????????"
Mr. T:  (suddenly alert and perhaps concerned that I had some baby news to report)  "Yeah!"
Me:  "Um, can you come and kill this spider?"
Mr. T:  "Ugh!  (long pause)  Okay....." 

He gets out of bed, stumbles red-eyed to the hallway, takes the toilet paper from me, kills the darn thing and returns to bed.

Me:  "Are you sure you crushed it?"
Mr. T:  (silence)
Me:  "Thank you so much.  It's just that...well...it was a BLACK one.  And I'm pretty sure it had a white spot on it's back?  Is that a black widow?"  (we've had this same conversation 100 times)
Mr. T:  "Black widows don't live in Nebraska."
Me:  "Yea, but how do they KNOW that!?!  Have they scoured every inch of Nebraska looking for them!?!"
Mr. T:  "Same way they know polar bears don't live in Nebraska."
Me:  "Oh.  Well, it doesn't seem EXACTLY the same to me."
Mr. T:  (snoring)

Don't we lead such a charming and interesting life? 
No need to answer that.

In other news, today is my last day at work...paying work that is.  Our Tidytot is due in two weeks, so let the nesting begin.  Now I can finally have time to dust our blinds!