Cosette Has a Name!

I'm thinking this blog is going to become a Davenport Family Update Transit of Information blog. Hopefully I can put some interesting info up regularly, especially once baby Cosette comes and I'm back on my feet (or not on my feet and a little restless).

Firstly, we have named our baby girl Cosette Marie. And yes, I meant to type it out! We had been keeping our name choice a secret for about 5 months for two reasons: We could change it if we wanted, and it was fun to be sneaky. Well, reason number one become very valuable to me when about a month ago I fessed up to Keith that I really didn't love the name we had chosen and had been calling the Kicking Kid for months. I just didn't.

For a while I loved the name Evelyn, the old-style way. Then I recalled the hauntingly beautiful store Eveline from James Joyce's Dubliners, and I vividly remembered my senior-year English teacher telling us to say her name Eve-Line or Eve-Lyn, because she's Irish, Joyce is Irish, and that's how the Irish like it. Eve-Lyn sounded awesome to me, beautiful and unique. So we made it Evelyn, pronounced Eve-Lyn. Somewhere along the way, though, I started hearing Keith say "Evil" every time he called our baby by name. And I was bothered. Eventually I couldn't handle it anymore and broke his heart by casting "Evelyn" out the window. But, I mean, come on...Evil just shouldn't be tolerated.

Cosette was on my top 5 list for quite a while. Keith, however, wasn't in love. It took some living with and convincing on my part, and finally one morning, Keith said, "So let's name her Cosette." And I was happy.

Where the name came from, though, I'm not sure. I think I was inadvertently influenced by my reading selections of Les Mis over the years of Englishness and literature-learning, although I couldn't have told you Cosette is the daughter of Jean Valjean...that is, before I was reminded of it.

Marie is my middle name...that's where that came from.

So anyways, other Davenport happenings:

Olivet graduates this weekend: David, Kent, and Andrea are undergrads, and Tim with an MBA. Busy, busy! Graduating from college ourselves seems like ages ago to Keith and me. College itself also seems like another world, in which we only possibly actually lived or perhaps only made up. We do miss our college friends so much though. And some professors. And some classes :)

No more work for me after next week. I'm cashing in my lattes at Caribou Coffee after 1 year and 7 months to wait impatiently for Cosette to come see me and then take care of her. Now this means many things to us Davenports, but mainly it means that we will be relying on the Providence of God now more than ever, and we will be hopefully looking for an additional job for Keith that he can work joyously and not reluctantly. It means rearranging things financially. And it means that I'm finished with yet another "Just a Job" job and can look forward to a new job in the future that really invigorates me, or to more at-home motherhood, whichever befalls me.

Max & Sadie, our adoring 2-year-old furry fluffies, say hi to the world through the blog as well. They want you to know that they are doing well. Sadie Catahoula is excited for the baby to come so she can have yet another Davenport to snuggle and mother. She also wants everyone to know that she has settled down (*some*) but will still jump on you and love you if/when you come to visit us because she just downright adores you already. Max Dog, on the other hand, wants you to know he feels apathetic about the whole baby thing. However, if you come to visit, he promises to sit with you in the green chair and do nothing all day.

That's about all for now. 5 more weeks till the due date!

23-Week Ramble

Well, hm, things sure are fiercely normal and frighteningly different. All, of course, on a scale of minute proportions.

Normal: Currently addicted to the Olympics,
Abnormal: Projecting my fear of motherly failure on that one American snowboarder who totally choked four years ago at the finish line, gained a ton of media attention for her hope for gold this year, and unfortunately wiped out in the semis in a furry of snow, flags, and a flying snowboard. Needless to say, I teared up a little on the way to work thinking about her surely broken heart.

Normal: <3 for rearranging and purchasing furniture
Abnormal: Obsessively checking Craigslist for new listings.
Abnormal: Finding a beloved changing table/dresser combo on Craigslist, feeling like I had it for sure in my grasp, and then finding out it sold before I could see it. (Note that it was used and not the finish that we wanted, but for some reason I latched on.) Finding another beloved combo changer at JC Penney Outlet (it did, in fact, have scratches and damages, but of course, I loved it unequivocally), checking on it a few days later, arranging for a friend to help us haul it, and then finding that hours after it was in my sight for the last time, some other mother-to-be (likely a Johnson County-ian, hmph) bought it out from underneath my very grasp. I bawled, bawled, rejected fast food, bawled, curled up on the recliner, and bawled. Over a damaged dresser.

--Clearly I'm swinging on a pendulum--

Normal: Excitement for the baby to come!
Abnormal: Waking up at 1 am and pondering the birth of my child, waking Keith up to discuss it, and finding that I'm annoyed with him for not wanting to chat about childbirth and birth defects and all that jazz...

Normal: Dreams
Abnormal: Dreams that involve my mother, at 52, having another child; a college acquaintance blowing up in Disney Land; and my OB stealing my child at birth and giving it to a couple who couldn't have kids all for the sake of doing Good in the world (I could always have more children, after all). I now have developed isolated fears of birth control, Disney Land, and my obstetrician.


Enough of this talk. Some info updates: I'm 23 1/2 weeks and feeling the baby moving about a lot. Keith felt her swimming around two weekends ago (yay!), and just recently I've been able to see her kicks! While I'm watching TV or reading, I enjoy leaving my hand on my tummy and feeling every knee, elbow, hand, or foot that I can. Usually, I giggle. Giggling has become my number one reaction to any miracle of life: marriage, healing, salvation, babies...

At my last check-up I had gained 6 lbs from my previous appointment, for a total weight gain of 7 lbs. Yippee. I very much enjoy my prenatal pilates, mainly because the instructor is at least 10 months pregnant (ha) and if she can do it, I can do it too. For the most part. Unless it involves moving more than 2 appendages at a time. Coordination gets tricky, if you know what I mean.

Still trucking away at Caribou Coffee. I both look forward to and dread my quitting day, because once I quit, there will be no more paychecks. And I don't know what we'll do, or how we'll make it, and I don't know what my next work move will be from there, and I don't know how long we'll be able to hold on, but that's where the beauty of Christ-following comes in. Something (well, Someone) is keeping our hearts at peace as we approach this serious unknown. God is our Provider. He'll provide.

Girl!

On Wednesday Keith and I went to my 18-week appointment all excited because we were going to have THE sonogram. Is it a boy or a girl? For a couple who replied "A baby" when people asked what we wanted, the excitement was not over finding out the news that it was a boy or it was a girl so much as just knowing.

We both knew before the sonogramer said...our baby's a girl!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mad props to my dad and grandma, a cousin, a best friend, and Keith's grandma for all also "knowing" it was a girl for quite a while. Super spidey sense on these ones, if you ask me.

The sonogram showed our daughter sitting breach-style, cross-legged, facing out, with her hands pulled up to the sides of her face, just hanging out, swimming around. How cool! News is, too, that she can hear these days (19 weeks) and recognize familiar sounds like my voice, Keith's voice, my heart beat, perhaps a coffee pot brewing...

So, after the shock of life-changing information and then the mind-dulling 2-hour wait to see our doctor, we didn't really hit the road naming her and buying her lacy pink outfits. Well, we didn't until yesterday! Shopping for baby girl clothes = an amazing experience of ruffles, pink, lady bugs, dresses, and bows. Amazing how much more fun it is to shop for her than for myself! (I never thought I would have such a thought.)

About her name, we decided upon the recommendation of a few trustworthy moms and our own intuition not to share her name until she's born. Besides, a secret is always fun and the pursuit of its answer always makes your life more worth living, right? Um, right. Anyways, we think we've settled on her name, and we're trying it out on her now to see if she likes it (and us too).

After buying her an "I Love Daddy" onesie (and I'm convinced they make no such thing for Mommy that comes in girl colors, sob) and a few other staples and some diapers, I entered some eratic sort of psycological state where I felt I needed to buy all the items for the nursery and decorate it all and fill the closet and register post haste, or else. Good thing someone was reminding me I have 5 more months of carrying the child before we get to meet her and need to clothe her and introduce her to her room...he did the trick. oh, as did a delicious vanilla bean frappuccino (yes, I betray Caribou Coffee every once in a while to meet my needs...but that's another blog post).

I've now found that a good way to channel my overbearing motherly instincts is...drum roll...crocheting! I've been a crocheter for officially 5 hours now, which necessarily means that I'm terrible and my "blanket" could also pass as half a sock, a Barbie poncho, or a shrunken scarf. However, I fully intend to crochet my baby girl a beautiful blanket which she will love and cherish forever.

Well, until more news strikes me as noteworthy (or maybe not so much?), that's all folks!

First Reflections on Being a Momma

Yesterday was my third prenatal doctor visit, the first quickie. The doc put the stethescope-type thing on my tum and before she could finish saying "Let's hope the baby cooperates" we all three could hear a really hearty swish-swish-swish-swish heartbeat. It's something next to magical, let me tell you. It's Lovely.

Rarely are there moments when you reach a certain happiness, and when you do, there's no telling how you'll react. Watching this baby grow is among my happiest experiences. And I've found I'm a blissful laugher. There's nothing funny to the situation, but laughing is all I can do. My friend Sheri wisely pointed out today that this gives me better perspective on Isaac's name. I laughed, okay.

After the magic moment had passed, my amazing blood pressure had been confirmed, my weight found to be still the same (I've lost and gained back poundage leaving me at my pre-preggs weight...something's about to change, I expect), and our next appointment scheduled, Keith and I got in the car to head home. I started thinking back on hearing for the first time our baby's heart pumping blood through it's little peach-sized body. We've had the opportunity to see Baby Bean twice on sonogram and see the heart beating, but we've never heard it.

I said outloud how awesome it was to hear our baby's heart, and then did what any other savvy person in 2009 would do -- mass texted my family. My mom wrote back that hearing your baby's heartbeat is one of the best experiences of your life. Instead of agreeing with her in my head though, I immediately dissected her statement. My mom's speaking from experience; she heard my heartbeat when I was the size of a peach. My heart beating was her baby's heart beating. But how can that be, since it's always been mine.

All this time, Baby Bean has been our baby, but for the first time, I realized the enormity to procreation -- Baby Bean is our baby, yes, but Baby Bean is also Baby Bean. An individual, who will consider its heart beating to be its own heart, not the heart of its parents. How existential, you're thinking. But seriously, when this baby's born, it'll be our child forever, and its self forever, rarely thinking on what it means to be our child, whose heart was beating inside me, like my own. It's a lot more than just having the same last name, similar looks and manerisms, and the same family history.

Baby Bean had always been indistinguishable from me until yesterday. How strange to realize that I'm carrying someone else's self around, as much as it is also mine. How neat. How ineffable a thought. There's a lot more to this being a momma stuff than morning sickness and diapers, that's the truth.

No Comfort or Aid for the Enemy -- No Way?

A few weeks ago Keith and I were innocently roadtripping to Chicagoland, singing to Christmas music, looking out the window, when all of a sudden I was accosted by this on the back of a semi-truck:

Behold, the exact antithesis to Jesus's message, preaching, LIFE, was plastered on the back of a U.S.-goods carrier. What is going on in this "Christian country" of ours? One conclusion to draw, which I have drawn already, is that the United States of America is not a Christian country, and any icon with an American flag coupled with a statement boasting of hate for the enemy rather than love seals that deal.

This is not to say that Christians don't reside in this country, or that God is not present here. America is simply not a Christian country, but is she a Christian nation? What's the difference? Is there one? I'm only using the word "nation" because of its strong biblical overtones. Nation, from the Greek ethnes, is a people-group, not a municipal, government-organized State with a ruler. People-groups live within countries; they did in first-century Rome, and they do now.

Something I'm trying to understand is that there is no more Israel. I could get tarred and feathered for saying that, according to one radio talk-show in particular, but I can't be convinced any other way. The biblical Israel is gone, the one with whom God covenanted and shared his prophets and miracles. They finally said "no" so God finally said "no," and, thus, his grace is all the greater in Emmanuel. But any idea that America is an Israel of the 20th- and 21st-centuries just doesn't float many boats any more. How can a Christian nation (that had no president, no concept of secular law, a year of Jubilee for crying out loud!) exist in the form of the United States, or any country now? It can't. It's gone. Israel began handing out her purity when she begged God for a king, and now we still have what she asked for.

I just wonder, who here loves their enemies? Who believes Jesus really told us to love those who hate us and strike us and kill us? What would happen if we did love them, whomever they are? Our war enemies? Is this impossible?

The Beginning

Books inspire me. Not all books. Good books. Well, not all good books either. Uniquely good books that strike a vein carrying a flavor of off-beat, turn-your-world-upside down blood that runs through a few of my veins, on occassion.

I named this blog after one of these books, Till We Have Faces, by C. S. Lewis. It's a book you do a lot of treading in, head-scratching, almost quitting, and, in the end, crying over. It's quite a novel. The story-teller and protagonist is named Orual, and she's looking, looking, looking for true love, or rather, an ability for herself to be able to love truly. In the end, she discovers her ugliness and embraces an agape-sque love. Really remarkable.

We all need to vent, to our best friends or spouses or unfortunate baristas caught up in the morning rush of coffee and scones. We all need to challenge what we think of as love, what our families think of love, what our country thinks of love, what our world thinks of love.

This is an unashamed Jesus-follower blog. I'm trying desperately to find him in this world, and find how his Truth fits into 21st-century Earth (or rather, how Earth fits into his Truth?). I want to air my dirty laundry thoughts, my questions, and hear yours, if you've got any. I learn best through talking "it" out and having my conviction or idea challenged. Challenge or commiserate away. Here we go!