Update on Simon

Yesterday, Simon had a check-up on his eyes.  You might remember that he has Accomodative Esotropia, or the medical term for crossed eyes.  His glasses are an effort for correction, and we went back to the doctor to check on his progress.  He goes to Children's Mercy in Kansas City.  Since he had an appointment first thing in the morning, we spent the night at a hotel the night before.  Eliza thought this was great fun; Simon wanted to go home as soon as he saw his pajamas come out.  Let's just say it was a very long night.

So far, glasses aren't helping as much as we'd hoped they might.  This means that starting today (right after nap, actually) we will begin patching his right eye in order to strengthen his left.  He will have to wear the patch for two hours every day.  As mama, I'm a little nervous about this because I forsee him constantly messing with the patch.  He's a stubborn, willful little guy, going through a phase of tantrums.  I'm hoping that he'll take to them better than I anticipate, as he did his glasses, but the patches are adhesive and they will obstruct his vision rather than directly helping it.  My hope is slim. 

The doctor told Nick (who was the one to take him; Eliza, Levi and I stayed at the hotel) that she anticipates he'll need surgery.  We have another appointment at the end of April to check his progress.  There is hope that the patches will help and we can forestall the surgery.  From what Nick told me afterwards, however, the doctor feels surgery is a pretty sure thing.  The purpose of the surgery will be to lengthen the muscle that is turning his eye inward.  There are lots of technical details about that, which I'm not going to worry about just yet.  Let's see how we do with patching and wait to hear what the doctor has to say in April.  Then, I'll worry.  Then, we'll see what all surgery will entail.  For now, I'm taking a wait-and-see attitude.  That attitude is a saving grace, because I'm truly not worried or uptight about the possibility.  Better yet, though, I know my son is in God's hands, and that God loves him even more than I do.  (Hard to imagine, as I adore that boy!)  I trust Him to take care of my Simon. 

In the next few weeks, you might be looking for pics of Simon's new glasses.  His prescription changes, and we went ahead and decided to fork over the money for some Miraflex frames.  These are nylon frames that are bendable and pretty much indestructable.  We let him try on a sample in the office at Children's Mercy.  He immediately started smiling.  When we tried to put his old ones on (which he doesn't like to be without), he surprised us by taking them off and throwing them on the floor!  While this was a more expensive option than just replacing his current lenses, we feel we've made the right decision.  There are times the nose pieces seem to bother him and the frames he wears now often need adjustments from his various spills, mishaps, and how often they go on-and-off.  These will not have any of those issues.  As often as this poor kid hits his head and falls down, I won't have to worry about his face getting cut again from his glasses.  Plus, we picked out a fun new color.  Keep yours open. ;)

The View I wanted.

Last month, I wrote about how I wanted to focus less on resolutions and more on five important prayers for this year.  These stemmed out of a growing desire to be intentionally in prayer and to grow in my prayer life.  Before the new year had even begun, I made a few action steps, which I'll share with you next week.  The first was to create a prayer table.

Inspired by this lovely article over at aholyexperience.com, and especially the beautiful photograph of their prayer bench, I knew that I needed a dedicated place.  A place that when I entered it (or technically, sat down to it) I immediately entered a place of hush, a mindset focused on the sacred.  It may not always feel that way in that special spot; it may not always be possible to sit there, but having a regular place immediately sets you in the mindset of prayer.  Daniel prayed regularly at windows facing Jerusalem (Daniel 6:10); Christ, though he was itinerant, always sought a quiet and lonely place.  For mine, I wanted a place to sit.  I have lots of closets, some large, some small, some very odd (the top of a set of stairs, anyone?).  I could create a real prayer closet.  But closets are dark and cramped, and I cannot disassociate them with lurking spiders. No, I wanted a prayer table, one that sat before a window where I could look out and pray.

I knew the window I wanted.  It's view is one of my favorites in the house.  It is the front window in what was our living room when the second floor of our home was our apartment.  I fell in love with our home looking out that window at the changing leaves the fall we moved in.  I watched the seasons change on the boughs of the trees outside.  It's a view of our block, well-kept homes across the street, our little yard out front, a quiet sidewalk.  It's the "pretty" view, the aesthetically pleasing one, though the winter days without snow may not be it's best aspect.

However, there is no room for a table there now.  That room has morphed into our bedroom.  There is just enough space in between that window and our bed for me to walk around and climb in bed.  There's no room for a table, let alone a chair.  And considering the furniture and doors and fixtures in there, a rearrangement isn't practical.  So the consideration began for a different window, a different sunny spot. 

We have a large home with many windows.  It would seem easy to find one I liked, wouldn't it?  Yet with the configuration of this room, the purpose of that one, it left me with little choice.  I ended up in the laundry room.  The view from there looks out on the roof of the addition to the back of the house, which obscures most of the yard unless you are standing up.  Beyond our yard is our slightly derelict garage (the current use of which is solely for the storage of many things, mostly "handed down" to us by previous owners of this house), and beyond that, the alley and our neighbors' backyards, and beyond that, the streets to the west of ours.  To the east (looking out the window I wanted) is an area of town with beautiful old homes.  To the west, the homes are more modest, and many not as well kept.  This is not the view I wanted.

I wanted the prettier view, the more inspiring, the one that makes me feel more at home.  The one with the well-kept homes and graceful boughs, and where, frankly, when the trees are in leaf, we seem a little cocooned behind a veil of green. Somehow, the view out the back reminds me that I live in an area called The Box.  Just beyond the trees, just barely out of sight, is the store where two police officers were gunned down.  Down my alley sometimes comes a woman who scrounges through our trash cans for things to salvage.  If it's not her one day, another it's an older man.  But this is the window where we had space to set a table, where I could easily plug in my computer should I need it or the Bible software on it.  And this is where I can see the most of the neighborhood where I live and for which I feel called to pray.  I wanted the one, and I got the other.

But life is like that, isn't it?  We might want something, but we find our path leading elsewhere.  Proverbs 16:9 says, "The mind of man plans his way, but the LORD directs his steps." Whether you take this to mean that the Lord will perhaps take you on a very different path than you might have planned for yourself, or that perhaps He will simply guide you along each of the steps it takes to reach your goals, I think it points to one very important truth: it is the Lord who moves us forward, who will direct us in the way we should go.  Whether we set a certain endpoint in our sights but find our path moving to the left of it, God is there, directing us towards Himself and towards His will.  Whether we simply ask the Lord to take us on a journey in faith, if we set out like Abraham with a general idea of direction and let the Lord guide us, He is there.  Is my table at the back window a divine appointment?  I don't know.  But I see how it better meets His calling on my life at this moment.  My view at my prayer table shows me how I must pray; it reminds me that I am praying for my neighborhood, not merely myself.

I've been able to sit at my table regularly for more than a week now.  One glorious afternoon, I had the window open and listened to bird song, funky bass beats on car stereos, traffic gliding past, and random conversations walking down my alley.  Now when I am praying to love my neighborhood, I am looking right at it. 

I don't always get to pray there.  Sometimes, it's overwhelmed with the laundry, the primary (secondary?) purpose of that room.  You saw it's state yesterday.  It's a give-and-take.  Sometimes, the laundry is neglected so that I can pray.  Sometimes, when I've actually caught up on the piles and piles of clothes, those piles spill onto my prayer table, shunting me down to my messy dining room table.  (Yes, I lack a certain something as a housekeeper, don't I?  I'm becoming rather reconciled to it.  But that's another prayer.)  Still, I hope I will be there more often than not. 

For now, it is more important that I find myself at some table, bowing my head in the presence of my Lord.

Monday Musings

(To be honest, I might, just might, be writing to avoid the piles of laundry sitting just a few feet from me.  I also might be writing just to share with you what's been filling my days.)

I'm sitting at my prayer table in my laundry room.  You haven't seen it yet, but you will.  It's beautiful quiet right now, with three sweet heads laying down in sleep: Simon in his bed, Levi in his, and Eliza snuggled up in Mommy and Daddy's, her head upon Mommy's pillow and a book falling from her hand.  There are so many things I'm thinking as I look out my back window, watching birds wing from tree to tree and listening to the sound of traffic, that weird amalgam of industrial/modern with nature that makes up the urban landscape.











 

My laundry room at this very moment.

Today, Eliza was Cinderella.  She told me I was Cinderella, too.  And the happy look of belief on her face was one which I wished I could mirror.  I don't feel like a fairy princess.  I feel like a fat, frumpy housewife whose hair is never in place, who has long given up on the wonder of makeup.  My house is certainly not in order, as Cinderella's would be.  After all: she spends her days cooking and cleaning and knows how to make a floor shine and a window glisten.  My kitchen is full pots needing washed, dishes needing cleaning, every floor is dusted with crumbs from a toddler boy who likes to carry his food and mash it as much as he likes to eat it, and well... There's that aforementioned laundry.  But my daughter does see those things when she looks at me.  Instead she smiles, her face lit by the beauty of certainty and love, and called me "Cinderella Mommy."  She was pink Cinderella, and I the blue.  And all the way to the library and to Walmart she called me that.  Daddy is my prince, she told me (indeed, he is) and Simon is hers.  She looked at me with those piercing blue eyes and said, "Mommy, all boys should be princes."  Indeed, they should, sweetie.  And you deserve one who certainly is, precious girl.











Yesterday, I went into church with a heavy heart.  The Lord has been working in my heart.  Exposing sin, bringing me to my knees in repentance.  My heart was heavy, not from guilt or breast-beating, but just for some relationships gone awry.  For the feeling of "other" I sometimes have in my own church-body.  Is it possible to change and for others to see it, when they only see you once a week?  And do I have a place of belonging better than I really understand, or is there some work to be done?  How do I know what's right and true or just my perception of things?  There is a perfect storm gathering, I feel, where the Lord is going to do some work.  I don't remotely believe I am at the epicenter, but I see Him drawing some things together to do a little maintenance in my life.  This deep calling to sit here at this prayer table and spend time with Him.  Our Bible study is now going through Priscilla Shirrer's Discerning the Voice of God and the first week admonishing us to expect Him to speak.  Yesterday morning, He did.  The opening bars to "All Creatures of Our God and King" begin, and a still small voice whispered, "Worship me."  Don't worry about all those other things, Stacey.  Don't take upon yourself the work that might be Mine.  Leave these things to Me; leave them at My feet, and worship Me.   The tears began to flow and I worshipped.

(That is not to say that I left them there, at His feet, and let Him be God.  By evening, I was handling them again, worrying over them, studying them like they were a Rubix cube.  And again, I had to realize that I cannot hand Him something for a time and then take it back.  I had to put them back into His hands again.  Then it was "Follow Me.")


 

Tomorrow, is a busy day followed by another busy day, followed by another busy day.  I find myself longing for the quiet ones.  Do you ever do that?  Stop to look at your calendar and note all the penciled-in or candy-colored spots?  When did my days begin to look like Valentine's conversation hearts?  It's a wonder anything gets done at all, the way we run around.  I can't say, "like a chicken with its head cut off," because at least, at some point, the chicken quits running!  Perhaps we're more like the proverbial hamster on its wheel.  We need to slow down, as afternoons like this, with quiet enough to hear the person in the next room breathing, will begin to disappear.

If my people...

You know this verse, don't you?  It comes up often, especially on these new-fangled word/photography combo-pictures that are becoming so popular on blogs and Facebook.  (I've heard them called memes, but upon looking up that word, I'm not sure if that's the correct terminology or not.)  However, if you haven't seen it somewhere, if you aren't as familiar as I'm assuming you are, here it is in it's full:

If my people who are called by my name humble themselves, and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven and will forgive their sin and heal their land.    -2 Chronicles 7:14

I hear this verse so often.  It may be ironic that I hear it most often around election time.  Its frequency could almost make it into a cliche...

However, it is on my heart.  Earlier this month I published my five prayers for the new year.  At that time I'd committed myself to praying daily.  Oh, and I do.  I pray a little here.  I pray a little there.  I pray every night as I'm drifting off to sleep.  But neither prayer nor the Lord has my full, undivided attention.  I'm always doing something else.  Like dishes.  Or going to sleep.  I fulfill my commitment by the letter but not the spirit of the Law.

And then I read this blog posting from TUMI (The Urban Ministry Institute).  Please, read it.  Go, now.  I don't even mind if you don't finish my own post, if you will read it.


Convicting, yes?  It even has that nifty verse at the top.  But seriously, it hits the bulls-eye on the matter.  It sums up everything in my mind the past few months, except I've not had opportunity to drive a woman to rehab or to help a young man fill out a resume.  (Where can I sign up to be so useful?)  

And then, within a few minutes, there was this dropped into my inbox, Ann Voskamp's call to be a radical Christian right where you are.  You can go read it, too.  I'll wait.

It hits all the questions I've had the past several months.  Maybe the past few years since my active role in ministry in any form has shrunk as my duties at home have grown with each successive child.  I long to minister, to serve the Lord in a tangible way.  I see my children as my first ministry.  Don't doubt that.  I know and feel the importance of their upbringing.  But I don't think I am supposed to hide behind my role as mother, to allow it to become an excuse for not serving in the church in any capacity.  We are called to serve, not just our Jerusalems (our families), but outside the familial bonds as well.

I've felt powerless, useless, and unworthy to serve in my inner city church, to be a student in the local TUMI classes because I don't do such things as Adria Medlen does, that I don't reach thousands of readers and have opportunities to travel as Ann Voskamp does.  I know God has pulled on my heart strings to be in prayer, earnest prayer.  But is that really enough?  It seems so little.  It feels like a cop-out.  But the point that it is hitting home to me is that any and every endeavor should begin in prayer.  It should begin in a time seeking God, seeking His face and His will and His wisdom.  I know that my call at this time is to pray.  But how can I hear any other calling if I am not sitting at His feet, ready to listen? How can I develop His eyes to see what needs to be done and to tap on His power to extend beyond myself and my own means to do it, if I am not spending daily, concentrated time with him?

I'll confess, my first reaction was this: Where will I find the time?

Already, I rise at 4:00am to have study time and to workout with my husband.  The study time is technically supposed to be an hour long with time to pray.  But when you factor in that I nurse my son, do a few toiletries, and change into workout clothes before going to my study, you'll realize I lose twenty minutes there, if I wake up with my alarm.  And then it takes me a good ten minutes before  my head is on straight enough to open my Bible or even think.  The minutes slip away so that I have only a few, and I study.  My children are almost always awake by the end of the workout, or shortly after.  From then on I am running, running, running.  Running to get milk and breakfast, to change diapers, to change clothes, to clean up messes, to provide preschool, to load up the kids to go to our various activities and commitments....  The list goes on, as it always does in motherhood.  Naptime comes and I finally get a shower and then there is food to prep, a kitchen to clean, laundry to fold...

Where will I find the time?  I have that book, "Too Busy Not to Pray", and I know all the advice.  My head pounds it into my heart every day.  And yet, I spent a few minutes on the edge of my couch, rocking my infant son back and forth and thinking, "Where will I carve the time?"

But if His people will humble themselves...

I am His person.  I am His.  I need to humble my agenda, perhaps humiliate it if necessary, and take the time to pray.  Let the dishes rot in the sink.  If I want baggy, saggy camel knees like John, I need to kneel down and do it.  If I want to be known to be reliably praying every day like Daniel, I need to carve out the time and do it.

Will you do it with me?  Are you His person, too?  Have you found the time and the place that is uniquely His?  Will you find the time, make it, carve it out for just Him and Him alone?

Find me next week, same place and time, and I'll let you know how I do.     

I'll be good... tomorrow.

Those words are the death knell to any good diet. 

I confess, I spoke them on Sunday.  I sat down to make  my to-do list for the week.  To clear it, I have to actually accomplish (accomplish) at least three items each day.  Not work on, actually complete.  I could feel the blood draining from my head.  The immediate thought?  I need some hot chocolate.  Something warm, as our living room (and much of the house, on our new energy regimen) is a bit chilly.  Something comforting, before my blood pressure rises and I start to stress.  Of course: hot chocolate, as there's no chai to be had in the house.  And of course, there must needs be marshmallows....  As I pulled the bin of hot chocolate mix from the pantry, I thought to myself, "I'll be good tomorrow."

Granted, "tomorrow" was the date on which I had intended to start converting our current diet (which isn't bad, but a little carb heavy), slowly and surely, over to a more P90X-friendly/get-in-shape/healthier-eating diet.  Our monthly budget starts over this week, so there is a fresh well of cash to go towards perishable salad stuffs, veggies to fill the crispers (and confound my cooking skills...) and other such items.  We started the program on a Monday; it made sense to me that our diet would start on a Monday.  We'll begin with more protein-packed breakfasts.  I will move up to compose salads in jars for lunches: the kind with the vinaigrette on the bottom, the veggies layered next, a lean protein, the lettuce on top to keep it dry and crisp.  Shake to coat, upend in a bowl, and enjoy.  But that was all "tomorrow".  I had today to be bad, right?

The problem is, there's always tomorrow.  Much like the song the red-haired orphan sings, much like Scarlett O'Hara's desperate (and likely unrealistic) reassurance to herself against another blood-red sky, it's only a day away, and it's a new one.  There's always tomorrow. 

It should really be: today.   If I wait for tomorrow, "tomorrow" never technically, actually comes. I need to start now.  Today, I'll be good. Today, I'll have tea with only a small drizzle of honey and lemon, instead of that cup of hot chocolate.  Today, I'll eat the ham-cheese-spinach quinoa cups for breakfast and not the oatmeal chocolate chip pancakes I made for the kids.  I'll start gathering salad ideas and making vinaigrette today so that it's ready if I don't have the lettuce for salad right now.  I'll be good.  Today.  Today is just one day.  I can take things one day at a time.  And maybe by the end of P90X, or even a second round of P90X (Lord willing), I won't have to tell myself to take it one day at a time.  New habits will be formed, new tastebuds tingling, and hot chocolate will be nice once in a while.  But for now, let's just start with today.

Not tomorrow.

Isaiah 12, and oh, the Friday Quick 5

1. I'd promised myself I was going to start using more pictures on my blog.  However, I don't understand the whole photo-sourcing things on blogs when I look at the Wiki sites where you can pull pictures.  It doesn't work like MLA or Turabian, therefore I don't understand.  My photography skills aren't good, but at least the images are all my own.  However... I'm really bad about actually getting the pictures taken.  You see the downward spiral, don't you?

2. The kids have been getting up early again.  Just a few blessed weeks, they slept in until 7am or later.  Now it's all early mornings.  It's seriously cramping my style.  But then, I can't complain when the early morning is filled with laughter and squeals as they play "Lion" with Daddy.  (Basically, Lion consists of Nick roaring and chasing the kids, then suddenly running off to hide for them to come find him, where it starts all over again with the roaring.)  Yesterday was a particularly happy morning as I made his sandwiches for work and they played for several minutes before he had to go out the door.  I love this life as a family.

3.  P90X really is kicking my butt.  I've lost so much of what I gained last time.  Let it be a lesson to me.  Today is the first day I haven't woken in a great deal of muscle fatigue and pain, and that's because I could do very little yoga yesterday.  My muscles just won't support me.  4am is kicking my butt, too.  Nick has a vacation day today, so we're working out during naptime, and we slept in.  Suddenly, 5am isn't such a bad time to get up.  Unless, of course, your not-yet 2 year old is crying to get up....

4. Can I just say that it's been a rough week?  I'm trying very hard not to complain or go on about the bad things, but to focus on the good things.  Still, it needs to be said: it's been a very rough week.  So much on the heart.  One of the young men in our congregation is in ICU with a blood clot on his brain; please, please pray for him.  My grandfather was in the emergency room, unresponsive, yesterday.  He's ok now, but we are realizing more and more that his remaining time here on earth is coming short.  Our congregation lost a very sweet lady this week.  I think she was ready to go.  From those closest to her (my parents are among those; my mom greatly misses her friend), she'd begun to take on that look, deep in her eyes, like she was really in another place, that her heart and mind were already in heaven.  It made me think about the way we should really live.  Shouldn't we all be so heaven-minded that our hearts are already there?  Not so much, obviously, that we forget to live, as Paul admonished the Thessalonians.  But how often, how many of us are still so focused on this earthly life that our coming after-life is a bit of a foreign concept?  As rough as this week has been, I'm reminded that it's only temporary.  The other side of the coin is apparent, too: as much as I sigh at night, grateful that the day is done, time is fleeting.  There is so much kingdom work to be done. Am I about the Lord's business?  Am I so heaven-minded that I see the gaps of the people who do not yet have one foot in the door, i.e. know their Lord?

5.  After such a weighty question, I'd like to leave the Quick 5 on a high note.  Isaiah 12 is such a beautiful chapter.  If I were a painter, I'd want to paint something like that.  If I were a singer, I'd want to sing an aria worthy of it.  I'm just a humble "writer", and not even one good enough to truly pay it homage.  It's like the first warm day of spring, after a cold and dry winter, that day when suddenly you feel like you've come alive again, just like the flowers and fields and trees.  It's the refreshing shock of cool when you jump into a pool on a hot sunny day, or the soothing warmth of a hot chocolate, sprinkled with marshmallows, after a day in the cold and snow.  It's like that. The passage gives us a picture of restoration, of a person and a people once estranged from God and brought close again.  Once, they were under God's wrath, and now they are wrapped in His comfort and salvation.  Instead of cursing, they sing praises to His name. This is the difference between holding onto our sin and surrendering to His good will.  Isaiah wrote it to Israel, but it is true for anyone who would declare Him Lord.  Please, take a moment to read it here and to meditate on the rich goodness that comes from the Almighty Lord God.  May it fill your day with comfort and peace and the beauty of our LORD:

Isaiah 12, from the NASB:

Then you will say on that day,
"I will give thanks to You, O LORD:
For although You were angry with me,
Your anger is turned away,
and You comfort me.
"Behold, God is my salvation,
I will trust and not be afraid;
For the LORD GOD is my strength and my son.
And He has become my salvation."
Therefore you will joyously draw water
From the springs of salvation.
And in that day you will say,
"Give thanks to the LORD, call on His name.
Make known His deeds among the peoples;
Make them remember that His name is exalted."
Praise the LORD in song, for He has done excellet things;
Let this be known throughout the earth.
Cry aloud and shout for joy, O inhabitant of Zion,
For great in your midst is the Holy One of Israel."


Amen.

Friday Quick 5

1. It snowed on New Year's Eve.  I can't tell you how happy I was about that.  It's a beautiful white out there even as I write this portion of the post.  On New Year's morning we woke to a pristine landscape.  No one yet had tromped through our yard, along our unshoveled sidewalk, and the street only had a few wheel tracks.  I stood at our big picture window with the kids and watched the sky turn pastel pink with the dawning of a new morning.  It felt so clean and hopeful.  For a minute, I could forget that there's this fiscal cliff hanging over the economy and binding up the political works.  I didn't care that the house was a disaster from a few days of hard-core play.  I didn't even mind that I'd been up several times in the night with an overly-hungry baby.  It was a sweet moment with my children as they pointed at opalescent sky, the sparkling snow, and the black outline of the neighborhood trees.  Welcome, 2013.


2. We received a gift membership to the Children's Discovery Center here in town for Christmas.  This week we activated it and spent a few happy hours running around and stimulating the kids' sensory perceptions.  It was a happy time.  I was cranky, stressed, and didn't want to be out.  The point of having snow on the ground is that I don't have to go out.  My daughter is certainly not her mother: when I told her we were "going bye-bye" (otherwise known as "out"), she danced around the room, singing to herself, "I'm so excited!"  When we had to return home for a few minutes to grab said membership that had been forgotten on the table, she broke down and cried in her carseat.  Yes, my daughter is a social butterfly, and I am not.  As I watched her flit around the various stations, laugh hysterically with other children, and as I observed my son intently studying tools, toys, and silk scarves flying through the air, I was glad that I'd been pulled out of my comfort zone.  Our comfort zone may be safe, but it's not always best.

3. I'm hoping to start doing some batch cooking, freezer cooking, once-a-month cooking, whatever you want to call it.  Really, I want to eat healthier.  We eat so little veggies.  One reason is that I don't know what to do with them.  Another is that it takes me four-times as long as it should to get the main course to the table, so getting any kind of acceptable sides ready often falls by the wayside.  My hope with the batch cooking is to eliminate the desire for fast-food and convenience foods because I'm too tired, too complacent, too overwhelmed to put a decent meal together.  Ideally, it would mean having the main dish already prepared and ready to pop in the oven or what-have-you, and I'd just need to toss together a salad or prepare a quick but tasty vegetable and voila, dinner is ready.  I hope to enlist my husband's help through childcare.  We'll see how this goes.  (Insert uncertain smile here.)

4. Today (yes, today!) we are going to see The Hobbit!  I expect to fail as Tolkien.  I expect it to be a good time as a movie.  I'll let you know how that goes.  However, I'd been pretty certain I'd be seeing the film in a certain blur.  My glasses have been missing since Wednesday afternoon.  Couldn't. find them. anywhere.  I had a feeling that when they finally showed, it'd be someplace obvious.  We'd searched every room, even the most unlikely of places.  I'm always the last I take care of, and I need new glasses.  Perhaps this would be the push to get me to go get some?  And then... I found them.  Just a few minutes ago.  Right by the foot of the couch where I sit, blending in with the floor and the furniture.  This next pic expresses my feelings pretty well:

5. My baby weighed in at 16lbs 10oz yesterday.  Big. Boy.  He's so cute.