Thank You!

Thanks for all the well wishes. We are so happy to have our little man here and he has gotten quite the welcome from his brothers. They are ever so happy to

1. shove a binky in his mouth

2. pull his bassinet around the house

3. sing him LOUDLY to sleep

4. hold him tightly and tell him stories.

We have officially survived the first two weeks and in all seriousness, we are full of joy. There is something very special about having a new babe in the house.

So there’s that. My fourth boy!

And then there’s other things. Like my book. Some of you may know, I’m about done with the revision phase of a book that has been a VERY LONG TIME coming. In fact, the night before I went to the hospital, my editor sent me an email with some scene changes, etc. and asked if I could get it back to her in the next few days.

I stared at the email and thought, I can’t do this. I can NOT do this.

I told Cam, I can’t do this.

He said, You don’t have to do this.

I said, Yeah. I don’t have to do this.

Then I sat there. And I said a prayer. Cam and I said a prayer.

Then I worked for three hours. I didn’t finish, but I got close.

In the morning, when we got to the hospital (leaving my kids with my sisters and father), I pulled out the laptop and handed it to Cam. For the next eight hours, while we waited for the baby to come, I dictated to Cam and he made changes for me in the manuscript. We went down the list, item by item until, a half hour before the arrival, we finally finished and Cam clicked send.

Here are some things I realized through this process:

1. I can do hard things.

2. This actually wasn’t as hard as I was making it in my head.

3. It took our minds off the long wait for baby to come.

4. My kids were in good hands with someone else. It was just me and Cam, hanging out in a room for hours. What better way to spend our time?

5. Writing is fun. Especially when you have someone willing to help you. We laughed a lot.

6. I felt tough even though it really wasn’t tough AT ALL! There weren’t huge changes. I’d done most of that earlier but there were enough minor changes for me to feel a little defeated the night before.

7. There’s no need to feel defeated.

8. I am SO GLAD I did it BEFORE the baby came rather than AFTER he came. I had forgotten how exhausted and achy and demanding being a new mom can be.

9. I love my husband.

10. I am glad I prayed.

So that’s my writing birth story. I could tell you other kinds of stories in relation to this epic thing called childbirth–like how I immediately put on my string bikini right after he was born because I was looking that good, or how I had forgotten about nursing and what that entails and how it made my bikini look so much better/scarier, or how this cute thing loves to blow out all his diapers and the boys think it’s pretty darn awesome and in a way, I do too–i could tell you stories like that but this is a writing blog so I’ll save you the details.

Thanks for all your love and support. xoxox