Too soon to the party... once again!

Aaron and I met for the first time during orientation week of my freshman year in college. We started dating that February and knew within a few weeks that we wanted to spend our lives together. Of course, six years later I probably would laugh if a barely eighteen-year-old informed me that she was ready to marry her boyfriend of three weeks, but thankfully my parents didn't go into hysterics when I made that claim. Instead, they wisely guided us to make it through the two long years until I was able to graduate and marry my sweet Aaron at the baby-faced age of twenty and three months!

Aaron still had another semester left when we said our vows, so we returned to Wheaton as newlyweds, only to realize that we were too soon to the party. All of our friends were still living in the dorms, attending class, and eating in the cafeteria. It was awkward for them to be around a married couple. And so it was that with little money, few job prospects, and basically no life experience, we were set adrift to find our way without any peers to walk alongside us in our newlyweddedness...

Throughout the following years, we watched most of our friends from college get married, we moved several times, and we made new friends who were at various stages in the journey of finding a life mate. Soon we had seen many couples through the whole process and had a solid base of married friends. We could hang out without it being awkward, we could talk about married life problems, and we could refer to our spouses without everyone in the room blushing or giggling. Our days of lonely married life fading into ancient history, we decided the best choice would be to move along to the next life stage - parenthood! For some reason, it didn't dawn on us that again we would be the first to show up...

So here we are again, the first of all our friends our age who have made the leap to being parents, and it can be a lonely place to be. Now, don't get me wrong, we have many loving and faithful friends in every stage of life who share their hearts and time with us. But there is something different about your commitments and priorities when you are solely responsible for the care of a tiny person. Bafflingly, we have lots of friends in other places who are happily breeding. Our loneliness in parenthood doesn't extend to facebook or the blogging world. But right here, right now, we are the only parents in our close friend group.

It seems like it cannot actually be so... After all, we live in a pretty large city and come in contact with lots of people over the course of a week. I mean, we know other people with babies, just none that are at the same stage of life as we are... At church, there are lots of people in their thirties with kids around Quin's age; in Waco, there are plenty of pregnant teens; and somewhere (I'm sure) there are couples our age with kids. The problem is, I'm not entirely sure how to find them. Aaron and I are pretty well educated, we've been married for almost four years, we attend church regularly, and we're in our early twenties... oh yeah, and we have a baby! Somehow again we've made it to the party too soon.

I'm sure in a few years we will have plenty of friends with toddlers and babies. Life has a way of working these issues out. Someday we will look back and remember fondly the days of being invited to events at which we would spend most of the party trying to hush a hungry newborn. We will laugh when we think back on all the crazy things we did with our childless friends (with a baby strapped on our backs). It will seem ridiculous how uncomfortable some friends were with being in the same room while Quin ate, and everyone we know will travel religiously with a diaper bag. Questions like, "Wait, you can't drink when you're breastfeeding?!" will fade from memory as we surround ourselves with people like us.

... but for now, we are alone among our friends in this journey, and actually, in all its loneliness it can be a lot of fun! Just like it was fun to be married when our friends still lived in the dorms and worried about dates and flirting and nights of heartache, carrying a baby around when you're the only one who's got one can be quite a hoot! Everyone adores our boy and he is spoiled in all the attention he gets! Even if we have to turn down invitations and have people over here instead of going out, we have found ways to do so many fun things with the little guy along for the ride! He's been to football games, youth events, parades, game nights, movie-watching parties, and so much more. Nobody blinks an eye if he stays out after seven or doesn't get his diaper changed when he needs it because they don't know any better.
Experienced parents inform me, "Well, obviously we won't be there because that's after __________'s bedtime" but we can count on all our childless friends to be clueless about bedtimes, never too busy to hold our child, and always excited to see a little smile or an unexpected roll or even some sloppy drool. Everything baby-related is more thrilling to those who haven't experienced it all themselves.

So here we are now: lonely, grateful, and not a bit remorseful. I wouldn't change a thing, even though deep down I am looking forward to the days of playdates with all my heart! For now I can just hope that in time, they will come...

We Three Woodards

On August 1, 2013 We Woodards grew from two to three, and the past three weeks as a family have been special and exhausting. Aquinas Martin Woodard was born right on schedule, in the middle of the night on his due date, and he has proved to be a very cooperative and sweet little boy ever since. Besides still being a little confused about the difference between daytime and nighttime (but really what can we expect from a child produced by Aaron and me) he is really a perfect little baby.

He was born at 7 lbs 10.5 oz, but he's proved to be quite the eater since then, which has taken him to 9.5 lbs only three weeks later. Maybe we're going to have a chubby little guy, which is fine by me, or maybe he just heard his daddy say that he was supposed to get big and strong so he's really working on that as fast as he can! Of course this means that he spends the majority of his waking hours eating, which is fun for his mama, and the time he's awake and not eating he gets to spend doing his "workouts" (AKA tummy time) with his daddy. He's getting really strong; he can already lift his head pretty well and, just like in utero, he has a very decisive kick!

He's a very busy little guy for someone his age. Already he has done lots of shopping, frequented various parties, attended church and our quarterly business meeting, gone to a softball game (and watched many a throwback football game in preparation for the new season), visited campus several times, and pretty much been strapped onto his mama anytime she wants to go anywhere, which is pretty much every day. He loves the little outings, and he rarely fusses in his car seat or in his Moby. He really is a dream child... except at night.

Since he doesn't sleep much at nights, we've taken to taking turns staying up with him. Usually he spends the first part of the night with his daddy and then mama wakes up early in the morning to trade off duties and let daddy get some sleep.  It's good practice for next week when we will be trading him back and forth during the day for the duration of the semester. 

Other than eating and sleeping (and pooping of course), there's not much to say about our adorable three week old. He's really not that entertaining, although the two of us can happily spend hours holding him, cuddling him, and laughing over the silly faces he makes or his precious little sneeze. We are so blessed with this little guy, and we're trying to enjoy every part of this new, challenging, exhausting experience that is parenthood!

And now for some pictures of our first few weeks as three:

Cuddles with Mama

Proud Daddy

Handfuls of love

Oh the many things we've learned - like how to use an infant carseat

Giving Quin his first bath at home - he's not fond of the experience

Watching football with Daddy

Sleepytime with Mama

Our happy family

The Story of Our Trip to Mexico (In Pictures)

Aaron and I got to go to Mexico this June!

In Oaxaca, we spent the first part of the week seeing lots of dear friends...

...and doing some fun sight-seeing 

(like returning to the spot where we got engaged four-and-a-half years ago)!

On Thursday we made the trip through the fog to the Mazatec highlands.

We celebrated first in San Jose with the believers at the town square,

where Aaron "grande" and "Aaroncito" were reunited!

On Friday the New Testaments were dedicated in Eloxochitlan with a festival of the Mazatec language.

On Saturday we joined Tsini and San Jeronimo to dedicate the New Testament there.

We saw lots of beautiful dancing (this is traditional Mazatec outfits and baskets)...

...and enjoyed presentations by people of all ages.

It was so special to see old friends,

and spend time with our dear family!

The Concept of Home

Tomorrow we leave for the long-awaited trip "home" to Oaxaca, and as I frantically try to remember everything I've been meaning not to forget when packing for this big trip, I am also hurrying to unpack box after box to get all the clutter put away from our move on Monday before we leave for Mexico. The moving, unpacking, and packing for our trip have really made me think about what makes somewhere "home".

During our two weeks of homelessness (AKA staying with our neighbors after being kicked out of our old apartment sixteen days before our new lease started), one of our neighbors/roommates heard me refer to "home" and asked what that word meant to me. It's a very complicated question for a young adult. Home can be the place you are from, the place you currently live, or often simply the place you are not. Being married, it is a little easier for me to answer that question, and I flippantly replied that home is wherever Aaron is... and also our stuff. :)

Well, a few days later I wasn't so thrilled to be taking all that "stuff" with me into our new apartment. Thankfully, Aaron did all of the heavy lifting on Monday, but still the last three days for me have been a marathon of unpacking. On Tuesday, I considered this new apartment "home" when I cooked our first meal on the stove top. On Wednesday, it seemed more like "home" once our clothes were all in the closets and there was no more living out of suitcases. Today, I told Aaron that a house becomes a home when every book has been put on a shelf. Now the last boxes are unpacked. Pictures are ready to be hung. Things are starting to find their way to where they now belong. However, as I break down the last box I turn to open my suitcases and pack for a trip to another one of my "homes".

And, oh, what a wonderful place I get to go home to! Vibrant green mountainsides, streets crowded with smiling people, meal after meal that fills your tummy and your soul! It's been almost four years since I've been home, and I just can't wait!

We've all heard it said "Home is where the heart is..." Well, if that's the case then my homes are fractured. My deepest home on this earth is and always will be by my Aaron's side. However, there is a home of mine at Blue Jay Corner in Kirkland surrounded by my smiling cousins; in the halls of Wheaton College where I learned to love academia; under the snowy skies of Iowa and at summertime baseball games; at Grandma's kitchen table drinking mint tea and eating bowlfuls of ice cream; reading a good book in a hammock in our backyard in Oaxaca; and on the rugged hillside of a remote town where next week I will celebrate God's goodness once again. Just because my homes are fractured doesn't break my heart. It would be such an anguish to allow my many families and homes to pull my heart apart, so instead I must somehow allow the multiplicity of home to simply increase my love and comfort in every part of this good world.

So tomorrow I start the nostalgic journey from one home to another, thankful for the incredible blessing it is to dearly love so many places and just every once in a while to go back and remember what it was like when that place actually was the place I called home.

Goodbye Apartment #18

Moving is hard work, and even more so when you're carrying a little baby around inside you! This evening, after almost 12 hours of exhausting work and cleaning, Aaron and I stood at the door to our little apartment one last time, and he held my hand as we prayed and thanked God for all the good times we had there. We've lived in that little home for almost 2/3 of our marriage, more than any other home that's been ours together. As we left one last time, the things we remembered fondly and were grateful for included:

- The place we met so many of our dear Quadrangle friends: Adam & Karin, Addie, Brando, Raelynn, and so many others
- All the evenings of impromptu communal dinners and game-nights
- A home to study and grow and sleep
- Hot, hot summers filled with lazy days and trips to the swimming pool
- Birthdays, Christmastimes, Quin's Gender Reveal, Life Groups, and so many other fun parties
- Sunday mornings running out the door to Sunday School at Calvary
- Aaron coming home exhausted every weekend morning for a year and sleeping all day
- Late nights with my thesis papers strewn across the living room
- Walking to campus every morning and coming home with homework and grading
- Aaron discerning God's leading more and more, and being accepted to Truett
- Watching RG3 win games and get the Heisman
- Hosting the Youth Group girls for a slumber party
- Pumpkin carving in the green space
- Welcoming our family from afar, and monthly trips to Dallas to do laundry
- Visitors from out of town: Karin, Kimberly, Mark Price, John Pohl
- Leaving 3 times in the middle of the night to present papers at conferences
- The place where we found out we were pregnant
- The hum of the sewing machine: piecing quilts wherever space allowed and making and remaking clothes
- Graduation Day prancing around in my cap and gown
- ... and finally, the sacrificial help of dear friends to help a pregnant lady pack everything and move out!

With tears streaming down my face, Aaron shut the door one last time and locked us out of an empty apartment. Now we're homeless for a few days before we can move into our new apartment where we will make more memories, including bringing home a little baby boy! :) Looking forward to that!

Finding time

Tonight I read a very interesting quote about money:

If you are currently living paycheck to paycheck, extend that to three weeks instead of two. Then, as you get better, you can think a month ahead, then three months, then six, and finally a year ahead. (The goal is to get to a point where you are thinking 5 years ahead.)

I find this quote fascinating because, even though I'm no good at budgeting my money, I actually treat my time this way, which usually leads to everyone around me asking how I get so much done... Time is a commodity, just like money. If today you can spend a little bit of time working ahead for tomorrow's to-do list, tomorrow you can work a little bit ahead on the next few days, and after just a little bit of extra time spent each day working towards the future, you will soon find yourself working months and years ahead of everyone else. The great thing about this way of looking at time is that it gives you the flexibility to go a few days without working if needed, because you've already worked so far ahead that you don't have to worry about every single thing on your to-do list. It also helps alleviate stress big-time. I often tell people that I don't do anything I don't want to do, and that's why I get so much done and I'm never stressed out. The truth probably is that sometimes I do things I'm not entirely fond of, I just do them way in advance so that I don't feel miserable and stressed while doing them...

It's a little like paying bills when you get them instead of when they are due. Aaron and I try to live this way with money too, although I'm not quite as good at budgeting my money as I am my time. I've never liked living paycheck to paycheck, and at this point we are about three months ahead of ourselves with cash flow... Even so, I would like to keep developing these skills so that we can push that window farther and farther ahead, and learn how to better be good stewards of both our time and money.

From the silence...

It's very quiet in our house today... VERY QUIET... Last night we attended Calvary's Service of Shadows, in which we heard and relived in a small way the words of the Bible recounting the last few hours leading up to the resurrection. It was a haunting service with sorrowful music and Bible passages, as one by one the lights in the sanctuary went out and we were finally left in the dark to bear the truth that for at least some time on this earth, Christ was not yet resurrected.

Even though we know the ending of the story, in our house today we do our best to live into the sorrow and grief of the death of the Son of God. We surround ourselves in darkness and silence, and not a word is spoken between us. And in the silence of these 36 hours, we yearn towards the glory of Easter morning.

It seems somehow important to me, someone who is always happy and always talking, to intentionally quiet myself in order to in some way comprehend what Christ's death means. It's very hard for me, depressing and frustrating, to be so quiet. Perhaps that is why I continue to do it each year. Just like I freely immerse myself in the anticipation of Christmas, the repentance of Lent, and the "Hallelujah!"s of Easter, I must allow myself to fully enter into the grief and sorrow of Holy Saturday. And from the silence, from the death of noise, I will grow to appreciate the gifts of life we have that we celebrate on Easter morning, when at sunrise I can rejoice and proclaim "He is risen, indeed!"

On Making Money (or not)

As I reflect on five years of life together with my sweet Valentine, I have come to realize that in a lot of ways, the greatest gift Aaron and I have ever been given was also the most miserable two months of our lives, that have defined and determined the course of the rest of our lives. In January and February of 2010, Aaron was finishing his last semester at Wheaton, and I was a new bride, new graduate, and newly unemployed! Before that January, I hadn't really thought about life as a long, glorious journey of becoming. I had mostly just glided along through college, picking a major based first on what I loved, and then based on who I loved. I graduated with a degree in Spanish in 5 semesters just so that I could marry Aaron and (ideally) support him until he finished in May. Well, the ideal doesn't always turn out, and truly I am so glad it doesn't.

That January I was supposed to start an entry-level job at a Bridal Salon, which I thought would be fun and exciting and perhaps put me on the trajectory to be a Bridal Consultant or Party Planner (careers that I still believe would be highly entertaining and challenging for me.) On the fifth day of our week-long honeymoon, I got a call that the job I was supposed to have had fallen through, and so began my days of unemployment. Financial, emotional, and physical burdens aside, unemployment is in so many ways a real gift. For 20-year-old Andrea, unemployment meant a chance to, for the very first time, truly question what it was that I wanted to do with my life. In truth, my unemployment didn't last long. I worked that spring temporarily for the US Census and in April I was offered a position that became the real push for what has now become my real (for now) career of academic study and instruction. But for both Aaron and I, those months of dark, cold, penniless unemployment have affected and will affect the course of our lives from here on out, and more importantly, our attitudes towards work and money that have evolved into something entirely counter-cultural but so life-giving for our family. (An ideology that falls somewhere along these lines.)

In 2010, I began to understand my vocation, and later on, in 2011, Aaron had his own season of self-discovery, which also came through unemployment. Both times, at the time, the financial and emotional strain seemed overwhelming, but now I have learned to see God's hand at work even through our own need. I reflect on this as I approach a new season, unsure if God will bring us through yet another season of unemployment for either one or both of us over this summer and fall. This time, I am trying to learn to reject the fear and doubt, embracing what may come as a chance for God to work on our hearts and lives for His own glory. Who knows but that He has an even greater plan for our lives than the one I have set, and through a semester or two of joblessness, He may bring it about. As a planner and a spender, it is oh so hard for me to accept that perhaps for us, financial stability is not and should not be the goal. It is a difficult thing to explain to a culture that so values savings, mortgages, and 401Ks that perhaps God's plan for our own family goes beyond the traditional "American" financial plan. For us, this calling to financial freedom has meant such drastic measures as quitting a "good" job in search of "greater" volunteering, the absence of a budget in favor of living without expectations, giving whatever and whenever we are asked without thought of the bottom line, and living in such a way that income doesn't matter as long as we are doing what God wants. Even for our families, who love and support us, seeing God's plan for us in the midst of grad school, seminary, and now a pregnancy may be a challenge to their desire for us to be financially "stable". Although it may go beyond explanation, the truth is that through seasons of drought, Aaron and I have come to understand that our marriage and our family exists not to succeed financially, but to follow faithfully wherever God may lead, with the understanding that the ultimate goal is not comfort but calling.

And part of me wishes such unemployment on each of my siblings, each of my friends, and each of my students, because for me, it was the greatest gift I ever received.

The Beginning of the End

There is a deep sadness in my soul today. At first I thought it was because I slept in far too late... for the twelfth day in a row. Then I wondered if maybe the torrential rain outside was making me lethargic. It wasn't until I checked my school email and read some of the messages awaiting me that I realized why these days leading up to my last semester of grad school are so saddening and terrifying. I just love school, and the realization that next week I start my last sprint of it is just heartbreaking for me. I know I'm weird. None of my friends are ready for our month-long vacation to be over. Yesterday, I was really hoping that we could all just go back a week early. But today I realized that I don't want this semester to start because those fifteen weeks will fly by all too quickly, and even though we have an exciting summer and hopeful plans for the fall to look forward to, the fact that I will have to face another graduation and another end to my career as a student frightens me.

It takes a special kind of courage to face the real world without the comfort of school cradling me. I've always been so good at school. It is a place where I know what is expected of me, where I can always exceed those expectations, and where the rewards for my work are always as expected. Unlike the difficult job market, as a student you are never turned away. There is always a chance to study more, to increase knowledge, and to ask hard and enthralling questions - even if you don't know the answers.

In the fall, regardless of what I do next, the security of life as a student will pass. I will be supporting Aaron's studies for several more years, enviously watching while he registers for classes, visits the library, meets with professors, and takes final exams. I pray that over these next few months we can find peace in the unknown that is our future and that whether or not the next few years of my life carry me through the halls of academia again, I can trust the greatest Teacher and never forget that just because I move a tassle from one side to the other, I don't ever have to stop being a student.

Besides, I'll have far more important things to think about by then...