??? Questions ??? 3

**How do I find time for crafts? What do I use for patterns? What are some other crafts I've done?
Ok. I find time because it's stress-relief for me. I usually crochet or knit or sew while watching tv. My family is always thrilled when I'm knitting because then they don't have to put subtitles on to watch a movie (when my sewing machine is roaring away). I usually knit from about 8 or 9 till bedtime. Usually bedtime is dependent on when the project is at a good "stopping point". Last night that meant when the hat was done. :)
Patterns. Ohhh baby. I usually have an idea in mind and then google it. No joke. If I want to make a pair of baby pants - like the blue ones in one of the recent pictures (I think, if not, in one of tomorrow's pictures) I google "knit baby pants" or "baby pattern knit trousers" until I find something I like. If I'm not find something good that way, then I go to one of my trusty dusty sites. And the list is groooooowing fast. These are the daily stops. No joke. Daily.
www.bevscountrycottage.com - has tons of baby and preemie patterns. Also has fetal demise gowns (ie. babies that are miscarried too early to fit normal clothes). Bev fascilitates preemie and fetal demise wear being given to hospitals that can use it.
www.knittingpatterncentral.com - they have EVERYTHING
www.crochetpatterncentral.com - same set up, just for crochet
www.bernat.com - as in bernat yarn. Lots of cool stuff here, very clear instructions
www.lionbrand.com - TONS of stuff. For bernat and lion brand you have to be a member, but its free, you just have to have an email and password login.

And here's links to some of my other projects.

**How has Joshua changed our family? Me personally?
In respect to our family, I think Joshua has made us want more time as a family. It's made us want to be close-knit, and spend more time together. The night before Joshua was born, Matt brought Oceana into bed with us - on purpose - so that we could all sleep together. It was fitting, we had no idea how long we'd have with Joshua. So we treasured the last little bit that we could.
For me, it's been a wake up call. I guess I thought that having healthy babies was easy. Like, get pregnant, have a baby, and then they grow up. Easy? No. I've become a lot more respectful of women who have miscarried. I've never miscarried, so please don't kill me for what I'm about to say. I used to think that women who miscarried (before 20 weeks) were making it out to be worse than it was. But I know now, that's a total lot of CRAP. Losing a child is losing a child. It doesn't matter if the child was miscarried, died because of an ectoptic pregnancy, was stillb orn, died early, died in childhood, died in adulthood, or died from a terminated pregnancy (for medical reasons) - the heartache is the same! The dreams for your child are still dashed. The place in your heart for them will forever remain empty. Your heart can grow bigger, but that puzzle piece can never be refit, it will always be missing. I have a new-found respect for women who have experienced loss.
I have discovered about myself that a) I do crafts when I'm stressed, b) I love knitting, c) I love writing and want to write a book (more on this later), d) I love my babies more than I could ever express, e) I want to learn photography so I can take better pictures of my children.
On writing a book. Maybe because I'm in New Zealand now, and don't have Barnes and Noble right around the corner, but it seems to me there's a huge hole in the market for women experiencing neonatal death - from any aspect besides miscarriage. My mom almost bought me a book about neonatal death, but she said 80-90% was about miscarriage, and not geared toward my situation. I've decided that at some point I'll take my journals, my blog, and what I've learned and write our story. I don't know if it'd get published. But perhaps that will be my way of remembering everything I could about Joshua.

**Does Joshua's cele hurt him? Um. I'm not sure. He doesn't like putting extra pressure on it (like leaning his head back into it). He flips out when we do that, but he doesn't cry, just flails. He also cries when he sneezes, we think there's something that's causing more pressure when he sneezes. This may or may not be related to his cele.

**What's Matt's and my love story? The person who posted this was at school during our freshman year (when we weren't dating) and came back in March of our junior year and arrived the day our engagement was officially announced (our college did official engagement announcements during chapel). She was confuzzled (confused/puzzled... its a word coz I say so).

Ok. This one's sort of long. To spare some details, I'll just say that I was dating someone when I left for college in Feb 2003. We dated through our freshman year and then broke up during the summer. I say this only to clarify that I hadn't even "scoped" out the guys in our class before junior year. When I first came to visit the campus in Feb 03, there was this rather bored-looking guy there with his youth pastor, also visiting. He sat in the back of the room at all the little events, slouching and looking "tough". Apparently he [Matt] scoped me out then - and made some comment after we were married about how he'd told himself he'd never be with someone as gorgeous as me. Maybe he was searching for brownie points that day, maybe it's true. :) Aw.... how cute! Anyways. So we arrived back on campus from the freshman-junior summer, and Matt's first words to his roommate were "Did Susie and X break up?" (He says he has no idea why he said it, or why it was the first thing out of him mouth).
The first 7 weeks of our junior year our whole class was in NYC doing an internship, and so we (class of 65!) got to know each other really well. While we were there (September in NYC, it was blazing hot!) a bunch of us got into a big waterfight. It carried over several weeks, and got rather crazy. I was out to get Matt back for something, and found a Gatorade jug - the big ones they empty out over the Superbowl coach's head - and went to dump it on Matt with a friend's help. I was standing behind a wall, waiting for him to come around. The idea was the slosh the whole thing on him. Instead, he walked too far around and saw me, so he wouldn't come over. Just then, one of his friends came behind me and grabbed it up. And dumped it on me. Jonny Wiedel, I'm still grumpy. :) I splooshed my way upstairs and felt rather embarrassed. That night I was sitting in a room talking with about 6 girls when my friend Danielle walked in with three long step roses and a letter. She plopped them on my lap and I about died. What do you say when you're sitting with a bunch of girls and you get roses dumped in your lap? I made a hasty retreat without any explanation and ran back to my room to read the letter. The letter was a list of "10 Things I'm Sorry For". It was something like, I'm sorry Barney's a purple dinosaur, I'm sorry guys have smelly feet, etc. The last one was, "I'm sorry you got wet. - Matt".
Roses win a girl's heart real quick. The interest was there, and he told me before I left for break, "We'll talk when we get back to Elim." So I spent the whole break telling myself I wasn't going there, that I was off guys, that I was dreaming it up and he didn't like me. Ha. Was I wrong...
That was late October. In November we had the "talk". I told him I needed time to sort some other stuff out. Then in January, I decided I was over the stuff and he asked me out on January 19th (I think... oh dear, I don't remember). On March 12th we got engaged, and on July 9th we got married. No, I'm not kidding. We were dating less than 2 months and engaged less than 4. And we had Oceana the following April. 9 months and 2 days later. :)