Time-bound

I should know better than to think a due date means I'm going to have a baby to hold. ;) Rinnah was my only "early" baby, coming two days before her due date. Being, today, four days past should not surprise me.

But this whole week I've found myself increasingly distracted and unable to plan my time. What should I tackle next? The answer to that question is different if I have one hour left, or five days left, or something in between. And I've found this conundrum to be rather debilitating this week.

And then late Thursday, kind of out of the blue, I realized quite clearly that I never really know how much time I have left. Time is not mine to control, and the only difference at the moment is that I'm aware of this truth instead of living oblivious to it. My realization of my time-bound nature automatically brings to mine the timelessness of God. He, unlike me, is not bound by time, and is not limited to seeing time one moment at a time, and living it it only one direction. As the creator of time, he is outside of time.

Not that that reminder meant that suddenly my Friday and Saturday were productive and useful and distraction-free, but it does mean that now I have a place to direct the fight when those thoughts of the unknown future threaten to take over. God's hands have been so intricately involved in the timing of things that have been happening over the past months, that I can choose to believe that he has the arrival of this little one all planned out, too.

And because pictures of cousins are always appreciated by my two-year-old niece far away across the ocean, here is a peek into what we've been doing while we've been waiting to meet the newest member of our family!

We finally got out to pick up a car seat for the baby, and Rinnah got right to work testing it out.

Leah's baby has spent quite a bit of time in there, too.

She almost looks real!

Ha! Even Krassi, who is always into new and different things, was checking it out.

 We spent lots of time outside last weekend boiling off our sap all in one big blitz this year (I hope to back-post about this sometime.)

Reuben was thrilled beyond words (well, words are pretty much always beyond him!) to be able to help Dad feed the fire this year. He kept that thing cranking!

 Krassi really liked being outside.

And he got a chance to swing for a while that day, too.

Owen was able to do a lot of the real work tending the boiling sap this year.

Leah loves to color with chalk.

More sap tending

And, oh yes, another prenatal visit (on my due date). Reuben the midwife was back at work again. I love how he's got the cat in a head-lock while he listens to Baby's heartbeat. There's multi-tasking for you!

And more lovely days outside. Reuben picked right back up on one of last year's favorite activities - hitting things with sticks.

And since the ground wasn't quite dry enough for sitting on, Krassi spent this afternoon in the wagon. Rinnah was happy to join him here and there.