God is Gracious

Timing is everything, right?

Yes, our baby was 3 weeks early. Technically, he was a preemie (1 day away from 37 weeks!). But his timing was perfect.

1. We wouldn't have been any more ready by his due date, honestly.
We had just gotten the nursery painted. Beyond that, we still didn't know what we were doing. We knew nothing about babies. So the only plan was to have one more baby shower, then attempt to figure out what stuff we had in case we could think of something else we needed.

Somehow we had managed to get all of our canning done before the baby was born, but hadn't really gotten into making meals ahead of time to throw in the freezer. Honestly, I'm not sure if I would have gotten to that anyways. My energy and ability to move was very quickly disappearing.

Him coming early just meant we had an excuse to not be ready...

2. Chris got out of a bad situation at work.
There was a client that was creating a LOT of stress for Chris at work. The baby coming early gave him the ability to hand the project over and walk away from the stress. It was perfect timing too, because the situation was resolved in a way that Chris wouldn't have been able to do. There was less stress because someone else was able to look at the situation and just end it, rather than suffering through it.

3. Mom got to hold the baby.
My mom has been having hit after hit with the cancer, then pneumonia, then shingles, all on top of blood issues and other problems. With the baby coming early, she was able to get to the hospital and hold him a little. Now most of our interactions are through video chat so she can at least see him.

4. We skipped the stress that would have happened leading up to the due date.
Let's be honest. If your due date approaches, you stress out about it, wondering when it will happen, what's going to happen, will there be a mad rush to the hospital, will I be at work, will Chris be available, will blah blah blah... Chris and I can stress with the best of them. We got to skip that.

5. Both my mom and Chris' mom were unavailable, so we had to learn to ask others for help.
My mom has been sick. Chris' mom was going in for shoulder surgery the day my water broke. We had no idea what we were doing. Plus I was having headache issues and couldn't actually function very well for the first week.

We were forced to ask for help.

Luckily, there are lots of "moms" for us at our church. We had ladies come in and clean while I slept, hold the baby while I slept, make me lunch, make us dinner, and fill our freezer with some meals that all we had to do was stick in the oven.

We also had some friends on Facebook step up and volunteer. I've got more meals coming next week. I had a dear teacher from my middle school years come and hold the baby and even clean our bedroom and the bathrooms (WOW!). I've had people drop off things that they thought we might need (and we did, we just weren't sure when we'd get to the store to find it!).

It was and is fantastic. And humbling. And not easy. But we're learning to be okay with asking for help.

----------

So weighing all of these things together, we looked at the top few names we were thinking of for our new little boy. One name meant protector. One name meant fair. One name meant God is gracious. God is very gracious to us. So that's what we chose for his first name.

His middle name means beloved and is from one of my favorite characters in the Old Testament.

He will be our constant reminder of God's grace.

----------

gra·cious
adj.
1. Characterized by kindness and warm courtesy.
2. Characterized by tact and propriety
3. Of a merciful or compassionate nature.
4. Condescendingly courteous; indulgent.
5. Characterized by charm or beauty; graceful.
6. Characterized by elegance and good taste
7. Enjoying favor or grace; acceptable or pleasing.

Canning Applesauce

We made applesauce again this year with Chris' parents.

Last year I made us do it with the hand-cranked foodmill, because I had never made applesauce before and wanted to know how.

This year we opted for the Kitchen Aid attachment. I'm glad that I did it once with the foodmill... It really makes you appreciate the ease of using a Kitchen Aid. We will probably make it that way every year now... I want one for my Kitchen Aid... :)

Canning Tomatoes

Saturday we spent the day canning tomatoes. It was Chris and my first solo flight in canning. Last year we did applesauce with his parents and last week I did a batch of tomatoes with my mom.

It went well, but it was a long day. Only one jar casualty! Not sure what happened, it got a crack and made a mess in the canning bath... Oh well.

Here's some pictures:

 

  

See more pictures at our flickr page.

Applesauce

Chris and I headed up north to do some canning this weekend.

We had lots of leftover apples from the Pumpkin Patch, so we wanted to put some to good use. We rifled through my mom and grandma's mason jars, found two dozen and were on our way.

First we had to cut up the apples and remove the seeds. We kept the peels on – adds a few nutrients and makes the applesauce a pretty pink.


This is me and Chris' parents working on those apples.


Then came the cooking. We put them in big pots with just enough water so they didn't burn to the bottom of the pan. Stirred them around until they got fairly mushy.


Chris is good at stirring.


Once they were mushy enough, we cranked the apples through the food mill. This pulled off the apple peels and made the sauce nice and smooth.


Finally, we put the sauce into the jars and ran them through the pressure cooker.

I never realized apple sauce was so easy to make. Well, the process is easy, but it definitely can take some time to do so many. We filled 19 jars. 19 quarts of apple sauce. Wow! We'll be all set for a few months.