amazon.com and other things keeping me sane

As much as I love my new job as a full time mom, housekeeper, cook, wife, etc., I often find myself up to my elbows in pear baby food and dirty diapers, and I have to have some reminder, small as it may be, that once in another lifetime, there was more to me than babies. That thing today is amazon.com.

Let me backtrack, however. Because of our move to McDonough, I have spent the past two weeks with neither internet nor cable. Though this could have been viewed as tragedy, Ada and I rose to the occasion, and out came Season One of Gilmore Girls. Sadly, I admit that Ada and I have spent so much time with Lorelai and Rory over the past two weeks, that last night I dreamed I was actually living in Stars Hollow in Gilmore Girl world. For those of you unfamiliar with the Gilmore Girls, it is a show about a mother, Lorelai, who became pregnant at 16 and left home to raise her daughter,Rory, on her own away from her wealthy, controlling parents. In this fictional world, everything worked out perfectly, and Rory is the ideal child, who is extremely smart and well-read, and eventually, in season 7, graduates from Yale, her grandfather's Alma mater.

Now, as much as I love watching The Gilmore Girls, I always leave the episodes feeling somewhat guilty because Rory has read so many more books than I have, and this leads me to Amazon.com. If you have been keeping up with Scott's blog, you know that we are attempting to forgo a monthly cable bill with an HD antennae. I am not loving this idea, but I have decided that to fully get on board with this plan, I will begin to read all of the books that I have wanted to read or would read if I was still teaching, instead of watching all of the pointless television that I would be watching if we had cable, and I have Amazon.com to thank for making this possible. I have decided that each week I will save enough money from the grocery budget to order one used book off of amazon.com. This means, that in a year's time, I will have purchased 52 new books, and I am definitely up for suggestions about which books to purchase. I think my first is going to be Harold Bloom's The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages. So, to respond to your post, Milla, today I am loving Amazon.

As for other things that are keeping me sane--I have decided to run a half-marathon. I will post more about this at a later date, but for now, just know that this is one other thing reminding me of pre-baby LB.

And, despite being the reason for the insanity, sweet Ada keeps me sane. Though she still wakes up at least once a night, her dirty diapers are worse than ever, and she has been a grumpy little thing for the past couple of weeks, I can't get enough of being her mother. She is still rolling over from back to stomach and then getting stuck there, she is smiling like crazy, and she got her second set of shots this week, but she was such a trooper!! Motherhood is such a huge dose of reality, and I am not one to deny that, but at the end of the day, it is the most amazing thing to get to be someones mom.

And of course, Scott keeps me sane. He is the stability to my craziness.

Finally, it is the knowledge that God is in complete control that truly keeps me sane. It is the one truth that I can cling to when every emotion tells me otherwise. When I think about the plan that He has for Ada's life, it is quite humbling and overwhelming to think that I am just a small part of the plan. Yes, I am her mother, but ultimately, Lord willing, she belongs to Him, and who am I to question His plan for her life. It is such a comforting thing to come face to face with the reality that God is so, so huge, and I am so finite, and all I have to do is just rest in Him and the fact that He will provide my daily manna.