Sonshine Cottage

God's Plan

2011-12-15T05:29:00.000-08:00

It's been so long since I've been here that I noticed the links on the previous post and thought, "Hmmm sounds like good reading".

Just writing down some thoughts here. If you have any thoughts on the subject, feel free to comment. Mostly I just hear crickets chirping, which is fine.

So we hear a lot about waiting on God's plan, waiting for God to reveal our next steps and so forth as we move through this world. And it's real comforting to know that God has this perfect plan for us. But really, does the Lord of heaven and earth micromanage? His ultimate plan is that we have relationship with Him. That we love Him and serve Him wholeheartedly. His word also states that we can serve him right where we are; scripture that is used over and over in the Christian mommy bloggy world to encourage us to serve in the midst of diapers and laundry. But it also applies to our husbands; in the midst of my husband's unemployment, where does the Lord want him to be? My thought is God wants him to be faithful to Him whatever befalls, wherever, whenever. So why all this talk of Waiting on the Lord to "reveal" His plan for us?

It sometimes seems like an excuse just as much as a comfort.

We are being told "Wait on the Lord" and "Seek His wisdom in the word" as we try to figure out what is next for my husband. But God gave us sound minds, counsel from wise, godly friends, and yes, ultimately everything is in God's power, but that isn't the question. The question is: Does God micromanage? I theorize that common sense is a funtion of our brains and learning that the saved and the unsaved share alike, though it seems to be disappearing at an alarming rate. The bible states that the unsaved, even the wicked, can love and give and other good things to some extent. We all are His creation after all, and "He don't make junk" as it were. But seriously: If you recieve a compliment on making a good meal plan, do you say "It's all the Lord" like He came down and plopped a menu in front of you? When there are difficult circumstances and you "don't feel the Lord's leading" or "His peace" about a choice, do you chalk it up to "it must not be His plan"? Is that truly the Lord giving you a nudge, or are you just covering your decision with terms that no one will argue with? It seems to becomeing part of the Christian jargon to use these terms.

I certainly have more thoughts on this, but real life calls.

Homeschooling Homemaker Links for Me

2011-09-27T10:39:00.000-07:00

Hello, my much neglected blog. Everything is well with us, though my hubby could use more stable employment and is searching around for it. He is looking fabulous! I ought to post a recent picture of him. But my bloggy focus has shifted and I'm mostly writing about quilting these days. My reading of homeschooling blogs is down to just about nothing as I'm just working on what works for us and many homeschooling blogs foster either discontent in me or make me feel like a slacker. I think (and more importantly, my hubby thinks) I am doing a good job here at the sonshine cottage, though I have my doubts quite frequently.

But today I did some homeschool blog reading and I wanted to save some links for future reference, so I'll post them here today.

Age Appropriate Chores

Time Management

Homemaking Tips

Grouchy Girls

A Slob Comes Clean--- A new to me blog that must be worth reading based on the title alone!

That's it for now, I've exhausted all my computer time.

2011-04-06T14:50:00.000-07:00

My hubby has finished all of his chemo! Yay, yay, yippee! (To quote my 4yo daughter) Do you like his party hat he got as a farewell at the cancer center? He is doing awesome. If it weren't for the lack of eyebrows and eyelashes, you probably wouldn't even think he was going through chemo. Now to enjoy and give thanks for his healing and to trust that God has a wonderful plan for this man's life in the long-term and his employment search in the short-term.

A little peek at something I'm working on. Eric has really been encouraging me to get more serious/dedicated to taking some time for myself and doing my quilty/stitchy thing. This is so fun and easy----the colored parts are done with colored pencil!

My girl likes to paint and stitch too! She was adamant about watercoloring outside this morning and she turned it into a battle of wills, but she lost. This afternoon, the wind had died down a bit and she had sweetened up so I stapled some heavy paper to the play house and let her use those squeezy brushes with the paint inside them.

Happy girl!

Such a beautiful day here. I hope you are enjoying spring as well---unless you are a friend in the Southern hemisphere and are preparing for fall.

God is so good! His ways are unfathomable and amazing.

Pinning Away

2011-03-12T10:52:00.000-08:00

No, not pining away. Ian, 18 months, snuck into my sewing room and while I caught him fairly quickly, it was a prickly situation! I'm punny.

Can you see this? He's taken several of my straight pins and stuck them into my chair! He didn't stick himself or anything, the little stinker!

Below is a shot of a pillow top I've been working on. It's not done in this shot, but I've got the top done now. I just haven't finished assembling the pillow.

I've been stitching away at free motion machine quilting projects, and it's been a blast!

Today's Frugal Thoughts

2011-02-22T11:43:00.000-08:00

One fail and one success today:

I am all out of paper towels today. I rarely use them except for absorbing oil/grease when frying or microwaving. So I used some brown paper bags to soak up oil from some breakfast sausage. Verdict; it didn't soak up much and really showed how greasy the sausage was. I am leery to use newspaper, though I have read about others using it before. We might walk up to the local convenience store (We're down to one working car and hubby has it) and get some paper towels or wait til the hubby gets home to buy my favorites, Viva brand. They're expensive, but so tough and absorbent that I use less.

We have a ton of dry pinto and white beans from the food distribution that we've begun getting since Eric's cancer was found. Last night I soaked my usual kidney and red beans in preparation for chili and I decided to throw in some pintos and white beans too. After I cooked them today, the colors have melded and it looks fine. We use plenty of dried beans, but even so we have a lot.

We also have an abundance of canned green beans (used plenty in yesterday's turkey pot pie), white rice, Pasta (not whole wheat), and some sugary stuff we'd never buy. The kids love the new snacks though. And I'm doing my best to use these gifted foods. Think I need to slip some Beano into some family members' food though!

20011 Update

2011-02-21T11:38:00.000-08:00

Wow, how neglected this blog is! So much has been happening, that I really ought to write down so I don't forget how awesome is God's love, mercy and provision.

In a nutshell, since having a huge soft tissue sarcoma removed from below his right arm at the end of July, my hubby has only worked 2 full 40 hr. weeks while undergoing radiation and then chemo. Two weeks ago, he was 'laid off' from his job and it looks like his employer may be closing the doors. At the time he had 3 more rounds of chemo to get through. Now he's got 2 more rounds of chemo, is working occasionally for a friend when he feels up to it, and we figure he has the best chance of finding a new job after all his treatment is over at the end of March.

Sounds pretty dire, doesn't it?

It's actually been pretty awesome!

Seriously.

God has provided so richly through our friends and family. Meals, cash, babysitting, transportation to treatments, encouragement and more. A big tax return in the works to get us by until the chemo is all done and he finds a job. There is no sign of any more cancer and the treatments will hopefully take care of any stray cancer cells. My husband is tolerating the treatments really well and we're enjoying the extra time together.

It certainly hasn't been easy, but God has brought us through thus far, I will trust in what He brings next (even if I don't like it!)

The kids are doing great and they are too young to understand the gravity of such a word as cancer. We call it 'Daddy's ouchie booboo' and they trust completely that Daddy's being healed.

Perhaps I'll write more soon. We'll see.

Merry Christmas

2010-12-24T10:27:00.000-08:00

May your homes be warm and filled with love. May your hearts be full of His love and grace.

God has blessed us so richly with love, joy, and met our needs abundantlyduring this difficult year.

2010-12-14T07:49:00.000-08:00

I had to send out a letter to a couple of my friends today and I thought I'd post it here too.

My dearest,sweetest friends,

I was/maybe still am having a little pity party for myself this morning inspired by doing enough cleaning and washing of children that I had no hot water left for myself and ended up taking a cold shower----invigorating at least. Followed by my disgust at how fat I have gotten and how, even though Eric and I had agreed that going to the Y and getting exercise was an important priority for me, any care for myself has fallen by the wayside.

Thankfully, no one in my family is wise to how selfish and whiney I am today.

As I was whining at taking care of my family first, I remembered that you, my friends are taking care of me. By lifting me up in prayer, encouraging and humorous conversation, and providing meals and babysitting services.

Thank you so much!

Love, Amy
P.S. Yes, I know, it's not you, it's the Lord- thanks for yielding to Him.

Tied Down?

2010-12-13T06:14:00.000-08:00

Tied Down, by Edgar A. Guest

"They tie you down," a woman said,
Whose cheeks should have been flaming red
With shame to speak of children so.

"When babies come you cannot go
In search of pleasure with your friends,
And all your happy wandering ends.
The things you like you cannot do,
For babies make a slave of you."

I looked at her and said: "'Tis true
That children make a slave of you,
And tie you down with many a knot,
But have you never thought to what
It is of happiness and pride
That little babies have you tied?

Do you not miss the greater joys
That come with little girls and boys?
"They tie you down to laughter rare,
To hours of smiles and hours of care,
To nights of watching and to fears;
Sometimes they tie you down to tears
And then repay you with a smile,
And make your trouble all worth while.

They tie you fast to chubby feet,
And cheeks of pink and kisses sweet.
"They fasten you with cords of love
To God divine, who reigns above.
They tie you, whereso'er you roam,
Unto the little place called home;
And over sea or railroad track
They tug at you to bring you back.
The happiest people in the town
Are those the babies have tied down.

"Oh, go your selfish way and free,
But hampered I would rather be,
Yes rather than a kingly crown
I would be, what you term, tied down;
Tied down to dancing eyes and charms,
Held fast by chubby, dimpled arms,
The fettered slave of girl and boy,
And win from them earth's finest joy."

Beatitudes for Homemakers

2010-12-12T15:41:00.000-08:00

BEATITUDES FOR HOMEMAKERS

Blessed is she whose daily tasks are a work of love; For her willing hands and happy heart transform Duty into joyous service to all her family and God.

Blessed is she who opens the door to welcome both stranger and well- loved friend; for gracious hospitality is a test of brotherly love.

Blessed is she who mends stockings and toys and broken hearts; for her understanding is a balm to her husband and children.

Blessed is she who scours and scrubs; for well she knows that cleanliness is one expression of godliness.

Blessed is she whom children love; for the love of a child is of greater value than fortune or fame.

Blessed is she who sings at her work; for music lightens the heaviest load and brightens the dullest chore.

Blessed is she who dusts away doubt and fear and sweeps out the cobwebs of confusion; for her faith will triumph over all adversity.

Blessed is she who serves with laughter and smiles with every meal; for her cheerfulness is an aid to mental and physical digestion.

Blessed is she who introduces Jesus Christ to her children; for godly sons and daughters shall be her reward.

Blessed is she who preserves the sacredness of the Christian home; for hers is a divine trust that crowns her with dignity.

By Ella May Miller

Hat tip to the Modest Mom blog.

Easy Wreath

2010-12-01T12:18:00.000-08:00

I made this wreath last year to coordinate with my bright green door and it was so easy, nearly free, kinda modern looking, and stored incredibly well.

The base is a foam wreath shape, wrapped with natural linen strips, then I added some rick rack. The flowers are made from simple shapes cut from white felt, red satin scraps backed with some medium weight interfacing for stiffness, and a button in the middle stitched through the shapes to hold each flower together. The leaves are green fabric scraps, again backed with fusible interfacing for stiffness. The little plaque part is more white felt glued to cardstock. The text was supposed to be stamped with black ink, but didn't show up well, so I broke out my handy Sharpie marker. It is all affixed with the trusty hot glue gun.

The best part is that I had all this stuff on hand. The fabric was all scraps! I bet you can find some odds and ends around your house to decorate with too.

The wreath came before the door knocker, which wasn't so easy or cheap. But it only required two holes to be drilled into the door and hubby had it installed in a flash. I am so glad we put it in as it has been the most attractive and secure way to hang stuff on the door.

It works for me!

Favorite Kitchen Gadget

2010-12-01T11:51:00.000-08:00

Actually this would only qualify as my favorite kitchen gadget if by 'favorite' you meant most frequently used. Do you know what it is?

It's the only bit of Pampered Chef stuff I still have! That's right, I ditched the pizza stone and kept the plastic scrubby that came with it. This little bit of hard plastic is the best pot scrubber I have found for cleaning my two cast iron skillets without removing the 'seasoned' coating of the pans.

I've shared before that while my kitchen isn't too tiny compared to the rest of the house, and bigger than all the kitchens in the houses we looked at before buying this one, I still have to be very careful to limit how much stuff I have. Otherwise we'd run completely out of room. I have only the 2 skillets/frying pans, so they get cleaned a lot, thus the scrubby gets used a lot. Unlike other scrubby things, it doesn't hold onto the gunk when it cleans. Have you seen how gross some scrubbys can get? Yuck! And it takes up barely any space. Did you notice the corners are different sized? That's to get into the corners of different type pans. This works great on the skillets, my crock pot, and baking pans.

It certainly works for me!

Oh, and the pizza stone? Too heavy, too big, and we like pizza baked in a pan just fine.

New Dress

2010-12-01T05:28:00.000-08:00

Here's my previous sewing project; a dress for my daughter. We love it. It's so twirly and check out the ruffles on the bloomers. Gotta make this again.

Baby Quilt

2010-12-01T05:15:00.000-08:00

My current project, a quilt for a new grandaughter of a friend. All basted up and ready to quilt. I don't like the thinness of the batting I used, though the quality of it is very good. So excited to start the quilting!

I hope it turns out good.

Presser Feet

2010-11-15T08:37:00.000-08:00

Another post title might be: Having the Right Tools for the Job or Do Fence Me In.
I have some new tools in my sewing arsenal. The first is the stitch-in-the-ditch foot, though I have yet to use it for quilting. This thing is so perfect for top stitching garments! There's a little 'fence' (think like a table saw fence) right down the middle. Adjust the needle to the left of it and create a straight line of top stitching along the seam. Below is some stitching around the neckline of a dress I'm making for my daughter. You can see the edge stititching behind the needle and just in front of it as I finish up going all the way around the neckline. Below are some great feet: On the left is the Stitch-in-the-ditch on the left which is sometimes refered as a blind hemming foot (I think). In the middle is the quarter-inch foot, great for piecing quilt blocks. The foot has a fence to the right which guides the edges of your pieces for a straight accurate seam. And on the right is an over-edge foot, helpfull for finishing edges on seams without bunching them up. It also has a fence of sorts to guide the egde of the fabric though it's a bit different from the fences on the other two feet.

Forgive the poor photos, my camera is a 10 year old digital and let's just say cameras have come a long way in 10 years.

It's so wonderful to have the right tools for the job, and these feet have really helped my sewing.

How about you? Any favorite sewing tools you love?

Give Thanks

2010-11-15T08:17:00.000-08:00

I finished my fall wall hanging several weeks ago, but it took forever to remember to take a picture.

I made two hanging tabs with the thought that I'd use an interesting stick from the woods to hang it, but right now it's hung with a dowel. I think I probably should have used 4 tabs, as the corners are sagging a bit.

I love doing free-motion machine quilting!!!!! It's fun and challenging and feels so artistic. It's also fast once you get the hang of it. If I'm going to finish anything now adays, it has to be fast.

I love the colors of fall and Thanksgiving. I have so very much to be thankful for after all!

Sunny Sunday

2010-10-31T09:04:00.000-07:00

I am missing church this morning with an achy back and a nearly one-year-old who is....um....shall we say..no longer constipated. In between airing out my house and sitting on the heating pad, I thought I'd put an update here and in my kids' memory books which are woefully behind.

I'm supposed to write in their books for at least every birthday and my daughter turned 4 in September and I've yet to write for her fourth birthday. Since her big brother just turned 6 yesterday, I thought I'd better get caught up before it starts to snowball.

My hubby finished up his radiation treatments 2 weeks ago and is hoping to get back to work sometime next week. We have an appointment with a doctor to discuss Chemo tomorrow though. (He had a myxoid fibrous histocytoma removed at the end of July--stage 3 cancer) He's been doing incredibly well and the Lord has used our friends, church, and family to meet our needs. Hubby actually testified about the blessing of having cancer in church one Sunday. A mixed blessing to be sure, but an awesome way to see God at work!

I'd like to write more, but I better get on to writing in those books before the rest of the family comes home.

Drop me a comment if you're still reading here please.

Fall Fabric Fun

2010-10-14T05:44:00.000-07:00

Here's a little fall wall hanging I'm working on:Sorry for the poor close-up.Would you believe this is with the macro function on my digital camera? Ick. The leaves are ironed on with Lite Steam A Seam 2 and then I'm free-motion stitching over them. I've already finished detailing all the leaves and soon I'll start free-motion quilting the background. First I have to finish up a pirate flag for my kids' new play structure that we built mostly from salvaged wood.

It's raining here today so I thought I throw a picture of this cutie:

And this is a shot of my sewing area before we rearranged it:

See how crowded and narrow it looks? And my back is to the door which wasn't working with also keeping an eye on the kids.

But here's the improved version, which I am so tickled with:

Most of the stuff is still in the room just in a better arrangement. My sewing table/desk faces the window and there's enough room for my ironing board and for the kids to play in here a bit. Leah likes to come in and watch/help and I tend to put the baby in his excersaucer so he can bounce and play.

Oh, I almost forgot, my hubby put up some shelves above the baskets on the paneled wall made from salvaged lumber. I'll have to take another picture. I had to wrap the shelves in white contact paper to make them safe for fabric and they look great!

Machine Embroidery

2010-10-08T15:06:00.000-07:00

I told my neighbor I was doing some sewing and quilting as thank you gifts, Christmas stuff, and hopefully some things to sell. She is a wonderful, generous woman and offered her unused embroidery machine on loan.

I've been working on it a bit today and I've been alternately frustrated and thrilled! I can see setting it up to do the same emboidery multiple times, because it's difficult to set up each time. But once it's set up, you push start and you can walk away while it stitches which is pretty cool.

A Few Quick Sewing Tips

2010-10-06T14:43:00.000-07:00

I've been doing some sewing lately and I thought I'd share a few tips.

Use a loop of painter's tape, sticky side up next to your sewing machine to hold all your lose threads and tiny bits of fabric.

Change the blade on your rotary cutter occasionally. I just got a new blade even though the one I had was working ok. I was amazed at how much easier the new blade cut fabric.

Use duct tape to tape two large cutting mats together to get one extra large mat. You can leave them folded together when you don't need such a large cutting surface.

I don't do much ironing of clothes, so my spray starch was quite old; buying a new can is a pretty good idea. I like the new non-aerosol spray from Niagra.

For some creative fun, try free-motion machine quilting. I think I'm addicted and I'm just learning how to do it. I used to love hand quilting, but I just can't take the time to do it now. Machine quilting is fast, and the free motion aspect frees me up from a bunch of tedious marking and measuring and feels more like drawing.

Using a dry erase board to practice the free motion designs was something I had skipped, but I worked on it last night and it was fun and helped me figure out what hand movements worked best for me. The pros recommend this sort of practice. Silly me for skipping it.

When Your Best Friend Moves to Africa...

2010-09-27T05:29:00.000-07:00

When your best friend moves to Africa you know you are going to miss her so much.

When your best friend moves to Africa and your husband is fighting cancer and you get to see her one last time, you'll cry like a baby.

When your best friend, the one who you'd call your spiritual mother if you knew for sure she wouldn't read this post, who was the first person to really live a one-piece life in front of you-- following God as best she can, moves to Africa you thank God that He sent her into your life.

When you suspect she'd read the above sentence and the homeschooling mother within her thinks, "run on sentence" you'll laugh.

When your best friend moves to Africa with her husband where he'll work at a Salvation Army hospital and she'll be serving also you rejoice that she is following the leading of the Lord no matter that it is very difficult to leave family (she's a grandma now) and friends behind.

When your best friend moves to Africa to serve as a misionary, in the middle of nowhere, but still will have internet access, you really hope she'll set up a blog so we can see what she's up to and share some of her wisdom and experiences with us.

Love you so much Becky!!!!!!! Words are inadequate to express how much you've touched my life. Oh, and stop blushing!

God is So Good

2010-09-25T06:07:00.000-07:00

I wish it were easier to get blog posts out of my head and actually onto my blog! I usually have an armful of baby when I'm on the computer so surfing is much easier than typing.

We are in the midst of my husband's radiation treatments and he's doing very well, though he's now getting some skin reactions that will only get worse as we finish the next 18 treatments. He gets tired very easily, but otherwise he's feeling pretty good. I liken the tiredness to being pregnant; your body is doing all this stuff on the cellular level and it's exhausting!

In the midst of all the medical stuff, severly reduced income (praise Him that we had disability insurance!), daily radiation treatments 45 minutes drive away, loss of our regular routine, and homeschooling, God has worked so many things to our good.

My parents have given us their credit card to use for purchasing groceries and gas. Without this help I don't know how we'd be making ends meet. Our church family has been so wonderful; every weekday someone is either watching the children while I take Eric to his treatment or someone is taking him to treatment while I use the time to keep up with our homeschooling activities. Occasionally, someone brings over a meal too which is wonderful since his treatment is in the late afternoon. Some members have given us a little financial help.

Our neighbor has also blessed us financially--this woman is so fabulous! She is a strong believer and we have such wonderful uplifting conversations. She understands about coping with medical issues and leaning on God for strength as she has Lupus. She is very down to earth and a lot of fun to talk with. I have been praying for our neighbors since we moved in; specifically for our future neighbors as a couple of the houses were empty. Now He has provided one who is an encouragement to me and another family that I am trying to minister to.

So many things to write about, but I've got to go now.

My Buckler

2010-08-18T05:03:00.000-07:00

Edited 8/22/10 to add: I am an idiot. Apparenly I was confusing the buckler, which is a small shield, with an atlatl, which is the device that gives farther reach and power to a spear's throw. I'll leave the post up because I think the gist of what I was thinking still is true.

Reading this morning in my Nave's Topical Bible. I love how this book orders the bible by subject and topic; it even reorders the Psalms by topic and this where I was reading this morning. Psalm 18 was listed under Psalms-thanksgiving. Thankfulness, peace, hope, rest and faithfulness are things I'm trying to keep in the forefront of my mind as we fight my hubby's cancer. Nave's is based on the KJV instead of my usual NKJV so it has a few differences that speak to me a little differently.

Psalm 18
1I will love thee, O LORD, my strength.

2The LORD is my rock, and my fortress, and my deliverer; my God, my strength, in whom I will trust; my buckler, and the horn of my salvation, and my high tower.

3I will call upon the LORD, who is worthy to be praised: so shall I be saved from mine enemies.

4The sorrows of death compassed me, and the floods of ungodly men made me afraid.

5The sorrows of hell compassed me about: the snares of death prevented me.

6In my distress I called upon the LORD, and cried unto my God: he heard my voice out of his temple, and my cry came before him, even into his ears.

Also

30As for God, his way is perfect: the word of the LORD is tried: he is a buckler to all those that trust in him.

31For who is God save the LORD? or who is a rock save our God?

32It is God that girdeth me with strength, and maketh my way perfect.

33He maketh my feet like hinds' feet, and setteth me upon my high places.

The word buckler is used here instead of shield. A buckler is a device used to give further reach and power to a spear's throw. Though God is definitely not a device I use, clinging to the Lord certainly gives me more strength, peace, and hope than I would have without Him.

Things have been quite difficult emotionally here. When I can keep my mind stayed on Him, things are good, but it is very difficult in the face of all these appointments, medical reports, financial issues, and plain old out of whack routines. But we are trying to just take each day as it comes and enjoying having Eric at home no matter the reason.

Listening to scripture set to music has been a total blessing. More on that later.

2010-08-03T14:51:00.000-07:00

So I mentioned that my hubby was a bit of a one-handed wonder also in my last post. It's beacuse he had a huge, canteloupe-sized malignant tumor removed from under his arm. He will have to undergo 5 weeks of radiation and he's lost a bit of feeling and range of motion in his arm, but his prognosis is very good.

Our church has been wonderful through all of this; providing childcare, meals, lots of prayer, some financial support, and lots of love too. I can see God's hand at work here but it's been very hard. I feel like I'm walking a mountain top ridge, in danger of falling to the left or the right if I don't keep my thoughts on the Lord and how my family needs me. I am so weak for this task, but isn't it great that God loves the weak and flawed?

Maybe I'll post more soon, but for right now, I've got a lot to do.

One Handed Wonder

2010-08-01T14:44:00.000-07:00

I haven't done much posting here, especially since I had my baby boy who is now nearly 9 months old. I'd like to write more so I can keep track of what's going on, to share a few ideas I have, and just to vent a bit now and then.

The problem is that I'm usually only able to get on the computer when I am nursing. While this is great for some guilt-free internet surfing, it's hard to do much typing one-handed. Now that my son is eating solid food and not nursing as much, I'm online even less. Additionally, while I'm checking out so many wonderful blogs of some very smart ladies, learning from some great sites, and even popping into a few homeschooling forums; I'm hardly ever commenting. I notice that the more I comment, the more hits I get here.

Without the wonderful feedback I get from comments, my blog posts tend to stay in my head; which means they eventually trickle out of my head and dissapear forever. My brain just doesn't function like it used to. My memory is shot and my ability to work numbers is horrible. I'll attribute it to many years of undiagnosed sleep apnea, sleep deprivation from raising these wonderful babies, and plain old age.

But things have been happening around here that I'd like to document so I'm going to try to do better at posting. Ironically, one of the big changes around the sonshine cottage has left my husband a temporary one-armed wonder too.

Does anybody still read here? Could you leave me a comment if you do?

Customize Education

2010-07-11T17:05:00.000-07:00

Fascinating talk on education. Entertaining too. Don't forget to pause my music on the side bar.

What's a Girl to Do?

2010-06-23T11:06:00.000-07:00

My three year-old daughter doesn't have a 'thing'. You know, like my son's things are trains and now Legos.

She's got a nice doll house with all the accessories, a big box of dress up clothes, a couple of dolls, doll clothes, and my beautiful old cradle. Lest you think we're totally sexist, she's got thistle blocks, mega blocks, and now TRIO blocks (which my son now loves and I like much better than Legos for the younger child) plus free access to any toys in my son's room.

If females are built for relationships, then she's all girl. She mainly wants to do stuff with somebody. This is great if she and her brother are getting along, or if I can take time to play with her. I have a lot of activities that the kids can do, arts and crafts, toys, etc. but mostly she want to do things with somebody. During quiet time, she looks at books by herself fairly well.

She loves to help me so I am trying to make a point of her helping me in the kitchen which sometimes calls for planning ahead. She's great at dumping pre-measured ingredients into a bowl or mixer. She can stir fairly well, though I need to be close to keep things under control. Now I just need to remember that she can do these things with recipes other than cookies or I'm going to gain a ton of weight! She's learning to cut with a butter knife, so we're eating more bananas, sliced of course. She can wash veggies and non breakables as long as I give them a follow up washing. Peeling carrots and cucumbers is the latest thing she's helping with. This requires a few sacrificial veggies and some careful supervision if I want to use said veggies in our food- she can peel right through a carrot if not reminded to turn it. She's been putting silverware away for over a year, sometimes with messy results, lately it's been much better. Give her a spray bottle of water and rag and she's in heaven, but the floor can be dangerously wet afterward as spraying is more fun than wiping.

This has been great for our relationship I'm sure. I just need to be mindful to keep it enjoyable for her and not become drudgery, nor let my temper slip if I'm in a hurry in the kitchen.

But shouldn't she have her own thing? Dare I hope that she'll love domestic duties or is it just a passing phase?

DIY Wood Furniture

2010-06-17T18:24:00.000-07:00

I think I'm in trouble! I'm trying to keep the list of home improvement projects from expanding, and then I found this site: Knock Off Wood, a site full of DIY plans for wood furniture, some including knock offs (as the name implies) of popular designer furniture.

Here's someone's version of her Bankable Bookcases

An awesome table:

And the everhandy loft bed; which she has many variations available.
Note my preference for items with stuff storage! Too bad my hubby is more a welder and electronics tinkerer instead of a woodworker. If I could safely walk in his shop, I'd build these myself. Yeah, in my copious free time. Not!

But so tempting. Someday....

When you hear, "You cannot..."

2010-06-13T12:01:00.000-07:00

If you hear a voice within you say 'you cannot paint' then by all means
paint, and that voice will be silenced.

~Vincent Van Gogh

I think this applies to just about anything we want to do. Today, I am: napping, sewing, singing hymns, reading, and rejoicing in life.

Re-purpose a Dresser

2010-06-01T20:07:00.000-07:00

This:Has been replaced by this:

But now it looks like this:

And there's no more darkness looming over the entire small room! Well, other than my gloomy photo skills. I'm contemplating little curtain panels over the games, and I have some pictures to put on the walls still, but it's a vast improvement. I'll take slightly cluttered over dark and crowded anyday.

This project was finished at least a month ago, but I just haven't felt like taking the time to post.
I showed the dresser that started it all here, and it has really worked well for our homeschooling stuff.

Next major home project? Hopefully a remodelling of the back room that serves as sewing room and repository of all placeless stuff in the house. It will involve wiring, drywall and cabinets. Joy!

Another Important Homeschooling Book

2010-06-01T17:58:00.000-07:00

The most important book for this homeschooling family is the bible, but I was reminded how useful a good hymnal is today and how I have been making use of it already in our learning and plan on using it much more. I'm not an extremely talented musician, but I love to sing (mostly where folks other than my family don't hear me) and I want to pass not only singing and music appreciation on to my kids but also the comfort or joy of a GOOD song stuck in their heads.

The day started and ended well, but in the late morning I slipped into a funk of negativity and apathy, not directed at my family, but as usual, at myself. Thankfully, my hubby is an understanding soul and I also recognised my moodiness and didn't do anything too horrible.

While nursing, I stopped in at Large Family Mothering and this post was encouraging and had the lyrics to an old favorite hymn that got me singing again. Later, out on the porch while the kids played, I couldn't remember all the words so I grabbed my trusty Baptist Hymnal.

That got me leafing throught the whole thing and singing (quietly- it's my porch, but sometimes it feels as if we're on display) just about every other song. Besides the music, there's the church covenant, a how and why to get saved, and responsive readings based on some of my favorite scriptures. The hymns are divided into categories and there's the handy indexes of titles, tunes, and first lines. I'm thinking I need to spend a little more time in the Joy and Triumph section and the Home and Family section.

My church doesn't sing a whole bunch of hymns, being a fairly new church, we don't even have hymnals, using a projector instead. But I want my kids to learn the old favorites. There are plenty of new CD's out there to teach children scripture, but the old hymns are full of scripture already. Sometimes we forget how useful an older resource is when there are so many good, new things out there. There are also many songs in my hymnal that I don't know but the lyrics certainly are applicable to my life and I hope to learn some of them.

So far, with the kids, we usually sing without music when we have a circle time (it's been hit-or-miss in the last 6 months) at the dining room table, but we were gifted a keyboard 2 years ago and I really need to use it. I finally bought a bench for the keyboard last month, and I have yet to sit on it.

I have 3 hymnals; one I picked up at Goodwill- Glad Songs (a collection specifically for children and youth of the Church of the Brethren from 1922), an older Baptist Hymnal that I think I got from my mother, and my favorite is a Baptist Hymnal that I'm not sure where it came from. I'm hoping it didn't get purloined from a previous church (always active in choirs and choir director at one), but the label in the front is partly missing and I don't recognize the names that are in it--- it's too new to be a thifted find. Sigh..."Excuse me, I used to be a member here. Did I steal this hymnal from here?" Maybe I bought a hot hymnal at a yard sale?

Another benefit of using a hymnal over newer music compilations---they pack a lot of songs in a relatively small space!

Fix It Friday

2010-04-15T14:18:00.000-07:00

Maya, at Maya*Made is having a fix it friday carnival of sorts and I thought I'd join in with my latest project.

This may not actually qualify as a fix, but since I took something that was discarded on the curb and made it work for me I'm calling it a fix. It turned out so well that I'm doing it a second time.

The picture below is our wardrobe turned entertainment center. It's huge and holds all our electronics, videos, DVDs, and puzzles and games. The problem is that it's huge. We got in the habit of calling it Frankenstein even at our old house where its size suited the large living room, but here in the cottage it looms over the small living room.

To give you an idea of its size, this picture was taken from my recliner which is against the adjacent wall, near the corner of the opposite wall. It kinda looms over the tiny room.

We need to replace it with something smaller that we can put the TV on top (until we can get a small flatscreen or do away w/ TV altogether) and have storage for the stuff. One day we hope to put shelves in under the stairs, but that's in the future.

One day I spotted some furniture on the curb around the corner from our home. Having seen an idea in a magazine for transforming dressers into bookcases, I snagged two drawerless dressers that were in rough shape.

I didn't get a before shot of the first dresser so I'll have to sear your retinas with the second, larger dresser that I'm working on this weekend. See below.

Yes, someone painted it bright orange with a rubbery latex paint. Ick. Now, I didn't realize how cheap these dressers were made until I started working on them. There's a lot of particle board, formica on the top, and I believe the feet are molded plastic. So I'm taking the fast and easy route with them; spray paint! The first dresser (below) hadn't gotten the orange paint job and was easier to do, but the orange one may need some brush-on Kilz primer (their spray paint primer is horrible!)

The white dresser was meant to replace Frankenstein, but it got put into the dining room while awaiting the beast's removal and it worked there too well to give up, which motivated me to get started on the orange dresser. Plywood was cut to fit between the drawer spaces and shelves and tacked into place with brads. Then the whole thing was spray painted with an ivory gloss paint. The inside is rough particle board, so I plan on glueing up some pretty paper of some sort.

Now it will be put to use holding school stuff and art supplies. Yay! I love it when I can redo something for cheap, solve a decorating issue and add storage space.

Simple Pantry Supper

2010-04-13T16:18:00.000-07:00

Here's a simple supper that's frugal, versatile, and uses mostly pantry staples. My meat and potatoes hubby likes it even though it has neither meat nor potatoes. I like it because it's easy and cooks in the microwave. The only drawback is that it doesn't look like much, so I suggest serving some colorful veggies or salad with it. We have paired it with canned beets several times which are a pantry staple for us.

Once again, I'll remind you that I'm a 'handful of this, pinch of that' kind of cook, so giving exact measurements is not my forte. This recipe is so versatile that the only important measurements are the rice, beans, and water.

Lentil Rice Casserole (serves 4-ish)

1c. brown rice (can also use some wild rice)

1/2c. lentils

1t. celery seed

2 boullion cubes (beef, chicken, or veg.)

dash season salt and pepper

3c. water

Combine in microwave safe dish, cover, and microwave for 5 minutes on high. Then microwave an additional 25-30 min. at 50% (Do not forget to reduce to 50% or it will catch on fire. Nevermind how I know that!) Let stand a few minutes for the moisture to absorb, depending on the type of rice, you may need to cook a little longer.

Now you can fluff the rice and serve, or stir in a handfull of mozzerella cheese and let the cheese melt in. (The cheese is a big help when feeding to small children to avoid rice everywhere.)

There are come optional ingredients that can be used: Browned hamburger or leftover meat, onions, peppers, etc. Since I'm using this as an easy meal, I don't use these too often but some leftovers can be a good and quick addition. The amounts are easily adjusted too. Sometimes I'll reduce the lentils to 1/4 c. and use this as a side dish.

Works for me.

Why?

2010-04-12T04:16:00.000-07:00

Why, oh why must motherhood be full of so many contradictions?

Why is it that on the same morning I'm looking forward to the baby sleeping through the night, my daughter comes down the stairs (just as I was about to put the baby back down and try to get a little bit of sleep) and she is so cute, loving, and showing definite signs of being a big girl instead of my little girl that I just want to say, "STOP!" Just stop growing up on me.

Somedays it's just going by too fast. Other days it can't go by fast enough to get to the next stage where I think it might get easier (face it, it won't get easier, just different). Then there are those days in which it want life to speed up and slow down simultaneously.

Sigh....

Homeschool Temptation

2010-04-10T11:44:00.000-07:00

Homeschooling is getting me in trouble. Not that there's anything wrong with it, in fact I really like it. The problem right now is that my motivation to homeschool right now is faulty. I'm using the education of my preschool-aged children to give me a sense of accomplishment, more structure to our days (not a bad thing), and to validate my work here at home.

Because somehow keeping up with the laundry, meals, cleaning, and daily childcare just doesn't quite seem important enough. I know, I know, I've read all the verses, the books that uphold the SAHM in her important role, the discourses on finding the sacred in the ordinary and I agree that taking care of my husband, children, and home is an important job. And I do a pretty good job at it, but it just doesn't stay done, which can be frustrating and I admit my attitude can be pretty bad about it.

I'm a very crafty, DIY, project-minded person. I like to say at the end of the day that I got x, y, and z done. My to-do lists are way too long. Actually, they're more like "I wish I could do" lists. One project seems to require several pre-project projects (before I can do this, I have to do that...) and one project leads to another. My 3 and 5 year old children are pretty easy to keep busy while I do some projects and tasks, but my 5-month-old who is not too keen about naps is quite different.

It's just part of the season I'm in, and I try to remember this. Really I do. I even call a few wise friends who remind me of this fact. So I try to let some of the projects languish until a more opportune season. I try to tell myself that in a few years, the kids might be able to help with more of the projects. I try to limit how many things I decide to make because I can make it for less.

So what does this have to do with homeschooling?

Well, it may not be the season for my projects, but who could argue with a mother's efforts to educate her children? Most of the preschool stuff we've done has been done in a natural way, worked into conversations, hands-on activities, and read alouds. But Jamie had requested reading lessons nearly 2 years ago and the result is a late 5 year-old who is reading at a second grade level.

The temptation is that I find myself wanting to push the other areas of his schooling and he's not ready. There are times when he (or my daughter) doesn't quite grasp a concept or follow intructions and I think that I am not cut out for homeschooling, which is ridiculous because I don't even need to be teaching much yet. While certainly not stressing myself out with teaching him, I keep losing sight of the blessing of not being tied to schooling right now. I'll be submitting my letter of intent to homeschool my son for Kindergarten this fall. I don't have to work on his handwriting skills (which are pretty poor- perfectly typical of a boy his age.), math skills, spelling or anything else.

But if I do some school activities with my kids on any given day, I come away with a kind of smug satisfaction that has less to do with their learning than my feeling of accomplishment. Somehow being able to fit in this extra activity of school makes my day. " Did school? Check." I can see the potential for that feeling to grow into something really ugly and frenzied if unchecked. I know very well that he can be an advanced reader without being advanced in other areas, nor will he necessarily keep his advanced status over time. I don't need to be pushing him, nor myself for that matter, to do so much that he begins to hate it.

I'm trying to see this time as a blessing, a time of freedom to enjoy my children without the needs of schooling looming over us. Another five or six months without having to worry about what do with my younger children while teaching my oldest child. A time when any learning we do accomplish is that much less on our plate later. Time to merely enjoy my children and love on them.

It is so easy to get carried away with plans, ideas, hopes and dreams when it comes to homeschooling. We need to research our options to find what will work for each child and family, and there's so much information out there. There's the books, magazines, and curriculum suppliers of course, and there are a billion homeschooling mommy bloggers out there that are a simultaneous mixture of blessing and curse. A source of inspiration and consternation.

I do not want to push my children too far. I want us to pause and recognize that we've done well thus far and not feel as if we must constantly press on, learn more, do more, be more. I want to say that just for this moment, it is enough. I want to protect my children from my crazy sense of inadequacy and dissatisfaction with my efforts. If they see that part of me, how will they develop their own sense of worth and confidence?

I will do what I can do and it will be good enough. And then I'll forget that good enough is perfect, go a little crazy, beat myself up and then pause, take a break, pray and reflect. Then I will remember, readjust my course and try again.

Alphabet Animals

2010-04-04T17:59:00.000-07:00

If you're teaching someone their letters, check these alphabet animals out! The images are beautiful and a bit like an I-spy game.

I think I might color one of these.

He's Alive!

2010-04-04T04:23:00.000-07:00

He's alive!
He's alive,
and I'm forgiven,
Heaven's gates are open wide.

Celebrating the death, burial, and resurrection of the Lord this morning. I hope you are too.

Interesting Article

2010-04-01T11:33:00.000-07:00

I found this transcript through Conversion Diary, and while it's aimed at Catholics (which I'm not), I'm saving it for future reference with my children. I think it raises some very valid points and thoughts as to why after all these years of contraception, we have even more illegitimate and unplanned for children, and how trying to separate s*x from procreation cheapens the act and humanity (Not to mention, it's not too effective). It gives some very good arguments for saving s*x for the marriage bed, things that I am hard pressed to put into words.

It supports Natural Family Planning too, and discusses how NFP might strengthen marriages more than contraception. I'm not entirely convinced that NFP deserves all the credit she's attributing to it rather than the result of good, God-centered marriages, but it's interesting nonetheless. Seems to me a distinction should be made between marriages/relationships that use contraceptives because they aren't interested in having children and those that use contraception after having children.

Sunday Seven

2010-03-28T17:35:00.000-07:00

1. The One Thing Principle- instead of doing a bunch of stuff in the day and feeling like we've done none of them well, how about focusing on one thing?

2.You can purchase Mp3's of many homeschooling conferences here. I'm thinking of buying all the Mp3's on CD from last year's homeschool conference (in Richmond, VA) as a substitute for this year's conference.

3.This quote: “Life is not orderly. No matter how we try to make life so, right in the middle of it we die, lose a leg, fall in love, drop a jar of applesauce.”-Natalie Goldberg, posted at Handmade Homeschool.

4. Permission Slip, also at Homemade Homeschool

5. Educational Goals for the Whole Child, at Simple Homeschool.

6. This is the inspiration for a little crafty goodness I've been trying to sneak in: 39 Squares

7. 10 Signs That You May Need a Break. Is it wrong that I think #6 is one of the best ideas EVER?!

Printable Activities

2010-03-23T14:52:00.000-07:00

Oh internet, talented homeschooling mommies, and printer: I [heart] you!!! I love finding clever activities I can print out for free for my children. Particularly ones that help teach/reinforce phonics or math without requiring writing.

Here's a shot of one of us playing the bug race game found through Chasing Cheerios. There have been links to several good games at Chasing Cheerios lately.

I also printed out the Domino Parking Lot Activity for another day.

The Snail's Trail has quite a few helpful resources too. And there's homeschoolshare.com, which I find a little hard to navigate. 1+1+1=1 has a ton of stuff too.

Then there's mathwire.com, DLTK bible activities, and Lambsongs Bible story books.

There's a ton of stuff out there and I'm only limited by ink (toner), paper, time to find the materials and my ability to organize them (which may be the weakest link). To organize them, I use an expandable file, broken down loosely into subjects and skill areas.

(And yes, that is my baby in his bumbo chair on top of the table. He's under my constant supervision and less likely to get hurt there than on the floor with an active 3 and 5 year old.)

Homeschool Teaching Qualifications

2010-03-23T09:04:00.000-07:00

"We can sum up very quickly what people need to teach their own children. First
of all, they have to like them, enjoy their company, their physical presence,
their energy, foolishness, and passion. They have to enjoy all their talk and
questions, and enjoy equally trying to answer those questions. They have to
think of their children as friends, indeed very close friends, have to feel
happier when they are near and miss them when they are away. They have to
trust them as people, respect their fragile dignity, treat them with courtesy,
take them seriously. They have to feel in their own hearts some of their
children's wonder, curiosity, and excitement about the world. And they have
to have enough confidence in themselves, skepticism about experts, and
willingness to be different from most people, to take on themselves the
responsibility for their children's learning. But that is about all that
parents need. Perhaps only a minority of parents have these qualities. Certainly
some have more than others. Many will gain more as they know their children
better; most of the people who have been teaching their children at home say
that it has made them like them more, not less. In any case, these are not
qualities that can be taught or learned in a school, or measured with a test, or
certified with a piece of paper."

From here. Emphasis is mine. The site refers to unschooling, and it is unclear to me, having not read the site's other pages, whether they are refering to homeschooling in general or to 'child-led' education, but it generally assumes that we are not trying to imitate school in our home.

That willingness to be different from most people, includes being different from other homeschoolers. Because while we may have some similarities, no family is the same as another and our teaching should reflect that.

I'm pretty certain I'm a little weak in enjoying all my children's energy, foolishness, talk and questions. These kids can really talk up a storm, which is to say, it can get quite loud! But we're all learning together.

Edited to add: Blogger and I are having issues again about spacing and format.

To Do or To Enjoy

2010-03-22T09:50:00.000-07:00

Love this quote:

I arise in the morning torn between a desire to improve the world and a desire
to enjoy the world. This makes it hard to plan the day.

EB White

Though I would substitute 'my home' for the world. Not that I don't have thoughts about bigger things but I figure my home/family/community are a part of the world.

Helping in Haiti

2010-03-17T19:47:00.000-07:00

Here are some links to some wonderful folks helping in Haiti. Most are working with Heartline Ministries, an organization that was already serving in Haiti before the earthquake shook the nation on January 12th, which just happens to be my birthday.

Fascinating reading on a horrific catastrophe followed by insanely confusing relief efforts. These folks listed have some real brutal and beautiful stories to tell. I can't remember which blog or post referred to this, but many newborns are being saved in Haiti now that would have died before the quake because the relief efforts have brought equipment and services that were unavailable before.

Heartline Ministries

The Livesay Weblog- I love the quote on the banner of this site.

Haiti Is Such a Strong Word

This Isn't Grey's Anatomy

The Apparent Project

Read, pray, give if you can.

Did you know you can donate SWAG bucks towards helping relief efforts? I have no clue where the $ would go.... but still.

I haven't donated a dime. Sad but true. I want to but we are on a serious push to pay off some debt so that we can give (money or time) in the future. In fact I scheduled an appointment to get WIC this month. We easily qualify, but so do a LOT of people. A family of 5 earning less than $47,000 per year can qualify. Are we short on food? Nope. Would it be nice to get this help for a short period of time, that our taxes helped fund previously? Yep. (Except my pride would be hurting, the trips for the appointments might not be worth it, and the food choices are--interesting (what? I can't get non-hydrogenated peanut butter, and the only oatmeal covered are those expensive packs of instant?))

When you read about the poverty of other nations, it seems a little ridiculous to even consider ourselves needing food aid. We just tighten the belt and pursestrings (I could use a large belt--evidence that I'm not hurting for food, oh and in case you're worried, the kids are healthy and plump. Baby boy 17 pounds at 4 months) So I cancelled my appointment. Then a day later, I thought, "Hmmm maybe go on WIC and use the saved money to send to Heartline Ministries or to sponsor a child with Compassion International?" ACK!!!!! I'm too much of a conservative to take the aid just because we qualify.

What about you? How do you give when the budget has no room, but your heart does?

This probably should have been two separate posts. Sorry.

Boys

2010-03-16T12:27:00.000-07:00

I enjoyed reading this post, A Mom and Her Boys. Maybe you will too. I especially liked what she had to say about boys being different;

Just because you don’t see the merit in jumping out of trees or running headlong
as fast as you can into walls doesn’t mean the crazy stuff they do is deserving
of you griping at them all day long.

And also about channeling their energy, which I try to keep in mind already. But I really had not thought about how boys may try to assert themselves as they grow into men and their roles as leader of a home. I can see now where the desire to lead a home and be in charge may motivate them to attempt a coup in their father's home. Things to think about while my boys are growing.

Edited to add: Local large homeschooling family extraodinaires, the Boyers, have a two part series on boys at their blog right now.

Good stuff!

Kids on the Computer

2010-03-11T18:27:00.000-08:00

My husband and I each have laptops, and while I've used mine to view Starfall.com with the kids, we've not let them operate one by themselves. Our local library has a computer set up just for kids and I've let them fiddle around with it, but they are far from computer savy.

We recently set up a computer for the kids in my bedroom and installed some [Edit on March 29 I had said Reader Rabbit software, but was mistaken. It's actually the Jumpstart series] Kindergarten and first grade software. Why the bedroom? Since I only want the kids on the computer for a limited time and only when I can supervise them, I figure they can play on it while I attend to the long-neglected pile of clean laundry in my room, chase some dust bunnies under the bed, and a few other tasks that don't usually get done because usually we're on the first floor of the house.

I haven't been too impressed with the Jump Start programs; they don't have enough direction. You have to play around with the mouse and see what it reveals. My kids seem to need something a little more direct.

Besides starfall.com I have enjoyed sheppardsoftware.com for the kids. These are both internet based programs, and the sheppard site does have some advertisements, so supervision is vital. Sheppardsoftware.com is full of educational games and learning activities. There's a special section just for preschoolers and kindergardeners that is fun without being too busy and overstimulating.

The library's computer has a kid-sized mouse and I'd like to get a similar one for my kids. My hubby thinks maybe a travel size mouse for use with a laptop might work for the kids. I want my kids to value books over other screen-based electronic media, so I don't think they'll get much time with electronic media (especially video games) until they are pretty proficient readers, though I think it can be a handy tool for our homeschool.

Anybody have some recommendations for kids' software or use of the computer?

Parenting Wounded Children

2010-03-04T15:20:00.000-08:00

If you have been blessed as I have to see parenting as a sacred trust, to start out with our own babies, immersed in a little subculture that mentors and models parenting skills and disciplines as found in our own church family then you may have wondered at the struggles of parents and children outside of your circle, of adoptive parents, of the craziness of families seen in the news or even the grocery store, or our own experiences with temporary care of a relative's children or in a babysitting experience.

We wonder why the simple methods of caring, consistent discipline and teaching aren't being used or aren't effective when they have served us so well. We can really be sheltered within our own circle of experience. Here's an article that is a fascinating, insightful, and sad look into what goes on when that sacred trust is broken or absent.

I wish I had read this when we went through a period of caring for a relative's child. We entered into that situation thinking that what worked for the Christian nuclear families we had been exposed to would work for that very different situation. This information, along with some other information and scriptures is something I will try to remember when I am tempted to pass judgement on someone else's parenting or offer advice.

While this article is mainly directed at adoptive and foster parents, I think there are definitely lessons I can apply to myself and my parenting--especially the importance of modeling self-control for my children.

May God keep me from wounding my own children and bless those who endeavor to parent those children who have been wounded. May He touch the hearts of parents who have wounded and help them to heal instead.

Hat tip to Owlhaven and in the interest of full disclosure, I haven't had a chance to read the article completely as we are having a bit of a rough day.

If You Give a Mouth a Toothbrush

2010-03-03T11:15:00.000-08:00

Something I need to remember, especially on those days when the only reason I'm not still wearing pj's is because I slept in yesterday's clothes!

'If you give a mouth a toothbrush' by Footprints on the Fridge.

I'm not so sure about the jewelry or pinked cheeks (do I even have any blush anymore?) but I'm working on that pretty mouth and all that comes after it.

Simplifying Hot Breakfast- WFMW

2010-02-17T05:13:00.000-08:00

Simplifying our meals has really helped during this time with all littles (5 and 3 y.o. and a newborn). One of my favorite meals to simplify has been breakfast. When my hubby started working second shift, breakfast became our dinner so we got used to hot breakfasts. Oddly, when we moved into town, hubby began coming home for dinner but I still make hot breakfasts most of the time. They're cheap and yummy and start our day off nicely.

There are three ways I've simplified our breakfast:

1) Make ahead

2) Adapting recipes to cook all at once.

3) Limiting my recipes.

Making ahead: So many things can be made ahead and reheated. Besides baked goods like muffins and breads and biscuits, I make a double batch of baked oatmeal and save half for another morning. Pancakes and waffles can be made ahead and even frozen for serving at a later date. I also have a recipe for oven baked French toast that is easy to prepare the night before and just baked in the morning. (Don't forget, you can use left over pancakes to make sandwiches for lunch.)

Adapting recipes to cook all at once: Take your favorite pancake recipe and pour the batter into a greased 9x 13 pan and bake for about 20-30 minutes at 350. This is one of my favorites! Cut into squares and serve just like pancakes. Instead of tending my two skillets and flipping pancakes (I suppose it'd be easier if I had an electric skillet), I can chuck the pan into the oven and grab a shower or something. Try pouring the batter over blueberries or other fruit or tossing in a little cinnamon. Yummy. My baked oatmeal, puffed oven pancake and baked French toast recipes also fall into this category.

Limiting my recipes works for all meals and meal planning. By this I mean I cycle through a fairly small list of tried and true recipes. This simplifies planning and shopping and the repetition makes me get really fast and efficient in the kitchen. I've even got my bicuit recipe memorized. For more variety I vary some of the ingredients like cinnamon and fruit. Biscuits, oatmeal (doctored up with various fruit, nuts, and spices), oven baked pancake, and baked oatmeal are our usual weekday breakfasts.

I serve breakfast with either scrambled eggs or Brown and Serve sausage cooked in the microwave, and fruit. I think providing protein from the eggs or sausage helps balance all the carbs from the usual breakfast fare. Most mornings the two older kids wake up early enough to need something to eat before breakfast. This has become a standing joke about being hobbits and 'second breakfast'. I give them a tiny bowl of cereal with milk.

Hot breakfast makes my family happy and my simplifying tricks makes it work for me.

I think there's more to this post, but I've got to go. Look for a few recipes later this week and a continuation of my Life with Littles series.

Life with Littles, Part 2- Being Proactive

2010-02-16T19:08:00.000-08:00

I have always thought of myself as a creative, crafty type who likes to be impulsive and 'wing it' rather than plan and measure and execute. And for the most part, I am and it works for me. But this free-spirit-edness (is that a word?) has sometimes been a cover for laziness and/or has left me with less than satisfactory results.

As my family has grown, 'winging it' just doesn't work quite as well, which I'm sure is no surprise. Conversely, 'winging it' has increased in my cooking and sewing as there just isn't time to do these things just 'right'. And my favorite thing to 'wing'? Preschool. But those things are topics for another post.

There is a stage when an only child of a SAHM reaches a certain age and things get rather predictable and boring. This may be about the time that some moms think about going to back to work or start working from home and others tend to start working on baby number 2 or something else. For me I began to work on a pretty solid routine to order and fill our days. Note that I did not say schedule; my impulsive and anti-number nature just rebels at a "we do so and so at such and such time". Library every Thursday, naptime after lunch (glorious 3+ hour naps by my first-born!), snack and read alouds after nap, baking bread on Mondays, etc. It really helped keep everything going in an orderly fashion (for the most part) and kept the days from being too boring (go play....I said go play....go play, here's a puzzle, now go play).

In the spirit of full-disclosure, I also got pregnant with #2. She came along when my son was two months shy of 2 years old. The biggest thing to change in our routines was to cut out many of our outside activities and commitments. That's not to say we didn't go outside, we just didn't go anywhere as much.

But now with a 5 and 3 year-old and a newborn I can't just wing it as much. I have to be proactive. I have to follow our routines as much as possible and step in and redirect the kids a lot more in order to keep things running relatively smooth. Without being proactive, sibling spats increase, messes get out of hand, and sometimes childish energy gets out of hand and somebody or something gets hurt. Without being proactive, I'm just reacting to each crisis as it happens, I feel like I'm being sucked dry without any replenishment and I get irritable.

I think being proactive just might be what makes those mothers of many children look like supermoms to those moms with fewer children. Whether it's crafts, lots of reading aloud, song time, circle time, school time, chore time, whatever it takes to keep the kids engaged and busy, maybe not out of some crazy desire to be perfect (though there are those types out there...sigh....) but merely as self-preservation.

The biggest proactive steps I've been taking? More craft time, school/circle/song time thingy (still part of my 'winging it' method of preschool) after our quiet time, quiet time has replaced nap time, more cooking with the kids, a cleaning time, and more redirecting of play before they get tired of something and trouble ensues. More rotating of toys and amassing bigger sets of fewer toys so the 3 and 5 yo can play either together or seperately with the same kind of toy. (Trains, blocks, wedgits, wikki stix aka bendaroos, playdough)

I've also taken steps to be proactive with myself. Getting dressed to shoes. Yep, Flylady is right, it helps. Though sometimes this happens only because I woke up in the clothes I wore the day before. My time at the Y has diminished to 3 days per week, but it's nearly a mandatory thing for me as it really gives me a break and I still have a lot to do on this body to get it fit. I have worked to break down some of my crafty projects into smaller steps that I can do as I get a little snippet of time to myself. I have also given up on the afternoon quiet time as a time when I can rest on my bed as the kids rest or nap on their own beds. Yeah, I need the rest, but it just isn't happening and I need to use the time to prepare for the afternoon or nurse (usually nurse) or something else 'productive' and I just try to get to bed earlier--which fits with my baby's sleeping pattern better anyway. When I was trying to get that rest and not succeeding, it affected my attitude. Putting on worship and praise CDs or kiddy Christian music to keep my attitude where it should be. Reminding myself that I set the tone for the family.

So yeah, being proactive is really working for me and it makes me feel like I really have a handle on this whole mothering thing. Well, until I don't. Because life just happens sometimes. I'm really hoping that being proactive is one of those things that I'll get used to because I have to, because it's really quite exhausting. I feel like I'm 'on' a lot more with much less down time. It's harder in a different way and yet more peaceful when I'm proactive.

Speaking of rest.... I need to get mine. Goodnight.

I do hope to touch on some other things that are working for me now. Next post might be on how I've simplified my cooking.

Life With Littles

2010-02-03T19:16:00.001-08:00

Today, I rocked! I really rocked (as a mom) and not like I thought I rocked last week when I had done all kinds of good things in my home, with my kids, with a friend and then realized I had gone around all day with my shirt on inside out. (And yes, the friend noticed and was too kind to point it out.)

What has made the difference and given me the confidence to say I actually am doing a good job at motherhood? Self-preservation. First a little background:

When I was pregnant with my first child, I was one of 4 pregnant women at my church. The other three were pregnant with their fourth child. When I was pregnant with #2, I was one of three pregnant women. The other 2 were pregnant with their 5th child. You can imagine how inexperienced and inept I felt. There was a crowd that I could compare myself to and always I came up lacking. (Yes, I know I shouldn't do that.) How in the world did they manage with 4 and 5 kids when I could barely manage with two? How could I even consider having more?

These kind ladies did their best to convince me that it was harder when the babies were all little and none of the older kids were at an age to be good helpers. It took a long while before I believed them. One lady expressed to me that every stage was a challenge in some way and that you just get used to what you have to do.

This go around, the fertility club has dwindled, and I got to be the lone gestating mama. Not that it made me special or anything, but I enjoyed not being in a pack this time. This time around, I feel much more confident and up to the challenge of three little children, albeit they aren't as close together in age as they could be. Mine are 5, 3, and 11 weeks and that's close enough, thankyouverymuch.

What's changed? First, I guess I actually do know what I'm doing to some extent. Yup, I just faked it with the first two and they were the Guinea pigs, but I feel like I know what to do with a baby now. That is, as long as the baby is healthy and fairly mellow, and Praise God! my kids are. Second, I think I finally am allowing myself to believe that it is hard when they're all little and not comparing myself to families that have a child that is, say, at least 8 or so. Third, since I've done this enough now, there's a knowledge of the seasons and challenges that a new baby brings. A feeling that I've been here before and such and such helped, it passed quickly, and yes, I can prioritize better and extend myself some grace. And fourth; You get used to what you have to!!!!! This last one is big, y'all.

We as adults aren't much different than these toddlers that we're bringing up. I made the connection today between getting used to what you have to and child training/discipline. Someone had mentioned that their toddler wouldn't drink plain water and that they had to give him watered down juice to drink. I, in my sinful judgemental mind thought, "If he had nothing else to drink, he'd go for the water eventually but he knows he can get you to give him the juice." Whammo! That still small voice pointed out that in my sinful, self-centeredness, if I could get out of being a good mama, there are times that I would (and do).

Thankfully, I am left with very few opportunities to be a really bad mama. Not that I am perfect. I am messing up all the time, but I'm feeling like I'm getting the hang of it and some of it is becoming routine and dare I say easy? Maybe not easy, but definitely routine and not so hard. God has called me to be a loving, disciplining, discipling, joyful mother of my children. My husband safely trusts that I will care for his children, teach them, and also keep a peaceful home. My own goal (among a few others) is to be the best mom I can be without turning into a perfectionistic, too busy, crazy stressed out lunatic.

If I was surrounded by a so-called support system that told me it was ok to entrust most of my children's care to strangers, to give into childish whims (mine and theirs), to go to work to buy more things, to have more me time; well I probably would grab at that "juice" if I could. If God and husband didn't tell me differently or if I chose not to listen to them. But I'm going to stick with the 'water', something that is more healthy if not as tasty and appealing.

I am used to it. I am used to having a routine of sorts. I am used to fixing simple meals from scratch. I am used to quiet time, morning prayer, afternoon 'school' of a very simple sort. I am used to having a time of activity whether outside to play, an errand to run with the kids, or some crafty thing with the kids. I am used to our bedtime routine. I am used to telling the kids to go potty before naps, before we go somewhere, before bed. All kinds of things. The more I do what has to be done, the more I make room for those extras.

Even better---my kids are used to these things too.

I think back to those awesome mamas at my church with multiple children and how together they seem to be. Perhaps what I see is the cumulative result of all those things they have had to do to becoming routine. I certainly know that the mom I am now would blow the socks off the mom I was when I started. But, there sure is room for improvement!

Back to how I rocked and self-preservation: I know I can't get a nap during our afternoon quiet time anymore so I enforce quiet time with my two older kids on their beds while the baby---well---at this point mostly cries, but I'm hoping to get him to ease into a napping routine. Meanwhile instead of whining and begrudging myself some downtime, I've been trying to use the time to get things done around the house. These are things I would normally do after bedtime at night, but instead I'm going to bed earlier to better match the baby's sleep cycle. This usually includes setting up some sort of activity for the kids since it's too yucky for them to get much outside time and they need that interaction with me. I do these things because taking that extra step of having activities with the kids, quiet time, and getting in some creative time for myself makes things go so much better.

Today I got my hair cut this morning, cut a pair of pants out for each of the children from repurposed or thrifted clothes, organized my sewing room a bit, put the end veneer on part of the kitchen counter all during so-called quiet time. Then after the kids were up; sewed one pair of pants, started on another pair (I sewed in the dining room while the kids were doing an activity), helped the kids with a Valentine's Day project involving hearts of construction paper, scissors and string, made cookie dough with the kids (ate too much dough this evening-oops), and then cooked up some yummy chicken stir-fry for dinner. All while nursing and changing the baby many times and most importantly- without totally losing my cool with the kids and yelling, doing my best to model the behavior I want them to possess, and without whining or complaining to my hubby when he got home for dinner.

More on my life with littles in a few days. I'll need those days to not only write but to give plenty opportunity for me to mess up so that my current thoughts can be seasoned with a little bit of humble pie.

Free Printables

2010-01-30T17:23:00.000-08:00

About 14 inches of snow on the ground, 18 degrees F outside and I'm going stir crazy! I am thankful I don't need to go anywhere but I haven't been able to do much today except nurse/burp/change the baby and referee squabbles between the 3 and 5 year old.

I am trying to figure out if the baby has been nursing enough that he's stimulated my milk production or if I'm on the verge of a breast infection of some sort because I feel all tender and engorged. I also have been cold all day, even though I increased the thermostat 2 degrees above what we normally have it set at. Maybe I'm gonna come down with something.

The hubby tried to do some snow removal with the tractor but it was still snowing and it was just so cold that he decided to wait.

Since I'm spending so much time nursing, I'm getting a lot of computer time and we got a new wireless network printer for Christmas so I've been looking for free books and curriculum online and printing out some of it along with a ton of free worksheets and coloring pages. Ian did take a nap long enough for me to do some organizing of our school stuff and all the papers that were all over the dining room.

Here are some nifty links for free printables:

Bible lessons and coloring pages
Books of cute poems to teach manners and character, The Goop Directory, More Goops, and still another. Love these!
Donna Young's Printables- I printed a bunch of the handwriting stuff, especially these.
Some beautiful coloring pages for me! Links to other coloring pages too.
Here, you need to register for free to get the better printables.
Sparkle Box has a ton of stuff, though a lot of it is in color.
A bit more work, but you can generate custom worksheets here.
Fun Fonix eBook- 3 letter, short vowel workbook already made with the worksheet generators from the above sister site.

Pantry Shelves

2010-01-25T18:59:00.000-08:00

I wish I had taken a 'before' picture, but the shelves below had been in the short hall way between my kitchen and the wasking machine. Problem was, they stuck out too far into the hallway and the black color really made the space feel dark and cluttered, plus the shelf spacing didn't work well for my food containers. Now the shelf has been wheeled on it's handy wheels around into the enclosed back porch/sewing room area next to my deep freeze. It's in an awkward spot and has to be rolled out to access all the shelves, but it's a perfect fit for the space and now hold non-food items and paint. That floor is actually pretty clean, just is in bad shape. Below are my new shelves, installed by my handy hubby. They're a perfect fit for the space.

I still have some more food to place on these shelves. We are starting to shop more in bulk and less frequently, so these shelves are vital to keeping things stored and organised. Don't those jars look pretty?

Tie One On

2010-01-25T18:27:00.000-08:00

Tie on a baby that is....

Blogger is giving me fits and I can't get it to let me move these pictures around, so they're out of order.

Homemade Asian baby carrier (ABC). The only carrier I use on my back so far. This one needs a make over as I made it padded and it is too hot and bulky. This one allows me to lay the baby back down easily without waking him once he's been lulled to sleep by my movement. He's a newborn here, so his legs are tucked up underneath him. Now at 10 weeks, his legs hang out the sides a bit and he's higher up so you can see the top of his head.

Baby pouch, home made like the rest of them. I love this one for going places. Custom fit, no rings. Not for wearing over long periods of time due to the one shoulder design.
Below, my version of the baby wrap, AKA commercially as a Moby Wrap among other brands. The most comfortable wrap I have and versatile, but this one should have been another 2 feet longer and the fabric doesn't maintain it's stretch. Very easy to make. I'll be making a new one soon. I use this one to walk the track at the Y if I take Ian with me. The kids are ready to help me make some cookies.

Baby pouch again. Let's not notice how unflattering these photos are, OK? I take this pouch with me wherever I take the baby, very convenient, no excess fabric or bulk. I'll be making another one of these soon as the baby grows. The commercial ones are big for a newborn, so you've got growing room, but since I made mine, I wanted the best fit for when he was at his littlest.

Without my baby carriers it would be hard for me to get things done around here, or I'd have to let the baby cry while I got things done. With my first baby, I could even nurse while walking around with him in a ring sling but the other two wouldn't do it. I wear my baby the most when cooking, not all the time, but several times a week. Wearing your baby keeps him pretty happy and folks are less likely to touch the baby or ask to hold him when he's in a carrier-- a plus during cold and flu season.

Baby Ian

2010-01-24T17:47:00.000-08:00

Baby Ian, 2 days old and ready to leave the hospital, wrapped up in the blanket and hat that I made for him. Snoozing on his mama.

Happy chubby bubby! It sometimes blows me away to think that my body produced everything he needed to grow so nice and big. He's a happy, mellow boy who nurses a lot, wakes me once or twice per night, fights napping during the day, and looks like his daddy. I am so blessed.

My Kitchen Challenge

2010-01-24T14:46:00.000-08:00

I am not one for making detailed menu plans. I tend to keep certain foods on hand that we use a lot and cook from what's on hand replacing those staples and ingredients as they get used up. Some folks call this cooking from the pantry. I usually have what I need to rotate pasta, pizza, chinese, mexican, meat-n-potatoes, and soup meals through our dinners easily. It provides enough variety, but I don't try new recipes very often and that's okay. With little kids, there's not enough time or motivation to fancy up my cooking. I don't actually follow recipes, cooking 'intuitively' or what I think of as by-the-seat-of-my-pants so things are interesting enough.

My kind of cooking requires keeping a stocked up kitchen. I have to plan enough that I'm not surprised by the absence of a vital ingredient and so that foods get used up before they get too old or go bad. I also stock up when things are on sale, but only things that we'll actually use. Since we've moved into town 3 years ago, I've had to fight the tendency to run to the store for a handful of things every couple of days which can lead to a lot of while-I'm-here-I-might-as-well-get-this kind of purchases. This is bad for the budget and usually bad for my waistline.

We've changed up how we shop recently, mostly where we shop and how often. This week I'm trying to not shop until Friday when hubby gets paid, which is not a big deal as we have plenty of food on hand. Except for a few challenges inspired by the Eat From the Pantry Challenge at Money Saving Mom and Life As Mom. I want to use up some odd ball ingredients and I'm out of a few staples.

Onions! My last onion was large enough for a few meals worth, unfortunately I found out tonight that it was rotten. Seems like every bag of onions I buy has at least one bad one in it. I use onion in just about everything I cook for dinner. While it's used primarily as a seasoning and I have plenty of onion powder, it's strange to not start off meal prep with chopped onion.

We're out of potatoes but we've got rice, pasta, and tortillas so it won't be an issue.

The last important staple isn't actually a food item. It's the dough hook for my KitchenAid mixer. For the second time, I've had to order a replacement as the enamel coating is flaking off and the new one is back ordered (this time I'm getting one without the coating). This means no home made bread unless I want to knead it by hand, which is unlikely. We've got half of a store bought loaf right now, so sandwiches for lunch won't be happening after tomorrow. Maybe there are some breads I can make with the mixing paddle. I used to make pizza dough in my food processor, so maybe we'll do that. Remember I've got a new baby, so cooking/baking time is hard to come by.

Things I found that need to get used up:

Dried chickpeas/garbanzo beans- bought with the intention to make hummus although I do not have tahini, an ingredient apparently necessary for all hummus recipes.

Plain cous cous. Not sure why I have this since I'm not big on pasta unless it's baked. Pasta masquerading as rice? I'd rather have rice. I'm thinking making it up with chicken bouillon and some chopped sweet peppers.

A bottle of taco sauce. Bought for an interesting crockpot recipe a long time ago. Must look for the recipe and hope I have everything it calls for.

Canned cream of chicken soup. Revolting once you've gotten used to making a simple white sauce and adding fresh ingredients to make a creamy soup. Got it cheap at Aldi's and stocked up thinking it would save time in cooking after baby was born. Won't get it again.

I'll share what I come up with later this week if I get enough computer time.

Comparative Chaos

2010-01-17T11:29:00.000-08:00

I seem to constantly battle the urge to measure myself by the wrong standard. I'm pretty sure I'm not the only mom to do this, especially in the SAHM and homeschooling community. Right? There are times I look at others and feel inadequate or worse, feel like a total slacker or lazy slob. Then there are the times that I see some of what I deem chaos in others' lives and feel sinfully superior for keeping things more simple.

When I'm fed up on the Word, as opposed to just being fed up, have sufficient sleep and the hormones aren't raging I remember that the only measure I need to use is God's. Thankfully God uses a merciful slide rule of sorts that measures only according to what He's called me to do. Also as I grow older and my prayers for wisdom are granted (Wisdom? Me? Ha!) I can recognise patterns of my own behavior better. Such self-knowledge finds me (sometimes reluctantly) acknowledging that I am different from those I'd easily compare myself to, that I am easily overwhelmed in some areas and yet have strengths in other areas that I tend to underestimate.

We all have a different calling from God, different talents and training, and are at different stages of life. I forget this all the time. I think some factors that make me overlook these differences are that some of my life experiences are pretty unusual (ranch, farm, truck work), I was raised as an only child in a very quiet environment, and had children so much later in life.

I love how Heather at Beauty That Moves describes her reaction to busyness in an interview at Progressive Pioneer:

You seem to aim for simplicity. I know, in my life I seem to be battling an
ever-encroaching chaos! How do you steer your life back towards simplicity and
keep the chaos at bay?

I love your expression "ever-encroaching
chaos." Indeed, I feel it too. A few years ago our homeopath wisely told us that
he firmly believes "some people just need a low-stimulus environment." His words
were so comforting and spoke to what my intuition already knew. Lately on my
blog I've been writing about the busyness of my life right now, and while it
does feel quite busy to me, sometimes I have to laugh at myself knowing it's all
relative. "Busy" for me can happen rather quickly... while another person might
still be running strong, checking things off their list well into the night, my
own cup runneth over much sooner and I find myself feeling desperate for a cup
of tea, some quiet, and a few deep breaths.

I need a low-stimulus environment! The Progressive Pioneer is one of many 'crafty blogs' that I read more often than I probably should---because the crafty goodness, photographic eye-candy, and spectrum of lifestyles and life seasons can fuel some discontent on my part, as creative endeavors are seriously curtailed when you have a 5 and 3 year-old plus a 2 month old. On the other hand, at least I can get an eye full of creative beauty while my hands are full with a nursing baby; arguably a creative endeavor of immense worth.

Quick Update

2010-01-15T19:23:00.000-08:00

Eek! Has it really been more than a month since I've posted? I guess that's life with a newborn and no desire to keep blogging higher on my list of priorities. Whenever I nurse at home I usually get to use a computer and surf while I nurse but that's mostly reading time not typing time as I can only use one hand. I've even had to change the magnification of what sites I read as the computer sits off to my right.

Baby Ian has become a chubby bubby, smiles a lot, and wakes only once at night. Things are going quite well, even though I still have some bad days depending on amount of sleep I get, hormones, and how well the 3 and 5 year old are doing (just typical things at their age, I hope). I thinks that's just part of the season.

In fact, I'd say the hardest thing is to be mindful of the season we're in and not try to either take on too much stuff/activities/projects/whatever or load myself up with guilt or discontent because I'm not doing more. Even at thirty-nine (just last week), I still have plenty of years to add these things to my life when time and children allow.

I do need to make a little more time for some creative crafty outlet as I get great pleasure from working on something pretty and useful. I've been making time for exercise, usually 3 times a week and that's going well. I also feel like I'm barely keeping my head above water sometimes when it comes to keeping up with the cooking and cleaning without resorting to convenience foods or doing things that cost more money. Hubby and I are working on our food expenses right now, and have changed up a few things that are blog-worthy if I can just get enough time to type them up. Ian gets his best sleep from 9-ish to usually about 4:00am so it's really important that I don't stay up much later than 10:30 or 11pm trying to get things done if I want to get some good sleep.

Ian does not get good sleep during the day. Maybe it's the price of having him sleep so well at night but he really fights sleeping during the day and if he does sleep, it's not for long unless I'm wearing him in one of my baby-wearing thingies (another post perhaps?) so it's hard to do things during the day, but we're managing and I think that's the best thing I've learned about life with 3 children- you can identify the season/pattern of life easier and just know that things will change/pass whatever, if that makes any sense?

I does mean I have to more deliberate and proactive with my time and with management of my home and children, especially the children. I try to not let them have too much unstructured play time for long periods- like when I find myself repeating phrases like, "Go play", Stop fighting" etc. Time to rotate the toys, introduce an activity, or read a book.

Time to get to bed. Maybe I can post again before too long.

Navajo Fry Bread

2009-12-13T01:12:00.000-08:00

So I mentioned this recipe on my facebook page and a few freinds asked for the recipe so I've given out this link from there, so facebook friends, I hope you don't read too much of my blog and decide i'm a blathering idiot!

OK, end of disclaimer.

A few days ago I had wanted to make an approximation of a friend's dish called taco ring. It's taco meat and cheese wrapped up in crescent roll dough or a similar store bought refrigerated dough. I have a large amount of bulk taco seasoning that I want to use, but no 'whomp' dough. A few days ago, i made a nice calzone with italian sausage that i had got on sale and i had thought at that time that i'd use a variation of that pizza crust dough for the taco ring. But the calzone crust turned out very tough and very hard to bite through.

The older kids have been 'helping' me cook a lot lately. They love to pour and stir, plus it gives them some good attention from me, so I figured we'd make something together. At first I was thinking tortillas, but decided to try this fry bread from the "More With Less Cookbook" which is one of my favorite cookbooks. I've shortened and adapted it here.

Navajo Fry Bread

Mix in bowl (I used my Kitchenaid):

4-1/2 c. flour (use up to 2c whole wheat)

1/2 t salt

2 t baking powder

Stir in:

1-1/2 c water

1/2 c milk

This dough is pretty wet, add in enough additional flour as you knead the dough to get it workable--I used the Kitchenaid to knead it. Divide dough into golf ball sized lumps and roll each into about a 6 inch circle. Fry in several inches of hot oil, (400 degrees if you've got a thermometer). I used a cast iron skillet to fry mine. Dough will puff and bubble, turn when golden brown. Drain on paper towels and use while still hot with filling of your choice. I used taco meat.

These are so yummy, just don't think about the oil. Frying them at the proper temp. will help them from absorbing too much oil. Don't burn yoursef!

After mixing the dough, i gave a chunk of it to one child to play with, but the other lost interest. I didn't let them roll any out, but i think soon they will be able to do it. I did not let them near the frying oil.

Update- Life With Three

2009-12-07T09:36:00.001-08:00

It's been a while since I've had time to post and I have a few things I really want to write down, but as anyone with a newborn knows, time to blog is at a minimum. I actually get quite a bit of computer time, as I have one next to the two spots I nurse at but I can only use one hand on the computer while I nurse and it takes me so long to type anything, so most of my computer time is just reading for the most part. There's just not enough time to sit down to post or do much commenting sans baby.

But things are going well. Baby Ian is a mellow baby and keeps me busy nursing and changing diapers. I've said it before when I had my second baby that you learn how to care for a baby with the first baby and then with each additional baby I think it's more about logistics. That is definitely true with a third baby. I really have to be deliberate with my time and really proactive with the two older kids (ages 3 and 5). They are really sweet with the baby but they aren't so sweet with each other at times. I've had to get creative with them.

I've even had some time to exercise--just walking so far, but with mixed results. More on that with a future post. I've also found another blog I'm gleaning a lot from and am enjoying reading so much from various blogs. I really want to share what the Lord has taught me through His word and through some wise mommas though I'm not sure anyone reads here anymore, but writing it down helps me internalize the information better.

Gotta go now, baby is sleeping and it's time to fix lunch, load the crock pot, do some dishes and cleaning, talk to my hubby, and give some attention to the older kids before the baby wakes.

He's Here!

2009-11-13T16:11:00.000-08:00

Ian Josiah was born Wednesday and weighed 8 pounds, 6 ounces and is 21 inches long.

Turns out all I needed was a little prostaglandin gel to go into labor! After that, no drugs until I got a little local to put in one stitch for a first degree tear. More details later, but we're home and doing well except for a little jaundice that we'll have to retest tomorrow. He nurses like crazy!

Thoughts of a Lady in Waiting

2009-11-10T16:06:00.000-08:00

Waiting on a baby, that is.

Thought I'd put a few thoughts down for later before I forget them. I'm always surprised at how fast some details and menories get lost in my brain, especially those regarding labor and birth.

I should have never, ever assumed that just because my other two babies came two weeks early, that this baby would be early too. In retrospect, I see that their early births could have been attributed to other variables, like the doctor who may have stripped my membranes on my first cervical check with Jamie and I was so terribly sick with a cold with Leah I could have coughed her out. Waiting these two weeks for this baby to officially be post-date has been tough. Wondering if every little tightening could be the start of labor. Worrying that the OB overseeing my midwives would press for an induction because of my Gestational diabetes, something they've been remarkably patient about as these things go.

I had enough pre-labor and Braxton Hicks contractions earlier in my pregnancy to make me concerned about preterm labor. Then, for weeks 38-39 I had so few contractions that I could nearly forget I was pregnant except for the large belly I was sporting. I did insane amounts of walking to try to move things along and work the baby down lower. Too chicken to try castor oil, I began drinking prune juice. I initiated sex with my husband for the sole purpose of it's supposed labor inducing effects, something that is about on par with the castor oil in comfort at this point. I half-heartedly took a few doses of blue cohosh, but was worried enough about it's safety to really utilize this herb. I ate spicy food. I threw aside my gestational diabetes diet aside a few times to indulge in pineapple, something that is supposed to help stimulate labor and is delicious and certainly safe.

Hubby was convinced that I was too uptight to go into labor so he ran me a bubble bath one night and lit a bunch of candles. I alternate between trying to get this labor going with lots of activity versus just trying to rest up and relax. Last Wednesday I was walking at the Y and started contracting weakly every 3 minutes. So I kept walking, hoping they'd get stronger. They didn't. After 3 hours I was too tired to walk and they fizzled out fairly fast. The next day, I met with a midwife who said said that if I didn't have this baby by Monday, we'd have to talk about induction. I did have her check me, something I wouldn't let them do with my 2nd baby until I was in labor. Sunday night, they started up again, still pretty weak but persistent and lasted all night. I knew they were too weak to count even if they were coming 3-4 minutes apart, but I figured they'd want to induce me on Monday, and I was so tired I might just let them.

On Monday, after being up all night with those annoying, weak contractions, they fizzled out as we headed up to the midwives' office. Figures. Then we get there and the ultrasound tech was sick and they wanted to reschedule for Tuesday. There wasn't even a midwife there to check me or follow up on the other midwife's threat of induction. So we left and wandered around town, wondering what to do. I called their OB nurse to tell her about my contractions, being post date, and of cours, all I get is her voice mail. We headed home so I could get some sleep and just as I unpacked my pillow and CPAP machine (I thought they'd be sending me to the hospital monday) the nurse calls and says I needed to get to the hospital to be checked.

Off we go to the hospital (the kids were still at a wonderful friend's). After being monitored, checked, and ultrasounded, I was given the option to have my membranes stripped. This is something that I feared had been the starting point for a horrible inductionwith my first baby and had made me paranoid to even be checked with my second baby. But once I was over due, supposedly with a fairly large baby, was sooooo terribly tired, sick of foisting the kids off for my appointments and trips to the hospital, and just ready to have it over and done with I had the midwife strip them. She said she wouldn't do it if she didn't think my cervix was ripe enough, but it was. And I was sent home. By the time we made it home, I was having stronger contractions though they were still pretty irregular.

There was a message from the midwife that she had talked with the OB and said that due to my gestational diabetes, that we needed to see about inducing me either Wednesday when she was on call (one of my favorite midwives at the practice) or Thursday. I picked Wednesday, hoping that the stronger contractions might bring on labor before then. Then hubby went back to work and I took a short nap and picked up the kiddos. After getting them to bed, I was still having irregular contractions, but I was so tired that I went to bedand was able to sleep through them this time. In the morning (today), there was very little contracting going on, so off I went to the Y to walk, but it did little good.

So now, I'm still having infrequent contractions but I've resigned myself to the induction and figure that instead of staying up most of the night and trying to get these contractions going stronger, I'm going to bed. My midwife assures me that we can start off with a prostaglandin
gel, which will allow me to still be mobile and may be just enough to get me into labor. I'm hoping that these contractions I've been having have dilated me since yesterday when I was 3cm and 50% effaced. I plan on putting off pitocin as long as possible and want to keep my membranes intact until they go on their own, or I am in real strong labor. Because once those things are ruptured, there's no going back or stopping. If I'm lucky, I won't need the pitocin or maybe I can have it stopped once my body cooperates.

I have to be real careful of my sugar levels right now, because if I let them get high, after the baby is born and is no longer getting extra sugar in his system from me, he can develop hypoglycemia or too low blood sugar. I asked one of my midwives what I could eat in early labor, since most will let you eat jello, popsicles, juice etc. in early labor. She said I can have diet soda and sugar free jello----yeah, that should give me the nutritious energy I need to see me through labor. Not. I'm going to take my own low carb yogurt and sugarfree pudding. Possibly some broth.

My poor hubby will be working late tonight and we have to get up by 5:30 am to get to the hospital, so I pray that he will not be a zombie in the morning. Because I'm pretty certain that I don't want to hear about him being tired when I am in labor.

Now I'm going to bed and praying that when I wake up I will be in labor and won't need an induction. What ever happens tomorrow, I hope I have the baby early enough that the kids don't have to spend the night at my friend's house. She's a wonderful sitter and I trust her completely, but my kids have never yet spent the night elsewhere, and since they won't be able to visit me at the hospital (flu concerns and policies) it'd be nice to have them be with their daddy at night even if they can't be with me.

I can't believe that I'm looking forward to this induction. I've spent alot of time learning about natural childbirth and avoiding unneccessary interventions and now I'm ready to be interfered with. Just goes to show you that situations change and new plans develop. Is it perfect? No. But will it work for my family and current situation? I think so. I don't want my desire for a wonderful drug free birth similar to my second birth to jeapordize my older children's needs, nor, honestly, do I want to push out a 10#+ baby. No matter what happens, it is ultimately in God's hands and I trust Him.

Preschooler Craft Organization Idea

2009-11-01T14:35:00.000-08:00

A new month, a new post, but no new baby yet. Sigh...

We have some big mats that we use for painting and I keep losing them in my craft closet. See here for a picture of the closet I store our craft stuff in. And don't think for a minute that it currently looks this neat! I'd take a current picture, but it's too messy, and I'm too hugely pregnant and lazy to bother.

These mats are perfect for painting with Do-a-dot paints. To see exactly what we use and perhaps get some for yourself, go to your local Advanced Auto Parts store and look at the mats that are on the checkout counter. Seriously! My hubby works for the company that prints these things and he brought home some extras. They have current sales stuff on them and they are tossed out quite regularly at the stores. They're plastic on top, and a non-skid foam stuff on the bottom.

Anyway, as useful as they are, they don't store well in my closet. Until today when I had a duh moment and came up with a solution. I grabbed a clothes hanger that is used for pants- the kind with clamps on them- and hung the mats up on the closet rod. No more searching the floor for where they've slowly curled up and been buried under preschooler detritus.

Now, I hope to finish cooking dinner and see if these intermittent contractions I've been having will resolve into the real deal.

Double Minded

2009-10-04T12:32:00.000-07:00

Allow me a little leeway in paraphrasing from the bible and suffice it to say that I am double-minded woman, unstable in all my ways.

Right now I have two competing forces inside of me: The not-always-logical but thinking part of me and what seems to be the primal physical body part of me. Though not completely accurate, I will refer to these parts as the mind and the body.

Yesterday I reached 35 weeks of pregnancy and next week starts the insanity of twice weekly visits to the midwifery/OB practice for a weekly ultrasound, followed later in the week by a non-stress test and midwife appointment. This is due mostly to my having gestational diabetes, but is also influenced by my loss of my mucous plug 2 weeks ago and periodic bouts of contractions.

My brain is telling me I have a lot to do before this baby is born and I better get busy and suck up any discomfort and fatigue. The body is telling me I just need to go lay down, rest, and the important stuff will all get done somehow eventually. The body is also making me get very inwardly focused whenever I have any contractions. There is a very small part of my brain that is telling me to listen to my body so that I won't have this baby too early. The rest of my brain is in complete denial, telling me I need to get up and get busy, that I am a mother of two other children and that I just can't have the luxury of 'going within myself' when ever I am tired or contracting, and that this baby won't come for another 3-4 weeks.

I guess until I reach 37 weeks I do need to take it as easy as I can so this baby doesn't come too soon, so the body is winning for now. But it is also the body that sent me off to the church nursery in search of some food this morning, right before communion. If I had had any cash, I would have actually left to go to the nearby McDonald's for a sausage McMuffin, hold everything but the sausage and muffin.

Am I totally nuts? Or does anyone else feel this way during the last 3-4 weeks (hopefully) of pregnancy? The body tells me I need to humble myself and ask for some help here too, but the mind is certain that what needs to get done, can get done by myself or my hubby. With my first baby, I was busy working the farm until a week before birth and the second seemed to go pretty fast too especially as I was confident that going into labor 2 weeks early wasn't going to happen again (It did). Having lost my mucous plug at 33 weeks and having plenty of contractions, I'm pretty certain I'll go early this time--though another small bit of my brain says that since I'm planning on it, it won't happen.

Argghhhh!!!!!!

Cart Before the Horse Homeschooling for Life

2009-09-26T17:34:00.000-07:00

I liked what Lady of Virture at Large Family Mothering had to write about the focus for education in real life: http://ladyofvirtue.blogspot.com/2009/09/cart-before-horse.html

She talks about being 'educated' but being ignorant of the skills needed to live a life, and how teaching these skills to her children incorporates many of the academic subjects we do need to teach them.

Our Version of Circle Time

2009-09-19T19:23:00.000-07:00

So I mentioned here that I was doing our own version of circle time now with my now 3 year old and nearly 5 year old. I'm keeping it very informal and at times, flying by the seat of my pants, but it seems to be working for us. You can find a lot more about circle times and how others do it here, and by doing a search on-line for circle time (you may want to specify homeschool circle time, as the idea is used for daycare, and early grades in schools).

My goals are: to more formally teach the bible, our beliefs, and character traits; to get a little more reading aloud time in, since I've slacked off reading at night because I'm so tired; get the kids used to 'doing school' together; teach my daughter her alphabet and numbers; and as a venue for later introducing other subjects like history, nature/science, art, and music that I'll probably teach them jointly.

My hubby works second shift, well, more like part of first, all of second and part of third at times. So we have decided to "do school" after he leaves for work at 1:30. We start off with a short prayer, but then the order changes from day to day. We've been using a hand-me-down Character training book that I hope to replace with something else eventually, a hymnal from which we sing 3 or 4 hymns (I love to sing and the kids do too), we usually sing a few bible verses that we've learned from the Pearl's ABC bible verses CD (already memorized so we don't use the CD except in the car), we do a few read-alouds (currently library books including AA Milne's When We Were Very Young) and usually one alphabet book (A is for apple, etc. especially for my 3 y.o.). We'll usually sing an alphabet song and a number song. Sometimes we do an activity with numbers or letters, very simple and informally, just to familiarize my youngest with numbers and letters. When I've got my act together, I'll have each child do a page or two from one of the Kumon workbooks I've got for coloring, cutting and pasting, or something similar. I've got two each of 3 of these workbooks so they can do the same activity.

This seems like a lot once I've written it down, but it goes quite quickly and simply. Depending on the kids' cooperation and attention span, we finish in about 30 minutes to an hour. After this, my daughter goes to her room for her nap/quiet time while I do a reading lesson and a math or handwriting activity with my son. Then he goes to his room to play quietly and I do something around the house for about 30 minutes and then go to my room for a rest.

If at anytime the kids start misbehaving during circle time, I just stop. They hate for me to stop. So far, it's been going quite well. My weekend project has been to paint an old wooden bin to hold all of the books that I use for circle time to make it easier to keep all of them together. Since the weather has cooled off a bit, we've moved circle time out to the table on the porch. I'm hoping that this will help incorporate nature study as time goes by. And at this stage, when I say nature study, I simply mean pointing out different organisms (trees, birds, etc) and identifying them and talking about them and talking about God's creation.

The most important thing is to keep it simple, relatively fun and stress-free as we start out on our homeschooling journey.

33 Weeks and Counting...

2009-09-19T18:54:00.000-07:00

A little pregnancy recap, possible TMI alert (Too much information)

Monday and Tuesday of this week I apparently passed part of my mucous plug and began getting pretty frequent and strong Braxton Hicks contractions and a lot of downward pressure. If I were at 36+ weeks or so I don't think this would be worrisome at all, just an indicator of my body getting ready for birth. At 32, going on 33 weeks today, I was a bit concerned.

Talked to my midwife Tuesday night, and she was very reassuring that all was OK. Since this is my 3rd baby, she mentioned that I already may be dilating 1 or 2 cm and may stay that way for a while. I was admonished to limit my activity if it brings on more than 5 contractions per hour, which pretty much means no more walking at the Y.

Yesterday, I saw the new midwife at the practice and I really like her. I still have to meet one of the midwives, and my next appointment will be with her. The practice has 4 midwives and one doctor. So far I love the midwife there that delivered my daughter, this new one is pretty good so far, and the other one I met seems a bit more medically minded, but nice.

The new midwife actually loved my glucose numbers and really praised me for them, which I really needed to hear. Especially since one of the midwives (and another who has since left) kept saying that while my numbers looked good, I'd probably need to go on Glyburide towards the end of my pregnancy. I hate it when they want to go all worst-case-senario on you. Fear of lawsuits I guess, scare you enough of the possibilities so that you will be happy with a better outcome. It was so reassuring to hear that my numbers looked so good since I've been working so hard at keeping my sugar levels controlled with diet alone.

She also says baby is breech. But says I have plenty of time for him to turn head down. I mentioned that there are some days when I feel incredibly full and uncomfortable, and some days I don't feel very big at all, and speculated that this could be due to his changing positions. She agreed and did say that she could be wrong about his position, having only checked by doppler, but said that 9 times out of 10, when she finds the heartbeat above the belly button, that they are breech.

Now that it is cooler, I realise that I have no decent maternity pants, but I am resigned to making do with what I have (hello again, baggy fat pants) until the baby is born. A few weeks after the baby is born, I fully intend to go clothes shopping, as I became pregnant after dropping 30 pounds and have gained only one pound so far. So I'm guessing that I will lose 10-15 pounds with the birth.

Now if I can just keep from gaining that back after the baby is born!

Interlibrary Loan Fees

2009-09-11T18:54:00.000-07:00

I've been thinking on ordering some books on-line to add to our collection (some pretty picture books for my daughter and some homeschooling stuff) but I don't want to spend much money right now. Just this morning, I decided that I would make a list and try to get them first through interlibrary loan and making sure I really wanted to purchase them.

Then while at the Y this afternoon, I opened the local paper to see that our local library system will now be charging a one dollar fee for each interlibrary loan in order to help cover their costs in this tough economic time. Apparently, the fee is fairly small compared to the postage costs the library does pay and certainly one dollar is cheaper than buying the book, but...sigh.

If I buy used, it'll probably be worth it to me to buy the book instead of just borrowing it for 2 weeks for a dollar. Apparently these fees are common across the country, but I'd never heard of it before now.

Homeschool Freak Out

2009-09-01T18:43:00.000-07:00

Also known as "How I realized that we started Kindergarten".

I ought to know better than to read too many homeschooling blogs at this time of year, with all of their best-laid plans yet to go awry, fancy 'comprehensive' curriculum, school rooms, doo dads, and all the fixins for their preschooler to 1st grader.

With a baby due the first of November and my oldest who won't actually be the official age for kindergarten until next fall, I had accepted that I really didn't need to do much 'school' with him at all. We do a lot of reading, arts and crafty stuff (ugh, paint!), talk about their world, sing, play, cheapo wookbook stuff from Wally world and the like. I've looked at scope and sequence lists for Pre-K through 1st grade and we're making great progress in a pretty relaxed way.

But then I surfed and looked and read and compared myself to others and found myself lacking. My insecurities completely blew all readings of Ruth Beechick right out of my head (she of the let kids be kids, play and read and talk as curriculum for the early years, and nothing needful other than the 3R's and the bible ---love her!) as I saw all these grand schemes for circle-time, social studies, history, and science for kids who don't even know their alphabet yet. I totally freaked.

I think I've shared here how I've been doing Hooked on Phonics with my son and also used Starfall.com at the beginning and how when I bought the newest version of HOP since my second hand version was missing a lot of the little books, I realized that we were nearly half way through what they've classed as 1st grade reading.

Well, I panicked (for about 24 hours), thinking that I really needed to do something more structured, more detailed, more comprehensive. Can you tell I don't like the word comprehensive? To me it brings thoughts of harried homeschool mamas feverishly working through 10 subjects at a pace where no one is enjoying learning (or teaching), lest they not finish all of the purchased curriculum. I'm sure as the higher grades approach, some of this may be neccessary, but surely not for kindergarten or first grade. I figure, get them reading first and it should all be much easier.

So then I went and looked up the scope and sequence for Preschool through 1st grade at worldbook.com , a source referenced in several homeschooling articles I've read.

Allow me a small rant about preschool readiness here:
Social-Emotional Development
* Takes care of toilet needs independently. (are his arms freakishly long for a preschooler or does he not wipe, or perhaps he waits till he gets home to do, well, doo?)
* Is not afraid to go to school.(I'm afraid enough for him.)
* Cares for own belongings. (yeah, riiight.)
* Crosses residential street safely. (By himself? Are you crazy? He's not even 5 yet!)
* Maintains self-control. (At 5? I have a hard time at 38 sometimes.)
* Shares with others. (We're making strides here, but seriously?)
* Talks easily. (Hooo boy, can he talk. Being quiet is another question all together.)
* Puts away toys. (Puts toys away pretty well IF he's able to stay on task long enough)
* Able to stay on task. (Depends on circumstances, surroundings, and motivation.)
* Able to work independently. (See above)
* Helps family with chores. (Well, he 'helps' me a lot, but I have questions about a lot of other kids in public schools)

Gotta wonder what planet these folks are from, 'cause some of this doesn't sound like any 4-6 year old I know. But maybe that explains the high use of medications for ADHD, sensory disorders, and the like.
End rant.

So I've figured out that with the exception of some math skills and writing (like a typical boy, his hand coordination is slow to develop) we're making progress in Kindergarten already. And of course we need remedial work on some of the above preschool skills. [tongue in cheek]. So through some convoluted thought processes, which may be lacking in proper logic, I figured that he'll be ready to start 1st grade next fall, so by default, we have undertaken Kindergarten this year. And officially, he won't be starting first grade until he's already doing second grade as far as registering our intent to homeschool with the county board of education is concerned, in the fall of 2011!?

I subscribe to the school of thought that the focus of education for a child this young ought to be a continued immersion in a Christian upbringing with bible reading, songs, and character development; learning to read, write, and basic math skills; and learning informally about the world around him. Anything else is either icing on the cake, can wait until a later time, or is a potential source of stress. So to that end, I'm continuing on with Hooked on Phonics, and working on handwriting and math although I've yet to use any curriculum per se for this. I may yet order materials from Handwriting Without Tears. I did score several Kumon workbooks at Walmart the other day, a high quality workbook company that I usually find only at Barnes and Noble or our local frou-frou independent bookstore.

We've also tweaked our routine a bit, in a twist that completely interferes with my goal of being a happy, relaxed, slacker mom, we've added a 'circle time' of sorts that includes my 2 year old! OK, she'll be three in little more than a week. Sigh...

More on this in a few days.

Pregnancy Update

2009-09-01T18:28:00.000-07:00

Some good news on the pregnancy front:

Breyer's makes a fairly decent chocolate ice cream-like substance called Carb Smart. So far if eaten after my last glucose reading of the night, it doesn't mess with my fasting glucose numbers. It's pretty good when eaten with a spoonful of peanut butter.

I have been able to eat taco salad at our local Mexican place and still have a decent post-meal test (if I stay out of the chips!).

We have had two glorious days of temps in the low 70's during the day. The AC is off, the windows are open and I get to listen to the beautiful sounds of God's creation. Good thing we live in a quiet neighborhood, or the sounds might not be so beautiful!

I occasionally have to get after my kids for trying to do handstands on the couch. As I watched my son's feet wiggle in the air above his head, I realized that's exactly what his baby brother must be doing in my uterus. Sometimes the movements are so strong it surprises me.

My new next-door neighbor gave me 2 grocery bags full of newborn to 6 months clothes leftover from her 2yo. son. They are nearly new, some look as if they have never been worn. I just lost all incentive to go through my son's old clothes.

Gestational Diabetes Blues

2009-08-21T18:55:00.000-07:00

[Cue blues rythem]
I am so hungry...
I could bite my arm...
There's nothing I want to eat...
That will do me no harm...

I got the blues....the gestational diabetes blu--es.

Seriously.

Eat more lean protein and leafy veggies, the midwife says. No,no, the nutritionist says---A diabetes diet is a balanced diet getting nearly one half of your calories from carbs. But if I eat that many carbs, I'll blow my glucose numbers! No matter, they say, we'll put you on medication! Said medication causes my blood sugar to plummet, gives me sweats and serious dizziness---unless I eat a bunch of stuff they say I'm not supposed to.

Eat small meals they say--- Yeah, then I'm hungry before the 2 hour wait is over to test my glucose.

You can gain about 10 pounds with your pregnancy, they say. But I've gained nothing (at 29 weeks) and they seem to be quite happy with that.

The terms big baby, macrosomia, induction (so far 39 weeks has been mentioned), and C-section get thrown around liberally. Last baby was 6 pounds, 13 oz. when I had gestational diabetes.

I'm keeping my glucose numbers well below the stated levels with diet only, nearly obsessively low, but when my medical providers review my testing log all they say is that you're doing OK but may need to go on medication later in my pregnancy.

Is there no such thing as positive feedback or reassurance in the medical field? No 'atta boys'. I guess they'd like to scare you to death so that you'll be happy as long as nothing turns out as bad as they warned you.

I am so sick of nuts, peanut butter, meat, salad, and getting to eat just enough carbs to make me mad. One third cup of brown rice is a serving?! I can eat one and a half entire English muffins, but no more than one whole wheat tortilla. We love homemade Mexican food---love stretching meat with grains and beans. But no more. Apparently I need to eat a slab of flesh and a green salad. Fruit! Fruit! I want fruit.

Sorry about the flesh remark, but I really don't like meat when I'm pregnant except for sausage and bacon, which pretty much count as a fat. Thankfully I don't have the egg aversion I had with my previous two pregnancies.

So, too many carbs is bad for me. But it's not supposed to be a high protein diet. And you need to limit your fat intake. So, what's left? Arghhh!

And it's not like I have a big sweet tooth or anything. Pies, cakes, cookies? Blah. I do love a bit of ice cream (chocolate with a spoonful of peanut butter), an occasssional Reese's cup, and potato chips----but otherwise I'm good with that kind of stuff. Right now a decadent treat I'm craving is Multigrain Cheerios and milk.

But I love cooking with brown rice, beans, starchy veggies (hello, potatoes!) baking whole grain breads and breakfast foods. And did I mention fruit? I really want to eat grapes--more than 6 at a time. Seems so wrong to have to limit good, whole foods.

Not to mention the financial harm that is being done to my grocery budget. And test strips are expensive.

Seems to me that there'd be more women online complaining about dealing with gestational diabetes, but after looking at the first 34 pages of Google results I found only three results that were real moms-to-be struggling with it, the rest were medical information sites. So I guess that makes me a real whiner.

Well, I'm hungry so I'm going to bed. Gotta have a low fasting glucose number in the morning.

Go, Read, Weep, Pray

2009-08-16T08:40:00.000-07:00

Hat tip to Ann at Holy Experience

Katie finishes her post from August 14th with this:

"I am 20 years old and have 13 children and 400 more who all depend on me for their care. Who are all learning to love Jesus and be responsible adults and looking up to me. The reality of it all can be a bit overwhelming at times. However, it is always pure joy. There is a common misconception that I am courageous. I will be the first to tell you that this is not actually true. Most of the time, I am not brave. I just believe in a God who will use me even though I am not. Most mornings, before I even get out of bed I am overwhelmed with His goodness, with His plan for my life; I stand in awe of the fact that He could entrust me with so much. Most days, I don’t have much of a plan. I don’t always know where this is going. I can’t see the end of the road, but here is the great part: Courage is not about knowing the path. It is about taking the first step. It is about Peter, getting out of the boat. I do not know my five year plan; even tomorrow will probably not go as I have planned. I am thrilled and I am terrified, in a good way. So some call it courage, some call it foolish, I call it Faith. I choose to get out of the boat. To take the next step. Sometimes I walk straight into His arms. More often, I get scared and look down and stumble. Sometimes I almost completely drown. And through it all, He never lets go of my hand."

Words that rip my heart out and encourage me to do....do what?

Losts of thoughts and prayers for my family lately. Wonderings on how I will show my children God's love, compassion, patience, and forgiveness in the midst of days that leave me raw and fragile. Thoughts of what is truly eternal: homeschool thoughts that think less on curriculum (seriously, at this stage, I could care less about giving my kids an excellent education. Instead I want to give them an excellent salvation through the Savior and a vision for service.) and more on character, love, meaning of family and service to our Lord and how that looks in a stage when I must be so deeply focused on family or fail my own children.

And if you've looked at the time stamp and wondered why I'm not in church this morning....Yup, I'm playing hooky. Actually, I have sweated throughout the services these last couple of weeks and decided to stay in my air conditioned home. How far is that from what Katie (above) must be living? Geesh. Another few weeks and it will cool off. I am so dissappointed in my computer's ability to play the sermons I was trying to listen to on-line this morning. So I was reading a few, when I found the above site. Must download some sermons to the mp3 player---much more my speed for walking the track at the Y at this stage of pregnancy than Casting Crowns.

Activities for Preschoolers

2009-08-10T17:58:00.000-07:00

Keeping the kids busy has been the name of the game lately. Partly because I don't have a lot of energy, and also to teach them to be more helpful in anticipation of their baby brother's arrival, and to keep them from fighting and driving me crazy.

So there's the obligatory arts and crafts. You know, the kind that you take 10 minutes to set up and they get sick of it 5 minutes later. Some crafts are better than others. I still have not made my peace with painting with the kiddos, as I have written about here and here. Do-A-Dot Paints aren't too painful or messy. Hmmm.....I've apparently neglected to get a photo of the kids doing this. I'll blog about it later. Sorry.

Putting scraps of tissue paper on clear contact paper or laminating sheets (which is what I use because I have a bunch of them and they are sturdier than contact paper) has been a hit. The paper backing has been taped down under the clear sheet so the area to cover is more visible.

Top the creation with another layer of contact paper or laminating sheet and you have some pretty window art, suitable for trying to pretty up the view if your new neighbors decide to trim up the tree that gave a bit of privacy between your houses. I did the large flower--another key to kids' artwork---don't think you can always get them busy and then do something else. They want you to do it with them.

Then there's running off their extra energy--oops, I mean enjoying the great outdoors. Pedal girl, pedal, nap time's coming! The kids always do so much better if they've gotten some outside time. We try to get outside every morning. This delights our new neighbor across the street because as she says, "You just don't see kids outside playing while their mommy looks on these days. Watching your kids is a joy." I think I love her! Some mornings I actually get to do some painting or yard work done while we're outside. Sometimes I can work on a craft, but I have to be vigilant with these two so that things don't get out of hand. Can't let the neighbors see that they're not always a joy!

I've got some new things in the kitchen to keep them busy too.

We've got an old fashioned coffee grinder that I'm letting my son use to grind coffee beans for his beloved daddy. He grinds it and transfers it to a jar for me. It is a great activity except...

Sister wants to get in on the act, which can lead to coffee getting everywhere. She doesn't have enough strength to turn the crank, but with a little refereeing from me, sometimes they will cooperate and she does the transferring of the coffee to the jar while he cranks.

Then there's always water work! Usually in the sink, but recently we've been pouring from some assorted child's teapots at their newly repainted table. We still need to work on keeping the water on the tray and not on the table or floor, and using the sponge to wipe up spills, but they love it.
Then there's juicing! Our new next-door neighbors had a Tupperware Party and invited me. This $12 gadget solved both the "gee, I ought to buy something" obligation and gave the kids another activity! It's a juicer, zester/grater, and egg separator. So far we've made orange juice a few times, zested a lemon, and the parts nest within each other, so it's a stacking toy. My son is begging me to make something that requires separated eggs and lemon zest, but the only things that I can think of that meet those requirements just might be too hard for me to resist on my gestational diabetes diet.

These kids just amaze me! The abilities and talents of 2 and 4 year olds (nearly 3 and 5 now) really should not be overlooked, and their desire to be helpful should really be encouraged. This is such a great age. They are so excited to be helpful, even if sometimes their 'help' isn't really expedient. They both are great "fetch-its". My son is helping with the laundry, mostly putting it into the washer and into and out of the dryer and he can tote a basket full of laundry up the stairs, which is a real blessing since my back is so achey from pregnancy. We've even worked on a new system for putting their laundry away that both of them are able to do. Oh, and let's not forget the Dustbuster---they use it under the kitchen table to get up crumbs and debris. Not perfectly, but still useful. Putting silverware away (nothing sharp), putting silverware and napkins on the table, 'cleaning' with a spray bottle of water and a rag, and all manner of little tasks.

I'll admit that I sometimes give them tasks to just keep them busy when things are getting out of hand. It gives them a sense of purpose and helps burn off energy. These things include taking things upstairs for me, usually one item at a time to really stretch it out.

These are things that any kid this age range can probably do with a little training, even though I'd like to say it's because my kids are exceptional. And the best part is seeing how pleased they are to be helpful and useful.

In the Montessori school of thought, this is called "Practical Life". I love this aspect of homeschooling preschoolers because we don't have to set up a house in a classroom. We are in the house, learning naturally.

Edited to add: I don't know why I can't get consistent spacing with Blogger. I've added more spaces between paragraphs repeatedly, but some just all run together once I post. Any ideas?

Quiet Times Book Tutorial

2009-08-10T17:48:00.000-07:00

I found a wonderful blog that is devoted to making a quiet book for your little one. There's a page for Noah and the ark, a page of the disciple Peter fishing, the alphabet, a very nifty oven with cupcakes and more.

It looks as if some of the pages have yet to be added, but there are some great ideas. You could make your book have as many pages as you want, or make extra pages to rotate in and out as you just use a binder to hold it together.

Check it out: http://www.quietbook.blogspot.com/

And in case you've been wondering: I have several blog posts floating in my head and photos in my camera, but surfing crafty blogs has become a habit of mine.

Serving Others

2009-07-19T19:53:00.000-07:00

Tonight's Bedtime story was a favorite of mine, The Quiltmaker's Journey by Jeff Brumbeau. It's a beautiful book, fabulous story of a life spent doing what one can for others, beautiful illustrations of quilt patterns, and a joy for me to read.

I must not be the only one who loves this book as I Googled the book to verify the author's name and came up with a listing for lesson plans involving this book's sister story, The Quiltmaker's Gift: here.

The story fits perfectly for some things I've been thinking on lately. The kids are nearly 3 and 5 and I keep feeling like I could add some opportunities for ministry to others to my plate. And then I remember that I'm going to be having a baby in the fall. (How can I keep forgetting this?) I am very careful with what I put 'on my plate' as I don't want to let my first ministry of husband and children slip and I know that my plate will be pretty full for a while.

I am also very timid when it comes to seeing a perceived need and wanting to address it when it involves helping others. Will I offend? Can I actually do something well enough to be of use? I am working on this as my timidity has let many opportunities slip by, I think. Today at the park there was an opportunity and I took action but through a third party and I hope it went well as I didn't get to see it play out.

So I pray and wait for God to point me in a direction and in the meantime I look for little ways to be helpful. How does one find one's service niche? Do I decide to do X as a ministry alone or do I look for those miscellaneous little things, or both? I love to do those things that I can do on my own timetable from home, like sending cards, making food, supplying the church nursery, and other little stuff like that. Perhaps it's just pride (and stray feministic thoughts) that makes me want to do 'something with more impact'.

The above story could lead me to think that with my craftiness I should do some Project Linus blankets or some such. But I tell you that with several unfinished quilts and a crocheted baby blanket that is still scarf-sized, that might not be the wisest move! I'd love to find a way to positively impact young mothers in some way.

But right now, I better end this post and get busy serving my home and getting to bed!

In other news, we were hit by a tornado in our area on Friday and I am ever so thankful that the damage was not worse than it was. We lost two trees, hubby's ham radio antenna was bent, and the bookcase I had been painting on the porch was knocked over and a leg broken off and a hole was gouged into the back (but it is repairable). Our tractor was down at the church in a place where it could have been smashed easily by trees, but was unharmed. We were out of power for about 35 hours! But God gives us blessings in the midst of the storm. My hammock got a good washing, and the temperatures cooled off and made being pregnant in July without power or AC bearable.

Vision vs. Reality

2009-07-07T19:54:00.000-07:00

It's been a rough couple of days here at the sonshine cottage. Not 100% horribly bad, but erratically up and down. I'd love to blame it entirely on pregnancy hormones and the normal, annoying little stressors that are 2 and 4 year old children, but I don't think I can dismiss it so easily.

Geesh. I know I struggle with insecurity, but are there not more moms out there that are just going bonkers at times? Maybe my problem is not having problems, but not being able to hide those problems under a facade of spiritual harmony, meek and quiet, blah de blah blah? Well, I am willing to bet we all go through this in one form or another with our own personal set of circumstances, and I think we do ourselves a disservice to not be honest about it. Once again, it's time for me to bare my soul so that anyone reading this will feel better about themselves, either because they are not alone or because they are not as messed up as me. It's my ministry. :-)

These ups and downs drive me crazy (a short drive) because things can seem so horrible and then a few hours later, I can't quite figure out why I was thinking things were so bad. I'm starting to see a pattern develop and am trying to just identify that I'm having one of these crazy meltdown days so that I don't do anything regrettable while in the pits.

Most of today was spent in joy that I had overcome the horrible morning I had yesterday and focusing on how good things were and how I was not going to lose it again for a while. That lasted til dinnertime when things quickly went downhill. Actually, I handled it fairly well, now that I am out of the heat of the (many) moments. Nothing wrong with discontinuing the bedtime story and quickly getting the kids into bed when mommy is about to blow her top. Right?

Well yesterday, when I was trying to get my thoughts focused back on Christ and what He wants from me (and hiding in the bathroom), I read the daily page from My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers. And once again, it could have been written just for me:

July 6th.
VISION AND REALITY

"And the parched ground shall become a pool."
Isaiah 35:7

We always have visions, before a thing is made real. When we
realize that although the vision is real, it is not real in us, then is the time
that Satan comes in with his temptations, and we are apt to say it is no use to
go on. Instead of the vision becoming real, there has come the valley of
humiliation.

"Life is not as idle ore,
But iron dug from central gloom,
And batter'd by the shocks of doom
To shape and use."

God gives us the vision,
then He takes us down to the valley to batter us into the shape of the vision,
and it is in the valley that so many of us faint and give way. Every vision will
be made real if we will have patience. Think of the enormous leisure of God! He
is never in a hurry. We are always in such a frantic hurry. In the light of the
glory of the vision we go forth to do things, but the vision is not real in us
yet; and God has to take us into the valley, and put us through fires and floods
to batter us into shape, until we get to the place where He can trust us with
the veritable reality. Ever since we had the vision God has been at work,
getting us into the shape of the ideal, and over and over again we escape from
His hand and try to batter ourselves into our own shape.

The vision is not a castle in the air, but a vision of what God wants you to be. Let Him put you on His wheel and whirl you as He likes, and as sure as God is God and you are you, you will turn out exactly in accordance with the vision. Don't lose heart in the process. If you have ever had the vision of God, you may try as you like to be
satisfied on a lower level, but God will never let you.

Have you ever watched a potter at the wheel? It is amazing. That lump of clay keeps changing form and just when you think you know what is forming, the potter thrusts in a thumb and radically changes the shape. Sometimes the shape is so changed that the potter starts from what seems to be the beginning all over again, but that previous shaping had some purpose-- perhaps to make the clay more supple so it can be stretched into a better vessel.

I think part of what causes me to get the most frustrated is having an idea of the overall vision and not being molded and battered into the reality of that vision yet. I am in such a hurry! When I have had enough of trying to fit into that mold, my clay pops out and doesn't want to fit. I guess I want it to be easy just because I want it so bad. But the process is what I'm here for. When the process is finished, I won't be here, I'll be with my Lord.

So- How to keep my spirits up, to persevere through the battering, molding, shaping of my character? How to keep my emotions from running away with my mind? We are told to renew our minds in His word and my mind knows this most of the time, but sometimes I lose sight of the vision, take my mind off of Him and focus on how hard it is and how easy some folks make it look like. I have reminders all over the house, and I'm trying to identify patterns (hubby is helpful with this) and record them (here and elsewhere) and just trying to survive those deep dark valley moments without making anything worse. Remebering, this too shall pass.

And pass it does. Yesterday my funk was broken by a mere 30 minutes of weeding a neglected flower bed. (In all honesty that was preceeded by a long talk with the hubby, bless his heart) Once it had passed, it all seemed so silly. Just like the woman who says her husband's sense of humor attracted her in the beginning, but now she finds him childish, I was feeling out of sorts because I didn't have any urgent, pressing agenda for the day, which had me feeling like I don't do anything of real value and I have wasted so many years developing skills that I don't need now. Which is ridiculous, since I work hard at having that freedom from the urgent, by limiting obligations, keeping up with the little but necessary tasks (most of the time) and focusing on enjoying relationships instead of wealth or superficial achievements.

Not that I didn't have stuff to do-- goodness, I have several to-do lists full! I can only explain it as due to hormones, spiritual attack, or I'm just crazy. But my take-away lesson was to (1)acknowledge the funk of the valley, (2)don't do anything to make circumstances worse, and (3)just do something that gives me a sense of satisfaction (like the weeding). Tonight as I was quickly losing my cool, I acknowledged that I was exhaused and sore, that pursuing discipline to get throught the bedtime story (and bible time) was not going to end well, and just got the kiddos into bed (very satisfying). The disappointment of not having bible time tonight is mitigated by the realization that I would have blown up had I tried to stick to it.

Don't know if I'm making sense to anyone but myself, but there it is.

By the way, you can read My Utmost for His Highest online here, but I prefer having my dog eared copy in the bathroom!

Crafty Goodness

2009-06-28T19:14:00.000-07:00

I had a lovely Sunday afternoon in which I did a lot of crafty goodness and cleaning of my sewing room.

I'm so crafty, I made this person.

Ok, so it was nearly 3 years ago. But I made the dress a few weeks ago along with the big flower in the window (part of a craft I did with the kids-my son's picture is also in the window.)

I'm so crafty, I made this hammock last week. Yeah, that's me with my head lolling back. You are so not going to see the pictures my hubby took with my belly in them. I told him to only take flattering pictures, but he didn't listen. It feels so good lazing about in the hammock in the mornings before it gets too hot. It would feel even better if the kids would stop climbing all over me when I am in it! But we do some reading in it and if they are crowding me, I tell them to run to the pine tree and run around it a few times.

My sewing machine did not like the hammock project. I used heavy duty thread and a heavy duty, large sewing machine needle, which worked well except for the tension. The back side of the hammock is sporting a lot of loopy stitches and knots, especially wherever I went backwards. It's made a lot like a tab-top curtain, but with tabs on both ends and there are two layers of striped lightweight upholstry canvas with a heavy canvas inbetween. The boards were from an old rope hammock that was falling apart. I bought new rope to string the ends. The fabric was in my stash and the total cost was about $20 for rope, thread, needles, and hardware.

Moving on to today! I did some cleaning of the sewing room to make room for our computer cabinet (which only houses the printer and office supplies) so we can move it out of the kitchen, to then make room for a pack-n-play to be used as the downstairs napping spot for baby boy Johnson. This got me distracted with a ton of projects in various stages of completion and urgency. I found a pair of pants that had been way too big a few months ago and thought I'd try them on. Still too big! Seeing their potential for getting me through this summer and pregnancy, I decided to give them an elastic waist band.

This was so easy! I just cut two slits in the waistband facing across the back and inserted a length of elastic and stitched it all up. The original waist band served as the casing and it used up one of those annoying 'too short to use, but too long to throw away' bits of elastic. Now they'll stay on and stretch with my growing belly over the summer. Which is a good thing since my maternity clothes have seemingly disappeared from the attic.

Remeber my quilted wall hanging? I've slowly been adding some embellishments and details. How do you like the sonshine cottage? Those are little lace hearts under it. It's the yellow house built on love. It's still got a way to go, which is sad since I was thinking this was a spring scene. I think I'll skip trying to do a scene for summer and move on to fall after this thing is done.

I have been thinking on this idea for a long time:

It's a fastener activity board. I just sat down and started putting it together today and it's almost finished. No where near perfect as it's just slapped together randomly, but it's a good start. And my boy needs some help working with buttons. His hand skills are pretty poor, which is typical for a 4 y.o. but I need to encourage their development and keep him busy while I sew. There's a snap under that little strip and the big buttons have one horizontol button hole and one vertical. I'll be adding some smaller buttons and placket to simulate shirt buttons next.

I also made some little tiny cheesecakes for a little reward for me. I used only about have the sugar called for and just a sprinkling of graham cracker crumbs as crust and baked them in muffin cups. They're good enough as a gestational diabetes treat, but not so good I'll eat too much.

I've been trying to push myself whenever I can to get as many projects done before this baby comes this fall, because I know I won't be doing much other than the basics once he's arrived.

Ali's African Adventures

2009-06-26T20:23:00.000-07:00

I've been reading this wonderful blog off and on for the last couple of weeks and I had to share it with you: Ali's African Adventures.

Ali is a pediatric nurse on one of the Mercy Ships. Her experiences are so different from what we encounter here, her attitude is amazing, her faith is strong, her writing is beautiful and thought provoking, and she's only 25 years old.

What in the world did I do with my life in my twenties?! Sheesh, I'm such a late bloomer. I pray that God will give me the wisdom needed to teach my daughter to have such a sense of purpose and service in whatever she persues and I especially pray that God works within her heart to lead her to follow His will passionately, selflessly. Because it's not really on how well we raise her but on how well she follows Him. And God has different plans and time tables for all of us.

And I am thankful for the work that Ali is doing and her ability to share it with us.

Recipe Substitutions

2009-06-26T18:36:00.000-07:00

Back when I was trying to lose weight, before I found out I was pregnant with baby #3, I was having a lot of success with substituting apple sauce, pumpkin puree, and/or non fat yogurt for the oil in many of my recipes. Now that gestational diabetes has reared its ugly head again I can't afford to replace fat with carbs, even if it seems healthy and the carb content is low, especially in the case of applesauce.

But I have found a new tweak. I am now using protein powder to replace some or all of the dry milk powder I use to mix up milk for some of my recipes. This has worked wonderfully in several waffle and pancake recipes. Not that non fat milk needs to be replaced, but it does up the protein content of the recipe, and in a carb-y food, that is a wonderful thing. I use a whey-based, vanilla flavored protein powder that I bought at Sam's Club. I now have enough to see me until this baby is a preschooler or so it seems. The powder also makes a pretty good smoothie blended with some frozen strawberries and milk.

The stuff contains Nutrasweet, but I am in complete denial over the harmful effects of artificial sweeteners on my body and that of the baby. Please don't try to get me off of the stuff as it is helping to keep me sane right now as my diet is very limited. The stuff is in my yogurt, the aforementioned protein powder, an occasional instant sugarfree pudding mix, my blueberry syrup, a nasty strawberry jam that I may never finish [shudder- How can the same company make a decent tasting sugarfree syrup and such a fake, nasty jam?], and yes- in the one or two bottles of Mountain Dew that I drink daily. Let's not start on the sodas either. Although I will refrain from having any caffeine before my next ultrasound as the baby was bouncing off the walls!

Perhaps in a day or two, I won't be so lazy/tired and I will actually give you the brand name of the protein powder and a recipe for a high protein waffle/pancake batter that I've been using with great success.

My Happy Heart

2009-06-12T18:53:00.000-07:00

My heart was made happy today as my wonderful hubby had the day off (he's supposed to have Fridays off since he works Sunday evenings, but it doesn't always happen) and I was sent to the library all by myself. What bliss!

I found the above book, My Happy Heart, written by Melody Carlson and illustrated by Jim Osborn and read it to the kids tonight. The boy makes a heart card to give to someone he loves and as he passes his day with those he loves, he decides to give his heart to God, the one he loves the best. Wonderful story and leads into a great teachable moment.

After reading the story, I told the kids that my heart belongs to God, and the girl replies that her heart belongs to God and the boy says, "My heart belongs to Jesus!" Too cute. While they are too young to truly give their heart to God, it certainly is a step in the right direction and warmed my heart.

I also checked out Dr. Laura's In Praise of Stay At Home Moms and am going through it. So far I've decided that if this book comes in audio format, I'm buying a copy to keep in the car for when I need a little praise. Because sometimes I lose perspective and get overwhelmed by the daily grind and forget about those wonderful things that make being a SAHM so worth it.

So Many Ideas, So Little Time

2009-06-09T18:31:00.000-07:00

Eek! It's almost been a month since I've blogged last. Let's see....

Since I last posted, I had to take an early glucose test for gestational diabetes and failed. Since I had GD for the last few weeks of my last pregnancy, I was tested at 16 (!) weeks instead of the standard 28 weeks. Since my insurance doesn't hardly pay for anything until we meet our huge deductible, I bought a cheap glucose monitor for half the price of the one my insurance would have 'covered'--meaning they would apply what I paid towards our deductible and not pay much else. Unfortunately, I got what I paid for and the darn thing was very, very innaccurate. I spent about 2 weeks nearly losing my mind eating very little food and still having high blood sugar levels.

After getting way too obsessed and testing myself repeatedly and getting levels that differed by 20 points within a 5 minute time period, I availed myself of CVS's money back guarantee and then shelled out a small fortune on brand name test strips and got the accompanying monitor for 'free'.

It was worth it however as I am able to eat more food and still have very good, possibly even low blood sugar levels. I am able to think about more than just food and sugar levels now! It still is not fun and I may lose my mind during these next 21 weeks, but I will survive.

I did find a pretty interesting and helpful site on Gestational Diabetes http://www.plus-size-pregnancy.org/gd/gd_index.html

Once again though, I am amazed at how little information my doctor's/midwife's office gives out. I can't help but think that they want their patients to be totally ignorant so that we will just blindly do what we are told--which probably makes it easier on them.

I have also been working like crazy to get more sewing done and get some projects finished. There are just so many good ideas out there and things I've been wanting to do and it seems as if nothing really ever gets done. So either I am doing these things when I normally have computer time at night, or I am feeling a bit brain dead by the end of the day and while I'm reading a lot on the web, I'm doing very little writing of my own.

Current projects include: a canvas hammock to sew (my hammock fell apart and I had the canvas so I'm making do and doesn't swinging in the hammock while the kids play sound like heaven?), the quilted wall hanging I blogged about earlier, a few new dresses and bloomers for Leah, the perennial kitchen cabinet painting project, some embroidery projects, desperately needed weeding in the garden and yard, and more.

I also just got back from a quick visit to my grandfather's. In preparation for selling his condo now that Grandma has passed on and Gramps is in a nursing home (he is a big, tall man who has had a pretty severe stroke) my aunt had me pick a few things to take home with me. I now have 4 matching tea cups with saucers, and several types of matching plates, an old globe (great for combining with homeschooling and hubby's Ham radio to locate contacts), my grandmother's childhood copy of Fairy Tales by Hans Christian Andersen, and a Peter Rabbit cookie jar. Plus a few old tea towels. Now to figure out where to put them.

In spite of the GD, my aching back and pelvis, fatigue, reduced exercise intensity, and frequent urination, I don't really feel very pregnant---even though the baby is making his/her presence felt. Most of this is due to the fact that my clothes are all huge on me except for some things at the waist. When I lost that 30 pounds earlier this year, I never bought smaller clothes because I found out I was pregnant (except for underwear as they were falling off) and figured I'd need those fat clothes soon. Now, all my pants and capris look like some kind of MC Hammer thing with a ton of extra fabric throughout the legs. So I need to do some more sewing or at least some more thrift shopping.

I have so much I want to write about, so I hope to do some more posting a bit more regularly. I'd love it if you would leave a comment if you are still reading here.

I'm So Crafty...

2009-05-14T19:51:00.000-07:00

I saw this on a blog and it made me laugh out loud! It was linked to someone else's business site, so I hope I'm not violating any thing by posting it here, but I just had to put it here! Reminds me of some of the thoughts I was having at the Y the other day when I decided not to work out as much and was thinking of excuses/defenses---"I may look like I'm lazy, but I'm really building a baby" and "So you've added 5 pounds of muscle by lifting weights? I just made a complete and growing musculoskeletal system." and my favorite, "Ooh, I just made an ear!"

My Day

2009-05-10T17:59:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we dropped the kiddos off with my mom and my hubby and I spent about 5 glorious hours roaming the hill city looking for goodies after first taking a nice walk on one of the trails that goes through the city. It was wonderful!

After our hike we stopped at a pretty frou-frou shop and cafe where hubby was shocked at the price of their ice cream and we were both shocked at the price of the china. (I've been wanting some tea cups and saucers and the thrift stores just don't have any I like.) I roamed the rooms looking at all the overpriced, but beautiful things. I did find some adorable little socks for the baby that I will want once we know what the sex is. And I found one little bird figurine that was a bargain and that I really wanted, but the checkout line was so long that we said, "Forget it." Perhaps hubby will surprise me with it, but I'm not holding my breath, since that was the whole purpose of the day together, to find a mother's day gift for myself. He just doesn't do gifts, and I've finally given up on the whole hinting thing. He needs a specific item handed to him on a list or else he's more than happy to let me buy something for myself.

We stopped off at a Goodwill that has a "boutique" and I found the most wonderful, beautiful, thing and hubby wouldn't let me get it! Can you imagine? I lusted after this item, went back to it repeatedly and held it. Several yards of blush colored dupioni silk with exquisite bits of lace and pearl beading. Who could resist? Well, hubby just couldn't bring himself to buy me a wedding dress. Too bad, I could have cut it up into a bunch of crazy quilt wedding gifts for people I haven't even met yet! Although it seems a shame to cut something so beautiful.

They had a whole wall of wedding dresses, all for $50 unless marked otherwise. Some were amazing and were very expensive dresses. Maybe if I can whittle my fabric stash down a bit I will get one. At least I'm not crazy enough to think I can go ahead and buy a wedding dress for my daughter. Although, maybe cutting one down for a dress up outfit wouldn't be too crazy---but not the silk.

So we did a bit of shopping and a lot of talking and the grand total expense for the day was about $30.00, not counting gas. I just wasn't into shopping--and the fancy yarn store was out of the specific yarn I needed for a baby blanket, so that saved some dough. But I loved the time with my hubby.

Quilted Wall Hanging Progress

2009-05-10T17:47:00.000-07:00

I promised that I would make progress on this wall hanging last week, and here it is. The photo is a bit washed out as I had to use the flash. Is it starting to look like a landscape now? There's still a lot of decorative stitching to be done before I trim up the edges and quilt it. I especially need to make the tree leaves a bit darker, perhaps with darker stitching or fabric paint as the leaves are just too pastel compared to the rest of the bright fabrics.

This is really a stretch for me as I don't usually work in such bright colors, but I am finding that I am liking these bright greens plus they were all from my stash. I need to add some animals or maybe even attempt to add a little yellow house for a little more interest don't you think? I do have some bird buttons that I plan to use.

Yay, progress.

On Weight and Breath

2009-05-03T18:53:00.001-07:00

I wanted to write this little blurb before my growing baby belly makes me forget it.

When I had children, coinciding with a big weight gain, I found that my lung capacity was diminished, and as a result I found my vocal range starting to lose a few of the top notes and I was running out of air before reaching the proper spot to take a breath. At the time I attibuted it to either being pregnant or just getting older.

But imagine my joy when I reached my prepregnancy weight, six weeks ago and holding steady, and realized one Sunday morning that I had more lung capacity and singing was effortless. On the show, The Biggest Loser, they had a few segments showing how their morbidly obese participants had a lot of fat in amongst their internal organs. From my work with cattle, I knew that internal fat, what we called kidney, pelvic, and heart fat (KPH) increased with an animal's increase in fat from choice grade to prime. But I hadn't thought that I was fat enough for internal fat to impact my life in an area that gives me so much joy--singing.

So a 30 pound weight loss restored my ability to belt it out without running out of air and to regain a few top notes, which I need since our church's worship music runs a little high (IMO) and if I can't sing, I don't feel like I've truly worshipped.

I know my lung capacity is going to be reduced soon as baby #3 starts hogging all the room :-) but I know that sometimes looking better or fitting into smaller clothes or just being healthier just isn't enough incentive to lose weight. But singing is something I NEED, something I won't let poor food choices and less activity take from me again.

Now if I can just work up the nerve to sing a song at church that I got the track for, about 18 months ago. I hate tracks and I'm scared of microphones.

New Sewing Area

2009-05-02T18:00:00.000-07:00

I have a lovely new sewing area in my home! It's at a convenient height for working while standing and is bright and airy. It's also very convenient to food and drink. If you look at the picture below, you'll realize that it's the peninsula counter top in my kitchen.You also might notice a white rabbit sitting at the table and a copy of The Gentle Art of Domesticity by Jane Brocket from Yarnstorm , which I heartily recommend for some wonderful eye-candy and lovely writing on the joys of the domestic arts as opposed to day-to-day domestication. You might also notice that I still haven't gotten my bottom cabinets painted. You will not notice that the rest of the counter top is littered with dirty dishes, because, well, I didn't show you that part.

You might also wonder what happened to my little sewing room at the back of the house along with its little standing height work space. The thing is, it currently looks like the picture below.

I seem to have more inspiration than I have time or room. Do you see that little WIP's label at the right? That stands for "Works in Progress" and there's more than two baskets full of them. In fact, do you see the black and white squares just above the citrus box there in the middle? That's part of a nearly finished quilt top featuring a green bug novelty print fabric that was a gift at the shower for my first child. Maybe I can finish it in time for my third child's arrival.

Not even a good decluttering is going to solve this mess. The only answer is to finish some of these projects and get going on others to start using this stuff up. There are so, so many good ideas and only so much time. Right now the kids are letting me get some sewing time in every once in a while while they are still up so I need to take advantage of it while I still can. Of course, I still find myself thinking of other things I ought to be stitching up, tormenting myself with crafty blogs, crafty magazines, and today I went to our town's first every quilting festival.

The quilting festival was small, but filled the facility that housed it. I thought it was pretty good for a first effort and I expect it will be back next year. It even had a few vendors and I was blessed by my hubby with some money to spend there. I bought a jelly roll of fabrics by Moda that I think will be good to combine with some of my natural colored, mostly thifted linen fabrics to make some zippered pouches or other small things. I also bought a book by Fig Tree Quilts with some adorable pincushion patterns and also a bottle of blue fabric dye that I am thinking of using to make some sky background fabrics for some pictorial quilted wall hangings I'm thinking of.

Here's what I've been working on today, below. It's a wall hanging for my porch. I've got a lot more done on it since I took this picture, but if you squint your eyes and use your imagination, you can see blue sky with clouds going into a lovely sunset (the sun isn't there yet) above some green hills.

Hmm, I'm not sure that I even see it.... I'll be working on it some more and I hope to finish this by....when?....can I work on a deadline without getting stressed and ruining the fun? Let's just say I hope to post a picture showing definite progress by mid-week.

The kids have been playing with some giant buttons when I sew sometimes, which is cute. They mostly sort them by shape although there has been some stringing of the buttons onto string. Poor Jamie has been begging me to make him an apron with a train on it, which reminds me, I don't think I ever posted pics of the cute matching aprons I made for Leah and I from a thrifted skirt.

Sometimes I wish I was a little more driven and finished more of the things that I start, but I find that if I push myself too hard, other aspects of my life start to falter. So I'm content with being a mediocre sewer/crafter, cook, gardener and such as long as I am a happy mama!

Edited to add: Sorry for the lack of spaces between paragraphs toward the end of the post. I've gone back 4 times to fix it and Blogger is being stubborn.

Gardening with Kids

2009-04-26T14:48:00.000-07:00

WOW! We went straight into summer. It's too late for me to plant that second batch of peas. I told some visitors just 3 days ago that I was hoping that with our new insulation we wouldn't need to turn on the AC until June. Well, today it is 90 outside, and the AC is running. Yesterday, it was cooler in the morning and we closed the house up early and didn't need the AC, but today it was 72 and rising in the house when we woke up. Yikes!

Anyway, I had promised a post about gardening with kids and I haven't had much computer time to put it together, so I'll give a few quick tips now.

There are several books out there about gardening with kids and I have two of them, but I'm not sure that many of the tips in them are realistic. I did have a lot of fun with our teepee (tipi) and plan to do it again this year.

Kids under 6 or 7 just aren't much help if anything, and sometimes they are kind of destructive-- even with the best intentions. Asking them to weed or pick can turn disasterous!

Plant plenty of radishes, even if you don't like them (I don't). They are fast, take up very little space, and are fun for the kiddos to pull out. If nobody likes them, they make good contributions to the compost heap.

Plant extras of things like snap peas, peas, beans, and flowers so they can pick plenty without any worry of damaging the plants and hurting overall productivity.
Plant densely to crowd out weeds-radishes can help fill blank spots. Don't let weeds go to seed.
You may want to keep small safety scissors handy and teach your preschoolers how to use them to cut flower stems instead of pulling them. Also keep a vase of water handy for those garden bouquets, one suitable for the standard short stemmed bouquet.
Make sure you have a couple of small watering cans, preferably with sprinkler nozzles (as opposed to the kind that emits a single steam of water for watering houseplants) so the kids can water without drowning your small plants and seedlings.
Keep some small buckets so they can haul things for you, like weeds and rocks, or veggies.
You might even want to keep a small supply of rocks hand to 'seed' in the garden just so you can have the kiddos haul them away. Put the designated dumping or composting area just far enough away so you can have a few minutes to work while they are on their mission.
Never have the kiddos work too hard, especially when it is hot. If the garden gets too weedy, work on the majority of it yourself rather then expect them to do a bunch of it. You don't want to make it drudgery for them. Keep it fun.
We have a sandbox in the garden area so they can indulge their digging desires without digging up the good veggies.
Don't forget bug repellant and sunblock, or hats when needed.
Take time to eat some raw veggies straight from the garden, while in the garden. My kids love to nibble snap peas, green beans, cherry tomatoes, and even spinach in the garden. Careful with this if you've got noxious weeds, and don't do this if you've been spraying chemical pesticides or fertilizers.
Take time to just play in the garden, with the goal being to just have fun with the kids rather than to work, from time to time.
Read picture books about gardening with the kids. Jodi's Beans was a great one while we were building our bean teepee.
There is a huge learning curve for gardening, so don't think that you are going to save any money from your harvest with your first several gardens. I'm not really sure I save money unless I consider that my produce is gourmet and organic. If I didn't grow it, somethings I wouldn't ever buy.
Praise, praise, praise those kids for their 'help'--even if it really isn't helpful.
Don't take on more garden than you can keep up with and realize that some things come along in life that may require you to neglect it or or even stop gardening for a while.
No theoretical saving on veggies are worth squashing your kids' spirits while you garden. The garden is great for teaching helpful attitudes even if you don't get much produce from it.

I hope these tips help or inspire some good ideas of your own. Another thing to keep in mind while gardening--you need to find what works for you. There are so many ways of gardening and none apply to every situation; whether geographical, seasonal, or situational. Every family, garden, and situation is different.

Sorry for the extra flower bullet formatting.

Oh, Beans!

2009-04-19T19:15:00.000-07:00

Shawna commented about her garden choices and looks like she is right on target.

So, on my list are: carrots, turnips, potatoes, spinach, lettuce, peas,
broccoli, onions.How am I doing? Should any of these wait till later?

Get all those in as soon as possible if you are in zone 7 AND if your estimated last frost date is around the end of April.

What about bush and pole beans? Are these planted now, or later? (We are also
zone 7.)

Where we are in VA, our last estimated average frost date is April 21, so those spring crops need to to get in asap or things will get too hot in a hurry. In fact, Saturday was so warm in the sun that I was tempted to say it was too hot and go inside. So I put up my hair and got in the shade instead. But that also means we can safely get beans and corn (if I were going to plant any corn, which I won't) into the ground now as long as it looks like we won't get a late cold snap.

I'm still holding off on the tomatoes, peppers, squash, and other heat loving plants because if you rush them, they'll just sulk anyway and I'm not in some silly competition for the earliest tomato. Many folks rush to plant corn and beans a bit too early and the seed will rot in very cold wet soil. The seed companies try to counter this by treating the seed with a fungicide.

If you open a pack of seeds and find that they are pink, make darn sure your kids don't handle the seeds and that you wash your hands asap after planting those seeds (if you do plant them). I don't like these treated seeds and won't use them. Don't confuse this with some cucumber and watermelon seeds with may have a few of the seeds a different color because you are actually getting two kind of seeds in the packet and some are colored for identification purposes for growing certain types of seedless varieties.

I have such a hard time keeping up with the days, sometimes they drag on and other times things just sneak up on me. I still haven't gotten my second planting of snap peas in the ground so talking about planting beans makes me realize I need to get crackin'.

And about beans: Pole or bush? Many hybrid beans come in either form, choose whichever suits you best. Last year I grew pole beans and I won't do that again unless it will be in later years when the kids may enjoy going on a bean hunt. I however don't like a bean hunt. I want to run my hands over the plants quickly and yank those beans off without missing any, so that they stay productive as long as possible. As soon as a plant sets good seed, it has fufilled its prime directive to breed and the productivity slows or stops. For some, the space saving pole forms may work fine, but I prefer bush types.

Happy growing!

In the Garden

2009-04-16T18:05:00.000-07:00

I just love gardening in the early spring in my raised beds! It's not hot, the weeds haven't completely taken over (yet!), the fresh green colors are so vibrant and we just enjoy being outside so much. The raised beds eliminate the yucky mud of just a few years ago on the farm, making things much cleaner. Back on the farm, I would prepare several rows in the late fall to sit until the spring because we would get so much rain that there just wasn't any hope of getting the tractor out into the field.

It is very important to not work your soil (till, plow, or even step on it a bunch) when it is very wet. It compacts and ruins the soil structure. I would pull those rows and if I could, I would mulch between the rows with leaves or even cardboard to give me a surface I could walk on without getting my feet stuck in the red clay that passes for soil around here. In a personal garden, you could afford to wait a few days for things to dry out better, but in a commercial venture, sometimes we just had to make do. There are several methods of judging if the soil is too wet. One is to take up a handful of soil and squeeze it into a ball. If it falls apart, it's plenty dry. If it holds together it's ok, but if it holds together and has a shiny wet surface, it's too wet. Another method is a bit of an afterthought. If you find your shoes are getting heavier with each step- get out of there!

So the raised beds eliminate all that guess work, but the trade off (and there are trade offs for everything!) is that these beds get very dry very quickly, especially in the dry, hot summer. If you don't have raised beds, try hilling your rows. Just rake up the soil into unconfined raised beds. On the farm, we had equipment to hill the soil into rows and rows made later in the season weren't as high in order to keep watering needs down. If things get wet after you've started your garden and you need to get out in it, try using boards, cardboard, etc. to help distribute your weight and avoid compacting the soil-- not to mention tracking in a lot of mud into the house.

If you are in gardening zone 7 (mid Atlantic states, west coast, similar areas), you should have gotten in some peas, spinach, lettuce, and other early spring crops in already. But if you didn't, don't worry, there's still time. In fact, if you've gotten those early crops in and you've had bipolar weather like we've had, the early stuff has grown very, very, slowly. I expect it will take off and grow like crazy if we get a few more days of sun. To extend the season, you can make two or more plantings of most crops, separated by 2-4 weeks. I like to reseed when a crop is about half way to the harvesting stage.

The picture above, with my watering wand positioned for scale, is of a persistent and common weed- Lambsquarters. If you've got it, and you probably do, now is the time to work on keeping it under control. It is very easy to kill when it is small like this (or smaller) with about 6 leaves or so. If you let it get much bigger, it forms a strong tap root that makes it hard to weed out. This stuff can easily take over a garden. Now, the great thing about this weed is that it loves fertile soil. So take heart if you see it in your garden. If it's getting big, but not set seed, which it won't do until it's usually a foot tall, it's a great addition to the compost heap, full of nutrients. It's also edible in the young stage and can be used much like spinach (although I don't eat it, in all honesty). In fact, orach is a specialty green that is available in many seed catalogues and the stuff looks just about the same, just red.Above is a partially weeded bed of lettuce, beets, and carrots along with my favorite weeder. This wonderful tool is sold as a winged weeder and is also sometimes called a strawberry hoe. The wings slide under the soil with a push/pull motion and cut the weeds off just under the soil. Just be careful not to get the wings too close to your veggies, or they will have faced the guillotine and lost. A scuffle hoe does a similar job- looks kind of like a metal stirrup on a handle- also known as a stirrup hoe. It too uses a push/pull motion just under the soil. One of the most useless weeders in my not so humble opinion on these things (I've done a lot of weeding) is the plain old ordinary garden hoe. With a blade that chops down into the soil at a more vertical angle, it takes a lot of chopping work, is inefficient, heavy, and disturbs the soil too much. About the only time I've used on of these is to hill up soil around potatoes.
Here's a closer shot of some of the lettuce I've just weeded, above. This is a lettuce mix from Johnny's Selected Seeds- my favorite seed source. See how the soil looks all fluffy around the lettuce? That's where I've weeded. The soil disturbance is only about 1/2 inch deep. This is important because most weed seeds like to be near the top 1/2 to 1 inches of soil to germinate. If I disturb the soil too much, I'll move seeds from deeper in the soil profile where they were dormant, to a place where they will grow and just replace the ones I've just killed. If I stay consistent with my weeding, I'll start to exhaust the "weed-seed bank" in that top inch of soil. This is one reason why some folks recommend not turning your soil over in an established garden, as it exposes dormant weed seeds to a better growing area and inverts your soil's structure- a big no-no if you've got a shallow top soil.

Above is a shot of my spinach, also newly weeded. The big stuff to the right is spinach that over-wintered. It's a bit tough now, but cooks up great. The newer stuff is about a week from harvest, but the kiddos were picking leaves of it today and eating it. Too bad I didn't get a picture of them.

Number one rule of gardening? Well, maybe number two as I favor "Feed the soil and it will feed your plants" as number one. "Weed early and weed often." It is so easy to kill weeds when they are in the seedling stage. In fact, when they have yet to get their true leaves, just disturbing their root system on a sunny day is all it takes to kill them. Weeding every 7 to 10 days will keep the weeds completely under control, although most gardeners never can keep up that schedule. Don't wait until the garden looks weedy.

Is my garden weed-free? Hardly. But I'm trying. I do know that the easiest way to sour kids on gardening is to let weeding become their main task in the garden, especially when the weeds and garden are big. I hope to write another post this week on a few thoughts I've had on gardening with little kids.

I Can't Do This?

2009-04-11T18:39:00.000-07:00

Does anyone want to fess up to how often the thought of "I can't do this!" flashes through their head in the midst of pregnancy? Especially when in the throes of morning sickness with little ones around?

I know I've thought it many times in the last few weeks. Ugh, just about every afternoon at 3:00 I get so weak and nauseated. Today my house tipped at a 45 degree angle twice, or so it seemed. I am blessed with a hubby who may not completely understand, but is willing to step up and give me a break as much as he can.

But I do know (mostly) that I will get through it and we will all pull through. I am such a fickle soul, I am so thankful that God is so gracious and merciful.

In the mornings I feel fairly good which allows me to still enjoy my workouts at the Y even though I am finding that I get winded easier and I can't handle as much weight as usual in many cases. My appetite is still very weird but its getting better.

I hope you all are enjoying some nice spring weather and thinking about the wonder of the risen Christ. I was able to plant some flowers this morning before being hit with such a wave of tiredness, I took a nap while hubby and the kids had lunch and quiet time.

Well, enough whining from me. Good night.

Answering Commenters

2009-04-01T13:09:00.000-07:00

Someone asked a question about my raised beds from a post done last spring. Since the commenter was annonymous and didn't sign a name, I thought putting the answer here might be more likely to be seen since she said she loved my blog....

My raised beds are made of either white or chestnut oak that we cut from our farm when we still lived there. The boards are roughcut 2x8's and the beds measure 8 foot by 3 foot. They're untreated, but are holding up well after 2 years of use. Many folks would have used 4x8 foot beds but I felt that 4 foot wide was too far to comfortably reach across.

Remeber, if you have a profile made with Blogger, you don't necessarily have to have a blog, but for me to email you, you need to either leave me your email addy, or change your security settings and I (and I only) will be able to see your email, and reply to your comment. Otherwise your comment displays a noreply@blogger.com default address.

Hope you are having a lovely day.

A Fabulous Day

2009-03-30T18:42:00.000-07:00

I have had such a fabulous day today! I went to the Y and unlike the last 5 times I've gone, I had no morning sickness and rocked my workout! I was worried that I would have gained weight when I had my weigh-in today because I was so hungry this weekend and we went out to eat twice. I actually lost a little weight-- 1.5 pounds. (Don't worry, it's ok, since I'm still pretty heavy and have had a history of gestational diabetes.) And I had a young lady from our church over for the afternoon so I could get a little break. When I made the arrangements, I figured I'd feel horrible today, but it was nice to have a break and be able to enjoy it.

Yesterday, I also found that 2 linen dresses I have actually fit! I bought one last summer, hoping I would get into it eventually, and the other I just bought and thought it would be too small and yet it fit! Both are Goodwill treasures. I wore one to church.

Having a good weigh-in was a big deal because I have bargained with my trainer that if my weight stays where it should be, that I don't need to tally my daily calories and show her my food journal, which saves me some time and helps keep me from getting too paranoid about my food right now, when my appetite and my hormones are a bit whacky.

A long time ago, I read that about 30% of all morning sickness is pychosomatic (ie: all in your head) and that always makes me wonder if I really feel all that bad or am I embracing the sickness and wimping out as a way to get more rest instead of just pushing through. But I feel so much better today that I know that I really, really did feel bad on those other days. Sometimes you just need a good day to put things in perspective. Of course, sometimes a bad day puts things in perspective too, but I don't want to think about that!

A Good Bowl of Yogurt

2009-03-26T19:17:00.000-07:00

So, if you're a thrifty mommy, especially if you're a blog-reading or homeschool magazine reading mommy, or both, you've probably tried making your own yogurt or at least contemplated it. Cheaper, better for you, easy (not so convenient), blah de blah blah...

Me? Nope. The idea is catalogued with all those other really nifty ideas that I label: "Great if you can do them without neglecting your husband, children, home, or without pushing yourself right over the edge of sanity and busy-ness." Not that I think any less if someone else can do it without the negative side effects listed, I just know that it's too much for me to undertake. I also know that I might would have a different feeling about it if I had my own milk cow and had a ton of milk to make use of.

But for now, I've been buying plain yogurt in the big containers and adding my own fruit and jam. Or at least that's what the plan always is. My friend Jessica turned me on to using jam as flavoring as an easier alternative to blending up fruit and adding some sweetener. But, it rarely happened. And now that I'm eating healthier and also seeing a need for higher protein, lower fat foods (because two of my so-called protein foods, peanut butter and almonds, have twice as much fat as they do protein), low fat or fat free yogurt seems like it might fit the bill. But I just have not been eating much of the plain yogurt with my own mix-ins.

So I've been checking out the yogurt section at Foodlion and at wally world. And just like my meat experience, I've been getting totally overwhelmed; fat free, fat free with fake sugar stuff, low fat, low fat with fake sugar, probiotic, and more. Not to mention the cost and waste of all those teeny tiny containers.

But look! They now have big containers of flavored yogurt! And even the food lion brand has some. So I got some low fat strawberry yogurt. And I had it twice today. And once, just a few moments ago in a bid to squash down some pregnancy-induced nausea, I actually ate the yogurt in place of the Chocolate Peanut Butter Cup ice cream that is tempting me from the freezer and it didn't feel like some second rate substitute for what I really wanted. Yay!

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not advocating yogurt over ice cream, my friends. No, I'm not that crazy. But maybe I can hold off til the weekend before eating it. Meanwhile, I'm getting some low fat protein food into my belly quickly when I'm getting sick to my stomach or am ravenously hungry. Which is good, because I have serious food issues when I'm pregnant. Like I don't want to eat much until I'm so hungry I must eat whatever is close at hand before I pass out.

Anyway, I guess this is another example of one of those things that we want to do the "right way" that just doesn't work out. And that there was a solution that wasn't a complete and total cop out.

Oh, and why to I have time to write a post tonight? Because I'm not logging in my calories. Oopsie.

2009-03-24T19:38:00.000-07:00

I shared here about tweaking my recipes, and here's one that is good but needs work:

Baked Oatmeal Snack Bars with Craisins and Chocolate Chips.

This is a recipe based on the Oatmeal Snack Bars at Kath Eats Real Food

3c rolled oats
1c Walnuts
1/2c Craisins
1t cinnamon
1t salt
2-1/2c nonfat milk
1 eggwhite
2T natural peanut butter
1t vanilla
3/4c chocolate chips

Mix it all together, spread in a greased 10x15 pan at 350 for 35-40 minutes. Cut into 28 squares.

Sounds yummy, doesn't it? They are sooo good! But they're still 109 calories. Each. The bars are just a little bigger than the size of of a strawberry newton, which by the way, have 50 calories. Just the other week I was disgusted to see that number after I mindless ate one when fixing the kids a snack.

So I thought baking these oat bars would be so much better. There's no butter, oil, or sugar. So 109 calories is a disappointment. But there's a few no-brainer changes to make; reduce, by at least half, the walnuts and reduce the chocolate chips down to no more that 1/2 cups. The bars are pretty chocolatey so I don't think that'll make a big difference. The walnuts do add some protein and heart healthy fat, but at a hefty caloric toll. And if I get desperate, I can reduce the peanut butter, but I love it so....

There are few other tweaks I could make. I'll let you know how it turns out. Just goes to show how keeping track of your calories can help you make better food choices AND drive you crazy.

Still Here

2009-03-24T18:53:00.000-07:00

Turns out that entering all your food into Sparkpeople.com can keep you from tending to your own blog.

Funny story:

A little over a week ago I was realizing that now I've lost over 25 pounds, I need new clothes and that finances are too tight to buy anything that doesn't come from Goodwill or thrift stores.

My cycles are getting farther and farther apart so I've been giving up my desire for a third baby and embracing the opportunities of having just two kids, the youngest of which is 2.5 years old.

Monday a week ago, I lost all of my pregnancy weight and now weigh less than I did before I got pregnant over 5 years ago.

Monday I was going to make an appointment with my gyn to see what was up and get an overdue pap. I had actually said in sunday school the day before, that there was no way I was pregnant,but I figured the doctors' office would ask if I had taken a preg. test, so I took one. I ended up making an appointment with my midwife for a confirmation ultrasound on April 3rd instead!

You saw where this was all going didn't you? Funny how He works these things out in His own time.

If all goes well, we should add baby #3 to the family at the end of October or the very beginning of November. I am a bit nervous because the doctor will not approve the progesterone regimen that I was on for the first trimester with my son and daughter, after two miscarriages. Same midwife, same practice, with one of the same doctors, but who knows what's up? I have a peace about it, so it's OK. No breaking into the pharmacy or frantic search for a cooperative OB for me.

So I guess I won't have to worry about buying any smaller clothes for a while! Well, except for a baby-on-board T-shirt to work out in, because I don't want anyone to think that my expanding middle is anything other than a baby!

Banned From the Walmart Meat Department

2009-03-07T17:50:00.000-08:00

We went on a bear hunt of sorts today. Actually a meat hunt. I've been having a hard time buying meat lately as it is so expensive and it really doesn't look good. I've complained to my husband about it. A few days ago I gave myself the go-ahead to buy whatever meat appealed to me regardless of the cost. I didn't buy a single bit of meat on that shopping trip.

With recording my calories, I'm seeing that I'm not getting much protein and I'm always going over on my fat grams, so getting more lean protein seemed to be the order of the day.

Now, for years I've minimized the amout of meat we eat mostly for financial reasons and to help keep hubby's cholesterol down (not that I've been successful at that). We do meatless meals a few times a week and also have dishes that don't use a lot of meat like soups, casseroles, and the like. So it's been frustrating to change my cooking. It's actually been easier to add more veggies into our diets than to add more meat.

So after a few weeks of griping, I took hubby to Walmart specifically to buy meat. I loathe their meat department. The meat is not individually priced/labeled and the signage never seems to be in the right place. I don't particularly like their packaging either. Plus I have a sensitive nose and the fish counter next to the meat aisle can turn me off of the whole thing at times. It's also hard for me to buy massed produced chicken as I have seen first hand how it is raised and worse, how it is killed and processed in the mega processing plants during my farming years.

Hubby looked at the fresh meat shelves for about 10 minutes, examined the labels, especially the cost per ounce, complained about the prices of the meat, and I think finally saw why I was so frustrated. He then proceeded to tell me that I was not to buy any fresh meat (as opposed to frozen or processed) at Walmart ever again. He felt like they were trying to confuse customers with the poor labeling and unit pricing things in different units. He was also disgusted at how expensive the traditional "cheap" cuts were, like stew meat. The only meat that appealed was a big package of brisket that he was thinking of grinding into hamburger with our Kitchenaide mixer/grinder.

Later this afternoon, hubby went on a meat buying expedition. He hit the Foodlion and the independent grocer and came back with some marked down chicken and some big roasts that he then ground into nice lean hamburger. He figures the burger worked out to about $2.20 per pound. It took him about 40 minutes to grind and repackage it all.

This fall, we bought a quarter of a beef from a friend and it was great! I hope we can buy again from him soon. (Hint, hint! S.G.) We still have a little bit of ribs and such left.

Tonight I made some baked, breaded chicken tenders with bake potatoes and green beans. It'll be nice to calculate the calories on line with Sparkpeople.com since usually I have to figure the calorie counts on meals with 3 times the ingredients.

So, banned from buying meat at Walmart. I gotta say it's no loss for me.

Weighting for Success

2009-03-05T19:24:00.000-08:00

Woohoo! I have lost....wait for it...cue drum roll...25 pounds since late December! Yes, that includes Christmas and all that.

I've never lost this much weight at one time, ever. Two weeks ago I actually lost 5 pounds in one week. That's more than a few of those Biggest Loser folks have lost in a week and they're living and breathing weight-loss, 24/7. So, what has made the difference? Three things: upping the intensity, lifting heavy weights, and counting calories and showing my food log to someone for accountability.

I do have a secret weapon, kind of like those folks on the Biggest Loser, her name is Maria. She's the trainer (although maybe she has a different title, I'm not sure) at our local Y. She's awesome; picture someone like Gillian Michaels, but someone who smiles more. I'd say she's nicer than Gillian, but Maria has a tough woman image to keep up. She's knowledgeable; I know, I've done my research too. Research is way easier than action. She's encouraging, sassy, pushy, and I can't believe she's putting this much effort into me. Oh yeah, she's 43 and has two kids. I couldn't do this with some perky, single, twenty something, although Maria is pretty perky, but not in a way that makes you want to do something mean to her. Now, part of her job is to develop routines for the Wellness Center members (the Y's term for the gym), and she's given me new routines whenever I asked. But progress started when I asked her to weigh me once a week as an alternative to joining Weight Watchers. And then she ordered me to make a food journal and show it to her weekly. Man, she's tough!

So, I know you are thinking, "I don't have a Maria or a Gillian". But you don't have to have one for success at this. Really, the only thing I've been doing that everyone else might not have access to is the weightlifting I've been doing, and you could get creative with this and still workout. Weight loss is still a simple matter of calories in versus calories spent, there's just a few tricks to make it a little easier, like eating just enough protein and enough fat so that you don't feel like you're starving all the time, without exceeding your calorie needs. Then there's exercising to both burn calories and to speed up your metabolism. Let me share what's been working for me in more detail.

Intensity. We've all heard about getting about 30 minutes of exercise/activity per day for increased health and that's great. And sometimes it's near impossible to get that little bit of time in. So the thing is to really get as much out of that time as possible. No casual strolls around the block if you want to see results. Yes, it's icky, but ya gotta sweat! But you can get more results by not only picking up the pace, but by doing little bursts of higher intensity exercise. This is called High Intensity Interval Training,or HIIT. (Sometimes I do Somewhat High Intensity Interval Training, which has an acronym that pleases me when I think of it mid-workout. Sorry, I've got a crude side.) Basically, you do a small warm up at whatever aerobic exercise you're doing (cardio machine or just plain old walking or anything in between) then go for 30 seconds as fast or as hard as you can, then resume your normal pace for 1.5 to 2.5 minutes of 'recovery' and then repeat until you are done (or feel like you are going to pass out or something- I'm not a doctor, yada yada) By doing this you can either shorten the time you spend doing cardio for the same calorie burn or cram way more calorie burn into the same time. But the best thing is that doing these intense intervals has a positive effect on your metabolism, speeding it up for hours after your workout is done.

The exact number of seconds isn't vital, just the total effect of working in these bursts of all-out effort. You can do this with walking/jogging, cardio machines, whatever. If you do any kind of weight training or other non-cardio exercise, you can insert a few bursts of all-out cardio into your routine to boost your calorie expenditure and help your cardiovascular system. For a while, Maria had me doing two or three exercises interspersed with 3 minutes of all out effort on whatever cardio machines I chose, for a total of 6 intervals plus 5 minutes each to warm up and cool down, which gave me 28 minutes of total cardio plus doing my weights and such.

Which brings me to lifting heavy weights. No, you will not bulk up! Not unless you are taking steroids, or my fear, since I am of German descent (and those German Olympic swimmers of a few Olympics ago were definitely taking steroids!) and built a bit like a beer keg, that I will build muscles without losing fat and therefore bulk up. But I read time and time again that it won't happen. Because you will lose body fat. Because building muscle speeds up your metabolism. Not only does it boost it during exercise, but like the intervals, it lasts after you're done working out. And when I say lift heavy weights, I mean you should lift enough weight that at your last repetition (say 12) you can't do anymore. In order to build muscle, you've got to actually work it enough that it needs to repair tiny little tears in the fibers. That why we get sore when we've lifted a lot of weight. Now, not so much that you are actually causing real injury, but just a little soreness or tightness. As Maria says, "Not so much that you can't get up off the toilet by yourself." Work the muscle to fatigue or failure for results. If you can do something easily, up the weights or the resistance. This also applies to bodyweight exercises like push ups or sit ups. Search the Internet for tougher versions to give your body a workout without having to do 100 repetitions. Plus lifting weights can be empowering with that "I am strong!" feeling and it helps prevent: muscle loss as you age, reduction in metabolic rate as you age, and bone loss--once again--as you age. Maria told me a story about a thin friend of hers that never lifted weights and got so weak that she broke her foot by tying her shoe!

And finally, the biggest thing that has helped me lose weight is making a food log, counting the calories using Sparkpeople.com and [shudder] show my log and daily calorie counts to Maria. This has been so hard but really effective. The accountability helps me be a good girl and entering my foods into sparkpeople makes me see things I can change and all of it helps me think these things through. I record my foul ups too, because then I have a reason when I don't lose weight, and so avoid that whiny "But I've tried so hard and nothing is working" pity party. The best part of counting calories though is seeing that by doing the interval training and weight lifting (weights 3x and cardio 2 or 3x per week) I can eat around 2000 calories and still lose weight at a good (make that great) rate. Now I do realize that as I lose weight I will plateau and need to reduce my calories by another 100 or 200 calories but that is far from the 1500 calorie level that many diets want to limit you to. And I've been getting used to what 1900-2000 calorie days look like so I'm not overeating out of ignorance. And if I have a day or week that my calories are low and my weight loss is really good, but I'm getting hungry and cranky, I know that I can eat a bit more without slowing my weight loss down significantly. Mentally, it's been hard to stop eating before I feel truly full, but I haven't been truly starvingly hungry either.

So that's what's working for me.

Spots of Interest In My Home

2009-02-23T18:30:00.000-08:00

Howdy to you out in Blog land! Not that I think there's many who decide to stop in a see a bit of my world. I thought I'd post a few pictures of things you can see in my home right now that I find a bit interesting. You'll note that the picture below is a pretty mundane shot of dishes that have just been hand washed. Not so interesting, huh? But take a gander at that drying rack. Why yes, it is a rack from an automatic dishwasher.

I had several days to do dishes by hand as I'm getting a new dishwasher installed by my wonderful Sonshinecottage Man. The idea to use the rack from my old washer was not my own, I read it on line somewhere but I can't recall where. It worked out very well, though I don't know if I'll hang on to it after the dishwasher is installed as I don't have room to store it in my kitchen. Meanwhile, the new one sits snug in it's box until this weekend (actually last weekend).
Sonshinecottage Man had to built a cabinet thing and a counter top for the new stationary dishwasher to be installed. I think he did a pretty good job. Don't you? Eventually, the new cabinet end will be painted dark green along with the rest of the lower cabinets. And looky there at my new counter top. It's just a 4 foot long section, but it's so much nicer than the icky white Formica that is in the rest of the kitchen. Maybe when I get the painting done, we'll replace the rest of the counter tops.

Hmmm... notice the ice cream tub being used as a compost pail? I need to make that a bit more attractive, I think. But I've found that a lidded container doesn't get used, or dumped out enough, whether it sits on the counter or in the cabinet under the sink. Maybe I should use one of my new, pretty, white bowls and use a cloth napkin over top of it when I'm not cooking?

Speaking of painting.... This is what part of my kitchen looks like now. A friend of mine is working on painting the doors and I'm working on painting the frames. I've got 2 coats of primer on so far. The Sonshinecottage Man painted the insides for me, um, last year! Yup, it's a mess and slow going, but life gets messy sometimes. Especially when the children are little.

Do you wonder where all the stuff that ought to be inside those cabinets has gotten to? Look below.

Now here's a wonderfully tidy space in my home. It's the dining room closet, where I keep activities and art supplies for the kids.
Too bad that picture is more than a year old, because it certainly doesn't look like that now! See the ugly truth below.

I choose to see this as a picture of abundance instead of a mess. Well, not really. But life is all about attitude and how we interpret what goes on around us. Right?

Now above is a double whammy of a picture that really summarizes my life right now. Trying to get healthy while trying to take care of my family. Both areas are doing pretty well without too much trouble. At least until my attitude gets out of whack.

But the picture below is my favorite shot in this post. This is a wonderful young lady who wants to learn how to make a quilt. I am so far from being qualified as a quilting teacher, but I can still show her what I do know. Here she is working on piecing a nine patch block.

I think we all can teach someone something even when we don't feel all that knowledgeable ourselves. It's all a part of being a Titus 2 woman.

We've been meeting once a month and while she may not learn the exact "right way" to quilt, she's at least learning one way to do it. It's also given me a push to work on a quilt of my own.

Tuesday Tidbits

2009-02-17T11:38:00.000-08:00

I haven't been posting much so I thought I'd let myself be inspired by the 25 Random Things meme that's been going around on Facebook and the net. But 25 things seems a lot to come up with at once so I'll just give how ever many I have time for right now.

When I was 19, my nose got broken by one of my horses and I had two black eyes during the county fair, which was a big social deal for this long ago cowgirl.
I once had as many as 5 horses at once and trained many of them myself.
I haven't ridden in about 14 years.
I can inseminate and pregnancy test a cow (don't ask how), castrate a bull calf and bandage animal wounds, but even a little injury on a human gives me the willies.
My husband is a real ham, a licensed HAM radio operator.
I drove from Gainesville FL to Eastsound WA for my first job out of college, alone except for my dog.
I didn't realise how big a deal that was until I was on the ferry from Bainbridge Island to Orcas Island. No matter how the job turned out, I'd have to wait for the next ferry!
I have driven an 18-wheeler in every contiguous US state except Vermont and either North or South Dakota.
People who think there is only one right way to do things drive me crazy, especially if it makes them afraid to try something new. Just give it a whirl and try.
I taught myself how to cook, sew, clean, and garden just by trying, reading and asking questions.
My life is no less exciting or challenging now, just more mundane. Actually, it is more challenging and more rewarding.
I'm watching my son fall asleep on our couch surrounded by library books.
I am way too excited about my new dishwasher being delivered today.
I wouldn't change hardly anything about my life.

Tweakin' the Recipes

2009-02-11T13:00:00.000-08:00

I know we all work at making our food better for our families and avoiding processed foods when we can, but have you ever wondered just how many calories are in the cookies that you made with those supposedly healthful recipe tweaks?

I've been recording my food online at Sparkpeople.com and it can be enough to make you want to buy everything in a single serving package just for the ease of finding the nutrition information. They have a pretty extensive list of foods and their nutritional content, but the food you eat has to match up with what's on their list, or you've got to calculate it from the ingredients. You've also got to figure out how what you actually ate compares to what the listed food's serving size or units of measure and adjust accordingly.

But a side benefit of all this neurotic calorie counting, I found the Sparkpeople recipe sister site: http://recipes.sparkpeople.com/. Here, you can enter your favorite recipes by ingredients, they calculate the total calories, and then it's divided by the quantity that the recipe makes, say 12 muffins, and gives you the caloric and nutritional content.

I've found that it's a lot easier to figure out how much of this and that goes into something I'm making for the whole family than it is to figure out how much of each ingredient I'm actually eating. For those things I make up quite often without too much variation each time, going through the process of entering it in once is worth the time. I plan to do this for a lot of our breakfast food and baked goods.

If you've got a unique recipe, you can share it with other sparkpeople users. This option is usually checked, so I make sure to un-check it as I'd have to write the recipe up more clearly for others and most of my recipes are based in some part on someone else's recipe. The recipe's nutritional content can be transfered to your sparkpeople food log too.

So far I've entered in my whole wheat waffle recipe and also tweaked the recipe after seeing that it had more fat in 2 waffles (about 4" square each) than two links of brown and serve sausages. This recipe used nonfat yogurt and only 1/4 oil before being tweaked, plus all whole wheat flour so I thought it wouldn't be too bad, but I was shocked at the fat content which may be elevated by my healthy additions of wheat germ and flax meal. My first tweak was to replace half of the oil with applesauce. That dropped the calorie content per waffle from 178.8 to 156, and the fat from 8.4 to 5.7 grams.

I've also entered my whole wheat tortilla recipe and it's not good folks! Part of this can be rectified by making more tortillas from the same batch but I'm not sure how else to change it. Maybe some cooked spinach or tomato paste to sub for some of the oil?

I've always heard people say to keep a food log if you're trying to lose weight, but I hated to do it as I thought I had a pretty good handle on what I was eating and made fairly good choices as long as I wasn't doing the comfort food eating thing when things got tough. But Maria, the awesome Y trainer, gave the assignment of a food journal to me so I felt I had to do it. So far, I've learned that I do make good choices most of the time, but the journal gives me an incentive to make even better choices. It's also shown me that when I feel like I'm eating well, as in not too many calories or fat, I may not be eating enough which sets me up for a hunger and fatigue induced bit of overeating.

So, I challenge you to put your healthy recipe to the test and see if it is actually good for you! Do not, I repeat do not enter in your favorite indulgence unless you want to be depressed.

Weight: Working it Out

2009-02-08T18:10:00.000-08:00

Last week I asked the trainer at the Y to give me a new workout plan. You should have seen the wicked, gleeful gleam in her eye! I believe she said the new workout would make me cry. The poor woman didn't know what she was in for....

I did the workout, and it was tough, but I actually asked for more! Did I feel great, knowing that I was getting strong and fit enough to ask for more? No! I don't know if my hormones were out of whack or if it is because I'm fighting off a bug that has my son all sick, but I fell apart and boo hoo'd in her office because I wasn't seeing the results I wanted.

So we talked and she is so great... they don't pay her enough for putting up with me and I'm definitely getting my money's worth out of our membership. I know there's such a thing as a runner's high (not that I've experienced it) but I'm wondering if there's an exerciser's low? Maybe because I have spent so much of my life repressing my emotions I just don't know what to do with that rush of feel-good endorphins? I am very hard on myself apparently, in fact 4 different people told me that this past week. I don't quite get it as I think I don't push myself enough, but I guess I ought to trust these folks (which includes my hubby) and give myself a break! I do see that I don't enjoy my accomplishments much due to some fear of failure, which just results in an emotional plateau that is pretty boring and disheartening. I'm a workin' on it, though.

So the hardest thing Maria gave me to do this week? Write down everything I eat! It's not just hard to honestly record it down, but to figure out the math involved in counting the calories and serving sizes and keep track of the actual measurements of the food (wait, was that 10 or 15 crackers? And just how many calories is a single bite of your child's chicken strip?). I loathe math. Even with using the online tools at Sparkpeople.com it is hard and doesn't feel real accurate, but it is definitely eye-opening. But I'd rather do double the workout than to actually count calories and keep a food log,unless I have to do like 50 reps or more, because that requires counting a bunch, which is math-like in my book.

Sparkpeople.com has a great database of foods so it's not too hard, but I don't like how they calculate your calorie needs and how the fitness/exercise tracker doesn't seem to affect your calorie needs. I found another site, here, that does a better job of calculating your calorie needs which includes adjustments for activity levels. Since I go to the Y at least 5 days a week for about one and a half hours each time, I'm considered moderately active or more. (The evil, negative voice in my head says that at my weight I must be sedentary, but I'm doing my best to ignore her.) So that increases my daily calorie allowance by about 300 calories. But this site doesn't have as large a database for foods as the sparkpeople site does, so I'm sticking with sparkpeople.

Speaking of that evil voice in my head: Maria says I should name her. I'm thinking of calling her Hunca Munca after the Beatrix Potter tale of Two Bad Mice. She's a very mean, ugly, and greedy mouse. Maria points out that I would never talk to someone else the way I talk to myself. For all my positive writing here and here on the subject, I still fail and get down on myself but it's a work in progress, taking those thoughts captive, falling down and reaching out to Him who lifts me up over and over.

And on the first full day of counting calories, we end up in the big(ish) city at dinner time and hubby wants Mexican food. And instead of doing the smart thing and order the least unhealthy thing I can, I enjoyed myself and didn't eat as well as I could have. (There's just no fun in ordering a taco salad, hold the shell, sour cream, and cheese.) But I cut myself some slack and didn't get all bummed out. And guess what? I lost a pound. Go figure.