Big changes....

Life has been full of “happenings”, but this blog has been very much neglected. Sorry about that :( Things have been crazy, busy and good. Since we last posted, we have had a lot of new developments. The biggest one being that we have decided to move back to Michigan. When we moved to Texas in 2008, we didn’t anticipate that we would live in this particular part of Texas long term. We figured we would be here 3 to 5 years, but we were open to whatever God had for our time frame. Then, 2 months after arriving in Texas, we found out we were expecting a baby. Although we were super excited, we did not plan to start a family so soon after our move. We have missed our families since we arrived, but having Malachi in our lives further increased our desire to be close to family. We want Malachi to know his family and for them to know him. Jermale also wants to be closer to his dad especially after his mother passed last year and I really want to spend time with my grandparents as they are both approaching their 90s. None of these feelings are new, but we were sent here for a purpose and we were committed to doing what we came to do and helping to get Impact United Methodist Church started. We are happy to report that not only is the church started, but we have more than 150 members and it continues to grow. In addition to the church, both Jermale and I found jobs in our career fields and became a part of the community here. There is some level of disappointment because we know that there is more we can do here in Texas and more we can give, but after much prayer, we really believe that moving back is the best thing for our family at this time. A confirmation of this is that the family who was renting our house had to break their contract due to a job transfer and we are now having to pay that full mortgage. There is much more that could be said, but the bottom line is our season here is ending and it is time to go home. We are both sad to leave and excited to go at the same time.

Jermale’s last day at the university is May 14th. After that, he will focus on finishing things up at Impact, taking care of Malachi and packing. I am finishing out my contract with the school district with my last day being June7th. On June 8th, Malachi and I will fly to Chicago. A company will be moving all of our things and Jermale’s dad is flying here to help him drive our vehicles back to Michigan. We will be moving back into our same house and we can now see the fact that it never sold was actually a blessing in disguise. We have been applying for jobs and doing phone interviews and we trust that the right opportunities will open for us in God’s timing.

Malachi is 10 months old now, he will be almost a year old already by the time we get back to Michigan! He is a happy, curious bundle of love. He makes us laugh every day and teaches us to look at life in brand new ways. He crawls all over the place and can stand by himself for long periods of time. He isn’t walking yet, but I don’t think it will be too long. He is reaching developmental milestones right on time, but he remains pretty little as far as his weight is concerned. His blood work has shown a high white blood cell count numerous times, so we will be taking him to see a pediatric hematologist at Texas Children’s Hospital on May 11th. Please pray that we will get a good report and all will be well with him.

We originally set up this blog to keep all our people in Michigan updated on our lives. Hopefully we can keep it up more faithfully as it will now serve as a way to stay connected to all our friends in Texas too. To those of you who have followed the blog from the beginning, thank you for taking the journey with us and keeping us in your prayers! God has truly been faithful and we are excited for what lies ahead.

Love,

~The Eddies

PS The pictures are Jermale and Malachi (10 months), Malachi in his Easter suit and Anissa eatting crawfish for the first time.

Happy New Year!

It seems our blog entries are getting further and further apart. Sorry about that! We are feeling settled into our apartment. It is nosier than our old place with three young boys living above us, but overall it is nice and very much worth the savings!

A major update for us is that I went back to work on Nov. 30th. It is a crazy story, but I was offered a school social work position. This is a huge blessing since that is my preferred career path and those positions are very rare in this area. I serve 3 campuses. Two are 6th-8th grade and one is K-8th. It is very different than my school social work job in MI, but I am enjoying the work. It was so hard to be away from Malachi at first, but a friend of mine kept him for the first 3 weeks and it helped a lot with my transition. After working 3 weeks, I had 2 weeks off for Christmas break :) I go back to work tomorrow (Jan 4) and Malachi will be starting at a new childcare as my friend who was keeping him is having a baby at the end of the month. He will be going to a woman’s house. She has done in-home childcare for 9 years and is licensed through the state. Right now she is only keeping little ones and has 4 other kids in her care. I have visited a few times and talked to other parents. I wish he could go to grandma’s house or something like that, but I know things will be okay.

Jermale also had time off for Christmas break. We had fun relaxing at home and them we spent 5 days in Michigan. It was really nice to spend time with family. Malachi is now 6 months old and he had a really fun 1st Christmas. He is sitting up now and babbling constantly. No teeth yet, but he’s clearly working on that. He is sitting on his own and just starting to push up on to his hands and knees a little. He remains one of the most expressive babies I’ve ever seen and is full of smiles. I’m loving this age b/c he is so fun. Now, if he would just sleep through the night LOL!

Impact is going strong. We continue to have at least 1 new person join as a member every week. January 11th is the anniversary of our very first church service a year ago. It’s hard to believe it has been that long. God has brought Impact such a long way since that time and it is exciting to see all the positive developments. We took a holiday break for the youth group and will be starting back up on Jan. 17th. We are praying that this group will grow and that committed youth leaders will be developed.

Jermale also goes back to Lamar tomorrow. He has fewer events planned for this semester, so things should be calmer.

The next few months will just be focused on church, work and baby. We are looking forward to all God has in store for us in 2010 and we will all of you a very blessed year!

Love,
~The Eddies

It's been too long...

I know, I know! It’s been a while since we last wrote any updates. Please forgive us, but life has been soooooo busy for us lately. It seems that the older Malachi gets, the more he keeps us busy as we try to keep him entertained. So here’s some updates:

1. We’ve moved from Groves to Nederland, Texas to another two bedroom apartment, which is an incredible savings for us. The bedrooms are a little smaller, however, the living room and kitchen is much bigger. The living room is big enough for us to have our Elliptical Machine in there! The landlord even let us paint the apartment, so it really looks nice. Though the apartment is a little further from the church (Impact) by about 15 minutes, it’s much close to Lamar University (where I work).

2. At Impact, we now have two worship services: Sundays at 11am and Tuesdays at 6:30pm. Both services occur on Central Standard Time and can be view on the web at http://www.impactumc.org/ The Tuesday service is called Soul Food Tuesday: Feeding the Body and Soul. We serve a Soul Food dinner every 1st and 3rd Tuesday and on all other Tuesdays, we just serve refreshments. At our very first Soul Food Tuesday, we had approximately 68 people in attendance. The best part about it is that Tuesday is a totally different sermon topic.

3. On Tuesday, November 17, our new Director of Worship Arts will be starting. For the past few weeks we have been worshipping to tracks and worship DVDs. Now don’t get it twisted, we’ve still been getting our praise on. It’s been a real test: Can one still worship without a band or without a worship leader? We found the answer to be YES!

4. Anissa took Malachi to a modeling audition and he did well. She walked him down the runway and everything. Of course he was all smiles and everyone loved him. But, it was just one of the mall model search things, so it was really just for fun. Anissa doesn’t think they are legit.

5. Finally, if you are available to come to watch our worship service on the web on Sunday, we will have a very special guest speaking this Sunday. He is none other than Father, Husband, Brother, Son and Friend of the Year: JERMALE D. EDDIE. Please keep me lifted in prayer during the preparation and delivery of God’s message through me.

The pictures are Malachi in his Halloween costume, and a super cute smile from Malachi at 4 months old.

Love,
~The Eddies

Life is Good!

Let me start by thanking all of you who pray for us on a regular basis. We feel so blessed to be covered in that way and we certainly need it. A few weeks ago, we were having a rough time. Jermale was busy and somewhat stressed out at his Lamar job while at the same time constantly having little, random things to do for the church. He would work all day and then have some kind of church responsibility almost every night and on many Saturdays as well. When he was home, he felt pretty drained. I was drained too from 24-7 baby duty. I wanted Jermale to be more available to help, but I knew everything he was doing was providing for us financially and that he was going to be really busy with both a full time and a part time job. Still, I was missing work, missing family and missing friends. The bottom line was that we both were experiencing some feelings of burnout and that translated into really missing Michigan and what seemed like a “simplicity of life” we left behind.

We began to really pray and seek God on what we could do to improve the situation and others were in prayer for us as well. As always, He came through. We were able to meet with our pastor and create a new schedule that allows Jermale to have 2 days a week where he does not have any church responsibilities. We also decided that we would both leave the house once a week for some personal time. My night is Monday and Jermale’s is Thursday. We generally head to a coffee shop on those nights with the laptop and do church work. I know it is still work, but it is relaxing just to get away and have a break! Then Friday is our night to just be together as a family or get a babysitter so we can go out together. Yes, I know – welcome to the real adult world LOL. So far the new schedule has been awesome.

Another thing that God did was allow me to be more at peace with my new roll and to value it in a different way. As I came to this realization, I expressed my feelings on my Facebook page by posting the following:

"I love being Malachi's mom :) I'm learning to enjoy the moment and cherish the simple joys of motherhood. The things I'm giving up for these baby days are temporary and being a mom is such an awesome thing. There aren't too many other ways to contribute to the world in such a monumental way as raising a child. I am privileged and blessed. I know the baby days will fly by and I want to treasure them while they last. It’s not so much that my life is on hold, but more so that it is forever changed and will have different things added and taken away in each stage from here on. Each stage will be an adjustment that will only strengthen and stretch me to reach a greater level of my God given purpose and potential. That is a cool thing :)"

After having our short-lived pity party, we had a great Sunday at Impact which reminded us again why we are here. Then, this past week we had a Family and Friends Day at church with a shorter service and a big dinner afterwards. We also had kids activities and played a movie on the big screen in the sanctuary. It was an excellent day!

Jermale and I celebrated 3 fabulous years of marriage yesterday. The past two anniversaries, we have spent a long weekend out of town. This year, we got a babysitter, went out for desert and caught a movie. Having a baby changes everything for real LOL. Still, it was a great night and we had fun. Seriously, we have had such a wonderful relationship and marriage which almost seems abnormal these days. We are very blessed and thankful for each other :)

Malachi is 10 weeks old now and doing great. He is full of smiles and also loves to “talk” now. He gets more and more fun as the weeks go by and we are getting to be pros at life with a little one. He will be baptized at Impact this coming Sunday and 4 of our really good friends are flying in from out of town for the occasion. We are so excited! Also, we will be going to Michigan at the end of the month so Malachi can finally meet everyone back home and Jermale can attend his 10 year High School reunion. Yikes – we’re getting old LOL

The pictures of us in the Impact shirts are from family and friends day and the one of us at the movies is from our anniversary date night. Of course I had to post a few of the baby too :)

Blessings,

~Anissa

Happy Birthday to the Boys!

In Anissa’s words:
My how life has changed! Malachi is totally the boss :) Still things have improved greatly from those early days. Although the tiny newness was fun, I am glad the first month has come and went! These first few weeks were rough. I wasn’t expecting my recovery to be as prolonged as it was. It seemed like as soon as one issue was resolved like muscle soreness, another issue would come like not producing enough milk. And of course I had some hormonal adjustments happening at the same time too. Let’s just say I cried as much as the baby did if not more during those first few weeks (even since the last blog when I thought I was on top of things). Jermale will have to write his own experience. I know it was tough for him too, especially when he went back to work. Between Lamar and the church I know he was exhausted. Plus it was hard for him to not be able to help with feeding the baby. He wanted to be able to get up more at night, but since the baby always wanted to eat when he woke up in the night – there wasn’t much he could do. Having friends and family visit and help was very nice, but there were still a lot of overwhelming moments.

So, today Malachi is 5 weeks old and things are calming down. I am feeling really good physically. Although I have not had a full night sleep in 5 weeks, I’m used to it and feel fine. I also nap sometimes when the baby sleeps during the day. I look forward to starting a light work out schedule after my 6wk check up. I’m actually wearing a pair of pre-pregnancy jeans today with the help of a $13 belly slimmer thing from Target LOL. They are still snug, but they are wearable :) I know it will take time to get back to a being physical where I want to be and some things will never be the same (I think these new hips are here to stay) I just have to be patient and not over do it. I am also happy to report that breastfeeding is going much better. I had in my head that I just needed to get past the 1st two rough weeks and I’d be fine, but it was more like 4 rough weeks. I’m glad we stuck with it though.

Malachi is getting more and more alert. He smiles now although he is still mastering that skill so they are not super frequent. When you get one though they are the best! He’s also getting more interested in looking at things which I fun. He has a pretty consistent night schedule that just happened. He goes down for the night around 11pm. Then he wakes up to nurse and be changed around 2 or 3am and again around 5 or 6am. He usually does one more long morning nap until 8 or 9am. During the day we just go with the flow. He has a very loose schedule that incorporates prayer and swing time in the morning, reading and floor play time in the afternoon and daddy bottle time in the evening. There is a lot of sleeping and eating mixed in there too and sometimes a bath. I am also part of a play group that meets on Wed. mornings too, but we have only gone once so far. The group actually has a lot of aspects to it including childbirth and parenting support, sustainable living practices and an art collective. They have asked me to be involved on a leadership level and I am going to help them prepare to seek 501 (c) (3) status.

The church is awesome. Things continue to progress there. As August approaches I will begin to do more administrative work for Impact. I’ll mostly be doing things from home and then in Sept. probably be in the church office a couple mornings a week. Again, Malachi is the boss, so we’ll see what he allows LOL. Tonight, Jermale and I are going to dinner for his birthday and Malachi will have his first babysitter outside of family (my mom kept him while we ran errands a few times when she visited). We’ll start there and see how things go. I’m excited for life to continue to become more settled and for all the fun milestones ahead :)


In Jermale’s words:
Now as a 29 year old Christian father, husband, brother, uncle, nephew, cousin and friend (my birthday is today), I look back at my life and see that God has brought me a long way. It seems that every since Anissa and I have married, our life has been filled with transition; all under the direction of Jesus Christ. Being a father is my latest journey and most challenging so far. I wish I had more time to spend with Malachi. I thought that I would only be working part-time at the Church during this stage in life and that I would be a stay-at-home dad, but with the need of health insurance, I had to also find a full-time job. It’s hard to find a balance between family, work at Lamar University, work at Church, personal prayer time & reflection, alone time w/ Anissa, personal alone time and sleep. I figure if we did not have to get sleep, I would have a little more time available. It has been very frustrating not being able to soothe Malachi when he cries sometimes. Due to the fact that he has a bond & dependence (feeding) with Anissa, most of the time she is the one who has to comfort him. Even at night if I get up to change his diaper, I still have to wake Anissa up to feed him. Since he usually rejects bottles and pacifiers, I just try my best to enjoy all the times where he is totally content with being in my arms and starring in my eyes as if he’s been looking for me and finally found me. Since having the baby, I feel that I have discovered a new love and respect for Anissa. She is doing a great job at a new stage in our lives. I know she needs a break sometimes, but with me working all day with my job and a half, I wish I was more available. I also wanted to enter into a Doctoral program, but thanks to some good advice from Malachi’s god-mother, I decided to wait. I can’t see myself trying to study and take care of Malachi at this point. I praise God everyday for using us to create and love Malachi. If I could send Anissa to a tropical place for vacation, I would b/c she deserves it ALL!

Picture Link:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2614310&id=2247339&l=e415a38650

Life with Malachi

Whew-where to start LOL. Saying parenthood is the hardest but most rewarding job you’ll ever have is pretty accurate. These blog posts might be a bit less frequent, but I’ll do my best :) The first week with Malachi was pretty rough. Jermale and I were both pretty exhausted and I was super sore for a few days. Seriously, the muscles in my arms and back hurt a lot more than my stitches – labor is a very intense full body work out. Then breastfeeding was very painful at first- yep even cried once. Plus after, my milk finally came in, I got a fever and flu like symptoms. All that on top of very little sleep was not a pretty picture and made it hard to simply enjoy the baby. Week two was much better. I was less sore, the fever went away and Malachi started doing 2 and 3 hour stretches of sleep which felt great! Now, we are getting the hang of things more. Basic baby care, is pretty natural now and being out and about with him has gotten more routine as well. Jermale of course, is super helpful and willing to go it all. It has been wonderful to have some help and company too. My best friend, Gihane was here July 1-5 and my mom has no been here since the 7th and will stay until the 16th. Then Jermale’s brother Jeremy is coming to visit. With these visitors, I can still take stress free showers without working if the baby is crying hysterically even though Jermale is back at work. When it will be just Malachi and I, he will already be a month old so I should be able to handle things at that point.

Malachi is doing great. He had a touch of jaundice at the beginning which we watched, but everything was cleared up by his 2 week appt. He is a great eater (even though I’m still dealing with some painful breastfeeding challenges) and he is growing fast. He is too cute and already shows signs of his own personality. I wish I could capture some of his signature faces on camera, but as soon as you get the camera he stops making the faces LOL. Jermale has been busy getting back into the flow at work and with all the church stuff. I have been doing nothing, but baby duty for the past few weeks and will probably ease back into some church responsibilities soon. People are already asking me when/if we will have another one which I can not even think about right now. It is seriously a lot of work, but we are very thankful that things are going well and it is a blessing to have our family of 3!

Here’s a picture link:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2599028&id=2247339&l=51aca9c1ea

Love,

The Eddies

Introducing....

Malachi Jermale Eddie

He was born on June 23rd at 11:42pm. He was 7 lbs 1 oz and 21 inches long. The labor was long and hard, but we were able to do it naturally with no complications. We thank God that Malachi is here and healthy. He is absolutely perfect and we are totally in love with him! Thank you all for the prayers and support. Here is a link to some pictures:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=2598208&id=2247339&l=700756d6e9

Love,

The Eddies (all 3 of us)