it may not seem as supernatural as water being turned into wine, or a dead man being raised from the dead...but each of us are witnesses to miracles every day.

i drove down to pittsburgh earlier this week with the boys. kenny was already in town (at the office) and i was going down to meet him for a gathering of our pittsburgh-housegroup for a potluck dinner.

i was driving from a lightened sky into a dark one when my cell phone rang. it was amy, telling me that our friend nikki was going to be induced with their first baby! amy and i were just talking this weekend about how excited we were to find out if nikki and brian's baby was going to be a girl or a boy...what this little baby would be like...and dreaming about all of our kids running around our yards in just a few years time. we hung up and it was all i could do to keep my attention on the road.

adam started fussing, so i reached back to give him my finger for comfort and he grabbed it and immediately fell back to sleep. and then it hit me: the miracle of birth. the miracle of life. the miracle of babies and growth and development. this little hand was squeezing the life out of my finger (babies are born with the tightest of grips!) while just 4.5 months ago he was living without air in his lungs all tucked up nicely inside of me.

nikki and brian are a part of our housegroup. we have known of the life of their baby since they were 4 weeks pregnant. just a week or so shy of him having a thriving human heartbeat! we have been praying for this little baby for longer than he's been breathing and now he is on his way to being born!

during a pregnancy, we trust that a baby's growth and development happen as it should. we have no eyes to see what is happening, but we have faith that it is happening. and when we are finally able to meet our children, we are witnessing a miracle with our eyes.

at our dinner gathering that night, we learned together that nikki and brian welcomed a son into their incredibly loving arms: daniel andrew was born monday evening to a mom and dad who have been praying for him. what a gift to be born into a family who has prayed for you since before your conception!

and what a miracle it is to be a part of the life and growth of a child since their conception.

"For you created my inmost being;
you knit me together in my mother's womb.
I praise you because I am fearfully and wonderfully made;
your works are wonderful...."
Psalm 139: 13-14

i came across the best "meme" the other day and had to share it. it's a fun way to relive your childhood. Go here for directions on writing your own (and an explanation on the derivation of this meme):

I Am From...

...rainbow shirts and friendship bracelets. From the Atari 800 and one of the last VCRs on the block.

I am from the city-suburb: an inbetween of city-lights, and suburb-quiet.

I am from milkweed pods in October and dandelion fuzz in July. From the orange of Grammy's marigolds, and the sting of the crab-apple fights with my brothers.

I am from Cheerios eaten in our rooms on Christmas morning. From the library and the natural history museum on Saturday mornings.

I am from Jameses and Eugenes, Myrtles and Marjories. From liverwurst at Nana's and rutebega at Grammy's. From the Scotch-Irish and the Germans.

I am from conservative, orthodox presbyterianism, who didn't (and still don't) allow women to speak during worship. I am unfrom them now.

I'm from St. Elizabeth's hospital on Ash Wednesday, 1973.

From the spires of Oxford, the charasmatic Anglican church that changed my parents' (and eventually my) belief of worship. And perhaps God.

I am from white-framed paper photos stuck to black-paged photo albums on Mom's closet shelf. I am from wood and metal framed photos on the second floor wall of my childhood home. I am from dozens of Hallmark-store diaries with cheap locks, and shoes boxes of letters from penpals, now ashes.

yesterday was the perfect fall day. the sky was bright blue with big white clouds. the sun was bright, yet it was chilly. the leaves were falling and floating.

i wish you could have been inside of our home for the afternoon because it smelled just as lovely inside as it looked outside. we slow-roasted a rump roast, newcastle style. we had one bottle of newcastle brown ale left (one of our favorites...and since we're in pennsylvania, we have to buy our beer by the case...so this was the last bottle of a case that we bought several weeks ago), so i decided to cook a roast with it. kenny was a bit skeptical about wasting the perfectly good newcastle on a rump roast. the recipe takes a while, but it's easy: carmelize 12 cups of sliced onions, and then throw them in a pot with beef broth, the ale, and a rump roast (and a few spices of your choice - we chose thyme, salt and pepper) and roast on a low temperature for a few hours. i mashed up some potatoes, opened a bottle of our favorite red wine and voila! the perfect meal for the perfect day.

if i were to choose a soundtrack for the day, i'd begin with Joni Mitchell's Night Ride Home, then go into John Gorka's
Between Five and Seven, add a little Bruce Cockburn and Martin Sexton, and end with a nice Eva Cassidy.

and how do you end a perfect fall day? by making ice cream, of course! we have the ice cream revolution, thanks to Uncle Croc (Greg) and it's really easy to use. since the boys are a bit young to really shake it up and roll it around hard enough for the 20 minutes it needs, kenny and i did most of the rolling and shaking. although the boys had enough fun adding the rock salt and ice cubes. and of course, eating the ice cream.

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you'd expect parents of a newborn to be sleep deprived, right?

what about parents of a four-month-old? or a two-year-old? or even a three-year-old?

kenny and i are sleep deprived. our infant son, who slept for 8 straight hours at night for weeks after he was born has decided to wake several times during the night. he is even waking his daddy up (which never happened in the beginning) and (i'm so lucky!) his daddy gets up with him in the middle of the night as well! thus, we are both sleep-deprived.

our older sons share a room. rowan (3 years old) has decided that 6:09 a.m. is a great time to wake up for the day. when he wakes up, he wakes the entire house up. if we had neighbors closeby, he'd wake them up as well. so sawyer, bleary-eyed and oh, so tired wakes up with him. in october (and in the coming months), 6:09 a.m. is as dark as 2:37 a.m., or 12:56 a.m. he didn't believe me when i told him it wasn't morning. afterall, daddy had already left for work, so it can't be the middle of the night.

and yesterday, after waking at o-dark-hundred, neither older boy had a nap. you should have been at our dinner table last night: much screaming and yelling and carrying on, and not much eating (i'm talking about the boys, not kenny and me. although we were close to it!).

i write this not for pity, but for company. i just want other sleep-deprived parents to know that you are not alone. we're all sleep-deprived. i think there is something in a book somewhere written at the Beginning Of Time that parents of children under 16 don't get any sleep. and then, i am told, they still don't sleep because they're up worrying about their 16-year-old behind the wheel of a car.

what about parents of 20-or 30-somethings? I think my parents sleep very well at night. (right?)

congrats to (my brother) jonathan, rachel, sadie and gabe on charles elliott's arrival this morning!

little charlie ain't so little - he weighed in at 10 pounds and was 21 inches long!


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