Monthly Archives: January 2008

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His Babies

Last Sunday, we dedicated the babies to the Lord.  It was a beautiful time for us; the mental preparation I did regarding the meaning of the event (see here) really helped me to just enjoy the time we spent and the promises we made.  I wanted to finally post the pictures and Psalm 111, the passage Pastor Shannon selected!  Read it here in the English Standard Version (ESV).  It matched the meanings of the babies names so well… Rissa’s name means laughter and her middle name Charis means grace.  Zachary means the Lord Remembers and his middle name Alden means wisdom, and the passage encompassed all of those concepts!

We got there about 10 minutes late and I walked in and arranged the babies while Matt parked the car.  It occurred to me to check the bulletin to see when we were supposed to head up front for the dedication.  As we began the last verse of “Crown Him with Many Crowns,” I noticed that the Olson babies’ dedication was next.  Uh oh… no Matt!  As Pastor Shannon began to call us up there, I ran (yes, I literally RAN) down the aisle, whispered “Can you do the next thing first?  Matt is still parking the car!” and ran back to our seats to check my wide-eyed awake little ones.  He graciously agreed and everyone giggled, undoubtedly thinking, “Those crazy Olsons!”  The next thing was commissioning the newly elected and re-elected leaders, and I was just re-elected to continue chairing our social action committee.  Uh oh, still no Matt and I’m part of this too!  A kind usher stood near my children “keeping an eye on them” as I went to the front and was prayed for along with the other leaders.  Matt arrived, handed our video camera and digital camera to the kind friends who documented the event for us, found our kids being perfectly quiet angels (still wide-eyed and awake) in their carseats, and me upfront, then running again to the back and mouthing, “It’s time… now!!!”  We each gathered a kid, booked it back up to the front, and things went smoothly from there.  I’m so proud of our well-behaved children who were quiet during the fiasco of running around and being late and who did not urp onto themselves, us, the pastor, or the carpet.  All food stayed where it belonged and they were adorable, as always!

Babies’ dedications

We had planned to go out to lunch with Dave and Hazel, our honorary grandparents and the babies’ honorary great-grandparents, known as Opa and Oma.  However, Hazel rightly suggested that going out would be ridiculously difficult for us (it really is) and graciously offered us brunch at their home instead.  It was a delicious meal and such peaceful time… the babies ate, hung out with us, and then napped while we had time to chat with our dear loved ones.  It was a beautiful day, all around!

time with Opa and Oma     family

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All business?

These middle of the night feedings are a rare breed. They take only 20 minutes: I feed the babies, diaper them, and put them back in bed. Unlike daytime, there are few fights about sleep… they usually quiet down immediately even if they don’t fall right to sleep! And according to “the books,” unless I want to teach them that waking up at night is fun and exciting and they should continue to do it forever, I’ll keep it all business and not social. It’s nice… I enjoy a break from thinking “How am I going to entertain them for this segment? Hmm, I hope watching me do the dishes and talking about it is fun” and so on.

So I try. I meet my business partners, Zachary and Marissa, sometime between 1 and 4am each night, we do food, diapers, and that’s supposed to be it. Business. Except as my mother-in-love would say, “They are just so dang cute!” It is awfully hard to contain my smile when Zach-a-bean and Riss-Riss show up instead. Even in her sleepy state, Rissa gives me a winning smile and flips her bib over her face a few times as if to say, “Peek-a-boo, Mommy? How about just one game?” But this is a night feeding so I must be all business! I flip it back down and force myself not to say the day-time response, “there she is!!!” Then Zach tells me an entire story beginning during Rissa’s diaper change and ending during his own. Given his broad range of inflection and lengthy utterances (in what Matt calls his “baby seal” language) there is plot, subplot, character development, a climax… and he even pauses and gives me a meaningful look and a smile so that I can join in and we can turn-take. But this is night-time, so I have to hold back from saying “Is that so? go on, mm-hmm, mm-hmm” and just keep diapering.

We’ve had a 3 day reprieve from the constant crying (whee! I love month 6!) and that has given me a chance to think about it with a different perspective than just “how do I make it stop!?!” You know, my perspective makes a world of difference. I could view the babies’ crying as a problem to be solved, and try solutions and work through my options and be “all business.” I’ve been treated that way when I’m upset, and there is a need for that sort of thinking because problems that are solvable should be solved. But what if we can’t solve it? (Matt feels just as helpless when they cry and he tries everything he can think of too). We could give up altogether (and I have at times). There are plenty of things that could be wrong that we have no control over… we (and you!) have guessed teething or growing pains or frustration. What might they want to be communicating to us if we can’t fix the problem? Maybe they just want us to know that they hurt. I can’t make it go away, but I can be with them and say “It sounds like you are frustrated/hurting/in pain” (depending on the type of cry). I can’t snuggle them both simultaneously, but I can snuggle each of them and just be with them in their hurt. If I think of them as little people who need validation of who they are and what they experience, just like the rest of us, then I can offer that. And they will keep crying because they are still hurting. And I will still feel frustrated that it isn’t getting better. But there is release for me… I may not be able to “do” to make it better, but I can “be” to make them loved. I don’t always have to be all business.

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5 months

When my mom turned 50, she threw herself an enormous birthday bash at work, complete with a costume and a “forest fire,” her reference to the candles on her cake. She said that her 40s had been so crappy that she was thrilled to turn 50! She was welcoming a new era.

Today, the babies are 5 months old and I am celebrating and welcoming a new era! In many ways, this past month was the hardest for me out of all 5… I felt the most overwhelmed by what I don’t know and the most conscious of my inability to do and be what is needed around here! There have been many cool experiences to offset the hardships, but as the babies show us more and more of who they are and what kinds of needs they have, I feel more and more inadequate! There is a primary reason for this: they have been crying. Alot. Seemingly more this past month than ever before. I problem-solve and read books and they cry. I give up and do nothing and they cry. I try sleep-training techniques and they cry. I throw techniques out the window and just try to read their cues and they cry. I feed them their usual and they cry. I feed them more, they urp, then they cry. It isn’t like they cry non-stop, but a screaming session from one or both of them once every 3 hours is enough to frazzle every synapse in my brain. Sometimes I can figure out what they need/want and other times I can’t.

They are at a very cool transitional place where they are AWARE. They want to roll. They want to sit. They want to reach and grab that toy just over yonder or to retrieve the toy they just threw. They want to give themselves a new perspective of their environment. But they can’t. We are in the crazy in-between where they finally want to but can’t just yet, and they know it. And it is so hard because alot of the tears originate with their frustration at not being able to do all these things they are starting to figure out. Most times, it is either the whole “I want to but I can’t yet” thing that frustrates them or that they both want to be held. The inability to hold them both to their satisfaction is personally damaging for me. What if they aren’t being held enough? How the heck do you hold two babies? I can pick them both up and hold them on my lap, but we can’t do some serious cuddling with two of them there, and they both prefer the serious cuddling. Which I love too, so we are all crying about this one. So I switch off and the baby in my arms quiets down and the one on the floor cries. <sigh> This can become an endless cycle. When this is coupled with the fact that the babies are anti-nap activists (they fall asleep beautifully just like the books promise, then one or the other wakes up WAY too early and they wake each other up and want out Out OUT of their crib and they won’t go back to sleep whether I calm them or not or whether I leave them in their crib and then they cry during their awake time because they are exhausted), the tiredness and frustration has run rampant around here. And as much as I really want to, I can’t be all things to all people! Have you ever been confronted with the fact that the best you can do isn’t going to be enough and you’ll just have to make it work anyway even though you don’t have any more to offer? Yes, of course you have. So you can relate on some level, whether you have screaming twins or not.

But gloriously, month 5 is over as of today. And to start the new era out with a bang, my little activists took a 2 hour nap this morning. A TWO HOUR NAP!!!! I showered and folded like 6 loads of laundry (I’m halfway done) and did housework and washed dishes and returned emails and kept thinking, “oh wow, oh wow, oh wow…” I suppose lots of babies take 2 hour naps. And my babies sometimes do in the afternoon. But never in the morning! And never at the same time! Usually, I go get the one who wakes up first and hang out with them to give the other one a little longer to sleep. But they did it. And it was amazing. Happy “month 5 is finally over” to me!

There have been lots of external hardships this past month too. And we’re getting through those. I was praying this morning and I thanked God that I still like to be around my babies. That might sound weird, but I’m so grateful that the events of this month haven’t made me hate being a mom or feel like I just all-around suck. Sometimes I feel that way and sometimes I do actually suck, but as the Granades always say, “Hey, I’m a parent who is trying. That’s more than alot of kids get!” And when they are sweet and fun (which is more often than this email would lead you to believe; the screaming sessions are short but occur often and the aftershocks continue on), it is heavenly around here.

Here we are, me holding my two cuties. The first picture is when I’m home by myself with them and I managed to scoop them both up AND take our picture. I look tired and proud of myself, and that’s exactly what I was. The second was taken by Matt and he handed me one of them, so we weren’t quite as precariously positioned.

Tired Mommy and babies Mommy and babies

Take heart if you are hurting. Month 5 or whatever you call your hardship will end eventually. If you survive it (and you might not think you will), you’ll be that amazing person who survived and beat the odds! And maybe even better than survival, maybe you thrived. I know you can do it.

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Uncle Jerry

My uncle died this week.  It’s been a hard 3 months for my mom’s side of the family, especially her sister, Cathie, who lost her mom (my Grandma) back in November and now her husband.  I think I met Jerry when I was in grad school.  I liked him alot.  He was big and stern-looking at first but had a great smile and then you spent 5 seconds with him and realized what a kind man he was.  I was glad he joined our family and treated Cathie with dignity and respect like she deserves.  And now I’m angry that he’s gone.  He was young and had leukemia and the bone marrow transplant didn’t work and then some sort of cancer was discovered in these past few weeks, and that was the final straw for his body.  It’s a raw sort of loss… I wanted he and Cathie to grow old together and I don’t understand why they didn’t have more time.  I’m removed from it — I can’t go out to the funeral because we have such young children and that just makes travel impossible.  But I hurt for my family members who are hurting very deeply.  I wonder how God endures all the pain He sees… He must grieve pain and suffering and loss far more deeply than we do because these things exist from the overall effect of sin on us and our falling world.  He makes a way through, but it must feel like time to say “enough!” nearly every day.  I bet He longs to restore all of His creation at just the right time.  I look forward to that.

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Baby dedications

This weekend, on Sunday, we are dedicating our babies to the Lord. They will be 5 months old. There is a Biblical precedent for this practice in the story of Hannah (one of my two favorite Bible individuals) and her family recorded in I Samuel 1 and 2. Hannah wasn’t able to have children and even though her husband loved her very much, she wanted to receive the gift of a child from God. She promised God that if He provided her with a child, she would give the baby back to Him to be used in His work, and quite amazingly, she kept her word! She brought the weaned baby, Samuel, to the priest to live at the temple and Samuel grew into a man who knew and loved and served God, just as Hannah prayed he would. I can’t imagine giving up my children and not getting to be with them everyday during their childhoods; she was so brave! It’s a beautiful picture of her realization that children are gifts from the Lord and that they are really His children who He entrusts to the care of their earthly parents for a time.

I’ve been thinking about this quite a bit. To be honest, I don’t want to dedicate our babies. I do, but I really don’t. I want them to be my babies, not God’s. This is silly, because I know they are already His, but what I’m saying is that I don’t WANT them to be anyone but mine and Matt’s. If I view them as God’s children who He entrusted us with for a time, then there is the understanding that we give them back in a sense. This could mean that He calls them to a life that we cannot prepare them for. What kind of courage and leadership will they need to thrive in life and in faith in the kind of world we are leaving for them? I can’t even imagine. It could mean that His plans take them far away and I will miss them all the time and my heart will break when I can’t be with them. I’ve already told them they can be anything they want to be except shark wrestlers. 🙂 Shark wrestling is off limits! But what if they live in a culture where they are martyred for their faith? Or living in poverty because conditions are so terrible? Or making terribly hard choices about how to serve God during their time on earth, harder choices than Matt and I have had to make? Or what if we bury one or both of them instead of them burying us? I recognize that dedicating them to God means I acknowledge that God in His sovereign glory may require things of us and of our babies that will break our hearts, and we are saying publicly, “It’s okay. He knows how to care for them best and they are His babies. We trust Him with them, just like He is trusting us.”

It changes how we parent them. They aren’t just our babies to raise… it’s as if the King has dropped off two beautiful children to us and said, “these are my precious children. Raise them like I would and I’ll be back for them when they are ready.” These are very special people, people who could have untold influence on their world, and we get to raise them!  We are SO not qualified for this.  With all of that… God’s plans for them and our best efforts, they have their own ability to make choices. What if they don’t choose to know the Lord? We are giving them to God but they have their own choices to make and we can’t control that. We just have to love them up and teach them well and pray for them to be people who receive and offer grace, who serve in God’s Kingdom and love and know Him deeply. But they might not, and we have to acknowledge that too. We will love them no matter what!

Although my wish would be to just have them myself, God graciously allows Matt and I to be a part of their lives in a uniquely special relationship that reflects His love for us. As a parent, I love differently than I ever had before, and it helps me think about the way that God loves me. I watch Matt as a father and I’m reminded of my heavenly Father. It’s a beautiful word image, the idea of being someone’s child. Marriage is the Bible’s example for Christ’s relationship with His Church and parenting is the example for the personal relationship He offers each of us.

Baby dedicating is a sobering event. I’m excited. I’m excited to be a mother to these precious two and to be doing this whole parenting thing with Matt. Our tradition asks Matt and I to promise that we will prioritize our marriage so that we can be loving parents out of the overflow of our love for one another. We’ll promise to pray for our kids and teach them about the Lord. We’ll promise that they are God’s. And the witnesses who will be there will promise to help us do this monumental task. But it isn’t something we enter into lightly. We are promising really big things, things we’ll fail at. It reminds me of my wedding vows; I don’t love and cherish Matt every single day. But I’ll keep trying at it. In actuality, we are really promising to keep trying, over and over. If things are great or if our hearts shatter, we try and we try again and we trust God. The coolest part is that the Lord is trustworthy and unchanging. He is the very best Guardian for our children and He loves them so much more than we do. I’m excited to see what He does with their lives and I’m excited to honor Him with them on Sunday.

Whether you are present on Sunday or not, you are part of our community so you have the chance to hold us accountable to our promises.