In the Cold

This morning we woke up in the dark, like most winter mornings, and sat sipping at our coffee before the Husband got ready to go to work.  We sit at the kitchen table and chat quietly (hoping the kids will stay asleep for a bit) and read, me my Bible and him something else until his new Bible (on a Kindle!) gets here.  (Amazon.com said it would get here tomorrow.)  Sometimes we pick at a little breakfast; he's never hungry and I know I'll be eating again with the kids.  It's a nice chance to connect before he leaves for the day, and if he sneakily tries to let me sleep in I miss it all day.

He leaves before the sun comes up and I'm always a bit twitchy, when it's frozen out, until I know he's safe at work.  He has icy, fast roads to travel and there are deer that like to skitter in front of his car.

As the sun rises, Buddy wakes up--his sister had a restless night and is still asleep.  He snuggles in my arms and we watch the ice crystals hang in the air.  The sunrises have been soft pink lately but today it is blue.  It's 10F outside, and I can tell even before I look at the thermometer by how cold the floor gets near the back door.

In spite of all this the chickadees on the dark fir tree outside the front window are cheerful, like little peasant ladies twittering around a marketplace.  I like chickadees, even though they're considered rather commonplace birds, and now and then I put the stale bread in the yard to lure them here.  They get all my chokecherries too, and welcome to them.

It's been an odd, difficult time lately at our house.  Not that we've been fighting or anything--which is really remarkable, now that I think of it--we've just had a slew of weird and hard things to get through.  Big decisions, sleepless nights, 60-80 hour weeks at work for the Husband, a stressful time with a new boss, and a bizzare array of pregnancy discomforts for me have all conspired to make us a very weary and run-down couple indeed.

Yet God has preserved us from getting sick, batting at each other, snapping at the kids, or turning into gibbering, slovenly piles of unwashed clothes.  (Though I admit the clothes haven't been getting folded terribly promptly.)

Perhaps you could pray for us, both to rest in and be grateful for the gracious faithfulness of God, and for things to get a little easier soon.  It's getting to the point where things are piling up enough that you begin to wonder what is going on--like is there a "make it tricky" switch somewhere that got left on?

Cheers,

Breanna

P.S.
Potty training continues to be sucessful, btw--Buddy is now betraying himself when he uses his diapers by standing up and clapping his hands and making his "yay!" sound like when he goes in the potty chair, so we're getting there. ;)