The naming of a son.

Naming another baby was way harder this go around. Not because we didn't have some really good leads on names, but more that when the name was finally decided upon all I could really think was, "Whoa, who is this kid gonna be?!"

It took a solid week of me doing an intensive Bible Study for me to fully come to grips with the name and even as I write this I feel like I still don't fully understand the depths of what his name will mean for him.  But  in a lot of ways I am now even MORE excited to meet our little fellow. Who, from now on, will be referred to by his name: Justice Tirian Wilson

Tirian I got behind a lot faster so I'll start there. Not long after the beginning of 2015 I started to feel the great need to re-read C. S. Lewis' The Last Battle which is the last book in the Chronicles of Narnia series. I'm usually not one to pick up the last book of a series, but in this instance Brett and I have read them all so many times it was easy to grab the last book and devour it in two evenings after the kids had gone to bed by reading it out loud to each other. BOY IS IT GOOD!!! Not to get to end-timesy on you, but I'm one to believe that C.S. Lewis may have gotten a little prophetic in writing this book and the first few chapters are beyond sobering ( if you've never read it, push through, I promise it gets easier and its ALL worth it). That said, we were reading along and it became pretty clear that Tirian, the last king of Narnia, was a great name for our son...it probably started ( SPOILER ALERT) when we saw the character pushing through his doubts and his discouragement and calling on Aslan for help, but it was by far solidified when we got to the glorious ending when the King finally meets Aslan...oh, come on, I better just quote it for you:
"Then (Aslan) fixed his eyes upon Tirian, and Tirian came near, trembling, and flung himself at the Lion's feet, and the Lion kissed him and said "Well done, last King of Narnia who stood firm at the darkest hour." 

Oh MAN, that's super good, right?! And I knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that those were the words I want spoken over our son's life, it is my most fervent prayer-that he would stand firm in Jesus' name even in the darkest of times.

And while I may have had trouble at the beginning about Justice's first name, it really does fit so perfectly with his middle name I should have known it was right from the beginning... but I'll back up and say that the origin of the name Justice is similar to that of Ransom. We wanted the name to point to Jesus. However, while Ransom has a very nice and encouraging message about Jesus-on first glance the Justice of Jesus does not seem as cheery. However, can I just tell you that it IS?! We see in the Bible that the Justice of the Lord is very much wrapped up in mercy.

"( The Lord) loves righteousness and justice the earth is full of the steadfast love of the Lord." -Ps 33:5

"Therefore the Lord waits to be gracious to you, therefore he exalts himself to show mercy to you. For the Lord is a God of Justice blessed are those who wait for Him." Is 30:18

In a similar way that Tirian points to the end of all things, we must remember that every day that the Lord tarries He is showing us mercy by giving us chance after chance to come to Him. Yet ultimately we can expect the Lord's perfect Justice. And yes, HIS Justice is perfect. I personally have a strong sense of justice and I tend to be very black and white. My own Abigail-sense-of-Justice gets me into trouble all the time and I worried that I was putting that onto my future child. But what I'm coming to see more and more is that Abigail's worldly justice is not what we are naming our son after. The Justice of Jesus is FULL of mercy and grace, it is a gift and it is both mysterious and wonderful. 

And I am woefully unqualified to write about it.

Of course, there is another cool aspect to Justice's name that I really love- the call to mirror even just a little bit of that Heavenly Justice here on earth. Time after time when man is called to bring forth Jusice it is for those who no one stands up for: The orphan, the widow, the poor, the destitute- we are called to remember them and to give them Justice where none has been found before.

"Learn to do good;
 seek Justice, 
correct oppression; 
bring Justice to the fatherless,
 plead the widows cause."  Isaiah 1:17

He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of Thee but to do Justice, love kindness and walk humbly with your God? Micah 6:8

And so we will pray that Justice Tirian will grow up to be a man after God's heart-who fights for the cause of the oppressed, who stands even in the darkest of times and who points to the great coming of Our Lord.

We can not wait to meet you Justice Tirian Wilson.  We love you already. 

It's another....baby!!!

A few weeks ago in the midst of moving chaos -Brett and I threw our kids in the car at the impossibly early hour of 7:30am ( none of us are particularly fast moving in the mornings) and drove to an Ultrasound appointment. The highlights for my kids were the following:

-The fish tank. Oh man, who doesn't love a good fish tank in a doctors office waiting room? SCORE.

-Cinderella downloaded onto my phone. Sure, its tiny but it is still a movie and who doesn't love watching some unplanned screen time?

-And for Ransom, the confirmation that he was indeed going to have a baby brother.  Tabitha did not care about this at all. She was just concerned that her Mommy might be sick, but when she found out I wasn't she was happy to return to watching fish in the fish tank.


So there you go!! The Wilson's are about to be a male dominated family unit. I honestly hadn't thought that I had any predictions when it came to what we were going to have-it seemed pretty 50/50. We already had one of each, and all my pregnancies had been different enough that I couldn't count on all those wives tales....  but as it turns out, I was so NOT surprised when I saw those itty bitty boy parts that I think I must have known deep down. Or maybe it just feels right.

I'm getting more and more excited our little brother mostly because I've got the time hop app on my phone and it reminds what adorable babies we make.

Tabitha, 2 months old 

Ransom, 2 months old

                                       

                                                       And for comparison: our newest edition yawning... 

As for his name, that will be revealed very soon! Get excited, I won't make you wait too long...

Welcome to the HabitAT Kitchen

   So, because I'm not even remotely one of these "professional" bloggers, who has the great foresight to take pictures of their house in all its fine detail before doing any changes ( duh!) you'll have to make do for this little "Kitchen introduction" with some incredibly awesome wobbly pictures off the internet. But I think it just makes the "before" and "after" even more exciting, right? right? hahaha! So here it is: Soak in all the white counter tops and all the dark wood cabinetry....

                        

Are you still soaking?!? Isn't it something to behold!?? Let's look at it from a different angle...

                           
Wow...sooooo....soooo....awful.....
                           

But let's remember that nuns lived there and not say anything too mean. Instead, lets eat some sherbet to cleanse our pallet and head into what is now our kitchen.....

AHHhhhhhHHHHHH!!!!! 

First of all, because we aren't made out of furniture we did not have both a dining room table AND a breakfast table. So since our table is more "dining room-esque" this room is now a very fun kid friendly room where, thanks to my shiny new bar stools people can also hang out and chat while I'm cooking or eat lunch or if you're a tiny person you can have a snack at the kid table or "make" something in the tiny kitchen. 

                              

                           

I'm particularly happy with my "coffee/tea nook" where my chalk board calendar fit PERFECTLY to cover up the bad wood panelling back there, score!! 

                             

And now lets take a closer look into the kitchen.  I'm happy to say one of my most satisfying moments is when my painting was all done and all the various workers we'd had in the house all admitted they had thought I was CRAZY for wanting TWO DIFFERENT colors for my cabinetry. Well, folks, I think it turned out awesome! And they all had to admit that I had been right all along ( or they just wanted to make sure I was going to pay them so they agreed with me...however you want to look at it.) 

                            

Also, lets talk about my wooden counter tops. Yes, they are a little high maintenance right now. For a week we couldn't have anything on them at all because EVERY DAY I would treat them with mineral oil ( Also, try going to Walgreens and buying a BUNCH of mineral oil without feeling weird.) But, after doing treatments every day for a week we are now down to just once a week ( and I've been using this amaaaaazing bees wax/mineral oil conditioner called Howards Butcher Block Conditioner  and it is great stuff) and then by the end of the month we'll just be to monthly treatments. I can already tell that my wood is pretty well saturated with oil and water beads up on it immediately. I feel like considering the cost and how the "pain" was minimal I would do it again in a heartbeat. I looooove how it looks, and how I can kneed pizza dough on it like a champ.  

                        

One thing I have done, just to keep the water around my sink at bay, was to give my soaps and sponges a little lift on a cake stand, and I kind of like the effect! 

                           

So there you go! My brand new kitchen! If you do come for a visit please don't look closely at the cabinets since the painting job was the furthest thing from stellar but, as I suspected, once I'd moved in and started living my every day life in it, I hardly notice the horrible mistakes and smudges any more....hardly. 

Teasing.

The month of May was entirely swallowed up by things I did not love. I mean, entirely. There are few things that I hate more than the following:

• Disruption to routine. 
• Clutter. 
• Change. 
• Things not going according to plan. 

That basically describes every thing there could possibly be said about both moving and renovating! 

So you can imagine that I was really a party in pregnancy pants for the whole month! And so there you have it. The reason I didn't blog. Because nobody needed to see that kinda mess. Well...actually, ONE good thing happened in May, my friend Miranda came to visit-and that was truly a good moment. However, as it with a true jewel of a friend....you really have NO time to do anything other than talk for days and days on end.  And then once she was gone I was immediately thrown back into the mountain of moving which was once again not pretty. 

                                      ( by far the best thing about May) 

 Even as it was happening I knew I was not being the best version of myself and really the only way through it was to put my head down and pray we'd come out on the other side soon. And wouldn't you know it, June did indeed come!! Hooray! 

So now we'll get on to some fun stuff that I really want to share with you! I've basically been saving up some SUPER de DUPER juicy posts, like what our new house looks like! And things that I am loving about it ( and I'll try to keep the painter-hatred rants to a minimum). And then also, I can't wait to tell you what the next Wilson Baby is going to be! Followed closely by the always anticipated "Name that Baby!" post. And let me tell you, you're gonna want to stick around for this because its actually INCREDIBLY HARD to name another baby after you've already named THREE OTHER BABIES. The pressure really starts to mount. But, basically as soon as we saw the little gender bits of this baby I was in full on baby-naming mode. And I'm really happy with the final result. 

So, stay tuned! This post was basically an advertisement/ teaser for future posts. It was the 30-second "teaser" Star Wars trailer equivalent of a blog post. HA!