Thou shalt not use the Lords name in vain

I want Victoria to be able to see the wrong that she does. I want to instill into her at a young age that it is ok to make mistakes, but she needs to own up to them and not place the blame on others. When I hear the commandment “do not take the Lords name in vain” I interpret it differently than most people. I am not going to try and deny that I use Gods name in other ways than praying. When I do this I am not actually “damming” God. I am not blaming him either. The way I interpret do not take the Lords name in vain is exactly what it says. Don’t curse God, don’t hate God, and don’t blame God for bad things.

A few years back before I was saved I would literally wake up every morning and tell God that if he was real, I hated him. That to me is taking his name in Vain. I do not want Victoria to get to a point in her life where she thinks everything wrong thing is because God hates her. I want to teach her early on that God has a plan for everything, and he does answer every prayer; even if the answer is no.

This goes back to the trust issue. I want her to trust God, and at the same time I want her to know that he is not out to hurt her. I don’t want her to hate God.

I can’t really expand much on this because it is so cut and dry for me.

I want her to understand that she is going to make mistakes, and that is ok.

I want her to own up to her mistakes and not place the blame on others or God.

I don’t want her to hate God.

I can’t make it clearer than that J

Thou shalt have no other idols before me

I want Victoria to trust God more than anything or anyone else. My mom always used to tell me that people are always going to let me down, even her and my father, but God is the only one who will never let me down. I still have a hard time with this, but I understand it more and more every day.

When Victoria is going through a rough time I want her to turn to God for help. Obviously Cody and I will be there for her no matter what, but we cannot give her the peace that God can give her. I don’t want her to turn to drugs, or any other thing that will be a temporary mask.

I also do not want her to get lost in this world. I don’t want her to look at super models and worship them because they are “beautiful”. I don’t want her to lower her morals to hang out with a group of people of school because they are “cool”. I don’t want her to idolize the things that don’t matter. I want her to be herself, hold firm in her beliefs, and follow Gods plan for her life.

I want Cody and I to be positive examples in her life. I want to show her that she does not have to dress scandalous to be considered beautiful. I want her to see that there is a big difference between a boy and a man. I want her to see that we trust God with everything. And I want her to see that she can be true to herself and everything will be ok.

It seems like so often we place our trust in things that will break it, and once that trust is broken, we tend to blame God for things not going according to plan. Cody and I had a plan to stay in the Army for the next 20 years. We were planning on buying a house here in El Paso, me getting a job, us both going to school, and then when the time came we were going to try and get stationed in Germany. We were in a way idolizing this plan we had set up. These plans were our life. Now things have changed quite a bit. Cody may be getting medically discharged, and if that does happen then our plan is destroyed. We will have to end up moving back into one of our parents houses, getting civilian jobs, possibly put school to the side for a bit, and start back at square one until we get back on our feet. When Cody told me this news I was devastated. I didn’t think it was fair that they would discharge him because his condition is not severe and he can still perform his duties. I was angry that the second things started to get better for us, they took a turn for the worst. I was angry that our plan of finally owning a home was ruined, and I was angry that we might have to give up the military life style. Being in the Army has its faults and a lot of challenges, but it’s amazing. Once Cody told me this news I was immediately angry at God for doing this to us. All these dreams that we have been idolizing were thrown out the window. It was not until a few days ago I realized that our plan may not be Gods plan, and no matter what, Gods plan is going to be the one we follow. I realized I had to stop idolizing these dreams and plans, and make God my idol and trust that he knows what he is doing. I finally realized that God is in control, and is looking out for us, even if it doesn’t seem like it when our plans dont fall through.

We were at my doctor’s appointment the other day and towards the end of my appointment the nurse ran in the room and started yelling at us to grab Victoria and run outside because there was an active shooter in the building. My heart dropped. We grabbed Victoria up and ran as fast as we could out of the building and across the street to safety. Once we got to the safe spot I thanked God over and over again for keeping us safe. The thought of Victoria being killed in a shooting was by far the worst feeling I have ever felt. A little while later they let people back into the building. I don’t know exactly what happened, I don’t think there was actually a shooter in the building. I think that someone thought they saw a dangerous person and it got blown way out of proportion. Either way though in the beginning we had no clue what was going on, and we were running for our lives. After this happened I realized that God was on our side, and did have a plan for us and that no matter what happens with Cody’s job, we will be ok. I don’t ever want to experience something like this again, but it truly humbled me and instilled complete faith and trust in God. I am no longer going to make materialistic dreams my idols. For now on, God is going to be my only idol, and the only one I put complete trust in.

I want to show Victoria that it is ok to put complete faith in God. I don’t want her to have to experience a life or death (or supposed life or death) situation to realize that he is in control.

Thou shalt have no other God but me

The first thing I want for Victoria is that she loves God. Both Cody and I have a very strong faith in God, and I want her to be able to have complete faith in him. I want her to know that no matter what happens in life, he has a plan for her and although sometimes the plan does not make sense, it is for a good reason. When things are good in her life I want her to thank God and be able to see the role that he played, and when things are bad I want her to trust God that everything will be ok.

Cody and I have gone through A LOT and I can honestly say that I do not believe that we would be where we are today if it was not for God. Having faith has given us a sturdy foundation in our marriage, and we incorporate God into our lives on a daily basis. When we go through financial troubles we pray and ask God to help us, and he has never let us down. When things are going perfect in our lives we thank God for the blessings he gave us. When Victoria is up all night screaming, we ask God to give us patience.

We are nowhere near perfect, and I am not exactly where I want to be with God, but I would never give up my faith.

Here is the problem. We do not want to and will not shove religion down Victoria’s throat. If she is going to have Christ in her life, then it is going to be because she wants to and has faith. I am a firm believer that you cannot force a person to believe the way you do. You can lead a horse to water but you can’t make it drink. This is the exact same situation.

We will lead her to God. We will pray before meals, and talk to her about God. We will explain to her what we believe, and why we believe. We will stress how much God has helped us. We will be her examples of what it means to be a Christian. We will answer any questions that she has. We will make sure to attend a church that feeds her needs, and has good activities that she will enjoy.

But we will not force her to believe what we believe.

Doing that will only push her away.

If one day she comes to me and says that she wants to believe in something else, then we will no shun her that nor will we be angry. We will accept whatever she believes. I pray that she believes what we believe and lives a Godly life and becomes a woman of God, but if after everything we do she doesn’t believe it, then that is her choice.

I always want her to know that she can be who she wants to be and do what she wants to do and we will love her no matter what. We may not agree with the all the choices she makes, but in the end this is her journey and she needs to live it.

Both of our parents stressed the importance of believing in a higher power, and for a long time both of us did not believe in anything. There was a point in my life where I hated God. I believed in him, but I hated him. It has taken a long time to get to where I am now and accept the bad things that have happened to me and begin to trust God again. My parents never once judged me for this dark period in my life. Instead of judging me and shoving my hatred down my own throat, they dropped it and were there to talk to me and guide me.  By them doing this simple action, they saved my faith. I know that if they were to push religion on me when I hated it the most, then I would resent them, and I would have never found God. They guided me to the water, but waited patiently until I was ready to drink it.

I am going to branch of this in later blogs about what kind of Christian/person I want her to be, but this is the foundation of what I want for her.

I have seen so many great things come into my life with the help of God, and I know that he will bring her so many blessings as she grows.

 

New blog series

Being a mother has turned my world upside down. Last year on new year’s I was in a trashy town in Korea smashed drunk with my husband, this year I was in the worst pain of my entire life only worrying about how much milk I could pump for my baby girl before I went to the hospital. Before she was born me and Cody went to the movies at least twice a month and had special date nights every Saturday. She is almost 3 months now and I cannot even remember the last movie I saw and our “date nights” now consist of us struggling for hours to get her to go to sleep so we can talk for 15 minutes before we go to sleep. Before I could mistakes and not worry too much about it ruining a person’s life, but now I watch every move I make because I know everything I do, affects her on a level I cannot even begin to understand. I would not change single thing though. Being able to look at her precious face and say that is MY Victoria is the greatest gift I have gotten. I am quickly learning that being a mother has bigger challenges then loss of sleep, and loss of sanity! I am responsible for how this little girl is going to be. I am responsible in teaching her right from wrong. I have to decide who is allowed to be in her life, and who I believe is going to be a negative influence, I have to figure out a way to get her to love God, without shoving religion down her throat. I have to decide if we are going to let her date, at what age is it ok for her to date, and when she does start to date I have to decide if the guy is good enough for her. I will be held responsible for every mistake she makes under my roof. And on top of all of this, I have to do it all in such a way that does not change her from who she is, who she wants to be, and who she is supposed to be.

I know she is not even 3 months old yet, but I cannot stop thinking about all of this. I keep running scenarios through my mind and thinking about how I would deal with each of them.  

The other night I was not able to sleep because I could not stop thinking about all of this. I made up a list of the key things I want Victoria to learn from Cody and I. My next few blogs are going to solely be devoted to those things. I will try and get on every few days but I can’t make any promises.

If you have any advice, tips, regrets, success stories of what you did with your children while they were growing up feel free to let me know J

A solid foundation.

One of my many resolutions for this year is to blog more. I know that I will not be able to do it daily and maybe not even weekly but I am going to make a real attempt to post a few blogs a month. With the new starting a lot of things have been on my mind. Being able to watch Victoria grow and learn new things, how we can help out the community, where we will be in a year, and a few other things. But tonight I cannot stop thinking about where we are TODAY.

Things have been rough to say the least. Cody’s health is not very good, and they are not quite sure what is wrong with him. He has been seeing doctors for a few months now and they are doing everything they can to figure out what is wrong with him. My health has not been all that great either. A few days after Christmas I had severe stomach and back pain and we ended up going into the E.R. They did a cat scan and found that I have a huge kidney stone, and that my gallbladder is in really bad shape. I am still waiting for the kidney stone to pass, and I am scheduling my gallbladder surgery in a few weeks. Between the two of us there has not been a pain free day, so that has been really hard on both of us. They have not given him any medicine for his pain yet so he is stuck taking Advil and Tylenol which does not really help, and they gave me pain medication but I try not to take it unless I really need it because I am still breastfeeding Victoria.

To add on to that, Victoria has a cold and has been crying nonstop for a few days. She calms down once we hold her, but she cries the second we put her down and when she sleeps during the day it’s only for 10 minutes at a time. I am completely exhausted, and so is Cody.

Like the old saying goes bad things happen in threes. The third thing right now is our finances. They SUCK!!! Long story short, Cody’s pay got messed up a few times and it really set us back and we have been trying to play catch up for a few months now but it doesn’t seem to be getting better. Although we did not plan on me working at all while Victoria was a baby, I have been applying to jobs for a few weeks now and tomorrow I am going out to talk to a few of the places and hopefully get a job. I honestly have no idea how I am going to manage working a full time job, going to school, and taking care of Victoria, but at this point it is our only option.

Although things are REALLY hard right now, both Cody and I are very optimistic about everything and are really excited to see what this year has in store for us. We both know that we finally hit our rock bottom, and now there is nowhere to go but up. We have such much crap to deal with, but the good in our life outweighs the bad by far.

We are getting through this together. Instead of fighting about money, we are working together to solve it. I knew that we were a strong couple before, but I honestly did not know that we were this strong. We talk more than ever, and our love is becoming stronger. When I get down about things, he is right by my side to pick me up and I do the same for him. We have gone through A LOT since we have been together, and I am so happy to know that no matter happened, we were there for each other, rather than against each other.

Victoria is driving me absolutely nuts!! I am pretty sure by the end of this year I will not have any hair left because I am going to rip it all out. But she is the sweetest little thing. I LOVE taking care of her. She started smiling A LOT lately and is even trying to figure out how to laugh and it melts my heart every time she smiles and laughs at me. Having her fall asleep in my arms makes me forget all the bad in my life. I am so proud that she is my daughter, and I am so excited to see what she is going to be like in 15 years.

We have so much to be thankful for. Our family is the best. We attend a great and uplifting church. We have a great marriage and friendship. We have the sweetest little puppy dog in the whole world. We have the most amazing beautiful sweet little girl ever to live. We have a roof over our heads and food in our bellies.

Yes it would be nice to be able to get a baby sitter for a night and go out to eat and see a movie, but for now I am content eating tuna helper and watching the discovery channel.

It may be hard to see the blessings in your life when things are rough, but once you really open your eyes up, you will realize that you have soo many wonderful things in your life.

Lessons learned

I would like to take a few minutes to brag about my husband. He reenlisted on December 6^th of this year. Many people see reenlisting in the military as just extending their duty a few more years. They don’t think much of it, just another few years of protecting their country. I see it in a completely different way. He gave our family another 5 years of support. He is giving us a steady income, a steady home life, and making sure that we are all going to be taken care of. He is giving his country another 5 years of his life. At any given point he can be deployed, and he is willing to take that risk to keep this country great. I cannot express to you how proud I am to be his wife. He is the kindest man I have ever known. He has given me the chance to experience a life that I never thought I would have. We have experienced living in a foreign country, and will hopefully will experience that again in the next few years (we want to be stationed in Germany soon). He has shown me what true love is. He has made me a mother to the most precious little girl in existence. He has helped me become a better person. He taught me how to let go of the past, live for today, and look forward to the future. He balances me. We have been together for three years now, and I can honestly say that they have been the best years of my life. He does everything in his power to make me happy.

Having a baby has made things a lot harder. We cannot just get up and go on a date, or stay up until 3am playing video games on any given night. Victoria challenges us every single day, but we are learning how to deal with everything, and still take time for each other. We still have A LOT to learn, but I know that we can do it.

 

Here are some things that we have learned in the past 2 months.

Good communication is the glue to a good relationship. I became very depressed after Victoria was born, and for the first few weeks I refused to talk to Cody about it. I was snappy and emotional and would never tell him what was wrong. I was angry at him, and he had no clue as to why I was feeling that way. Finally he made me talk and I started to feel a lot better. I still have my days where I am just sad and moody, but I know that I can talk to him about it without it causing a fight. He has been very understanding. He was also feeling very overwhelmed and stressed about some things, but once he talked to me about it we were able to address the issue, and find solutions for them and work everything out. I can honestly say that we communicate better than ever before. We commit at least one hour a day for just talking. This is when we can come to each other with any problems we have and find solutions for them. This is when we talk about our future. This is when we talk about our hopes and dreams for Victoria. This is when we talk about old memories we have. This is when we just unwind and talk. Sometimes it’s about nothing of importance, and other times they are very deep and meaningfull conversations.

We have learned to rely on each other. We are both enrolled in school right now and some days it seems impossible to get any work done. So we take turns doing it if Victoria is unhappy. He does his school until he is done with everything for the day, and while he is doing that, it is my job to take care of the baby. And then when he is done I do my school work, and until I am finished for the day it is his job to take care of her. It is a very good system, and it has helped us out a lot. When either of us gets stuck on an assignment, we come to each other for help. I have him proof read my work and I help him look up articles that will help him with his work. I decided that there is no real reason for him to wake up in the middle night when Victoria cry. Since I am breastfeeding her, he can only change her diapers. There is no point in him waking up to change a diaper that I can change, and then be tired for work the next day. I am fine with this system, because when he gets home from work he helps me out A LOT and gives me a little break. I think we are finally starting to get a good system down, and things have been much easier since we started depending on each other for help.

Have fun! Being new parents is very stressful and overwhelming. It can be the most frustrating thing sometimes. We have learned that once Victoria is all changed, fed, happy and laying down, we need to take a minute to have fun and unwind. We take those times to play video games together (which usually ends with us passing Victoria back and forth while we take turns playing haha). We also watch TV together and make sure we both like what is playing. And every now and then we just goof around. There are so many important things we have to think about every single day. Is the baby hungry, is her diaper wet, when is her next doctor’s appointment, when do we have appointments, does Tylir need to go outside, what bills are due next week, what needs to be cleaned…the list goes on and on. It’s really important to just forget about the list (after making sure the baby is ok) and let go and have fun. Embrace today. Embrace each other.

The biggest thing I have learned is not stress the little things. Like the old saying goes, shit happens. Deal with it and move on. There is no point to stress out about things you cannot change, or things that have already happened. If it’s not going to be an issue in 5 years, then it’s probably not important enough to freak out about. Learn to laugh at things. Victoria almost always decides to take her big poop when we are in the middle of changing her. Yes it sucks that our comforter is stained now haha, but why get upset about it. We washed it, it’s clean, it looks like crap (literally haha) who cares! We can get a new one when we get some extra money; it’s not a huge deal. Victoria peed all over my this morning, and I could have gotten irritated that I started my day at 6am after getting 4 hours of sleep and the first thing I have to do is get her washed off and in a new onsie and clean myself up, instead I laughed about it and did what needed to be done. Yes I am exhausted and it would have been nice to wake up and enjoy a cup of coffee and not be covered in pee, but it didn’t happen that way. No big deal. She spit up in our new car and it got on the seats. No big deal. We are all healthy, we are all happy, and we are together. Nothing else matters. It is hard sometimes to do this, and I do struggle with it, especially after a rough day, but I find it helps out a lot to just accept whatever is going on and enjoy your day no matter what.

Extra tip: Take embarrassing photos of your children to get even for all the hell they put you through :)

Haha this is just a bad angle but its sooo funny!

This girl brightens up every single and day and I am sooooo thankful that the Lord blessed us with such a perfect baby :)

 

 

I mentioned in an earlier blog that we finally welcomed Victoria Rae into our lives J she was born on October 19^th 2012 at 2 am. She weighed 6 pounds 13 ounces and was 19.5 inches long.

I was dilated to 3cm for about 3 weeks before I finally went into labor, so by the time it happened I was so ready to be done. On the 18^th I started having contractions that were lasting a minute and about 6-7 minutes apart. I thought they were Braxton hicks at first but later on they started hurting more and more.

We went into the hospital at 7pm because I was starting to get very uncomfortable and I thought for sure it was time. The midwife hooked me up to the monitor and checked me and said that I was still 3cm and that my contractions were too far apart for them to admit me. She then told us to go home and relax and come back in 2 hours if my contractions continued.

Cody was really upset just because he thought it was time, and he was really bummed out that they sent me home. I on the other hand was super excited because I knew it was going to be SOON. We walked around the block for 45 minutes and I went up and down a ton of stairs, but the contractions were not progressing much. I was starting to get upset because my parents and Cody’s mom were on their way down, and I didn’t want to not have a baby and waste their money. But after 30 minutes of walking I started getting BAD contractions. Bad to point I was in tears whenever I had one. At this point I was not having fun anymore and I wanted it to stop. Cody was freaking out trying to pack a bag for me while I was screaming at him to hurry up.

We made it up to labor and delivery and they asked what was going on and I told them that I needed drugs NOW. They hooked me up to the machine again and checked me to see how dilated I was. Sadly I was still at 3cm and my contractions were only 4 minutes apart. I told them to not us home again because it was going to happen. They didn’t want to keep me because they were all convinced that I was not going to give birth until the next night, when suddenly my contractions went from 4 minutes apart to 2 minutes apart. They decided to admit me, and take my blood sample to get my epidural ready. I was finally in a room around 11pm.

Once we got up to the room they checked me again and I was finally at 4cm. While I was waiting for them to get my epidural ready I decided to hop in the shower to ease the pain a little bit. Cody held the shower head on my back while I kneeled on the shower floor for about 15 minutes. It was unreal how the shower made the pain hurt less. They came in and told me my epidural was ready and I was back in my bed within minutes.

During the epidural they made Cody sit on the other side of the room, and I was really scared. (I don’t like needles). My entire body was shaking so on of the midwives held my hands and let me lean up against her while they did the procedure. The midwife that was helping me made the whole experience much better, especially since my mom was not able to make it down and comfort me.

After the epidural kicked in I was feeling wonderful. The doctor came in and wanted to pop my water. She checked me again to see if I dilated at all and to all of our surprises I was at 6cm and she ended up popping my water during the exam. Things were moving along faster than any of us expected.

Around 12:30 Cody went back to the house to eat dinner and walk Tylir. I was fine with him gone because the midwives didn’t really leave my side and were keeping me company. They checked me around 1 and gave me this surprised look and asked when Cody would be back. I told them probably soon and why, and they told me I was at 9cm and going to start pushing SOON. I called Cody and told him he should probably hurry up and I could tell by the tone of his voice he was so excited. He made it back to the hospital and I started feeling A LOT of pressure.

I started pushing around 1:30. By this point I was no longer scared and I was just focused on getting this baby out and feeling better. After 20 minutes of pushing I started to feel like she was never going to get out. But then they asked if I wanted to feel her head. I opted out of that because by then I knew I was really close to being done and I didn’t want to waste any time. I was hurting and it needed to be done! Finally at 2am I was done. We heard her first little cry.

Her first breath took ours away. Literally. Cody fainted right after he heard her cry. He did not faint because it was gross, or all the blood made him sick. He was completely overwhelmed with emotion and just collapsed. So while he was out cold they put her on my chest, and I started freaking out. I had no clue what to do with her, and I was amazed that I was actually holding my baby girl for the first time. I had never been more scared in my entire life than I was in that moment. I wouldn’t let them cut the umbilical cord because I knew Cody wanted to do it, so we waited for him to get back on his feet and he was able to cut the cord.

They took away and got her all cleaned up and checked out. And started fixing me up.

Her arm was stuck by her head which resulted in me getting a 2^nd degree tear. They told me later that if her arm was where it was supposed to be I would have only had to push for maybe 5 minutes and I would not have torn at all.

Our parents got to the hospital around 4am and it was soo good to see my mom. I really wanted her there for support during labor, but I did better than I thought I would. I have to give credit to Cody and the midwives for keeping me calm and focused the whole time.

So now Victoria is 11 days old and healthy as can be. She is already over her birth weight and putting out PLENTY of dirty diapers a day. I am still trying to heal, I am feeling a lot better, but I am still pretty sore.  But our baby girl was totally worth it and I would do it all over again if I had to J

We are so sleep deprived and still trying to figure everything out, but we are doing better every day J

I will post again soon!

Amber