It's Been

It's been:

• One month exactly since Cate had an accident (while awake) in her underwear. I'm so proud of her. We keep her in a pull-up at night, but she wakes up dry most mornings. We'll probably transition to underwear soon.
• Over 72 hours since we've had to take Brennan to an urgent care or pediatrician. He still coughs from time to time, but slept in his own (albeit slightly inclined) bed last night (well, his bed in our room, he hasn't moved in with big sis yet and probably won't for a couple more months). He rarely wheezes or sounds like a crackly radio.
• A while since I gave my blog a facelift. What do you think?
• Almost 4 months since I went on maternity leave. This is the longest period of my life that I have not worked since my sophomore year of high school when I started my first regular job at a local retirement center. Before this maternity leave, my maternity leave with Cate (which was about 10 weeks) was my longest non-working time. Before that, it was the six weeks I didn't work after breaking my elbow. My jobs in college were very part time (like 4-6 hours a week), but I worked every year I was there. I'm still coaching our Power of the Pen team though. We have four students going to the State tournament in a month. I just resumed coaching duties last week. It felt great to be back in the classroom and reaffirmed that I made the right career choice and am not crazy to want to go back in August.
• A trying spring so far with our roof. New leaks continue to spring up. A roofer has confirmed hail and wind damage. Our insurance company will probably try to fight and say that our roof is old and "non-recoverable." Either way, someone's going to be paying for a new roof. I'd love your votes (click here) to become an editor/reviewer for HopScout. It's not a ton of extra income, and I'm kind of a longshot, but I'd use my earnings if given a position to literally put a non-leaky roof over our heads. If you could share that link through your own blog, tweet, or Facebook, you would so rock my world. I'm not sure if you have to have a Facebook account to vote.
  

No matter what though, God is good. My husband recently shared with me that our lives are not a series of peaks and valleys (where we have our highs of good things followed by the lows of bad things), but rather parallel train tracks. We can have the good and the bad at the same time. All of it builds character and faith. We're living that right now with our kids' health and steady improvement right alongside our leaky roof.

Cate asked to hold Brennan earlier tonight. She does this every few days or so. Not that she totally ignores him on the other days-- she tickles him, sings to him, tries to interact with him. She just doesn't always ask to hold him. I had to take a picture. My phone was the only thing readily available.11 more days to enter my 600th post giveaway. $10 to Amazon is up for grabs!

How has it been for you lately?

~Melody :-)