five times the fun!

so, life with a five person family is in many ways what we expected, but in many ways not quite such. there are times when i feel crazy, of course, but there is so much for which to be thankful. God is good. we have three healthy, robust children. one is coming out of the terrible twos, one is redefining the terror that is the terrible twos, and the other is completely peaceable. i am thankful to God for the changes i have seen in whit. he still has his moments, but on the whole is so much more compliant and kinder than he has been over the past year. his countenance is much sweeter and his love and care for his siblings is endearing. he is, in equestrian terms, broken in. of course, he still has flare-ups (today has been a bit of a relapse).
norah catherine...well, today i spent a good seven (think about that, really, that is a while for one issue) minutes praying with her asking, begging, God to help her obey and stop being so hasty to sin and wholly stubborn. she is definitely going to take a work of God to break. i am intensely grieved by her ugliness, i think because i know my struggle against God for autonomy is not so different from hers.
then there is knox. he is great. God has blessed our nursing work, and he is gaining weight rather nicely. he is quite varying at nite and unpredictable, sometimes wanting to eat every two hours. it is exhausting each nite, and days with a baby and two toddlers after nites like that...well, hard. but God must really give grace to this and we always make it without any obscenely large crisis. also, it is for a season and i am praying for perspective.
i have learned: the transition from no children to the first child is the hardest. it is so hard that it is a wonder people have more children. from to one to two is much easier, but still quite hard. from two to three, even easier still, but of course not lacking in it's own difficulties.