Living the Good Life

It's official, Ziggy (or Ziggianna as G-Ma Patty calls her, willing her to be a her) won't have to spend his/her first year of life sleeping in the bottom drawer of Daddy's dresser. We will soon have a new home, complete with a whole separate bedroom for the nursery.

Starting Feb. 26th, I will be the new Pastor of St. Paul's United Church of Christ in Henderson, MN. The job includes a house, right next door to the church, and we'll keep our little lake place here in Dassel for our weekend getaway spot. We're all very excited about the move! It brings us closer to good friends, Joe's family, and even a few minutes closer to my family too (just a south instead of west).

The wonderful people at the church are busy installing new carpet throughout the five-bedroom tw0-bathroom house, varnishing woodwork and kitchen cabinets, and removing wallpaper and painting every single room. They even let me pick out all the colors! We saw it about 1/2 done two weekends ago when I preached and led worship and the congregation officially voted "YES!" for the Stevens' family. It looks great and I'm loving all the shopping and daydreaming about where things will go and how things will look once we're moved in.

Which leads me to my latest thoughts about Ziggy. Frankly, I'm having a very hard time picturing a little baby in our midst. We went to register at Target for the baby showers our loving family and friends are having...and it was hard.

I don't know if we'll like these bottles or those ones. Do the extra vibrating/rocking/bouncing mechanics for the bassinet really "soothe" or just irritate a newborn? Are special blankets really needed to wrap baby tight in a swaddle for $7 extra per blanket? Don't the nurses at the hospital just tuck and wrap...can't we do the same?

Now I have to take back the years, and I mean years, of complaining and taunting my parents for the photograph of me as an infant in the playpen with a string of tinfoil and Coke cans over me. Seriously...I was smiling. Isn't that the point? Didn't I turn out OK without perfectly shaped and colored bits of plastic that move and sing and light up to alternately stimulate and soothe each corner of my growing brain?

Sorry, Dad. Tinfoil and Coke cans might be 'white trash' but they did the job just fine.

And why is the exact same car seat $30 more for the one that has the newest blue/pink and brown swirlies on it instead of last season's blue/pink and brown stripes?

OK, enough griping, mostly, we're very very happy and excited!

Ziggy continues to grow and move. I'm happy and healthy, adding heartburn and orange juice cravings to my list of symptoms. And we're appropriately overwhelmed by the thought of being entirely responsible for the health and well-being of a brand new human.

As we often say to one another, "We have a good life."