today

sometimes when i think about my life, i feel like i'm spinning.

and when i think about the phrase "think about my life" i am reminded of my sister, megan, asking one of her middle school students to think about his life and then him actually doing it and the face megan makes imitating what a middle schooler thinking about his life looks like.

the other night, i was making a grocery list, and i looked over to see joseph rolling to get to a stack of books and his carseat. i instinctively said "joooseph" and as the word came out of my mouth, i had to say it again, marvelling at the fact that the little baby rolling around (we've gone mobile, people) is my son and his name is joseph.

i remember my friend, jess, saying that she tried really hard to cherish specific moments with her son, finn, and i've found myself doing the same thing at times with j.bourne. following last night's dinner, jeremy, joseph, and i played with his infant-sized royals hat for about twenty minutes. it was so wonderful. i think that after a whole day with the babe, sometimes i figure time with dad and only dad is a must for both of us, but i realized in the twenty minutes of hat-on-dad, hat-on-joseph, hat-on-mom, peek-a-boo, repeat that it's pretty fun for the three of us to hang out too.

today's goal and prayer is to spend today joyfully and not at any point have the "ahhh... why did i go on facebook??" feeling. so far so good. i woke up at 6:45 to little boy making happy noises, enjoyed a cup of coffee after fasting from coffee and sugar yesterday (didn't realize i was that addicted..), played a bit, ironed a shirt, put the boy down for his first nap, started some diaper laundry, read john 8:1-11 (um, amazing), folded laundry, played some more with sweet boy, put him down for nap number 2, took a shower, and well.. here i am.

we're running low on v5's and burt's bees. at the same time. it's a tough life i lead. i intend to fix this very soon.

i'm working on new year's resolutions. thus far, i resolve to eliminate hurry, read complete books, and make an intentional list of crafts that i want to do and do them. i should probably stop there, now that i read the growing list. oh, and i'm going to try to write here more often. maybe every week if you're lucky.

i think i just realized that i have ended my type two spaces after a period habit. thank you very much, jeremy. it feels good.

i'm hearing some awake noises from the other room.. i love this life. have i said that?

and i--
i changed out of the black sweatpants and the shirt that joseph spit up on a few hours ago
and that has made all the difference.

contrary to popular belief, if you ignore something long enough, it will not in fact go away.

this includes 18 dirty cloth diapers and a mediacom modem from 2006.

and all of the stuff that's still in the basement of our old house on again street.

oops.

just do it (yourself)

did i mention i made a leaf mobile?

i did.

and i realize that although the leaf mobile is pretty cool in itself, the reason that i was/am so excited about it is that i made it. i can't tell you how many do-it-yourself projects i have looked at since discovering my all-time favorite makes my brain explode with overwhelming too much to handle amazing ideas website, design*sponge, but i can tell you how many i have actually done: two.

the first was inspired by this clever way to reuse security envelopes. i opted to cut out whales from the envelopes and made them into garland for my sister's birthday with the words "have a whale of a birthday" at the end of the chain of whales. it took me at least two of joseph's naps to cut out all of the whales, which i remember actually turned out to be a really fun use of time. also, the extra whales have become magnets on my fridge. jeremy and i realized recently that families should have magnets on their fridge. so now we do. whale magnets.

and, of course, the second do-it-yourself project was the leaf mobile. actually, now that i look at the original project again, mine is like five of what they suggested all linked together. oops. i think it took me an hour to put it together after having the leaves and branches in my home for a good two weeks and a couple of to-do lists mentioning the mobile assembly. okay, fine, i'll post a picture. i mean, it's not like i haven't been secretly wanting to post a picture the whole time anyway. :)

so there you have it.

the leaf mobile.

and a peak into the linneman dining room. we framed some pictures of joseph before his dedication open house so that our home would look settled in. not that i have to substantiate myself or the picture of me with my son that you can see in the background of this leaf mobile picture.

and the tea set, a wedding present from miss sarah linneman, has been a fun way for me to attempt to have our table/home decor possess some femininity. usually there are stacks of books in the corner of the table you see pictured. the tea set is intended to offset the books and obtain a balanced feel of both a man and a woman live in this home.

but anyway.

i was thinking today that if it brings me this much joy to make little things such as whale garland/magnets and leaf mobiles, i should do it more often. my next project is wine bottle vases. maybe. i just saw the word hack saw in the instructions. i don't want to get too ambitious, although i do have two bottles collected for this project already.

in other news, jeremy, joe bourne, and i returned from a trip to louisville, kentucky early this morning. very early this morning. both joseph and i slept the entire drive home while jeremy drove and conversed with the other two guys in the car. yep, four adults and one baby in a honda accord for six hours. it can be done. we originally expected this trip to be the finishing yes on a decision to move to louisville for jeremy to complete seminary at southern, but it's not looking that way as of right now. we may just continue living in columbia until God calls us to india, but that's another conversation/post altogether. i'll let you know. :)

november thus far

so,

-my hands smell like joseph's burt's bees baby bees wash
-chocolate chip ice cream with a cookie dough ball mixed into it sounds delicious
-jeremy is eating donut holes and just asked if it was okay
-life is better with ten inches less hair
-i just witnessed my husband close a carton of donut holes, open it up, sneak another one, and close it again. and i don't think he knows i saw it all happen :)
-fun-size halloween candy is actually pretty fun
-i should probably consume less sugar in life
-hmm
-i made a leaf mobile last night
-for the first time in marriage, i emptied the dryer of clean clothes and immediately folded them
-i do think that existence is just that much more enjoyable when you drink coffee because when you get to take it with you in the morning to drop off your husband at work, it's just so fun to have your coffee with you
-i think that's all
-love

i had a dream last night that jeremy, joseph, and i were on the run. i'm not really sure why, but i think it had something to do with the protestant reformation. i do know that at one point in the dream, jeremy discarded joseph's carseat off the side of a mountain, said we wouldn't need it anymore where we were going, and for the rest of the dream had joseph on his back in the moby wrap. we ended up in colorado.

joseph had 5, count 'em, 5 dirty diapers this morning. like before noon. seriously. three were poopy. annnnd they were all cloth diapers! it's working out pretty well so far. my studfest husband installed a sprayer that's attached to our toilet to wash them off. and it feels good to not be throwing something away each time the little kicky boy is up on the changing table. okay, i promise.. that's the last i talk about the diapers. it's just that lately when people ask me how i'm doing/what's going on with me, i'm really tempted to tell them about cloth diapers. sometimes i give in. they're just really cute and really cheap (in the long run, of course), and just so environmentally friendly. okay, now that was officially the last time i talk about the diapers.

in other news, i added some super masculine decor to jbl's nursery. he's been taking naps in there, so i figured some manliness could help out that effort a bit. he now has a wall that is adorned by a clothesline (i love clothesline decor. a lot.) his royals hat, a royals world series championship penant, some blue baby shoes, and a movie poster from the bourne ultimatum. in this poster, jason bourne may or may not be carrying a pretty dangerous looking gun. we'll just have to explain it to joseph when he's older. i wonder how it will go explaining his middle name to him when he's not old enough to see any of the movies yet..

yes. yes, my life does in fact revolve around my son.

i have some other posts i'm working on but i'm just being too much of a perfectionist to publish them just yet. one is on personal branding and my over-developed thoughts on how we portray/define/brand ourselves in this age. the other is on coffee and how addicted i've become to it. but i draw in references to a tree grows in brooklyn so, i mean, it's not just about coffee.

in other news,

we had some friends over for dinner tonight. thai chicken pizza. two of the friends were my sisters, who happen to be friends as well. the others were dustin and ben. i heard once that dustin's first words when he met ben were "what in the world?" which seems appropriate. these four fine folks are some of our best friends and also huge supporters of jeremy's work with karis. so we made them some pizza and hung out around the kitchen table. it was really fun.

we have purchased a hearty supply of cloth diapers and will begin that adventure when they are delivered this week. gulp. :) no, it will be good, for sure. and a lot less money/landfill space in the long run. i've been meaning to order the diapers for weeks now, and we finally sat down and picked out all of the colors and quantities and shipping preferences and such on saturday. it's pretty hilarious to make a purchase of this sort and at the end of the whole purchasing process realize that the end result is that we now have cloth contraptions with which to catch and contain joseph's poop. you know? i guess it has to happen somehow so it might as well be adorable versatile invincible bumgenius diapers.

i can always tell when i haven't had enough jessie-time when painting my nails seems like a really big deal. except i guess it always does. and sometimes i expect people to notice the ever-so-light pink shade that now graces my fingertips as if it's a really big deal. similarly, i trimmed my bangs on saturday, just about an inch or so, and expected somebody to say something until i realized that i have side bangs and they are always behind my ear. but seriously, i almost said "guess what? i trimmed my bangs.." to amy and kate when i met up with them that morning. but i didn't.

i did, however, tell jeremy about trimming my bangs. poor guy. i think i'm going to make the tagline for this blog "where my words go when jeremy has used all of his." lots of my posts are actually thoughts that i begin to develop during dinner conversation with my sweet husband and then, to his knowledge, complete within the confines of that conversation. except then i end up with these unpublished posts that are the remaining thoughts that go beyond the socially acceptable length of "so i was thinking.." talk that i actually have on the subject we've only partly discussed.

also,

i think i'm going to start reading sports illustrated as an investment into knowing my husband better. and because i just found out last night that michael jordan, although appearing in space jam as what one would describe as "a nice dad," is in fact quite arrogant. i've thought for the past 15 or so years that he was a genuinely nice guy who impressively has not let being the best basketball player in the world go to his head. oops.