My Story {Part 4}

{Part 1}
{Part 2}

{Part 3} 

After the early days of life with three little ones, motherhood became easier.  My fourth pregnancy was easier, too.  Though I still had morning sickness (I always get morning and all-day sickness.), it didn't last as long and it wasn't as severe.  It was in the first trimester of this pregnancy that I began blogging.  Benjamin was born eight days before his due date...and we became a family of six. 

Six people in a townhouse can get to feeling a little cramped so we began to tentatively, hesitantly look for a home to buy.  It was a leap of faith because we knew the Lord's hand was on us, but we didn't know if we were financially ready to handle the expenses.  I held back, but Brian said we needed to take the plunge.  We looked and looked and came up dry.  We made an offer on a house and someone outbid us.  We prepared to make an offer on another house and someone beat us to it.  We became discouraged and wondered if there would ever be a house out there for us.

Then we found out we were expecting number five.  Though we were not preventing pregnancy, this one took me by surprise.  I did not feel ready to have another baby.  Benjamin was only fifteen months old, still a baby himself, and we were still living in our rental. 

In August of 2010, I turned 30.  We had been home searching for fifteen months...and learning to bloom where we were planted.  Apparently God was planting us deep within the walls of our townhouse because there were no prospects on the horizon.  Alaine was due in less than a month when we finally surrendered our plans and contented ourselves with making the townhouse work-- arranging the kids' bedroom for Benjamin to move in with them and making space for the coming babe to share our room.  Three days later, Alaine surprised us by arriving three weeks early. 

It was a year ago this month that we first walked into our home.  We passed through its door on a sunny Friday morning and fell in love.  We made an offer and a counter-offer, and just when we thought things were working out for us, the seller decided not to sell and took the house off the market a few days after Thanksgiving.  In a whirlwind of events, she relisted the house again in the winter, we bought it, and we moved at the end of April this year, two years after our home-searching journey began.  Though we were ready to stretch our wings and get some elbow room, it was a little emotional packing up the house we had shared for six years and brought three more children home to live in. 

This summer we celebrated our tenth anniversary.  We reminisced about our years together.  We thought back to the people we were on our wedding day and wondered what those people would have thought if they had realized that ten years later, they would have lived in three different houses, changed careers, and become the parents of five children.

As a little girl, my dream was to be a wife, a mother, a teacher, a nurse.  Today, I'm living my dream. 

My Story {Part 3}

{Part 1}
{Part 2}

Not long after Ryan went away to college and I started my new job, two momentous events occurred.  The first was that my mom found out she was pregnant and the second was that Brian proposed.  The following months were a whirlwind.  My mom was put on bedrest at the beginning of her pregnancy so I was working full-time, helping care for Kati, doing laundry, cleaning, and planning a wedding.  I was twenty. 

In April, my mom had a surprise baby shower and about a week later her water broke with two months left to go in her pregnancy.  They were able to hold off the birth for a few more days, but on Good Friday, April 13, 2001, my youngest sister, Rebekah, joined our family.  She was seven weeks premature, but still weighed close to six pounds. 

When Rebekah was four months old, I got married on August 11, 2001.  Ryan was one of our groomsmen and Kati was the flower girl.  We had a small and lovely wedding, took a week-long honeymoon and came home to settle into our cozy two-bedroom apartment on the second floor.   We had both been living at home with our parents, but we had collected a small amount of furniture and  necessities to set up house. 

I worked mostly days at the college library and Brian worked 12-hour noon to midnight shifts as a manager at the movie theater.  When we had been married only three months, we found out we were expecting, but at twelve weeks, I suffered a miscarriage, on Brian's twenty-third birthday.  We were both devastated. It was weeks before I wanted to do anything besides cry.  Nothing sounded interesting and I wondered how the world could go on around me. 

A few months later, though, I was pregnant again and in December our first little boy, Gavin, was born. I quit my job to stay home full-time and when Gavin was two months old, Brian was hired to work at a Christian lawn-care company which had daytime hours and long-term potential.  Nineteen months later, Madelyn joined our crew.  When she was just three weeks old, Brian's dad passed away after a long fight with cancer. 

Knowing our family was probably not complete, we began to look around for a house with more elbow room.  Not in a financial position to buy our own home, we put in an application at a townhouse complex and were told there was a six-month waiting list, but the office manager phoned us that very afternoon, offering us a three-bedroom townhouse.  It was a bit emotional to leave our apartment after almost four years of precious memories-- the place where we began life a married couple and brought two children home to live, but on the weekend after my brother's wedding, we took up residence in our new place. 

The townhouse quickly became home and Owen was our first child to join us there.  I had severe morning sickness when I was pregnant with Owen.  When I was nine weeks pregnant, I remember sitting in our upstairs hallway wondering how I would cope with another day, let alone weeks, of sickness, but I finally felt relief by the the midway point in my pregnancy. 

Life with three little ones was rewarding but so exhausting.  One day I laid down to nap with the two littlest ones.  Owen was around four months old. Maddie was two and was running a fever. While we were sleeping, Gavin (who was four years old) went upstairs and unwrapped all of the Christmas presents I had squirreled away in our spare bedroom. 

part 4: more babies and another move

My Story {Part 2}

{Part 1}

As I drew closer to end of twelfth grade, I got the standard question, "What are you going to do when you graduate?"  I didn't have an answer so I'd mumble something about finding a job.  I had a job at the county library that I loved, but it only offered part-time hours and my parents said that if I was not going to school, I needed to work full-time.  As a child, I had wanted to be a nurse, but I had no desire to go away to school.   There were several colleges within commuting distance that offered a nursing program, but I wasn't sure that's what I wanted to do anymore.  What I really wanted was to find a man and get married, but in the meantime, my parents insisted I find a job or go to school.  "Do something," they said. 

When I turned sixteen, I had terrified of learning to drive so I was closer to eighteen before I finally got my license in the summer after I graduated.

After hemming and hawing all summer over what I was going to do, I finally enrolled full-time in community college, taking a bunch of general education classes.  I bought an old used car with incredibly low mileage  and I also kept my job at the library, working 20-25 hours a week.  Because I was going to school, I filled a lot of evening and weekend shifts where I was often scheduled to work with another college student, Brian.  It was during our winter break between the fall and spring semesters that we went on our first date-- out to dinner at Applebee's and to a church Christmas program.

My little sister, Kati, was five when Brian began to hang out at our house every weekend.  She loved to tag along wherever we went, whether it was to the corn maze or to Food Lion to grab a loaf of bread or on a walk in the woods. One evening we were kayaking and my dad fell into the shallow pond.  While Ryan and I stood on the shore laughing, Brian reached in a helped him out.  Kati dubbed him "Fisher-boy B" which she later shortened to "B" and the nickname stuck.  

During college, our relationship progressed until we were sure we wanted to get married as soon as we could support ourselves.  Right before my graduation from community college, I was hired for a full-time job in the college media center and I decided not to pursue a four-year degree.  In the week leading up to graduation, my mom started displaying some startling neurological symptoms and I even took her to the ER one morning, but they sent her home undiagnosed.  On the afternoon of graduation, Dad, Mom, Ryan, Kati, Brian, and my grandmother, watched me cross the stage, but I barely remember the ceremony.  What sticks in my mind instead is that at the reception following, my mom had a grand mal seizure and was rushed to the hospital in an ambulance and admitted to the ICU. 

The following days were torturous, as we were told my mom could have suffered permanent brain damage.  Ryan was supposed to leave the following week for college about six hours away.  He considered staying home.  I considered quitting the job I was scheduled to start in a few days, thinking I may be needed to care for my mom and my seven-year-old sister. 

We cried out to the Lord for my mom's health, and miraculously, she came out of the coma and was released from the hospital just over a week after she was admitted.  Though she was put on an anti-seizure medication and unable to drive for many months, there were no more neurological symptoms and no lasting damage.

part 3: ...then comes marriage, then comes baby(s) in the baby carriage

My Story {Part 1}

Since many of you slipped into my blog for the first time during my 31 Days series, I am taking a few days to introduce myself to you and share my story, starting way, way back at the beginning... 

{inspired by Tiny Twig}

I was born in 1980 to a couple of young parents.  My mom was eleven days shy of twenty and my dad was ten days past twenty-four.  They had been married one day short of two years.  I was a little red-haired, talkative baby.  I said my first word at eight months and never stopped after that.  One day when I was around four, I was walking with my parents in the mall.  I talked on an on and on until finally my dad said, "Kristin if you can walk from here to Sears without saying a word, I'll give you a quarter."  Sears was within sight, but I walked only a few feet before I said, "Oh, Dad, it's too hard!" 

I had a little brother who was my best playmate.  We played with our Fisher Price barn, giving our people names like Mrs. Egg and Uncle Max.  We even played Barbies and GI Joe together, though I didn't like it when Ken was more interested in fighting the other Ken than going out on a date with Barbie.  We also had a game we called Cowboy Ronus.  It involved an pretend family.  Ryan was the lead character, Cowboy Ronus and I was his wife, Wife.  One summer afternoon we were playing in the floor of the kitchen and I asked what we were going to name our second son.  (Our first was named Little Boy.)  Ryan peered into the cabinet and quickly decided to name him Pots-and-Pans. 

There were two defining moments of my childhood.  One was when I had just turned eleven and we began to homeschool at the beginning of my sixth grade year.  Fifth grade had been a particularly isolating year at school so I was glad for the new adventure, though I spent a few lonely years of middle school as I drifted from the public school friends I had in elementary school and before I formed the solid relationships I had with a group of friends in high school.  

The second defining moment was when my little sister, Kati, was born the year I turned thirteen.  Though it was an adjustment to have a sister after our family had not changed for eleven years, I thought it was wonderful to welcome a new little person.  I don't remember experiencing any jealousy, though sharing a room with a toddler was a little inconvenient, especially during her naptime.

part 2: life after high school and meeting Brian