Back in the Game!

...and she's back! My laptop met certain demise at the hands of my very ill husband (who shoved it off the bed onto our hardwood floors in his sick delirium) and I in no way had the will to publish from the public library...or any other public venue...so I wound up on an involuntary blogging hiatus.  Until now.  My beautiful, faithful (until dropped) MacBook Pro is finally home where she belongs, begging me to write.  So write I shall.  Or maybe its my whirling thought-life and inherent need to create that's doing the begging.  At any rate, I'm thankful that she's fixed and that I get to utilize my favorite outlet again.  Even if I'm the only one who ever reads this blog (as I'm certain anyone who read it before has long since given up on me), its worth it.

Life has been full in the months since I last was able to post.  In fact, it hardly seems to be the same life at all.  My husband has nearly stopped traveling altogether since he took a job as a worship pastor at a local church.  We also relocated to be closer to said church--and because we had a sudden desire to consume less and save more which made the decision to downsize our home and our lifetime's worth of stuff quite easy to make.  Oh, and we have since made, carried, delivered and brought home a whole other child!  You were spared the drama of "what's the gender?" and "holy cow, how far along are you, you are so huge!" this time around.  Suffice it to say that both were present.  Let it be no surprise that our third BOY was brought home six weeks ago and this mama is thrilled.  He's perfect.  Of course.  Even when he's screaming at 4:00am.  I suppose I owe him a blog post, as per his brothers' posts.  That shall follow.

I'm sure anecdotes from these past months will find their way to these pages, but for now, consider this the high-speed update.  Let's go from here, shall we?

Coming to September

The season is changing again and I'm unprepared as usual. With each shift I find myself wondering where the time went and this season is no different. August was a major month in the Martin house this year; it marked the 6-month birthday for Maddox, who is an utter joy, it brought a Martin family reunion, and the beginning to Logan's longest tour yet.

My baby is 6 months old! Nearly 7, now, and seeing the way that he has settled into this family is a joy that I can't even articulate correctly. It's as though he were meant to be in our family all along, even before he was a light-blue "+" sign on my bathroom counter, he was somehow supposed to be part of our family and no one else would have fit the way he does. There was a Maddox-shaped void in our family that was unrecognizable and unnoticed until he came and filled it. He's quick to laugh, always bright-eyed, patient, determined, constantly moving, working on two little teeth, and trying to sit up. He has enormous chubby thighs and the most perfect little toes I've ever seen--in fact, the nurse who did his footprints in the hospital took 20 photo-copies and shoved them in my bag, making me promise to distribute them to everyone because she too thought they were perfect.

The Martin family reunion was also a first camping trip for this little family, and I'd call it a success. I'm certain Elias thought he'd found heaven. Outside all day, every day, for four days. Little boy perfection. That is until we tried to bathe him in a shower stall. Mistake. Won't happen again. I kept waiting for authorities to bang on the door, demanding the tortured screams be explained. Overall it was wonderful getting to know extended family and introducing the boys to canoe rides, sleeping outside, campfire time and cousins. Elias is still calling most kids he meets "cousin!" and I was regretful to wash the campfire smell out of our belongings when we returned. A close to one of our first family-of-four memories before saying goodbye to Logan for 18 long days.

I'm writing from somewhere in the middle of Logan's east-coast tour and have nothing of substance to say about that, except that it's hard. It's hard to see how Elias misses his Daddy and it's hard making the life-shift that's required when he's on such a lengthy trip. Both myself and my boys (mostly Elias for now) have to mentally move into another way of doing life--the single-parent way where days are a series of carefully crafted schedules to reduce the amount of stress in our home. The nap-time dance, the feeding-time dance, the bath-time dance--trying to meet the unique individual needs of each of my kids at the same time. Every day that I do it alone I wonder in amazement how true full-time single-parents do it. How do they go a lifetime without a partner in the most difficult job I know? I'm thankful for the support system I have in friends and family...without them I would be reduced to a puddle of nerves in the wake of my little ones' demands and my children would be even worse for wear. So for now, each day is a new day and we just keep moving and wishing the time would pass at lightning speed rather than tortoise speed as it often seems to do when one is waiting. Waiting to hear Elias' belly laugh as he wrestles with Daddy in the other room, waiting to hear Logan over the baby monitor in the morning, meaning I'm granted some extra sleep, waiting for this space in my bed to be warm again, waiting for a yummy meal off the grill, waiting for a decompression partner at the end of the day. Waiting for my partner. I'm so proud of the music he makes and the people's lives he touches, but mostly, tonight, I just want him back!

So, to those of you who are sleeping next to your loved-one tonight, enjoy! To those who are single-parents: you're my hero, keep up the good, tough, endearing, important work that you do. And to those who are missing someone or watching the sand in an hour glass for some other reason, won't you please share your time-passing secrets with me?

Toys to Mozambique

Logan has recently partnered with an incredible organization that is changing the world. Food for the Hungry is touching the lives of our world's most neglected and most forgotten and they've let us partner with them in changing the world--thus being changed in the process. As Logan travels and shares his music, he also shares Food for the Hungry's vision of eradicating world hunger through supporting entire communities with clean water, shelter, education, and so much more. He offers concert goers a chance to sponsor a child. A chance to, for a dollar a day, support an entire community of people and send a message to an impoverished child that they are worth something. That someone, somewhere is thinking of them. Loving them, both emotionally and tangibly. Our family recently chose a child to sponsor to ensure that we were walking what we were teaching and experiencing and participating in the changes and the vision that FH is making and casting.

I need my boys to know about our world. About the injustice that they're charged with facing and fixing in the name of Jesus if they choose to follow Him. I want them to grow up with the largest world-view I can offer them. So, I took the picture of the little six-year-old boy from Mozambique that our family is now supporting to try and explain "child sponsorship" in two-year-old language to Elias. I told him how there are kids who live far away that don't have clean water to drink, or snacks all the time, or toys. I told him some of those kids don't have mommies and daddies and they don't have houses like us. I told him how God loves them like He loves him. My precious Elias studied that photo of the little African boy and said astutely, "Sad." True. He does look heart-wrenchingly sad. I recapped what I had just said about him not having everything that Elias does. "No toys?!" Elias exclaimed in disbelief. He hopped off the couch, toting the picture with him and heading for the door, saying, "I go. I go. Give toys, wa-wa, yummies. Make happy! Make happy! I go! I go! I go on plane! Make happy!"

My mommy heart grew and nearly exploded. I was shocked and impressed that he had understood, but more importantly, the answer was so easy for him. He heard of an injustice that his sweet little soul just had to make right and he was certain he could do it. He wasn't bogged down with the cost of plane tickets or the dangers of going into a place like Mozambique. He didn't mentally defer the responsibility of being change to someone else. He just knew that a boy without food or water, or toys for goodness sake, needed help. So he set out toward my front door at age two with nothing but a sad photo of a little boy he's never met, to ensure that that little boy knew love. Tears pour down my face now as I type this because the child-like faith that we're all called to as adults was raw and real in my living room. It convicted me that day. And the compassion and fearlessness in my little boy inspired me. Thank God for my kids, in all the ways that they challenge and inspire me every day of their young lives.

We are only limited by our own lack of faith and imagination. Children are champions of both. It reminds me (with a huge, metaphorical slap in the face) that there's a reason we're told to have "faith like a child." Oh, the things we could accomplish if we all had faith that size! I'm storing that moment with Elias up in my heart and locking it down with all the force I have because I don't ever want to forget his words; because every time I'm challenged to be the hands and feet of Jesus in this world, before He returns to make all things right, I want to hear my son saying "I go! I go!" I will go. Will you?

If you are interested in finding out more about FH and/or child sponsorship, please visit their site: www.fh.org.

Good Morning, Baltimore

I never thought I'd be a public nurser. Those moms who casually pull their shirts up in public and latch their squirming children to their chests nonchalantly, like it's as socially acceptable as holding their hand always left me turning away shocked, even after I had nursed my first child for a full year. No, I'm still not one of those moms. I draw the line at full exposure; but, life has forced me to tote my awkward and uncomfortable nursing wrap around with me wherever I go and feed poor baby Maddox wherever we happen to be when hunger strikes. My first little man, Elias had the luxury of a perfectly planned eating schedule that was carefully crafted to happen in the quiet of our home 90% of the time. As the second-born, Maddox does everything according to his family's schedule, and we are a family on the go.

I had a quasi-out-of-body experience when we were in Baltimore, MD last week, traveling with Logan. He was outside on the phone with our bank, dealing with a financial crisis (note: DO NOT use the photo deposit app for the iPhone through Chase Bank if you want to see your funds in the near future) which left me alone with our two children in an unfamiliar city--the youngest of which was screaming for food. I scooted up to the nearest friendly building, an enormous Barnes & Noble near the harbor. After finding no success in locating a ramp, I pulled Elias out of the stroller, threw it to the ground and lugged my children inside, out of the wind. I had half-hoped someone would steel it: Baltimore, while a fantastic city, is not stroller friendly...and umbrella strollers make me walk like a hunchback anyway (do they not make them for people over 5'5"?). Unfortunately, Logan witnessed my tantrum and rescued my abandoned stroller. Once inside I hauled the boys upstairs to the children's section, the one place I thought I might be safe from glaring onlookers, as Maddox was exercising his right to be heard. Hallelujah! A Thomas the Train set was set up in the cars and trains section: in my memory it was glowing in a heavenly light. Yes! Something to occupy Elias, and even a chair for me to sit in! I plopped down with some quick instructions about not running away to Elias and fed Maddox. Only five minutes into his meal, right as I began to think, "hey, I have this under control," Elias said "uh-oh." It's never good when Elias says "uh-oh." Uh-oh is "I dropped the whole roll of toilet paper in the toilet," or "I just poured your cup of milk into this drawer," or "I poked the baby's eye and now he's screaming in pain." That day, in that moment, it was "I just peed my pants and now there's a yellow river flowing beneath Thomas the Train's tracks right here in Barnes & Noble." This is where I seemed to step outside of myself and see myself sitting there, incapacitated by nursing while my oldest son tracked urine all over the children's section of a public bookstore that was all the way across the country from my home. And I laughed. I literally laughed out loud at the fact that there was a time before I had children, that I thought that parenting would be a breeze. How ironic that I remembered that in a lowest-of-low moment. My funds were frozen in some kind of internet black hole, my oldest son was scurrying around in sopping wet pants, my youngest had just screamed his lungs out to the entirety of downtown Baltimore and was now attached to my chest, rendering me helpless to fix any of the aforementioned issues.

The end of that story simply goes that Logan eventually came to rescue me and we worked out our financial issues before having to head back home, but that was not the end of my public nursing exploits. I would later find myself nursing at the table over lunch in a restaurant, in an exhibit at the National Aquarium, on airplanes, and next to a strange man who smelled like garlic in an over-crowded Chicago airport during a 3-hour flight delay. I imagine that won't be my last war story either.

Life is messy, isn't it? Life with kids is messy. Life on the road is messy...and beautiful. I'm so thankful that we get to travel with our kids. I'm so thankful that at the end of the day I laid next to my husband and partner in life and listened to our two beautiful children sleeping. I'm so thankful to have experiences and stories that make up who I am and who I am becoming. And I'm so thankful that I will never see any of those Baltimore Barnes & Noble patrons ever again!

"Shhhhhhooooo"=Airplane

I am proud to say that my talented husband is officially touring. Elias and I delivered him and the band to PDX early Monday morning and we won't see him again until November 22. I'm thankful for two things right now: 1) Elias and I took an airplane trip to see family in S. California just a couple weeks ago, so he's familiar with the concept, 2) Elias was there to see Daddy go to the airplane. Now every day when Elias wakes up in the morning, and again when he wakes up from his nap, and again when we sit down to dinner and again when I'm tucking him in bed and he asks for his daddy, I can tell him that Daddy left on the airplane and we will go get him from the airplane when it's time. Sounds complex for a 17-month-old to wrap his mind around, but it seems to appease him most days. Now when he asks for Daddy, I can say "where is Daddy?" and he replies, "shhhhoooooo" which, for those unfamiliar with Elias-speak, is code for "airplane."

I have wonderful people who love me checking in on me with the "how are you doing?"s and the "do you need any help?"s and so far my "pretty good!"s and "no, I think we got it"s are the honest truth. I do intentional things to make time move as quickly as possible and hopefully that works for the full three weeks of husband absenteeism. I'm used to going it alone and independence has never been a sorrowful (or lonely) thing for me; what I was not prepared for was how to help my toddler "miss" someone. And not just "someone," but his very favorite "someone." He breaks my heart a little bit every morning when he calls for daddy from his crib and then has to settle for me--again.

The bright side, however, is that Logan is doing what he loves and he's serving God and people in a specific way that not many are called to do. He is so uniquely and perfectly gifted for it, too, that I can't imagine him in any other capacity. Not that he wouldn't be successful: he's one of those obnoxious folks who is good at everything they try, but I don't think anything else would fit him quite as perfectly. So, if you haven't ever had the pleasure of a Logan Martin concert, jump on his site and check out the rest of the tour dates (and a preview of one of the songs from the NEW RECORD), and if you want a laugh or to feel involved (as I SO desperately do) check out the band's video blog. And if you see him before I do, tell him that his two biggest fans couldn't be more proud of him, and we can't wait to see him.

Tour Dates

The Logan Martin Band video blog

Hi to Daddy in Uganda!

Just wanted to let you know what I've been up to. Mom is taking pretty good care of me, but I miss you lots. Lately I've been playing with new toys and hanging out with buddies. Grandma Garrett came to visit us and we had fun with her. I have to get my shots on Tuesday and Mommy is dreading that, but tomorrow we're going carseat shopping because I'm over 20 lbs now and too big for the one I have! There will be lots of changes when you get back, but I tell your picture goodnight every night before I go to bed and I'm ready to hug you when you get here in just 5 more days!


Mommy and I love you and we miss you!


Love,
Elias