Category — Family

Her fingers wrap around mine like a chord. Limbs darting up to tug at my linen, cotton billows, reaching out to declare: “You are mine.” Tenacious, yet layered with a heart like cream, Madeleine steals frames from faces in an instant. Translucent glass beads scattered about the floor save her from topples as she devours them with her finger folds. Snowy flesh. She is sitting better and better every day. At dawn each morning Daddy awakes to spend sleepy hours with her while I try and catch up from night waking. Enfolding one another in the day’s first light. This is our love.

My step mom’s humour strikes again. Check out my two sisters and I in action here: We Are Disco (Elves)

:::

To view more picture of our little munchkin, click here.

Your face is an orbit. Pursed lips, supple skin. Bright eyes, like moons. A constellation.

You are a little ship, a face like an ocean cresting. Raven hair and blue eyes the size of boulders. 

I swim in your sea from day’s break to day’s end. You are my life’s greatest treasure. Lying beside you these first days has felt like a rebirth. Your soul, your face, every inch of you speaks pure. Your loveliness outshines the rainbow that nestled itself outside our window yesterday. I would spend the rest of my days gazing at your face if the world, the Lord, would allow. Instead I will take my moments, store them in my heart like gold, and watch you grow, grow, grow up into heaven, out into the world.

We welcomed our little girl one week ago today. Madeleine Jacoba Hope.

Madeleine comes from the root ‘Magdalen’ meaning ‘High Tower.’ Therefore she is named after Mary Magdalene and also the wonderful writer, Madeleine L’Engle. Jacoba (pronounced Yacoba) is my grandmother’s middle name, common to the Dutch, which shares the same Hebrew root as my brother James’ name. Hope is a word that has particularly captured me this year (I wrote about it here.) Also, we felt the name appropriate due to to the amount of times we had to reach out to Jesus for hope during her labour and delivery. It was a long journey to meet our little girl. 

Madeleine weighed in at 9 lbs 11 oz after 81 hours of labour, start to finish. Although we laboured almost entirely at home, she was delivered naturally by our midwives at Burnaby General Hospital in the wee hours of the morning. Mommy was too tired to go anymore without a little help (a small amount of IV Oxytocin.)

Our new life with Madeleine:

In the words of Madeleine L’Engle, one of our little girl’s namesakes: “Jesus was not a theologian. He was God who told stories.”

Our prayer is that our little one will tell the story of Christ through her beautiful, adventurous, and marvelous life. 

We welcomed Madeleine Jacoba Hope on September 2 at 9:15 AM.

9 lbs 11 oz. 72 hours of labour. Mom and baby are happy and healthy. Daddy says: “God help fathers of daughters.”

We are in love.

So, when do you think our bundle of joy is coming? Will it be a boy or a girl? And how much will s/he weigh? Post your predictions!

Date:
Gender:
Weight: 

Whoever is closest will win a prize! I am going to think of something exciting to mail you in the meantime… (Hint: the due date is August 27, though it changed once to the 19th, after a 20-week ultrasound.)

Let the guessing begin!

Living, working, shopping, churching in my own neighbourhood has become immensely important to me.

This passion began when Michael and I were first praying about where to live when we got married. We started off living in the tiny loft of the house where I’d lived for the previous five years. When we prayed we never felt God giving us a clear answer on the location question. We had settled on living in Kitsilano, renting part of a house or an apartment, until my dad and stepmom offered to sell us a condo they owned in Burnaby. The offer was clear out of the blue and as we prayed we felt it was God’s leading. We said yes. So, since last spring, we have lived in a corner of suburbia.

I never expected it, but I grieved moving out of Vancouver. I had fallen in love with my dirty corner of southeast Vancouver. I loved the hole-in-the-wall takeout Indian, the $2 bags of naan, and the crazy Chinese lady with the wooden broom handle. I missed running into neighbours on the street and housemates on the front stoop. Now I lived in apartment-land. On the 13th floor. APART-ment. It’s written right in the name.

I suffered something of a depression. I hardly went out. It was easy to do because I was newly self-employed and was working crazy long hours. Plus Michael and I were newly wed and working on building our relationship. My life felt disjointed. All of my favourite digs were on Fraser and Main, now I was a city away. We went to church near Vancouver’s city hall, but we were paying taxes in Burnaby. Familiar faces were non-existent.

I decided to get a (very) part-time job at Starbucks to meet people in the neighbourhood. And, you know, it worked! But I was SO overworked (5-9 AM at Starbucks, 9-6/7/8 at my desk) I had to quit. No matter, the short stint at the neighbourhood coffee shop opened up relationships where I lived. Now I walk into Starbucks and meet friendly faces. They even treat me to free beverages. They ask after our baby. They make me feel welcome — at home.

Slowly, slowly this area has become home. I think, in our right-now, click-culture, we forget that things take time. Relationships are forged. Homes are built. The expectation that these things will happen overnight is our great adversary.  

We found out yesterday that Michael’s sister is moving into our neighbourhood, two blocks from the little Anglican church we have been visiting and the butcher where we buy our steak and kolbassa. On Sunday we met up with our neighbour Tricia and her son Diego at McDonalds. We talked politics over Happy Meals (she’s meeting some federal big wigs as I type). Jennifer, our neighbour on the 8th floor, greeted us at the grocery store the other day. Her two-year-old daughter Amelia is looking forward to playing with our baby when s/he comes. 

Today, I thank God. We have a home.

So, I splurged.

Yesterday we celebrated Father’s Day with a visit to my dad and stepdad, but before stepping out of the house my husband got to experience his very first father’s day:

Eggs Benny. Homemade Hollandaise. Fruit Salad. Bacon. Fresh coffee. A letterpress card.

And tickets! to see Death Cab at the Coliseum next month. Woohoo!

I read this interesting article about how to bond with your preborn baby over the weekend. Apparently baby will be rocking out at the concert with us!

“Concert-going mothers report their preborn babies jump at the sudden sound of drums. In fact, from at least the 23rd week on, a preborn baby’s hearing is developed enough to enable him to respond to outside noise… Even the five-month-old fetus has been found to have discriminating musical ears.”  - From 7 Ways to Bond with your Preborn Baby 

And now Michael is off to Toronto for a week of work. Darling, I miss you already.

Since arriving home I have slowly been piecing our house together to make room for our new addition (due August 27, by the way.)

I’ve been purging, storing, cleaning and sorting every square inch of our home. I’m happy with the progress in all but our bedroom — the one room in our house that has always remained unfinished. Until now we’ve had two tall chests of drawers near the base of our bed, a set Michael inherited from his grandma’s deceased neighbour. (Grim, but true.) ;)

We’ve had our eyes open for a set of drawers for the past month or so, assured it is the piece to really complete the space.

I’ve had my eyes on some vintage sets, like this:

$250 at a vintage shop in New Westminster’s Antique Alley

and this:

But Michael and I differ in our affections (/repulsions) to retro furniture. (I love it, he hates it. Shocker.)

I’ve also been keeping my eye on Ikea, though our preference is for real wood. I’m particularly taken with the Engan collection.

Then, today, I popped into Value Village to pick up a VCR (I borrowed a prenatal yoga video from my sister-in-law and have also been dying to watch some of my old VHS favourites like Reality Bites and Fried Green Tomatoes) and I happened upon this find:

for only $35!

Sometimes a little determination and a little luck is all you need.