my life on skid(mark) row

i'm not sure that any of this will come out in full sentences (or in english, for that matter), but it's october now and i'm brimming over with words that need to get typed. ede is five months old, and i think it's safe to say that we have settled into life with a baby. of course, that discounts the fact that every day brings new surprises and that one can never tell what one's day will hold, but nonetheless, if you can accept surprises, you can settle into the life that it involves. so, to recap, i've settled into the fact that i'm just going to be unsettled for now. it's wonderful! all the cliches have proven themselves to be true!



we indeed can't imagine life without our little ede.



we didn't know we could love a little one that much.



it's true, it is different when it's your own (except in the diaper world - hello. smell is smell!)



and yes, our lives are changed forever.



but changed in such a good way. the kind of change that makes you begin to see yourself for who you truly are (a selfish, self-occupied wimpster wife) and inspires you to do anything and everything to be what you need and want to be. for me that would essentially be a selfless, loving, tender wife and mama. thank God he can make that even possible! no one could have prepared me for the emotion and passion that is brought on by motherhood. it's the raw kind of emotion resulting from the intense passion to do what is best for your family. my problem usually lies in maintaining a prayerful flexibility to weather the passion, discerning if it's rooted in my grasp for control, and realizing that i'm not the one in control.



fortunately, the sweet cherub we're gifted with is just precious and funny enough to remind me that life is too short to sweat the small stuff (like make-up.....or lunch). it's so amazing to see her personality develop with her sense of humor. she laughs, but only when she wants to, and she cries, but not enough to make me cry. there is a smile behind her eyes most of the time, and her world is a constant joy ride. just recently while spending time with family outside the city, jed and i noticed that we really are her best friends. she's not quite as comfortable or trusting with other people, even family, but with us she knows she's secure. i can't tell you what that does for our egos!



as different of a person as i now am on a strictly definitive level, i can only hope that this process called life continues to change me into what i need to be. what a great experience, what a wonderful privilege, and what an amazing journey!

....then came baby in a baby carriage!

eden is 20 days old today and i'm finally sitting down to type out my thoughts from the last 3 weeks. never could i have imagined a more exhilarating experience than having a baby added to our home! she is equal parts terrifying and inspiring, and we love her so very much. i'm not sleep-deprived by definition, just tired. but on the flip side - I CAN BEND OVER AGAIN! (there's no greater thrill, people) i can still remember what it's like to get 12 consecutive, uninterrupted hours of sleep, yet i still melt every single time i get up in the wee hours of the morning and look at her little wrinkled crying face as she screams for her mama. jed and i both are entirely smitten by this little child. she entertains us with her hat full of tricks, scolds us when we're not efficient with meal time, inspects our every feature when we talk to her, and continuously makes us the happiest people alive!

we put a lot of time into choosing her name. we didn't want to cramp her style with a boring name, nor did we want to overwhelm her with a crazy name. eden means “paradise.” we chose Eden for a variety of reasons. first, we love the name. she has been our little “ede” (pronounced ee-dee) for many months now. second, we want eden to always be drawn to the thought that life on this sin-cursed earth is not an end all. and thank God it’s not. the painful consequences of living in a sin-cursed world are a gift from God pointing us to find our hope and joy in the life to come, the life in which God will restore eden-like sinless perfection to his newly created heavens and earth. it is this future paradise that we hope and long for. third, we want eden to always be drawn to the thought that eden-like sinless conditions can be brought to her own heart while on this earth. through Jesus Christ, God sees us as current dwellers in his spiritual eden. eden, out of which we were expelled because of our sin, is once again our dwelling place because God has brought us there by his great grace to dwell with him by the work of Jesus Christ on our behalf. her middle name is janetta. we wanted to honor both of our mothers ("jan" and "etta") and their sacrificial love for each of us, and this name just made the best sense. it doesn't hurt that she was born on mother's day weekend too.

as we would have guessed, ede looks mostly like jed. as an in-law in the tyrpak family, i was hoping that my genes would finally rise up and be the first dominant in-law gene in the tyrpak clan, but no such luck. you can spot a tyrpak a mile away, and ede is no exception. she's just beautiful - rounded cheeks, trusting eyes, delicate lips, a tiny chin, and dimples that'll take your breath away. i'm biased - i understand - but she's so much more wonderful than we thought she would be! maybe it's because, after nearly 7 blissful years of marriage, we were finally ready to embark on parenthood; or maybe it's because she truly is a piece of heaven in our family. i don't know. i just know that i feel so priveleged to be her mama, and her presence in our home is the best gift possible. God has shown such kindness to us in giving us the gift of life! there were so many complications and things that could have gone wrong, but the grace given throughout this pregnancy and birth has been more intense than any complication could've been.

she's a mama's girl and a daddy's girl and together we're the three bestest of friends. we're so thankful for this new adventure, and with every step along the way we praise God for our little gift in eden.

calm before the storm

not that life is extremely calm right now, or that we expect a full-out storm, but it's a little bit that way. it's a rainy monday morning,and i'm officially on maternity leave. our baby girl will be here this week! our weekend was spent trying to gather a few last minute diapers, make a few returns, and stock up on necessities since it'll be awhile before we emerge to the land of the living again. this is a special monday morning though. it's our last monday without kids. yesterday was our last sunday without kids. next monday, we'll hopefully be coming home from the hospital as a family of three. and then... LIFE! late nights, early mornings, snuggling with a newborn, memorizing her face so we won't forget anything, relishing in the newness of life that God has so kindly brought into our home, and from what i hear going through about 8 diapers a day! it's here and we could not be more excited!

i was telling jed yesterday that this huge sense of "heritage" and what we will give our daughter has been occupying my mind lately. i want to get a few maternity shots this week sometime because that is the one thing that i would love to have from my mom - shots of her pregnant with me. unfortunately, i wasn't born in the digital age, but fortunately our baby is! i want her to have proof of how much joy she brought us even before she was ever born, along with the pictures of her happy parents. i've been thinking about the next 20 years as a whole, and just praying desperately that we do a good job with this little one. it'll only be by grace if she happens to be anything close to kind, loving, caring, and gentle because right now i am afraid of only passing down my sarcasm, quick tongue, inflexibility, and massively scarring fat stage circa 1993.

as i left work on friday and sat in the train on my way to meet jed for dinner and a movie, the last year of our lives overwhelmed me. my maternity leave started april 30th, and my first day at this job was april 27th, 2009 (during the famous unemployed and homeless act of 09). i remember so well this time last year - the newness of my job was freaking me out a bit, i wondered if i would ever get used to my co-workers and my position, and the weight of jed still needing a job was on both of our shoulders. in the last year, we have settled into solid employment, life in the city, and the joy of eminent parenthood. i don't feel older yet, just a lot more full. the last time something this big happened to us was when we got married, and during the first few months of our marriage, the hugeness of how it would change our lives was nowhere near our thinking. looking back, it was the most meaningful and wonderful thing to ever happen to us. likewise, i know that in a couple of months or years, it will hit us just how drastically changed and vastly meaningful our lives have become. jed and i are inseparable and deeply content, yet our lives are about to fill up with even more meaning and depth. just an incredible thought.

this week will be full of little projects, pre-op appointments, a couple of errands, naps, a little decorating, and mentally preparing for what's ahead. can you really prepare for something like this? can you truly be ready? it's like being on the roller coaster at the top of a hill, and the dork running the machine lets the cars sit at the top for just a little too long. you keep hearing the clicking noise, and you try to hold your stomach for the plunge, but NOTHING could've prepared you for the rush of being let go. it's absolutely terrifying and still the funnest ride possible! right now we're anticipating the hill. as the week goes on, we'll be stuck at the top with the endless clicking, and next monday will begin the most terrifying and wonderful moments of our lives. how can it not be exciting?!

giselle, heidi, and amy

almost 6 months ago we found out i was pregnant. it was a time of sheer exhilaration, fear, joy, and wonder. neither of us knew what to expect or how we would handle it, yet thus began our journey into a world we never imagined could be so amazing. for me, this was a journey to beat the odds, to be different, and to excel at pregnancy. i refused to consider gaining more than the needed 12 pounds, and after having lost weight during my first trimester i was certain i was going to be right there next to giselle bundchen and heidi klum – long, lean and a bit of a baby bump. (why it never occurred to me in the first place that I didn’t START OUT looking like them, I’ll never know. maybe that can be blamed on the disillusioned pregnant mind??) i wanted to thrive with this little one in me, to make this a great experience for both me and jed, and to have no lasting repercussions from what would end up being a total body transformation by the time it’s over.

i had spent the first 6.5 years of our marriage gawking at pregnant women and pointing out to jed what i hoped to look like. you know, the kind where you can’t tell from behind and then they turn around with this amazing glow on their face and an adorable baby bump. i’d point out the ones still wearing stilettos and suits, the ones running with their first born in a stroller in front of them, the ones tan and glowing from the inner beauty. i had friends who were that way, and i thought it would be just great to be that way! we would see those documentaries on tv where the women didn’t know they were pregnant until they went into labor because they were so humungous, which would then lead to a 10-minute conversation on “how could you?”

i had spent most of my life coping with the thought of cause and effect in regards to babies, and for some reason the selfish thoughts that dominated my mind for most of my life were focused on the fatty fat part. the horror of being asked how far along you were right after giving birth seemed to be a dungeon that would swallow me whole. i promised myself that the bedside pictures taken with our newly born baby would be professional grade and stellar, automatically adding me to the list of glowers i had so long admired. and then, after two days of sleeping off the whole birthing process, we would emerge with a beautiful newborn and take strolls in the parks and people would say “how do you do it?!”

and now, here we are. i’m 32 weeks along, 24 pounds heavier, nicely padded for comfort, and fatigued enough to somehow win a seat on most trains i ride. (be it the belly or the look on my face, the people i commute with are so kind and almost always offer a seat.) i would definitely not put my frame into the heidi and giselle category, nor have i found the energy yet to accomplish much more than cleaning the house, let alone extra-curricular aerobics. and stiletto’s? nah. i’ve been sticking to two inches or less for quite some time now. if i do glow, it could be from the happiness resulting from having the time of my life, but more than likely it’s because i tend to remain out of breath like a 900-pound wrestler.

but you know what? i couldn’t be more excited! the selfish depression that seemed eminent due to such disillusions and crazinesses of the mind has been graciously taken away, thank God! close to none of the ambitions that i set out with are important to me now, and the focus for both me and jed remains on the gift of life (our little girl) that God has entrusted to us. due to complications, my doctor is planning on delivering our baby girl via cesarean sometime around 37 weeks. we are so excited to meet her! our apartment is slowly getting to the place where going from two to three will be quite natural. just a few more minor revisions and purchases and the fun begins! no one can plan to be this excited. you can’t even hope to be this happy about something. the blessing of pregnancy and the marvel of life is something that continues to awe both of us. we feel direct kindness from God’s hand in this way, and we never want to take it for granted.

ps – please feel free to read this post out loud to me when she’s two weeks old, i haven’t seen a full night’s sleep, the house is upside down, and jed has eaten mcdonald’s for 5 days straight.

a death in the building

i know. i'm sorry. the dramatic potential of the blog title drew me in. after a phone call to the super and a sniff test, jed said this is worthy of a blog post.

so i obliged. about five days ago i started smelling a bit of an odor in our home, particularly in one specific corner of the bedroom. the next evening when we got home from work, we both smelled it at the front door. na-sty! at that point, though, it was nothing that a little lysol and a wall-flower from bath and body couldn't handle. that night we opened the radiator in our bedroom to see if it just needed to heat up and make the stench go away.

that worked well for the time, but the next morning it was back with a vengeance. since it was obviously coming from the floor in the corner of our bedroom where the radiator is, we decided to call the super in the building and let him know it smelled like dead junk in our apartment. he sniffed it out and felt the same way, needless to say. after checking the vacant apartment below us, he didn't find any corpses, so we're thinking it's in the ceiling/floor in between.

fortunately, i'm guessing it's a small corpse - maybe a small rat/mouse - judging by the lack of intensity in smell. whew!

but make no mistake, it smells bad. very bad. we taped off the openings in the floor, put down towels around the gaps in the radiator pipes, and stuffed dryer sheets around. our plan is to wait out the decomposition process since tearing out the floor isn't a good option.

this is one thing we didn't expect to have to deal with. maybe live bugs and rodents, but not rotting fur. last time i smelled death like this was in africa when a king lizard died in the crawl space above our house in the 110 degree heat. but anyways....i'm just trying not to think about where the stupid rodent was before he died. sick.

more later on whether or not we get the cops involved. i'm not sure how much longer my psycho nose can handle it.

the year we moved

this past sunday, valentine’s day, we celebrated one year of being in new york! one year ago, we quit our jobs, packed our duplex, ate all the el mocajete one could handle, said goodbye, and moved to brooklyn, ny. at that point, our expectations were quite unmanaged as we hoped/believed we would live with friends ‘til the end of february, find an apartment upon finding jobs just in time to move in march 1st. and then, we’d just go about our merry little urban lives, starting the process of finding a church to help while we got settled. march 1st came and went. april 1st came and went. our official job title became “restless” and our lease read “vagabond.” we had a few bites on our resumes here and there, but no solid promises from recruiters or interviews. for housing, we rotated between friends, family, and an available apartment space at a church in the east village. our goal was to have at least one of us employed before we looked for a place. finally, mid-april, i got a job offer and started on april 27th!

after a weekend of scouring craigslist and nyt.com, we decided on what was important to us and what we could afford and quickly scheduled a day of hunting with a realtor. apartment #1 couldn’t have housed a gnome. apartment #2 had a problem with sinking floors that made one slightly seasick. and apartment #3 was just plain ugly and ugly. apartment #4 was probably not going to work because when we called to schedule an appointment, the guy told us that the one we wanted to see had already been let, but that he had another one in the building that might work for us. we were, by then, learning to manage our expectations, so our hopes were slightly below average. it was under construction still, but upon seeing the space we could 100% envision our home to be apartment #4, hands down. It’s turned out to be the best apartment ever! after spending almost 9 months in the hood, we have grown to see our little place as a haven and comfort amidst the bustling of city life. God’s goodness in this blessing to us is incredibly undeserved!

for the first few weeks in our new place, jed worked tirelessly to make everything just perfect. he installed cabinet handles (never again), towel racks, blinds/shades, curtain rods, touched up some paint, unpacked, organized, ran errands to home depot, bed bath and beyond, and ikea, worked with the contractor to finish off a few details, and continually looked for a job. after almost a month of a non-stop to-do list, everything finally got checked off. that left an amazing home for us, but a guy still looking for a job. in july, after being in survival mode for several months, we both were excited about a job offer jed got with devry, a proprietary school with an open admissions position. since this was where his experience was and since the pay was quite comfortable, we were ecstatic! however, after six weeks of dealing with very long and late hours, some weekend work, and an unbearably psycho boss, we were both growing tired.

out of the blue one day in september, a recruiter emailed jed a job description for a position she thought matched his resume. it was in customer service, but the pay, benefits, and hours were significantly younger and better looking than the old hag of a job he had gotten used to. we figured an interview wouldn’t hurt, so jed rushed together a cover letter and updated resume and scheduled an interview. within a week of that email, he had a job offer! the relief of knowing that the days of devoting late evenings and some weekends to a job were soon over was wonderful! one of the particularly distasteful characteristics of his job at devry was the frustration of not having any time to give to a ministry. being in survival mode taught us much, and one prominent thing we came out of that time with was an intensified desire to be involved in a local church.

jed started his new job in early october, and he quickly impressed all of his co-workers and management by catching on so easily and being a stable, kind employee. they really love him there, which makes it much easier for him to appreciate his job. we are both so thankful for the low-stress jobs that God has given to us. we’re able to focus more on life outside of work rather than bear the frustration of difficult employment. he’s so kind!

one other major milestone of the last year was finding out about an eventual addition to our family. in fact, jed got his “good” job offer less than 24 hours after we found out about the baby, which made our hearts completely overwhelmed again of God’s undeserved kindness to us. in mid-january, we found out that we’re having a girl. she’ll join us sometime around the end of may - we know our lives are forever changed. we’re pretty excited about introducing a little one to the city we’ve grown to love so much.

back in november, an opportunity opened up for us to become involved in the church that was kind enough to house us during our vagabond stage. tompkins square gospel fellowship is a small church in the east village, and they were eager and kind enough to welcome any help that we could offer. jed leads the worship, i (try to) play the piano for the service, and we both are looking forward to becoming more involved as we get our heels dug in further. the pastor and people of this church have grown to be our family, and we love each lesson that God is teaching us through being in a smaller church.

writing this post reminds me all over again how much we’ve grown to love the city and love our new life here. of course, life is different and sometimes full of ups and downs, but the overall feeling we get of waking up each day knowing that we are where we’re supposed to be because he is taking care of us is so comforting. words can’t describe how thankful we are for the love and sovereignty of our God! the year we moved was truly a great year!

life is good

the time that has elapsed between the sensory overload called the first trimester and the current honeymoon phase of the second trimester has been full, busy, and fun. life is good.

not just because there’s a little girl that has stolen our hearts and amazed us with her prenatal soccer skills, but because we are settled. well, i should say “settling.” are we truly ever settled? life is good like that – never a dull moment. though we get worn out, complain about subtle discomforts, or grow impatient with circumstances, life continues for each of us, growing our soul through both pain and pleasure so that we can handle the next phase. without that happy medium of both pain and pleasure, would we truly appreciate the next day without the previous day’s experiences? with our kind God’s grace, the growth opportunities are so refreshing and exciting and illuminating!

since the beginning of december, our days have been highlighted by getting used to an urban, northern winter. man it feels good! it’s like living in a vintage painting or something – whistling radiators, waking up to the sound of a metal shovel on the sidewalk, dirty dirty streets, every winter accessory you can wear, etc. when the outside is so despairingly cold and the inside is so warm and cozy, a perfect winter ensues. if only we could guarantee a snow storm every weekend or at least a soup chef in our house!

another rewarding aspect of our winter has been the ministry God has opened up for as at a church in the east village – tompkins square gospel fellowship. the pastor, his family, and the people there have been such an encouragement and help to us as we’ve been dunked into learning more about the rigors and lessons of ministry. as we take just one day at a time, we’re thankful for the family God has given us there!

i could write everyday on the funny happenstances on what goes on when you’re pregnant; jed could write a short comedy about his co-workers; and our neighbors could more than likely fill columns about all the traffic we’ve been getting in our little brooklyn home; but we’ll spare you the details and just suffice it to say that God is good, and life is good.