Shouting and Weeping, Mingled Together.

"We're not necessarily doubting that God will do the best for us; we are wondering how painful the best will turn out to be." -C.S. Lewis

Yesterday Tahlia said "cicada" and "Eichenlaub" clear as day, hooked-on-phonics-esque. Yesterday I used the season's first swiss chard and zucchini from my little garden. Yesterday I grew to 22 4/7 weeks pregnant with new baby...there is a first time for all things.

Yesterday Kevin felt this little person moving and wiggling beneath my skin and muscle and uterine wall with a tentative MO and I thought, "I hope that's not the last time he feels this tiny one squirm." Yesterday I made at least one overly confident statement about having an October baby - in retrospect, presumptuous to say the least. Yesterday I chose my underwear based on which ones are capable of easily showing blood. Other things don't change no matter how many ultrasounds in a row show a "boring-old-normal cervix" (my perinatologist's words), save for the 5 mm band of mesilene that is keeping me from shear disaster and my fifth child from eternity now instead of later.

Kevin and I are in the middle of our biggest summer project, small compared to years past, but impressive considering that some believe I'm entitled to curling up in my bed and waiting for the leaves to fall. We are "spring"-cleaning our closets and consolidating so that we can empty our guest room closet of all smoky/sweaty camping and climbing gear and make space for all the pink and yellow 2Ts you can imagine. Kevin, resident psychologist on Main St. and 10th, wants Tahlia to be moved into her big girl room and out of her current nursery before any hub-bub with an impending new baby-sized resident...ie:  new room = yay! instead of kicked out to make room. It's going well...I am not the shyest of purgers. But there is hesitance...Elias was born within a week or two of sending our pretentious Christmas cards overflowing with pregnancy announcement; I was admitted to the hospital on bedrest with Elianna the week after we set up her crib, Elias' crib, for her (against my better judgment I might add).

Your baby dying makes you crazy. Your babies dying makes you other. I can't describe it; there are no right words. It is somewhere amidst feeling beaten into submission, feeling forgotten altogether, and feeling somehow chosen and set aside for a task that no one else wants but someone has to take. So I cleaned out my closets today, but unlike you, I seriously waged whether or not it was a wise decision in the eternal scheme of things.

I think things are a bit complicated right now by the underlying notion that if Maura had lived, I would be due with her this week. This, by the way, is the kind of philosophical terrain that I am terrified of exploring. After Elias, I SOOO abhorred the idea that someone would ever take it upon themselves to give me a good reason why it "had to happen," that we waited to get pregnant until after my due date with him had come and gone. (You think you don't like condoms? Try using them when the thing you want most in the world is to be pregnant...sorry, a second uncensored sidebar.) In my mind, this took away the possibility that someone would ever say, in a sweet churchy way of course, "Isn't it amazing? God is just so in control! He knew that He needed to take Elias from you in order for ______ to be here." There's no sweet churchy way  to assault someone in return for such a comment, so I planned on not risking the charge by controlling for conception rather than having to keep my cool. When Tahlia was born within the window of my intended pregnancy with Elianna, I could control for this to a degree by arguing that if God had WANTED to, He ABSOLUTELY could have blessed us with both beautiful girls instead of one...all-powerful, right? Right. But now, I've crossed that bridge. New baby will be our first "interval baby"...a baby conceived within the interval of presumed pregnancy with a a previous baby who has died. Now people will have the opportunity to say stupid things and I will have the obligation of responding. I hate having to respond appropriately when there is no appropriate response to be had.

So I continue on in this strange little otherly way...

• Due this past Monday and in 3 1/2 months.
• "No, she's not my first. And yes, she is my oldest."
• Almost 23 weeks for the first time, although pregnant for the fourth.
• Considering how convenient it will be that we still have not buried Maura's ashes at the Pinnacle with Elias and Elianna - we could take new baby's along and have a dual burial!...and emptying closets to make room for having two children in our home.

Now when you ask me how I am doing and I say "really well," you can be confident that I mean it...but that saying anything else would take 20 minutes, a box of tissues, and several reassuring baby belly kicks to get me through.

We are well. We are blessed. My two year old can say "Eichenlaub." I am the mom of five precious and eternal souls. And I am more pregnant than I have ever been. We are really well.

Many of the...leaders remembered the first temple, and they wept aloud when they saw the new temple's foundation. The others, however, were shouting for joy. THE JOYFUL SHOUTING AND WEEPING MINGLED TOGETHER in a loud commotion that could be heard far in the distance. ~Ezra 3:12-13