Recovering

We've been so grateful for the blog comments, facebook notes, letters, flowers, food and gifts we've received over the past few days from our friends and family. God has been carrying us through this trial, but one of the biggest ways He has done so is through His body, our fellow saints. Healing is slow, but God's grace is steady and that's what we're resting on.

I've really taken comfort in a few verses recently:

"But you are He who took me out of the womb;

You made me trust while on my mother's breasts.

From my mother's womb

You have been my God."

Psalm 22:9-10

"I would have lost heart, unless I had believed that I would see the goodness of the Lord in the land of the living." Psalm 27:13

"For we know that if our earthly house, this tent, is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands eternal in the heavens." 2 Corinthians 5:1-2

It is such a blessing to serve a God who gave us a book filled with comforting verses like these.

Our Son

On January 25^th, 2012 our firstborn son, Christian Benedict, was born. He went to be with the Lord a few minutes later. I had been having chills and a bit of a fever for a few days before, which I thought were just flu symptoms but which I now know were signs of a septic abortion. I had an ultrasound that morning and everything looked wonderful. They saw that he was a boy and he kicked his feet and bounced his head around and I loved him.

But that afternoon I began having contractions, and they continued to get worse. Since nothing had been wrong that morning I didn’t go in to the doctor, and they just suggested pain medication and a warm bath. Soon they became so bad that I felt like I was in labor again, and it turns out that I was.

We knew something was seriously wrong, and Joel took Lucy over to a friend’s house so that we could go into the hospital. But it was right then, in the ten minutes that he was gone, that our son was born, with only me there to catch him on our bathroom floor.

When he came out he was still alive, just long enough for me to tell him that we loved him, and then our Heavenly Father took him out of my arms and gathered him into His infinitely more capable and tender arms.

This was a terrible, hard, painful experience, and one that we will never forget. But in the midst of our sorrows, we acknowledge that this hard providence was given to us for a reason by our God. And with this mindset we have come to take comfort in many things.

First, I know that we worship a living God, one who died and rose again. And because of that we have a son who died but lives on in heaven. He is absent from his body but he is present with the Lord. And while we may be grieving, he is not.

Second, I know that God works all things out for good for those who love Him. I had my hopes and plans for Christian as all mothers do: that he and Lucy would grow up thick as thieves, and that we could shower him with gifts and love. But even there God had better plans for him: And if we being sinful know how to give good gifts, how much more will our heavenly father give gifts to those who ask of him (Matt. 7:11). So I have asked, and I know Christian has already received more gifts and love than we could ever give Him.

Third, I know that God is not distant, and we are not alone. Even when I gave birth to Christian in the bathroom, my Father was with me, leading me through the valley of the shadow of death. His Spirit has brought Joel and I immense comfort in these past 24 hours, and confirmed for us that God will never give us more than we can handle.

So we named him Christian Benedict. He is our little Christian son who was blessed to go and be with the Lord straightaway, without the pain and trials of a life on this earth. He has traded corruptible flesh for incorruptible and sorrow for joy. We see what is to come through a mirror dimly, but he sees the glory face to face.

“For our light affliction, which is but for a moment, is working for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory, while we do not look at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen. (2 Cor. 4:17-18).”

15 Weeks

Today I hit 15 weeks, and I thought I'd take a picture of the growing bump. Baby is now the size of an apple!

I only had a few seconds to snap it, so I didn't manage to get one with my face in it, but that's not really the point of a bump picture, is it? As you can see from Joel's two slippers and the doll scattered haphazardly around me, Lucy was running amok, and I had to go keep an eye on her.

And, if anyone cares, here I am at 14 weeks with Lucy. I'm even wearing the same shirt. It's deja vu!

Warm bread on a cold day

I haven't made home-made bread in a long time. Partly because my artisan bread-making was put to a complete standstill when my dutch oven was recalled. That was a great tragedy. Hopefully Martha Stewart comes up with an inexpensive, non-exploding replacement soon.

In the meantime, I'm back to my very basic bread which Joel likes better anyway, and which freezes nicely and is about as easy to make as Kraft mac-n-cheese.

Especially if you have a Kitchenaid and don't have to do any kneading by hand.

I used to really enjoy hand-kneading the dough, but that was back in my pre-Lucy days when I had more time and wasn't chasing down a little mischief-maker while making bread. Ah, multi-tasking.

Here's the recipe:

3 cups all-purpose flour (I do half whole wheat so that it's healthier)

2 tsp. instant yeast

1 1/4 tsp. salt

3 T. sugar

4 T butter

1/4 cup nonfat dry milk

1/3 cup potato flakes

1 1/8 cupes lukewarm water

Combine all ingredients and mix and knead them together until you have a soft, smooth dough. Add more flour or water as needed (I usually have to add more flour). Cover and let rise for 1 hour or until puffy.

Transfer dough to a greased work surface and shape into an 8-inch log. Transfer log to a loaf pan, cover the pan, and let bread rise until the outer edge has risen about 1 inch over the rim, about 1 hour (or 2 hours if you forget about it like I did).

Preheat oven to 350. Uncover pan and bake for 35ish minutes, tent lightly with foil for the final 10-15 minutes if it looks like it's browning too fast.

I usually double that recipe and freeze one loaf for later in the week. This is great sandwich bread, but it also goes great with soup which is what we're doing tonight!

Bugaboo Giveaway

So I don't usually use my blog for promotional purposes, but this one was too good to miss! Baby Gizmo is giving away a Bugaboo Donkey stroller (worth 1600 dollars) and I'm hoping to win it. :) And if you're like me and want to win it too, head on over to http://www.babygizmo.com/giveaways.php and enter!

What's the real reason I'm excited about this stroller? Well, because it converts into a double stroller, and I'm really going to need a double stroller come mid-July of this upcoming year! :)

Holiday Cheer

One of Lucy's favorite things to do is sit in my lap or dada's lap and look at books. She has to be in control of the page turning and how long is spent examining each page, of course. She'll stare for a while in silence at a page and then point with one chubby finger at something on the page and exclaim "AH?" which we interpret as, "What is that?" Then we give her the word: "cat" or "banana" or "house." She takes a while to digest this word before moving on to another object on the page. "AH?"



For Christmas Joel and I got her this rocking horse:

It sings and rocks and she is slowly learning to love it. We decided to give it to her early since we're driving to Santa Cruz for Christmas this year and there's no way that was coming in the car with us.

I think she looks pretty adorable on it. Especially in her little girly outfit. So cute!

The Wild House

I know that we only have one child, but even still, our house can get really wild. Crazy things happen around the Cohen casa, and I occasionally have the presence of mind to whip out my camera and try to document them.

Take, for instance, one of the biggest reasons Lucy is so excited for dada to get home in the evening and why she asks for him all day long. His seemingly boundless energy.



While by 5:30 I'm just about drained from a day with Lu, Joel walks in the door and within seconds Lucy is being swung around in his arms, wrestled with on the bed, or being give a ride in a plastic box.



Isn't she a lucky gal? She tries to imitate the fun with her stuffed animals, but really it's more fun when you're the pushee.




Also, there are the odd places that my child decides to plop her derriere when she's tired. (Lucy will probably kill me when she's older for posting such an unflattering picture. Or maybe she'll be able to recognize the humor in the situation? Let's hope for the latter).




And of course, there's your daily dose of kitty torture. Whether it's giving her gentle pat-pats:





Or attempting to balance plastic cups on her head:

This poor cat takes it well. Only the occasional scratch has happened, and it's definitely not enough to stop Lucy from playing with her beloved kitty.

And then, of course, there's reading time which, since there are no chairs Lucy's height, sometimes happens in the carseat when it's indoors:

And lastly there has been Lucy's favorite family tradition to date: Advent chocolate.

We're not sure how much made it in to her mouth, to be honest:

All these things and more make my day-to-day life very interesting and wild. And I love it! Bring on the wild house.