. . . lately, so badly. Many ideas, lots of God-given inspiration and fortification in this, the latest leg of my life journey, and a lot of dreaming and hopeful anticipation as well as some trepidation about all the decision-making in my near future, yes, all of this swims in my blurry mind, like koi in a murky pond. But the glittering flashes of silver and orange don’t stay still long enough for me to articulate the detail of any one individual thought-fish, much less connect any of them to another. I believe it is because I am so very tired. It’s as if the back of my brain is a black ocean of dizzying fatigue and the waves wash forward over my consciousness perpetually, leaving no dry clarity on the sands of my cognition. My mind is darkened, slow, heavy, yet constantly swirling. I am thankful when my duties and my children cause me, even for just one moment, to get my head up out of that black ocean and into the nourishing, bright sunshine.

My biggest challenge with the fatigue is the state of mind, the attitude, the crankiness that automatically accompanies the presence of the black waves. I am not as willing to answer my childrens’ precious questions, I am not as willing to play, I am not as willing to go into depth with their school subjects, I am not as willing to prepare healthy meals. Hold on, that isn’t the right way to put it, I am willing to do all of those things, but my flesh is so weak!! Can I transform the accompanying features of my fatigue? Do I hold the power to attach kindness, mindfulness and intention to my tiredness? Am I able to still put my childrens’ needs above mine when I am this worn out? Can my sleepiness be a signal to trigger thoughtful creativity, rather than emotional reactivity in my daily dealings? (My dad recently pointed out that “creative” and “reactive” are such similar words, just move the “C.” And if we can take the time to see [C] before we react, maybe we can respond to our circumstances more creatively. Brilliant, I know.)

Current brain science says that I do have that power. It’s called Neuroplasticity. Neuroplasticity is the power that attention exerts over the more automatic functioning of the brain. The act of choosing what we attend our thoughts to transcends our automatic brain function, and the coolest part? If we consistently make the same choice in response to a certain stimuli (in my case fatigue) our brains will actually create new pathways! They will rewire so that the thoughts or intentions we choose with our conscious attention becomes our automatic response to that stimuli! I got this info from The Mind and the Brain by Jeffrey Schwartz. Further, in How God Changes Your Brain, Newberg and Waldman state that they found that when we focus our thoughts on God, we are working in the part of our brains where compassion develops. They found conclusively that thinking about God makes one more compassionate.

I’m thinking that if I meld these ideas, if I focus on God more and more (He isn’t ever far from my thoughts already, but I could use some more intention in those thoughts), and I try to redirect my automatic response to my sleepiness to thoughts of my Lord and His attributes and taking those on myself . . . WIll it be a POOF! kind of scenario? Like, POOF! Despite my exhaustion, I’m still the mother/teacher/food preparer I want to be? Or better yet, POOF!
I’m a better mother/teacher/food preparer than I’ve ever been AND I still get to be pregnant! The funny thing is that if I simply prayed and asked the Lord to help me to be more disciplined, patient, present and creative in my responses to my kids, despite my fatigue, I think I would have pretty much covered all of the neuroscience bases, in that simple prayer! I am still thankful that God supplies me with information that I find interesting AND that declares the glory of His creation AND that inspires me in my Great Endeavor (mothering and everything that goes with it).

Well, here it is I suppose, the new post I’ve wanted to add. And it came from a murky koi pond, no less.

And a photo for the photo ones:

My camera was on 20x zoom to capture that little guy. How come his eensy-teensy body can send a clear and beautiful song out further than a camera can clearly capture him from?

And the books I mentioned:

I know there are probably more than a few people who check in here periodically, just to look at the pictures. This is not the post for you, but then, you already know that because of your sneaky, fast eyes!

I just feel there’s so much to catch up on! But the most important thing, the one that is going to take my life and thus this blog in a totally new direction, is that I am currently 6 weeks pregnant with our fourth child. See what you photos-only people miss?

If you’ve been following for a little, you probably remember the fourth child journal I started in Spring of 2009. And then there was nothing to report for a long time. It became an inward journey for me to answer the question, “Should we have another baby?” And I did continue the fourth child journal, but it was way too personal to share. It was such a big question and I didn’t want to have to find the “right” answer, I wanted something to just happen to answer it for me. But at the same time, if we were going to conceive, I wanted to do it conscientiously. There was a lot of back and forth for both Sid and I. But we both ended up on the same exact page in mid-December. We want another child! One more feels just right to both of us. We feel that when we are at our best (well-rested and priorities straight . . . this is most of the time I should mention), heaven on earth is spending time all together loving each other and sharing life.

If you don’t already know, Sid almost died 17 days before June was born. She probably would have been born sooner, too, but I asked her to not come out until Daddy was home from the hospital. My midwife also suggested that she may not come very soon after his emergency surgery because of my stress and it’s chemical influence over my physiology. So surrounding June’s birth, we had such immense gratitude that Sid was alive to know her and raise her and that has really effected our experience raising her. Also, being that she was our third child, we were experienced parents and felt much more comfortable knowing what we could just “let go.” And we learned to let even more go (some, at the sight of the condition of our home, might contend we’ve let too much go!), and while it was a challenging time when she was little, it was a wonderful time. We can’t help but feel we’ve come to a place in our parenting, in our spiritual journeys (the two are inherently intertwined), that a fourth child will bring us even more unspeakable joy. Already we savor hearing Jonny’s, Aveline’s and June’s thoughts about the bean-sized baby and what it will be like for them to have a teeny baby come live with us and join our family. We get to give each other those knowing glances, when we’re afraid that any outward expression of our relishing their ideas will influence their continued sharing. You know those, right? Those glances are a whole new level of romance, I must say!!

So that’s where we’re at. It’s early, which can be scary, I did miscarry once and didn’t even know for sure anything was wrong until 10 more weeks from where I’m at now with this one, so I’m just taking it one day at a time and praying this lovely prayer that I found in The Jewish Pregnancy Book:

An Eighteenth-Century Prayer for Every Day of Pregnancy
Lord of the Universe, Ruler of Hosts, all creatures look hopefully to You. In their time of trouble they look to You for salvation. And even though I am not worthy to come before You with my prayer, I harden my resolve and approach to humbly place my request before You. Just as You remembered Sarah, heeded Rebekah, saw Leah’s sorrow, and did not forget Rachel, just as You listened to the voice of all the righteous women when they turned to You, so may You hear the sound of my plea and send the redeeming angel to protect me and to help me throughout my pregnancy.
In accordance with Your graciousness, save me from all harm, sickness, hurt, disability, and pain. Be gracious to me so that the child I carry not be malformed, and grant me an unconditional gift from Your finest treasure trove. Listen to the prayer that springs from the deepest recesses of my heart, and let the child I bear within me be righteous, good, and proper. Strengthen me and gird me so I shall not miscarry.
Be gracious unto me and listen to my prayer, for You listen to the prayers of all who call upon You. Blessed be the One who listens to prayers.

And for you photos-only, I still want you to get the gist of this post, so here’s a photo after all.

Of course I took a picture of the test!! It’s too crazy, not knowing one minute, and then knowing the next! You’re asking a little plastic thingy to tell you whether your life is about to change drastically and unalterably. It was a truly joyful sight sight for me and I wanted to capture it, I’ll surely not be seeing one of those ever again, tested from my own hormones. Just think, that second line could be the first evidence of what will turn out to be a 80-90 year life! Another person, sacred to God, a soul whom He knew before it was knit together in it’s mother’s womb! I get to be a part of that! Could anything be cooler?! Of course I took a picture :)

I continue to dream, dream of the time to start trying to conceive, dream of the delight in wondering whether I’ve conceived, dream of the time to take the test, dream of the results. It is hard now, to keep my mind off of it, but I’m sure the best time to try for our fourth and final child is a bit later. The more time goes by, the less sure I am of our choice to get pregnant, but the more sure I am that I want four kids! Can that possibly make any sense?

June is still so little, though her initiation and success with her own potty-training suggests otherwise! And Sid wants to take a family vacation to Tokyo at the end of Summer. It will be nice to not be pregnant while traveling. It feels right in my heart to wait until after June is 3 to give birth. So hopefully, conception will occur sometime this fall, maybe around my birthday? We’ll see.

At an estate sale a few weeks ago I was picking out some books to buy and I came across a copy of Name Your Baby and I had to get it due to the fact that it was only 50 cents. It has been fun to go through it page by page and, again, dream. I was surprised to see the name Aveline in there. And I’m even more surprised that the name is so rare, given that it was included in that book which was printed in 1986 (it seems to me that every mother would want to name her baby daughter Aveline!). Just now I found a post-it note on one page in the girl names section with “Jessica Jennifer Shannon Monica” scrawled on it. So fun to come across an expectant mother’s dreaming! I do the same thing, practice writing out the prospective name, middle name with Stankovits trailing. Then if it looks good, I write out the names and middle names of those of us who already exist alongside. So fun! Sometimes, when I get just too pumped about this other little person I want to raise so badly, I think that if I write out my current favorite names (one boy and one girl name) and decorate the paper with my bestest creativity, then that’ll stave off my baby appetite for a while! I haven’t quite gotten to that point yet, though : )

So much to look forward to! Summer trips and a break from structured education, a possible trip to Japan, starting a new semester with a new educational philosophy and a possible pregnancy somewhere thereafter! Life is so good, God is so good. And that’s where I’m at with that.

Looks like I overpaid for my copy!!