Picture Baby vs. Real Baby

The "picture baby" always looks so sweet and angelic and perfect...the "real baby" never gets his picture taken. The crying, pooping, cranky baby :0) These are the most recent shots of our little boy looking, well, pretty perfect. And in so many ways he is, but in so many other ways he's a real human baby that interacts with life in many different ways. He coos and gurgles and makes us smile, and he cries and kicks and poops all over the changing table making us sigh in frustration at times. As we move into day 5 after a night of no more than 1 hour stretches of sleep, we wonder how we're going to make it through weeks of this. We know we will as countless parents have done before us, but we just have to wonder what that will look like as we already feel pooped and that's WITH my mom here taking two night shifts herself :0)

Christ be our Sustainer as you always are. Father us children during this time of learning to father & mother our own little boy.

Brighton coos in agreement as he sleeps here next to me on the couch :0) He's so beautiful, I wish you could all see him and cuddle him in person. It would warm your heart. Even if he does think day is night and night is day for now...we'll come out of this time different people, better people and with a beautiful son to love and raise in our weakness.

Brighton means "the one who is loved". I'm so thankful it's not just Matthew and I who have to live up to that promise, but that Christ loves and cherishes this little boy more than we'll ever be able to ourselves or even understand ourselves. We catch a tiny glimpse of what that's like when we look at him and feel our hearts swelling up so much love that we think they'll burst. I guess that's what Christ feels for us all the time...even in our weakness, our patheticness, our ugliness. Today I am more thankful for this gospel because of this state I'm in than I was six days ago when life was "easier". Thats a gift in disguise I believe :0)