Standing up by myself: I can bend down and pick up blocks too 🙂

Miri loves her bike seat!

 

at Cousin Noah’s birthday party

 She ripped up the original “what I love” paper. It read “I love to wave. I like to play “pattycake” and to clap. I love playing with my cousins (and can’t wait to meet Aminah Rezzai). I like being outside. I like to drop food on the floor and watch others pick it up. I love being 11 months!”

Miriam is so close to eating birthday cake! Not too much longer….Mommy has been planning her birthday party for like 3 months now. Geez. The little girl is so active and wants to do right in the middle of everything. She’s moved to two naps during the day. She sleeps better at night (Mommy is going to credit that to the Lord, and to Miri’s new comforter from Ikea). Before she goes to sleep, she decides to be really sweet and laugh and engage in conversation, as if to say “there’s so much to do! I can’t go to sleep….” She will roll back and forth on the bed and think she’s hilarious. In Daddy’s words, “she’s the sweetest bear of all.”

She likes to try out her walking shoes. She is confident to balance herself, but still wants help walking. We make a big deal in this house whenever she does something and she will look at us like “is this ok?” and then start clapping. She trembles with joy at the sight of family, but especially her cousins. They love her too. The best thing is for Mommy and Daddy to watch her eyes when she experiences something new. She soaks it all up like a sponge and there is such wonder in her eyes. Yesterday, she sat in the shade while we gardened for 2-3 hours. She held an earthworm and talked to her blocks, and the grass, and the dog next door…

Miri has always been a little ball of joy, but it’s so fun to see her continue to develop her little personality. She loves to wave at everyone and it’s awesome to see complete strangers stop in their day and wave back. If you want your baby to recieve a lot of attention, go to any BabiesRUs. She’s becoming a little girl now, and although she will always be my baby, she’s not such a little baby anymore. Le sigh. (insert Mommy warm-fuzzy feelings here). Watch out world! Miri’s got places to see and things to do! In a month, she will be a year old and may be walking 🙂

The Christmas season was very eventful for Team Carter. Earlier this month, we visited Jen’s grandfather’s family gathering in Eastover, SC. We stayed in Rock Hill and Christmas Eve-Eve we celebrated with David’s mom’s family. Christmas Eve we went to Ikea to look around just for fun and we went to church with Emily’s family.  Christmas Day included the family coming over for Christmas dinner; however it was unfortunate that Miriam was sick. Nothing serious, just the dreaded cold virus going around. Then I caught it and for four to five days felt like death and then it disappeared. Luckily, Miriam isn’t old enough to care about Santa Claus and such things, so she was happy to just be held/cuddled for a few days. We are doing much better now and David and I were able to spend a day in Asheville, NC at the Biltmore estate. (Thanks Santa for our tickets…it was great!) We really would like to go back and check out the other stuff to do there, but after the house tour, you become a bit overwhelmed by all the lavish details of the place. We ate at Tupelo Honey Cafe (thanks for the recommendation Plavnicks and Bates’) and had the best chicken and gravy biscuits ever! We also met up with Nicole and Nate Plavnick and lost ourselves in a glorious double date amidst books and obscure nooks in Battery Park Book Exchange and Champagne. Probably the biggest Christmas present we could give ourselves was paying off one of our student loans!! Hooray God for allowing us to steward what we have so we can avoid a monthly payment on that!! Also, many thanks to David’s parents for allowing us to live with them for a year so that this could be possible. (We joked that if we lived with them for another 3 years, we could pay off the other loan too….to which everyone laughs because we won’t put them out for 3 more years…) Sure, we’ve made lots of sacrifices this year to not spend so that we could pay off that loan, and it feels SO GOOD to not have it on our plate anymore 🙂 Praise God. Perseverance pays off. In other news, we rang in the New Year’s Celebration at 9:30pm (funny how that works with a kid…) complete with sparkly hats and steak. Miriam liked her steak, but mostly she held it in her mouth, not swallowing it. She does the same thing with pasta. She is really developing her personality. If you leave the room and she didn’t give you permission to leave, she curls her hands up and throws a fit until you come back…then she’s perfectly fine. She was given a lot of new friends (stuffed animals) by family members for Christmas and she holds long conversations with them. She has finally decideed that it’s time to roll over and she usually will do so after reaching for an object while sitting. She loves to practice standing up and holding onto things. Yesterday, she stood alone, while holding onto my leg for about 30 seconds. She also throws herself backwards to be upside down. She also loves to flirt with herself in a mirror = making silly faces, sticking her tongue out and waving. She still has no desire to crawl (just raises her arms and legs off the floor as if Superman, and hopes that will scoot her around) so we are anticipating her to skip the whole crawling milestone and go straight to walking. She wants to be mobile SO bad 🙂 Month 9: Miriam is such a joy! She continues to improve her vocabulary: “bwee”, “ooooo”, “wow”, “woo-dee”, ect. She has her night time routine down and likes to be in bed by 9pm. Her favorite book is “Pat the Bunny”. She is beginning to understand some basic signs and knows “milk”, “more”, “all done” and “good”. She cut her 1st tooth and tooth #2 is also about to come in! (she hasn’t bitten Mommy yet and this is a very good thing). She has mastered the sippy cup. She can almost pull herself up to stand and is getting better at moving herself from a sitting position to crawling stance. She would much rather eat what we’re eating than pureed food. Thus her palette ranges from Indian, Mexican, Chinese, American, ect. Her breakfast go-to is scrambled eggs and sausage and or grits. Miriam went on her first missions trip to Elberton, GA and took part in worship (our girl loves to sing!) and showered lots of people with baby love. She also tried BBQ and loved it! On Saturdays, she likes to putter around the house with Daddy and watch movies and have wrestling matches with him. It’s the cutest!

My dearest Miriam,

You are almost 9 months old. You are supposed to be taking a nap, but you’re not. You are in our room chatting up a storm. I know that you will not have a baby of your own for many years to come, but this is a topic of discussion that has come up numerous times this week (specifically mommies and their birth stories/experiences). Mommy can’t speak for every mother out there. I’m no expert. Her one experience with you is just one of many stories out there. So I’m directing this to you, sweet girl, because one day you will think that what I have to say is golden. (After you are through the “eye-rolling, too-cool-to-listen, mom-you-don’t-even-know” phase). This is a list of things that I hope to remind you of when it’s your turn to be a Mommy (when I’m old & grey and trying to pick out my cool grandma name and can’t remember these things )…

1. You are a miracle. Your child is a miracle. God wonderfully made you both. You both are so special. He wants your baby to come now. Not earlier or later…in the present time. You are a great mom already. God has chosen you over all the other (insert half of the world’s population here) mothers to have this baby; no one else. You make good choices. You are strong and brave.

2. You are not in control. In the same way you can’t choose your child’s personality or eye color. Yes, you have a right to have a birth plan and a right to choose where you will have your baby and how you would like to have that baby in perfect circumstances. You can have your back-up plans too. I hope and pray it goes just like you want it to. Just know that in expectation and planning, you may have to surrender your rights to control what happens. No one will know what will happen to you, until it happens to you. Know that even though you don’t know, it’s ok. God will be with you every step of the way (giving you more wisdom and peace about whatever is happening in every month, trimester, in labor and delivery and in recovery/postpartum).

3. Be careful of the advice you seek. You are pregnant. Everyone wants to talk about it, offer advice, offer their story (whether you want to hear it or not), even if they do or do not have kids. The “suddenly everyone is an expert mommy” syndrome will try to take over your life. People will come out of the woodworks to tell you horror stories. Be careful what you read/watch on the Internet (if that’s still a thing). Glean from the advice you are given, but stay true to who you are and what you believe.

4. I love you and will support you in any way that you need me. If you want me in the delivery room with you, I’d love to be. If you don’t want me present to watch you deliver your baby in zero-gravity-space-like conditions (that could be a thing, right?) then know that I’m not offended. I’ll be there to bake you a casserole or to offer you a shoulder to cry on or to babysit my adorable grandchild while you sleep. I’ll want to visit you all the time, but will respect your wishes if you need some space.

5.  Talk to someone if you need it. It doesn’t have to be me. Your feelings are important. You are not alone. Your experience matters. Speak it out to someone you trust. Cry it out in the shower. Over and over. You do not need to “have it together” in a set amount of time. Every mom is different and every child is different. You and your feelings are valued.

6. Do not feel ashamed. You are an amazing person who carried a person into this world. You sacrificed your body for another. It is easy to compare yourself to other moms (their postpartum bodies, parenting methods, choices, ect.) You can honor every mom by listening to her and respecting her decisions for her family while still doing something different for yourself and your family. You can’t change the past, but you can remind yourself of the truths about who you are. You don’t need to be defensive when you are confident that you know best for your baby.

7. If you want all the gory details, we can talk about it. Just ask.

8. Give your man a hug. (As your mother I’m going to assume your husband…) Talk to him. Include him in your decisions and discuss your feelings. He values them because he values you, the mother of his child. Even though he didn’t push a watermelon out between his legs or have his stomach muscles filleted, he has been through a lot too. He has invested himself emotionally. He has stepped up to be the father you knew he would be. You are his hero for going what you went through to have the one who looks up to him as a hero. And he is a walking zombie, just like you. Love him well.

9. The end result is joy. You will remember the good times and the bad days seem to fade over time. You will remember so many good memories. There are so many good things in store for your family. You will want more kids in the future, I promise.

10. Take some time for yourself. You deserve it and don’t feel guilty about it. Your child is not a burden. Get outside. Join some friends. Have a beer (now that you can again). Enjoy it. And enjoy coming back to your little love. Watch her eyes light up when you walk into the room! It’s the best!

To your greatest adventure! Love, Mom

Who does God say that you are? Who am  I? What are the promises spoken over your life? You see, we forgot ours.

In the craziness that was 2014 with an international move, becoming parents, living and reconnecting with family, transitioning back to life in the States and dealing with our own personal relationships with God…it was a tough year. I just listened to a wonderful podcast from Paul Manwaring (listen to the whole thing:  http://www.paulmanwaring.com/podcasts/rest-recreating-the-i-am-in-me) who was talking about rest–the recreating of ‘I Am’ in you. In it, he’s talking about rest not being a place or a destination or “doing nothing” , but coming back to seeking God to remember who He says you are. When God tells Moses “tell them ‘I Am’ the one who sent you.” Who is the ‘I Am’ in us? What are the promises that God has spoken over our life and who He says we are? Sadly, we forgot. It’s taken a lot of time, reflection, healing (an ongoing process at times) and remembering. We want to remember who God says we are, remember what we have seen Him do in our lives, and remember the promises He has for our future to move forward.

“The supernatural in the wilderness was to sustain us. The supernatural in the promised land is to advance us.” -Bill Johnson-

We believe and we are declaring that 2015 is the year we are re-creating Team Carter. The year Team Carter got their groove back. The year of seeking more of God in worship (in the little things–like how cleaning Miriam’s dirty diapers is worship), rediscovering more of the “I Am” in us–the piece of God that he put in us, restoring beauty, recreation and peace in our family to move forward. The next leg of the journey will be different. It’s a New Year and we are so looking forward to it!

Happy 2015! We hope you have an amazing year, filled with miracles and good things that come from the Father! Much love, Team Carter