Easter Sunday

Happy Easter everyone!  We hope it was a healthy and happy and heartwarming holy-day for all of you!

This year was extra fun because we got to make one of these . . .

for our own little guy.  It's double the fun since he's too young to say otherwise, so what else is there to do but fill his little basket with things that we, I mean, he loves!

Contents: a couple of books: Oh The Places You'll Go & Are You My Mother?, those little veggie/fruit tube squeezy things that he gobbles right up, Easter eggs filled with puffs, cheerios, and raisins, and a CUTE little Easter romper labeled "Captain Adorable."    

And of course, we thought it would be fun to leave Jasper a trail of where the Easter Bunny hopped on his way to leaving the Easter basket!

He spotted those eggs first thing in the morning!

And I think he liked them!  He even figured out how to open one or two on his own, and of course eat the contents!  What an effective way to do breakfast.  I may try this more often.

I think his expression looks like a Seuss character in this picture.  Evidently we're on a Seuss kick at this house.

Easter suit 2 of 2.  It's official--he prefers the sweater vest Easter suit from his nana!  I'm sure he was mistaking the donning of the necktie today for Chinese water torture.

The one and only year his Easter basket will be bigger than he is.

In his new Easter romper being so obliging and adorable for a photo.  We love this kid!

After the donning of the tie--hence, the Easter egg as a mandatory consolation prize.  Too bad he looks SOOOOO good in a suit!  My handsome boys!



So, as for the last couple of weeks and what's really been going on . . .

Since my last post, I turned 29.  I went to visit family for a week in Arizona and my mom came back with me for a few more days to help out.  Jasper was sick on and off with ear infections and teething while my husband worked 100-hour weeks at his new job.  Then as a thank you for his incredible work ethic and positive attitude despite insufferably long hours and measly pay, he was let go . . . all just in time to miss my birthday.

If I sound ungrateful, I guess it's because I am.  If I sound bitter, it's because I'm that, too.  If I sound like I'm growing ever-weary of waiting and striving for Jacob and our family to be rewarded through concrete, sustainable means for our endless hope and perseverance through this impossibly arduous entertainment business, it is because I AM.

I don't care how selfish it sounds, I will go to my grave saying it, there is NO ONE in this over-populous city that deserves the sweet fruits of his labors more than my saint of a husband.  And up until this weekend, I really, REALLY clung to the retribution of hard work, and the inevitable payout it would eventually offer our family.  Both of us always took solace in the knowledge that though his work was always short-term, everyone he worked with loved him and would've done anything to keep him staffed were there any work left to offer him.  And then that changed.

I know I shouldn't take it so personally, not that I can really take comfort in the fact that dozens of other employees were also laid off.  But I also shouldn't think or say a lot of the things I'm feeling right now, and yet here we are and I don't plan to apologize for it.  I have much to be grateful for: a loving, devoted, supportive husband and healthy, happy, beautiful baby, a family who is willing to follow me hither and thither from California to Arizona to see that my emotional and physical well-being remains in tact while I go through my mini-crises, just to name a few.  But even given all those things, the fact remains that this is VERY HARD.  It is hard to see someone I love and believe in not get what he so obviously deserves.  It's hard day-to-day, month-to-month, year-to-year not knowing what is going to happen to us and when, if ever, the struggling will get easier.  It is so hard that so few people understand what it's like to do what we're doing or why we're even doing it.  It's hard.  It's hard.  It's hard.

So, in short, I feel like I've gotten kicked while I'm down one too many times to get back up again.  This has spawned in me over the last few but very long days some serious soul-searching and re-evaluating of what exactly it is I'm expecting from this career and life we've chosen.  We can keep working, we can keep fighting, we can keep swinging at these 90 mile an hour curve balls til our bloodied arms fall off, but it still may not result in job security, or home-ownership, or freedom from the worry of making basic ends meet.  So, for now, I have decided to make the attempt to let them go--all the expectations of whatever I thought our future would be.  Even with as angry and hurt as I feel, which I do, we're not stopping.  We can't really, it wouldn't make sense to start over with anything else, tempted as I may be.  I am trying to change what I can--in theory--control, which is my outlook.  I am trying to expect and accept only life as it is now.  I will plan to pack whatever kids we have into that one extra bedroom and tiny (but lovely) bath we now inhabit.  I will plan to not have more money in the bank 2 or 5 or 10 years from now, and I will try my hardest not to be envious of those that do.  We didn't choose this life for the money.  We'd do better buying lottery tickets in all genuine likelihood.  We chose it because we felt and still feel it is where God wants us, it is where our hearts are, and we want to make our life's work doing only what meets those two criteria.  None of us know what life has in store for us or, knock on wood, how long we will be here, so then what do I want to spend MY TIME doing?  Not being bitter.  Not worrying.
Not. Waiting.
That is for sure.