Home, Free!
So the biggest news in our world is that I have (finally) been weaned off of working. A few weeks ago, after yet another very frustrating day of work with R, I started talking to Jeff about not working anymore. We started praying a lot about whether or not I could just quit, and this is one of the first times in my life I was actually ready to just QUIT, cold turkey. I ended up working from home for the couple of weeks after Christmas (most of the time that we were praying about this,) and the next time I went to work, R fired me! This is definitely a first for me, and I had a hard time not smiling as it dawned on me what was happening. She had decided that the position I was filling had been designed based on needs that weren't accurate (i.e., it was too stressful to have someone over at her house three days a week, and, my guess, that it was way too much to try to be nice to that person all day.) She felt bad for letting me go right now, since I am showing and probably couldn't get another job, so she offered me a month more of employment. I went home and told Jeff, and we decided that I would just work one more day (so I could get my ice cream maker back.)
I am now officially "at home," and I am so happy about the timing for transitioning into motherhood. Plus, I have so many doctor's appointments--three this week!-- that it is so nice to have the flexibility to go to those. I also need to tell you that God has been so good in all of this. I feel like He has slowly been trying to tell me to stop working, not to try to take care of myself and pull my weight in life, and it has been a tough lesson to learn. This is actually the fourth strange employment situation in the past year as I have felt Him redirecting my focus and pulling me out of work. Jeff and I had been praying earnestly about whether I could quit, mostly because of financial reasons. When I called Mom to tell her I'd been fired, she said, "Oh, that's so great! God knows you can't seem to quit, so He just did it for you..." Within a week and a half, Jeff got a supplemental job that he is really excited about. He will be interviewing people with disabilities and writing reports on their care. It is so perfect, he was saying this is something he would love to do without getting paid, but how wonderful that this is God's provision for us. Another thing is that we realized that we were putting away a rather ridiculous amount of money each month into a retirement account of Jeff's. It was so neat to realize all of a sudden,that God had helped us conceal some income, then brought it to our attention when we needed it.
It's really exciting to see God providing for our needs as a family-- blessing us with pregnancy, moving us (quickly!) to Whittier to be near family in a bigger apartment, then whisking me out of work and providing for the missing income. Isn't He good?

Who is it?

In the next couple of weeks, we should find out the gender of our baby. The fun thing for us is that we've already settled on a name for little person, and once we know WHAT the baby is, we will also know WHO he or she is. We're excited about being able to talk about the new family member by name. I think it will also help with the psychological preparation for having a child. It all seems so abstract to me right now. Every time I open the closet where we have the baby things, I think, "Why do we have all of this baby stuff? We don't have a baby!" I'm laughing as I realize that every time we get something that is baby-related, it just goes straight into that closet and we shut the door. Denial?