Tim and Olive's Blog

Mornings and I don’t get along. Even on the best of days without children, mornings are hard for me. Add round-the-clock nursing into the mix and getting up, let alone going out, takes herculean effort. All this to say, if I make a public appearance before noon these days, you can be sure it’s someplace that matters to me. Now that we have two young children, getting out of the house is quite a production. In the three weeks that we have existed as a family of four, we have made it out as an entire family a grand total of 4 times. Of those occasions, only once have we gotten out the door in the morning. Read More

[This is a guest post by Jessica Everingham, originally published as “My Identity Is Broken“.]

Insignificance. Failure.

Few words chill me like those two. I hate them even more than doing my taxes.

Why?

I’ll tell you, though I know this story won’t put me in the best light.Read More

As I write this, I’m 37 weeks along with my second child. There have been similarities between the two pregnancies, but also differences. I thought it would be fun to do a little comparison post here, in case anyone is interested, but also for the sake of my second kid who’s barely gotten any “airtime,” unlike big sister who got a gazillion blog posts while she was in the womb. Hah.

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We met the summer before I entered university. He was handsome, sporty, and impressively intelligent. A year my senior, he looked out for me during my first months as a frosh.
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With my first child, I got to experience Advent in a deeper way as I anticipated the birth of my baby in the months leading up to Christmas. With this second child, I am experiencing Lent on a new level as I journey with Christ toward the crucifixion and Easter.Read More

[This is a guest post by Dr. Nareeta Stephenson, a Port Coquitlam Chiropractor specializing in family chiropractic, women’s health and sensory processing disorder.]

Picture your baby before it’s born, it’s floating warm, safe and cushioned. Then gradually there is less room to move and stretch, things start to become cramped and then all of a sudden the walls start squeezing in, the fluid disappears and things get very intense. Finally after much pushing and squeezing your baby makes the shortest and longest journey of its life down the birth canal, and if all goes according to our bodies’ direction with no interventions, baby comes out just fine on its own. This is a naturally traumatic event, even without the influence of possible interventions.
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Happy Chinese New Year! This year is the year of the Horse. It’s become a tradition in our family to create a Chinese New Year video greeting, as we are unable to celebrate with many of our friends and family during this time. Hope you enjoy this year’s video!
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Ever since we got married, Tim and I have set aside a day at the start of each year to dream, evaluate and plan for the upcoming year. We call it our “Blue Day.” (We explain this concept in detail in our book, “Fight With Me.”) We continued our tradition this January and left Allie to cavort with her grandparents while we borrowed our friends’ place for a day of reflection.

Last year, our word was “Courage.” We needed that word. It guided us, encouraged us and gave us strength as we wrote and published our books, chose a faith community to identify ourselves with, found out about our second baby and made the (crazy) decision to start our own marketing company.

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What a year it’s been! We continue to be humbled that folks like reading our stuff and would actually share our posts with friends. This year, we’ve seen several of our pieces gain an audience and more delightfully, we’ve had the blessing of hearing from and having dialogues with our readers – some of whom we’ve never met.

As we end off 2013, we’ve rounded up our favourite posts from this year. Enjoy!
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Today we’re going public with the news: I am 14 weeks pregnant with our second child. With such exciting information, you’d think I would be bursting to make the announcement, right? Well, not really. I actually have mixed feelings about letting everyone in on this new development in our family. It’s not because we’ve had any health challenges (thankfully). In fact, my first trimester felt much better this time around. The reason I find it hard to announce my pregnancy? I am acutely aware that my news may surface pain for someone hearing it.
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