Lean In

One of the best things (if I can even call it that) that my son's death taught me was to "lean in." Lean in to the grief, the sadness, the emptiness because there is no other way. Lately our sweet 2 year old has been tough to handle. I say right, she says left. She throws fits over every.little.thing. And bed time-bed time! The once great sleeper now screams and throws fits each night as we forcefully put her to bed. And there is part of me that is tempted to just run from it. Distract her with "things" or rewards instead of doing the hard part of following through with discipline. After a long morning with lots of errands and lots of tantrums I thought to myself on the drive home "lean in." Lean in to this season where apparently she needs more of me than before. Don't resent it, don't make it more than it is-just lean in. Put your routine and your schedule on the back burner for the time being and buckle down on the follow throughs. Lean in. Such a simple thing but hard to do. I'm glad I learned it with my first. The hard part now is leaning with all of our children. Caleb's grief is heightened because of this pregnancy. Abigail's attitude is exhausting. This new baby makes me more and more physically tired as the weeks go on and I get bigger. Lean in. I'm going to keep leaning in because I know that's the answer in the end.

Abigail pretending to be....Can you guess? A pizza slice! She saw a man dressed up as a pizza slice at a festival recently and has not stopped talking about it since!

Baby Boy # 2 at 18 weeks. Looks a lot like an alien to me!

Our sweet first born