Aching for Life

Looking back at pictures from a few months ago - when morning walks at Ocean Beach was the norm. Zoe is three months old. So it's been three months of jarring interruptions. Interruptions to sleep every 3 hours, 2 hours, even every 45 or 30 minutes.  Interruptions to chores - "Play with that bouncy ball outside the kitchen!" "I'm thirsty!" "How do you write __?" And the perpetual, "Can you read to me?" "Can you play with me?" Interruptions to eating. Interruptions to conversations. Interruptions to time with one child to tend to another child.  When my fuse is short I find myself pining for another time, another place, another rhythm.  When I settle in for some quiet, when I first lift a spoon to my mouth, and I hear Zoe crying, 10 minutes into a nap. When I start digging through the drawers to re-organize the kids' clothes or piles of paper, and smack in that worse-than-before-mess limbo, someone needs help in...

You are four months and one week old today, and I wish we had more time to stop and write in document your growth, the special moments you give us with your looks and smiles and kicks and eyebrow raises. I wish life could move along a little bit more slowly, so that I could soak it in more, in hopes that it would take root more deeply in my memory, so that in the pining days ahead, I could reach back and still taste and see and hear the bundle of joy you are today. We will start sleep training most likely this week, and I wonder how the time has passed by so quickly. In a lot of ways it's because you're more easy-going than your brother and so sleep has not seemed such a hurdle and trauma to you or to your parents. In other ways it's because we've done this once before, and, like a road well-traveled, it seems that the distance is shorter, the progression faster. And of course your brother is growing and changing in ways all his own, and as much as we ...

Tonight Zeke and Zane are sleeping in the same bed for the first time - and it is not an orchestrated event. We just happened to get back to the hotel late, and I was nursing Zane to keep him asleep while Zeke was getting ready for bed. Ryan had to run off to meet with another friend, so to keep things easy I let Zeke join us in the same bed.  So the boys fell asleep together. Later tonight, I heard Zeke yell out in his sleep - a common occurrence for this nightmare-prone boy. I crept into the room later and saw that both boys were sleeping soundly again, with Zeke's hand on Zane's arm. And my heart lurched. There will be many days when I can't be around to take away fears and hurts, as much as I want to encircle these two boys. But on at least some of these days, they will have each other, and I am comforted knowing that  they can hold each others' hands.

I often am moved or humbled or challenged by sermons at our church , but tonight's message especially spoke to me.  (When the sermon video gets posted online, I'll link it here!) John Ortberg spoke on letting go and trusting God - a message that sounds so cliche that it seems impossible to be touched by it. Yet I was caught by surprise by how it touched a very vulnerable part of me - my struggle with fear. You see, he recorded the sermon at a gym called "Circus Center," a place where people can take classes from trapeze artists. As John explained why he decided to present the sermon there, he quotes Henri Nouwen: "The Flying Rodleighs are trapeze artists who perform in the German circus Simoneit-Barum. When the circus came to Freiburg two years ago, my friends Franz and Reny invited me and my father to see the show. I will never forget how enraptured I became when I first saw the Rodleighs move through the air, flying and catching as elegant dancers....

Zane: While sleeping, nursing, or awake: **Snort, sniffle, snort, snort** Zeke: When Zane is crying: "Don't worry, baby! I'm there. I'm there." In the morning, jumping into our bed and smothering Zane with kisses: "Helllooo-y! Hellloooy! My peanut! My pizza! So little! So little!" Singing the ABC song: "A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I, J, K, Ello-enopy..." Another song: "Los pollitos dicen, pio pio pio, cuando tienen ham-bre, cuando tienen fwee-oh."

Zeke: "Me baby!" Nostalgia A few weeks ago, Ryan's mom was in town and we went to the Stanford pool to squeeze in a last swim while it was still summer hours and the afternoons were still hot. At one point I was swimming laps while Mom was watching Zeke, and as I approached the far end of the pool, Zeke's back was toward me. Something about the way he was standing - the slight angle, the relaxed stance, gave me a glimpse of what Zeke might look like in a teenage boy's body, and my heart clenched a little.  I was reminded of how fleeting his little-ness is, how unrelentingly quickly the days will fly by until he will be the one with the bigger and stronger body, until he will even more his own person than he is now. All of parenthood is nostalgia, I suppose.  How many evenings I spend now while absent-mindedly playing or reading with Zeke with half my head reminiscing over the yonder years when I had evenings and weekends open before me like blank sketch...

It’s not a special occasion. Not a birthday, not an anniversary, not the beginning or end of a calendar year or school year. There is no imminent transition. Yet tonight, on the most ordinary of nights, I am taking stock the only way I know to take stock now – which is when the stars align and I have space in my head and time on my hands and – quite simply – I can. Tonight was one of the rare nights when I went to worship service alone. Ryan is in LA visiting his parents. And it’s not like we chat with each other normally during service, but somehow, by sitting alone, my head felt clear. (I guess that’s one of the clear signs that I’m an introvert.) The sermon tonight was the third in the series “The Truth About You,” and entitled “ You’re Never Really Ready .” Using Matthew 28:16-20 , our pastor talked about how Jesus called his disciples when they were incomplete (just a group of 11) and lacking in faith (“some doubted”) and gave them the Great Commission. He went on to talk...

" For  children are not obligated to save up for their parents, but  parents for their children.     I will most gladly spend and be spent for your souls." - 2 Corinthians 12: 14-15

Peach blossoms at the community garden Every day for the last few weeks, whenever I take walks with Zeke or just look at the cherry tree just outside our back patio, all these thoughts about springtime last year rushes to me. For weeks I've been meaning to write them down, and for weeks I've decided to wait till later, after I'm done writing the literature review for my thesis, after I'm done soaking in my last week at home with Zeke. Well, my birthday has come and gone without me sitting down to write even a basic journal entry (my habit is to do some soul-and-life-stocktaking on March 7 each year), so March 9 2013 is the day I will stop and record some of these things. Blossoming My anemones are blooming! Let's start with that cherry tree. "Oh," I want to tell Zeke - "Oh, if only you could have seen how this tree welcomed your arrival last year!" For a few weeks it was a cloud of white, shedding snowy petals. This winter ha...

This past week was Zeke’s first full week with Jean, our new nanny, shared with another family. And as much as I savored those three hours every day to sit down and focus on writing my thesis or to run errands with both hands free, by the end of the week, I felt this strange unrest – as if something wasn’t fitting quite right. I realized it was because it was such a dramatic reduction of focused, awake, sun-drenched, active hours with Zeke. It was essentially down to just the hours between his waking up and his first nap, because after his second nap, I am usually distracted with preparing dinner. Today is Friday, his stay-at-home day. Ryan took him to lunch and then I got to play with him out in the courtyard after lunch, and then put him down for his afternoon nap in a leisurely way. I’m watching him nap on the monitor right now, his chubby arms folded, his giant head pushed up against a bundle of blankets, his full little legs curled up into a right angle, and my heart is ful...

 Our little baby is not so little anymore (especially his head). Compare the above picture with this one of him at 2 months. When did he become such a giant next to Gund Bear? At 10 months, Zeke... is standing up on his own for up to a minute loves throwing things to the floor from his high chair and looking down for them doesn’t love bananas so much any more has 4 top teeth coming out in addition to the pair he already has on the bottom "waves" when he wants something (stretches out his hand first and then bends his fingers toward the palm) makes "motorcycle hands" when eating (curls his fingers and dips his fists forward and back) is trying to master clapping but his hands misses each other about 50% of the time so he looks like he's vaguely flapping and clapping his wrists turns around 180 degrees when we're eating out a restaurant to look at other people, and then sits that way for half the meal, unabashedly staring loves going “baba...

I continue to venture into unabashedly mushy mom-dom by making valentines on my son's behalf. And I seem to have a higher and higher tolerance for cheesiness. Hallmark has these ads on hulu encouraging people to "tell them" on Valentine's Day - they have people saying what they want to hear from their loved ones, like "You're beautiful," "Let's grow old together," and "In sickness and in health." And despite the contrived presentation, I was moved. Perhaps it's motherhood making my heart all soft and vulnerable, lurching at every sentimental stimulus. Mostly I think it's because this has been a year when we experienced some of these phrases more deeply. We've learned a little bit about being husband and wife in less-than-perfect health. We each had our turn attending to our (somewhat) bedridden spouse the first weeks after I gave birth and after Ryan got his ACL repaired.  And when Ryan told me that I was beau...

We bid farewell to Zeke's zodiac (the dragon) today! Since we sadly miles away from family and since I am not together enough to cook a new year's meal or gather friends together, we had a simple celebration last night with our neighbors in the courtyard - dinner and some performances. Zeke donned his new year's outfit (courtesy of Grandma from Hong Kong) for the festivities. Happy New Year, dear friends! Zeke did NOT want to put on his new outfit, but later on cheered up at the aikido demonstration.

I forgot the Ergo carrier, so Ryan carried a sleeping Zeke for most of the hike This past Thursday we had a chance to head to Santa Cruz for a morning and take a walk by the ocean and enjoy some delicious Italian food. It was so refreshing to get off campus and soak in God's creation for a morning. What a treat that we live so close to the coast and to such gorgeous sights! Cormorants riding the waves Early on in our hike along the coast, we spotted a pod of dolphins!   At another bay, sea lions frolicked in the crashing waves We had lunch at Lilian's, a little Italian restaurant with very warm service. Zeke was impressed by the pasta we had, I swear! (Probably the best gnocchi Ryan and I had ever had.) After lunch, we went to a Brazilian cafe for an acai bowl - acai smoothie topped with granola and fruit. Zeke was a fan, but more so of the waiters and waitresses! He swung around full circle to look at people. ...

I was welcomed home by Ryan with beautiful flowers, and  Zeke, with an initial hard stare and then a hand in my mouth and a big smile. It's good to be back. Zeke started feeding himself while I was gone! A peace offering for my patient boy - a maraca made from a gourd

To cap off a fruitful week in Uganda, we went white-water rafting in the Nile this past weekend. It was my first time really doing white-water rafting (we did some baby ones in Malaysia which totally did not count at all) and I was one part scared, one part excited to be in the Nile. There were 4 rapids in all, 2 Level 5's and 2 Level 4's. The very first one was a level 5, and it was a straight drop! Note my wide open mouth. In between rapids the water was calm. Because we got so hot paddling in between, it felt great to jump in the calm water and paddle and float with cormorants from time to time, and to enjoy the view of the lush river banks. We had gone through three of the rapids and I was feeling pretty good about it - enjoying them kind of like intense boogie boarding. Perhaps we could get through without flipping! (We had practiced flipping once before we started, in calm water, and it was harder than I had expected to get out from under the raft.) The la...

It has been a tremendously fruitful week. On the very first day of interviewing, I had exceeded the goal I had set for the number of teachers I would interview for the entire trip. Every principal I approached welcomed me into their school and helped organize their teachers to talk to me. It was also entirely God's grace that the five schools I visited were so different in size, resources, and the types of vulnerable children enrolled - a rich base from which to compare the experiences of the teachers. And some of these teachers truly inspired me. A lot of the teachers gave textbook responses concerning the vulnerable children in their classrooms, but some of them very frankly talked about the enormous hurdles they face in trying to care for them. Their schools may be lacking resources, but they were clear-eyed about what was needed and offered radical, insightful suggestions. What stuck with me most of all was their sincere desire to love the ones who didn't have much lo...