My Baby

"Your unfailing love, O Lord, is as vast as the heavens;

Your faithfulness reaches beyond the clouds.

Your righteousness is like the mighty mountains,

Your justice like the oceans depths...

How precious is Your unfailing love, O God!  

All humanity finds shelter in the shadow of your wings.

You feed them from the abundance of Your own house,

Letting them drink from the rivers of Your delight.

For You are the fountain of life, 

the Light by which we see."  Psalm 36:5-9

Isn't it incredible that when we see clouds, God's faithfulness reaches beyond them?  Isn't it amazing that when I don't know where I'm going to put another child or how we're going to feed another mouth or what in the world God was thinking when, through all our efforts to keep from this, the Fountain of Life granted us yet another life and gives us shelter in the shadow of His wings, and feeds us from the abundance of His own house, and lets us drink from the rivers of His delight?!  I am in awe of the unfailing love of my God.

I must say, I was initially in shock.  Not devastated, at the deepest level, but definitely reeling.  Another baby?  Are you serious?  Long ago, I thought it was a great plan to have all of my children before I turned 30 (I'll be 29 the end of this month).  Now, I realize, not only does that require extreme amounts of energy and who knows how many pots of coffee, but it will also require us to do something permanent after this baby comes to avoid our own reality TV show when I'm 42 and pregnant with our 19th child!  That's another big decision - not really thinking about that yet.  However, Suzanna Wesley and Mrs. Duggar are in a category of their own.  Not planning on joining them. :)  Beyond that crazy stream of thought, God is so good to grant us this baby, whom my sons are determined to name Deuteronomy, aka Dude.

In other news, Alayna is 15 months  old and so much fun.  She says new words every day, loves shoes and wants all 7 of her blankeys at the same time.  She loves talking on the phone and playing with her babies, and building spaceships and playing cars - we call that well-balanced.

She loves sitting in this chair.  She usually gets as many toys as she can hold in her arms and then sits down.  She's a hoarder.  :)  Now that she's walking she likes to kick the ball.  Hudson is playing soccer this year, so she's learning a lot from her big brother.  

The poor thing has been blessed with my cheeks, but we love them.  She may not love them so much when she's 14.  ;)

And this is the little guy we found playing on our playground in the back yard.  He makes a great science lesson/craft for this week!  We watched him for a really long time.  One of our favorite babysitters gave the boys bug-eye masks.  As soon as we saw the praying mantis outside they went and got their masks on.  More pictures to come!