Little Things of Texas

A New Favorite Recipe: Banana Muffins

2012-01-20T10:06:00.000-06:00

Pic and recipe taken from The Cookbook Chronicles

I have my own favorite Banana Muffin recipe, but I think it just got replaced!

One thing we did NOT do was add the cinnamon. I just do not want cinnamon, but if that is your thing then go for it.

Lorna’s Banana Bread (or Banana muffins)
Makes 1 loaf of banana bread, or approximately 12 large muffins
The secret to this banana cake is sour cream, an ingredient that renders many baked goods incomparably moist, an a touch of cinnamon.

2 cups all-purpose flour

3/4 tsp kosher salt

½ tsp baking soda

1 tsp baking powder

1 tsp. cinnamon

½ cup vegetable or canola oil

¾ cup brown sugar

¾ cup sugar

2 tsp vanilla extract

1 ½ cups over-ripe bananas, mashed (about 3 large bananas)

1 cup light sour cream, or whole milk yogurt

2 large eggs

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease and line a 9×5” metal loaf pan. (Or, if making banana muffins, line 12 muffin cups with liners.)

In a bowl, stir together the flour, salt, baking soda, baking powder, and cinnamon.
In a large mixing bowl, mix together the oil, brown sugar, and white sugar. Mix in the vanilla extract, mashed bananas, sour cream, and eggs.
Stir in the dry ingredients until combined. Pour the batter into a pan and bake for approximately 60 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean. (If baking muffins, fill each lined muffin cup 3/4 of the way, and bake for approximately 20-25 minutes.) Let the banana bread cool for 10 minutes before carefully turning it out on a wire rack.

We also got about 20 regular size muffins out of this.

Lots of Faces!

2012-01-15T23:15:00.000-06:00

I just love all these little faces!

I took these pics on Friday the 13th! I have has always claimed it as the opposite of what people say. I always say it is my lucky day... and I think because I "claim" it always seems to be. My original reason for "claiming" it is that I was born on the 13th, so I never liked being told it was an unlucky number and especially when my birthday fell on a Friday I did not like the idea that my birthday was unlucky. We can find the "bad" in a day if we are looking for it. Why focus on the "unlucky" parts of the day. Anyway, now I also "claim" it because I just don't think Christians should be superstistious. Anyway, I just wanted to share these pics of my kiddos.

Learning To Be A Giver (... and Reciever)

2011-12-09T00:06:00.000-06:00

One thing that I can truly say I have learned since Sienna's birth eight months ago is that giving and recieving are important to learn. I am not talking about a giving or recieving a normal baby gift. I am talking about giving of ourselves... our service to one another and ultimately to God... sharing our abilities and talents to help another in need (or in want... sometimes a person just wants to feel the love!).

Growing up I can say that I learned a lot from my mother about giving. She gave her everything to her kids. And sometimes I forget that.... I get caught up in what she did not give me. I have to remind myself that she gave all she knew how to give and she has loved my wholeheartedly. She always gave to me and my brother and she always wanted more for us than she ever dreamed of having. She taught me the importance of being a stay at home mother and that it was never a "lowly" job to choose to be with your children. Okay... but that is not what I am writing this post about, although I do want to brag on her some before it appears that I bash her a bit. Just so we are clear I am not writing this to bash her. I simply want to say that I did not learn from her how to be a giver outside the home. And I would guess that it was because she probably was never taught that either. I want to do that different.

In the last couple of years I have been introduced to the concepts presented in Titus 2. I have witnessed this idea of "teaching the younger women how they are to behave" much more among the homeschool community (simply because a vast majority or devout Christians) and in the church we switched to almost three years ago. We made this change in churches and this switch to homeschooling in the same year. I began to notice the outpouring of service specifically among my ladies Sunday School class. And I felt very imtimidated. Strange, right?! Well, it is because I have no idea how to begin giving to others like that. It seems simple, but for me it is just not part of my norm. Anything outside our norm is often hard to change. But I want to do that. I have sat back and observed. Curious that this is such a hard concept for me.. odd... I know... weird, right?! I have watched in awe of it from the sidelines. But recently that has changed. Before Sienna's birth I had a couple of meals brought to my home. Then, afterwards I had offers to have meals brought. Sadly, I did not accept them all because I just felt weird doing so. I had people offer to set it up so that someone would provide meals everyday for the first couple of weeks, but I just felt so unworthy of all that. I did accept some meals from individual ladies who offered. Wow! That was very humbling to see ladies go out of their way to cook for my family. To GIVE to me... me! I never feel worthy of such things. And the amazing thing that it truly did was light a fire in me to want to do the same for them or someone else... and to teach my children to do it, also.

BUT I feel so insecure. And people who know me well would never guess that this would be a problem for me, but I am so unsure of myself. I feel so inadequate. Many times I feel I have nothing to give or that what I do give will not be good enough for others. I worry that they will not like my cooking or that their kids will be hungry after I leave because my food is not up to par with what they are accustomed to. So, tonight I took meal to a friend. I worried about it, but I took it. I mean, I worried like in an abnormal way. I guess that will get better in time. Maybe one day I will learn to relax.... but this lesson is not about learning to relax... Ha! This is one is about learning to give.

So, I thought I would share what I took. Not to show off what I did or anything like that, but before I made the meal I googled "what meal to bring to a new mother"... as if I would no know that, since I am a new mother to an eight month old... duh! I came up with little on the internet to help me out. Also, I had to keep in mind that this meal was a for a large family just a bit larger than mine. Dead end on the internet. So, I thought about it. What was a meal I recieved that we enjoyed? Also, I wanted it to be mostly healthy and nutrient packed. I also know that this family eats meals cooked from scratch and bring over a box of Hamburger Helper would not likely suit their tastes. One recent meal we recieved was baked chicken breasts. The family I was cooking for eats mostly dark meat, so I would consider that also. So, this is what I brought and I think it went over well.

Baked Chicken Thighs/Drumsticks in a thin gravy
White Rice
Green Beans and New Potatoes (seasoned with salt, pepper, bacon drippings)
Salad (Leaf Lettuce, Iceberg Lettuce, Tomatoes, Carrots, Brocolli, Celery)
Sock-It-To-Me Cake

The chicken: I placed about a dozen pieces of chicken in a roasting pan and drizzeled it with EVOO, sprinkled it with salt, peper, garlic powder, oregano, and parsley flakes. I added a package of Onion Soup Mix and a cup of water. I covered it with foil and baked at 400 degrees for about 45 minutes, then turned it once. Once it looked done I turned it top side up and removed the foil and turned the heat up to 475 for about 5-10 minutes to finish it off.

Normally, I would drop off this meal like is customary, but I decided to stay and serve them each their plates. Keep in mind this lady has several children, so I know that it is nice to have an extra set of hands. ;) I told her I would serve as her "waitress". I did not linger and watch them eat. I moved about doing other things and when the meal was done I cleared (with some help) the table, helped put away the leftovers, and washed up the dishes (mostly pots and pans as I did bring paper plates). By the way, one of the best gifts a new mom can get is paper plates! Ha!

So, I am learning to be a giver in this way. So, tell me what is it that you think is the perfect meal to bring over after a new baby has arrived in the home?

Toilet Paper Pumpkins for Fall -- Picture Tutorial

2011-10-07T19:33:00.001-05:00

I have been seeing a lot of these cute little pumpkins around the web, but they have been made with fabric. I wanted this to be more of a kid craft and with less expensive materials. My first thought was to use tissue paper, but I was not able to locate any close by, so I looked for another option and found a orange party napkins.

Supplies Needed:

20 count pack of orange party napkins in dinner size (available at Dollar General for $1; you will use 2 napkins per pumpkin)

Glue stick

2 Plastic Grocery Sacks per pumpkin

1 small roll of toilet paper per pumpkin

Construction Paper in the color of your choice for leaves & stem

Scissors

I missed taking one picture and that was the first step... (sigh)... Anyway, the first step is to open up two of the napkins and lie them on top of each other as pictured. Lift TOP napkin back and apply glue using your glue stick to the top side of the BOTTOM napkin... just a small amount around the edge. Fold your TOP napkin back into place and that is where we start in the pic above.

{keep your eyes open or you might not get this step... ha!}

Straighten out two plastic grocery sacks and lay them in an "+" on the center of the napkin. Place a roll of toilet paper in the center.

Wrap the ends of the top plastic grocery bag over the toilet paper and stuff the ends into the center.... do the same with the bottom grocery bag.

And stick your finger in the hole just for good measure. Not really.... but you do want to make sure the bags are stuffed in as they will barely reach (and that is the reason you use small toilet paper rolls).

I am not gonna lie to you. This is the step that got a few, "I can't do this!" comments out of my perfectionist child. I just had to calm her down and tell her there is no wrong way here. Start in one spot and start tucking the napkin in the top hole of the toilet paper until you get all the way around.

Again, stick your fingers in the hole to make sure it is all stuffed in.

One last time to make sure it is in there... and you can stick a tiny piece of tape in there if you have a wild piece.

I handed out all my kids a piece of brown construction paper about 2 inches wide. I told them to crumple it up. GASP!!! They thought that was crazy. You want your stem to look like a stem, though.

So, you crumple it up and then uncrumple (you may have some tears... now worries) and roll it up and there you have your stem.

Stick your stem in your pumpkin hole. Again, you can add a little tape, if you want to.

We used green construction paper (one sheet did all five of our pumpkins) to make leaves and curlies. I cut out the leaves for my little ones and I cut our all our curlies. To make the curlies you cute little strips about 1/8" wide and lightly run the back of your scissors down them... very lightly... several times... and you may have to shape them a little... or you may know a better way.

Attach leaves and curlies with a little tape as you tuck it in the hole with your stem.

Your done! Put them on your toilet or dining room table. They look really cute and pretty classy for a kid craft. Sierra added a jack-o-lantern face to hers using crayon. I was thinking of doing this and we may still do it. I was going to cute out peices of black construction paper eyes, noses, and mouths and simply attach them with a glue stick.

I just want to add a couple notes:

My little helper is my three year old, Sahara.

Also, at the end of the Fall season when you take down your decorations this little project is very recycleable. ;) Obviously, the main thing is toilet tissue and we all know what to do with that. The shopping bags can be used for garbage, etc.. Hey, you could use that really big orange napkin to clean up a mess. And if you want to be really frugal you can save that toilet paper tube for another craft. The only thing that HAS TO go to waste are the construction paper leaves and stem (unless you can find another use for those as well).

Way of Life

2011-10-01T23:02:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I need to remind myself why I chose the name "Way of Life School" for our little homeschool. I need to stop "homeschooling" and focus on our "way of life" being/guiding our school. I think sometimes no matter how much I fight it I lose focus.

The Story of Ping

2011-09-26T23:13:00.000-05:00

The Story of Ping is a suggested read aloud in Expedition Earth for the week that China is studied. There are a lot of aspects of this book that make it great for learning and further study. I just wanted to point some of these out. I did not do all this because I noticed this stuff as I was reading the book. I want to point this out because as I jointly teach all my kids it is wonderful to find ways that I can interconnect their schooling. The Story of Ping is a great book for lower elementary level students, but it can be used for all ages. I read it to all my kids as a group two days in a row, but it is a book that could be read by my 5th grader just for fun reading. My second grader could read it with some assistance. Either of the two girls could use it for copywork... maybe one page per day for the 2nd grader and maybe more for the 5th grader.

There are many other ways you could use this book for different age levels. There is reference in this book about cousins, so you could use this time to talk about relatives and family. They could draw their family or collect pictures of family members for a collage or poster. Also, the author adds in an element of counting the ducks some, so this book could be used for talking about counting with the little ones and learning about two digit numbers for children 2^nd grade or possibly higher.

Little ones can enjoy marching around the room doing a “duck march” as the author refers to it in the book. Add in a little “quack-quack-quack” for some noisy animal sound fun!

The author refers to the “yellow water of the Yangtze River” and this would be a great time to do a little geography. Look up the location of the Yangtze River. This can be pointed out during the reading of the book for all the kids. You might add to this by having the older ones draw the Yangtze River on a blank map of China. Of course, you could even have the children do a little drawing of the river, etc… Also, research whether the water in the river is actually “yellow”. If it is, older chidren could research why it is.

Duck crafts are an endless activity that could be done while reading this book. I could never list all the ideas and I am sure there are a hundred options out there for free on the internet.

Snack time could be rice cakes if some variety. Rice cakes are mentioned in the book.

Play around with discussing the native language. In case that would be Chinese.

Discuss the sun rising in the east and setting in the west. Also, study the directions (N, S, E, W) and locate a compass on a map.

Weekly Wrap-Up ... Another "Off" Week

2011-09-24T13:56:00.001-05:00

I know I am doing this all wrong. You see it seems I only do a "wrap-up" on the weeks we take off from our schooling. I guess I just call it the wrong thing. The weeks that we do full schooling I call it by Week "x" Expedition Earth, etc.. The other weeks get a "wrap-up" for me. If this messes anyone up, I truly apologize.

As I mentioned above I scheduled this as an off week for a couple of reasons. One... I had dental appointments scheduled for Monday and we had a co-op meeting on Friday. That only left us with 3 days for schooling and I did not want to squeeze it all in. This will probably be our last week off until Thanksgiving, though.

So, anyhow we went to the dentist on Monday, then came home and took Sierra next door for her soccer practice. Tuesday Savannah's practice was cancelled, which was just as well since she has a hurt foot. Wednesday I did like 5-6 loads of laundry and the kids went to their Music/Choir classes and other church classes. Today we went to our co-op and then to the park. We had a simple dinner and then met up with friends at the local movie theater to see Dolphin Tale (which was fabulous). And now I sit here nearly falling asleep. All week has been non-stop, although it looks very simple. There just do not seem to be enough daylight hours to get everything in. And we have three hours of soccer games tomorrow morning, so on that note.... Goodnight!

Expedition Earth Week 2: China

2011-09-23T23:37:00.001-05:00

Well, it seems I am definitely not one to do things by the book... no matter what book I am supposed to be following. ;) We mostly followed the plan this week, though. We mixed it up a lot when we got to the crafts options.
We started out by stamping our passport and boarding our imaginary plan to China with Caden as our pilot. Sorry.... no pics. I tend to live in the moment and with a baby in my arms and one hanging on my leg I just don't worry too much with juggling a camera. Anyway, we located China on the map and completed a mapping and information worksheet from EE. We read some some informational facts about China and listened to your China song. We decided not to learn the Chinese portion of the song (too hard for us), but we sing the English portion. My kids are already a bit familiar with some BASIC Chinese facts as we have a "China lover" in the house. They already know how to say "hello", but enjoyed reviewing it, as well as, saying their names in Chinese and writing it. They got a chuckle out of hearing their names! Very interesting! Throughout the week we learned more about their writings and did a little simple math with the writing the Chinese numbers (1 + 2 = 3, etc.). The kids really like the Children Just Like Me book because it highlights one child from that country and tells some details of their lifestyle. In Windows of the World we learned about their religious beliefs or lack there of. We learned that their country really tries to control the people and there was an attempt to have one religion (non-Christian) about 60 years ago. And I don't know details of how they "limit" family size, but you have to realize that it would be by sterilization, birth control, or abortion. I know there is an over population issue there, but we found this very heartbreaking. Children are a gift from God. When we filled out our weekly prayer card my kids wanted to pray that "China would stop killing babies". And that was a touchy subject to address. We did re-word our prayer card to pray that "they will want babies". Our little ones heard talk of killing babies a couple of times and I had to tell my older ones to stop talking about that in front of the little ones that do not understand.

The fact is we really are not that much different as a whole here in America. Let's face it... most people here think that everyone should have two children and then, use birth control methods of some sort. I am guilty of using it for most of my twenties and that is one of my biggest regrets. I am not trying to step on toes here.... just MY thoughts. And as far as that goes I may not be having other children in the future, so I am certainly not trying to force my convictions on others.

Back to the topic.... We made a mini-book for the "Animals of China" and started using our "Animal Classification" wall (or window in our case... sometime in the future I will try to post a pic.) This is one of the Science portions that is incorporated into this curriculum. We also began making a lapbook for the countries we study throughout the year. Each week we will add a country. We looked up some information about China via internet (National Geographic Kids, etc.) and I like that that is incorporated into the curriculum as technology is such a part of the world we live in.

The Story of Ping is a suggested read aloud for one day. We extended that to two days and discussed it more. There are a lot of aspects of this book that make it great for learning and further study.

We were waiting on the Usborne Encyclopedia of World Geography book to arrive, so I just talked about some of the information with the kids. It did arrive and we used it by the end of the week. This book is much thicker than I realized. It is a large oversized book and is about 1 inch thick. I am really impressed with this book and could easily see this book being used for our entire homeschooling life... all age levels!!! My local library oredered it and I was so happy because I was hesitant to spend more money on books that I am not certain we will like. I am sure I will be ordering my own copy in the future. I am so thankful that I got a chance to preview it without it costing me!!

So, on to the crafts.... We did NOT spend $20+ on building that really cool Great Wall of China. We were going to do a paper version that we printed from Papertoys.com, but some little sister scribbled on it and we were busy enough already. ;) Actually, we ended up having another unforeseen doctors appointment for Savannah's foot, so the Chinese fan got skipped, also. Never fear though! Instead we (joined by our little ones) made Chinese lanterns, Chinese stick puppet dragons, and Chinese masks. We turned on our little Chinese song and set it to repeat and had a little Chinese parade with all our goods. We wrapped up the week and our day with dinner out to the Grand China Buffet in Lumberton, Texas. I rarely post locations for security reasons, but I have to do it here because Chinese restaurants have always scared me a little, but this one was really good... awesome really. I was amazed and the kids really loved it and being that is was a buffet we were able to see what we were getting BEFORE we were stuck with it on our plates. And we even got fortune cookies.

Here you can see us heading out to eat with each of the kids showing off their laterns, dragons, and masks... By the way Sienna was very frightened by these masks. Poor baby girl screamed her little head off and only wanted Momma.

This pic shows the details of the dragon a little better. One point I would like to make is that I try to use things we have without setting out on a special shopping trip for craft items. When I found this dreagon pattern online I knew it would require two sticks for each one. Dowel rods would work wonderfully, but sticks from the yard that are carefully selected work just as well. ;)d

And pay no attention to the clothing. We were not trying to make a fashion statement. For those of you that have seen us all matchy-matchy this is what gets worn most of the time. Also, I am not a Hollister fan.... I do not approve of their advertising. The shirt was free.

These are our fortune cookies... and no, we do not believe in such things AT ALL. It can be fun to read them, though.. just to see what they say.

And the backs:

Weekly Wrap-Up... Hehehe! (Scheduling Our Year & Random)

2011-09-09T23:24:00.000-05:00

Okay... well, this is a bit of a joke because we did not have a school week this week. At the beginning of our school year I sat down with a calendar and wrote in all the details that I already new about. Then, I sat back and looked at it. If we had more than one day in week that had outside commitments I put a little "x" out in the margin by that week. The rest of the weeks got a little week number out by those. Right away I noticed that this week my husband would be home for Labor Day and I knew that we would have our first week of co-op this Friday (today). Also, I knew there was a short appointment that would require us to break away on Wednesday morning and I do not like even short disruptions in the day. This week got one of my little "x" marks. And that equals no school for us!

So, what we did do this week was stay busy... sometimes busy doing nothing. But I guarantee you that busy doing nothing is still busy here. No matter how lazy you feel there is always someone that needs something done for them or there is a spill or other small disaster going on. Ahhh.. and I must not forget... someone has to flush the toilets and I seem to be the official toilet flusher. ;) But I want tell you too much detail about all that.

Monday was spent playing with friends that came over (and skipping Sierra's soccer practice because I think spending time with out of town friends is important) and then, spending time with more friends that dropped by. I think I did laundry or something that morning, but that is all a blur.

Tuesday was spent lazing around and making that Apple/Pear Pie.

Wednesday was spent doing appointments... and that was pretty much it. I had the one little quick appointment and then, I had to call the pediatrician about a rash that Sahara has had for over a month. She has been to the doctors three times now for this rash. It was one of those mystery rashes that just was not going away on her inner thighs. She saw her actual doctor this time and he diagnosed it completely different... eczema. And it seems he diagnosed it right because it looks better. And that is a huge victory! And I need to remember to send out a praise request to my Sunday School class about this one. After all that appointment business we rushed home to hurry the kids off to church. Errrrrkkkk.... (the sound of squealling brakes).... I forgot about half our day and this was the good stuff. I intended to surprise the kids with lunch out someplace because I have never taken all five of them to eat alone. I had considered Pizza Hut buffet, Chik-Fil-A, or McDonald's (ughhh McD's) and I was going to even get them kid's meals!!!. Oh happy day! See... we do not allow kid's meals. First of all, we only drink water most of the time, especially when dining out. Second, I do not like my kids lusting after toys and not eating their food. Lastly, it is just too expensive and I can feed them way cheaper for about half the cost. Well, I ended up wasting some of the day away and losing track of time. That gave us 20 minutes to dine. That eliminated Pizza Hut. And I really wanted to take them to CFA... not McD's. I told them that I would take them to CFA if they were super good and super fast. And they were... and so I promised to bring them back to play in the playground. And that is what we did. It was nice. I think I could move in there... they played... I sat.... I even ordered ice cream of which they shared with me... and we ordered more for them to eat on the way home. Then, it was rush home to quickly eat a simple meal and take them to church.

Thursday was a lot of laundry and a going through the family closet some. What fun. Not... When done somewhat we emerged with two boxes of clothes to get rid of. And those will be going to help fire victims in Bastrop, Texas. I still need to get that laundry put away....

Friday it was off to the first day of co-op and to the park. We meet lots of new people and we got to see our old friends. Yeah! We came home and chilled... really...to cool off... kids played the Wii and we all sat around and ate ice cream out of the container. Yes, because we are gross like that and I am a bad influence on my kids. ;) After that it was time to get serious in a lighthearted way. A childhood friend of mine is now a co-worker of my husbands and she is taking chemo for breast cancer. They caught it early and did a masectomy and now are doing the chemo...and her hair is falling out in clumps. So, a couple days ago Cody offered to help her shave her head. And today she decided she wanted to. They arrived and she looked a little nervous, but good. I asked her how SHE wanted to do this... behind closed doors or in the open?... her shave it, Cody, or me?... Pics or no pics?.... all those "little" details... And then, we just did it the way she wanted. And she went home to her husband with the help of a friend. We ordered pizza and rented a kid movie and that is how the week went..... and now I am going to bed.

Apple Pie!

2011-09-06T16:29:00.000-05:00

Well, we made the Apple Pie that we were supposed to make Friday for Expedition Earth to go with the book "How To Make An Apple Pie And See The World". Actually, we made Pear Pie, since someone shared some local pears with us. I really turned out yummy. Unfortunately, my kids don't like Apple/Pear Pie and I knew this, but I was hoping it might be different with the whole book and helping make it thing. Nope! Caden ate a little, but not much. They did enjoy the ice cream.....

Technically, I had scheduled this whole week off, so I am trying to decide still just how much school we will actually do. I am thinking not too much. It is early in the year to be taking breaks, but this week Cody was off for Labor Day, we have a short appointment on Wednesday, I really want to do the Spelling since it is a "Review Week", but I am thinking that special projects might be the way we go!

A COMPLETE Week! Started Expedition Earth: PART 2 (Completion): Week 1

2011-09-02T20:24:00.103-05:00

I did this in two parts because I wanted to blog seperately about our actual experience with Expedition Earth rather than all my life catastrophes. ;) I am not going to go into a lot of detail but rather will hit the highlights for us of what we did. And I am not certain how much I will blog about our experiences, so do not take this as a commitment to do weekly blog posts. I know my limits and when things get crazy blogging takes a back burner. With that being said I will proceed. {wink wink}

We had already started with some of these books with ECC, so this week was light for us (and I needed that {wink wink} ). A couple of the books we had already read like Maps and Globes, but it was a great review of the information. In fact I think this is a much better way to learn. I think I might just read that book to the girls a few more times throughout the year even if it is not scheduled in (and I need to check this). For a kid book it is a little heavy on facts and the repitition is good, since they really do not like it when it is read word for word. They prefer it being summarized as I did this week and "brought it to life" as I walked around the room referring to the map and globe and drawing some details on the dry erase board. I even had them find the points on the world map as I explained the pages about longitude and latitude. We used a scrap of paper and a page out of an Atlas to understand the pages that describe "scale and distance".

We will be learning about other countries and their religions, so we will be using Windows on the World. Again, this is book we had already started with and we just reviewed the information. For music we listened to and sang The Children of the World song and we all have this down after singing it for the last five weeks. Even my husband can be caught singing it from time to time. ;) We used the Geography from A-Z book to learn seven new words and this week they were all pretty understandable for the kids. I won't list all the words due to EE copyright, but I will say that one word was "polar", so that is easy for the kids to relate that polar bears live in the cold and that would be near the "poles"...polar. I am not saying the seven words were easy words because they were not, but they were just enough to kind of stretch the mind without being too much. And we did not do a worksheet or draw on index cards are write the words "x" number of times or anything like that. We simply talked about them and discussed them and I could tell they understood and had them explain the words. That is good for me. I like some things to just be simple. Another book that is the same is Living World Encyclopedia and it is and Usborne book. And I am just going to say this.... I know that I am the only person that feels this way on the planet, but I just do not care for a lot of Usborne books. I have felt this way with the ones that My Father's World suggests for K, 1st, Adventures, and ECC. I have used them, but they are just too all over the page busy for me. My kids like them and the information is good, but I would like things a little more storybook like. Put that same info that is on a two page spread onto six pages and I would love it. The action of flipping a page gives my mind a little break and I like that better. BUT it works and as it is I will just read and summarize to make it more enjoyable to use. We are still awaiting the arrival of the Usborne Encyclopedia of World Geography that is used for EE. Our local library offered to purchase some of the books and I am so grateful as I will not have to buy this book to see if I like it. Woo hoo! If it turns out that I do like it, then I will probably buy my own copy.

For EE we were given a couple of project ideas, so made the world... out of paper mache. Above is the finished project. We opted not to label our countries because ours are more of random blobs and not necessarily even the correct amount of "continents". We just had a little fun. The pic below is while our "oceans" were drying (ironic, huh? Oceans drying.) Anyway, you can see how we used paperclips to stick through the balloon tie and hung them from the chandeliers. We made it a three day project instead of two day.

Day 1 = blow up balloon and add paper mache

Day 2 = paint it all blue (we waited on the other colors to avoid mixing paint)

Day 3 = paint the continents green and added a little white at the north and south poles

In the upper pic you can also do a project we had already made with ECC that was our "children of the world". My brilliant seven year old, Sierra, to form them in a circle and balance them on our blow up globe. I love this!

This is a little snapshot of something I did for my tot and pre-ker. They are learning to recognize their names, so I decided to simply write their names on their notebooks (used for storing past work and for them to show off to Daddy). Then, I had the idea to make a little set of game cards for them to do each day to start recognizing their own name. If you notice in the first pic way up high (of our worlds), you will see their super large names on the wall that we used to help them recognize their names. For those I printed them the night before and taped them together like a banner. The next day they used bingo markters to trace their names... then they used regular markers, or crayons, etc...

Anyway, back to EE... We skipped doing the Continent Hop Scotch game that is suggested, but I fully intend to do this later. I just have this vision of another concussion and want to find a safer way to do this game. It is printed continent sheets that are laminated and although she suggests using something to make it slipproof I decided to think on it a little longer. Maybe I am being paranoid, but I just can not see how they can hop on it and it not slip and them fall. I have a few ideas that I will try out to make this work for us. {It is very important to avoid a second head trauma after a concussion... I am normally not this paranoid... just sayin'.}

And lastly, we read How To Bake An Apple Pie and See The World. I pointed out the locations on the world map to make them realize how silly the book is. They truly enjoyed this book and are excited about making pie. And so, we were supposed to make pie last night, but we ran out of stream. And so, we are supposed to make it today... sometime.... really.... I will... maybe I will go do that right now. Only thing is we are having pear pie because someone so graciously shared some pears with us! Yeah! And I think I will read that book to them, again!

Oh yeah! They got their passports and we studied some Bible verses and stuff. We are doing some things in our "own way". One of which is using Draw To Learn (Jesus) in which we read a passage of scripture and draw according to suggestions in the book. I am also going to use key verses that come up with EE in this same manner. And this week we prayed for the "lost souls all over the world". The verse this week was:

"All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age." Matthew 28: 18-20

I made a copywork page for them with a portion of the verse on it and they were given instructions to illustrate it.

As you can see with both of the girls I choose a portion of the verse for them to focus on. Being that Sierra is in second grade I underlined key words to bring it down even more for her copywork. For her I used a highlighter to write the words and then, have her trace them. She is being a bit sloppy with her handwriting and I think this may help. If she is tracing the letters she will learn to form them correctly is this way. These two pages show how we are using the same work and tailoring to meet each age. I hope to be able to find time to share our future weeks with you, also. We are headed to China next week. {wink wink}

A COMPLETE Week! Started Expedition Earth: PART 1 (The Concussion)

2011-09-02T20:06:00.000-05:00

Well, it is with great relief that I can say that we finished a complete week of our new curriculum, Expedition Earth. I was all set to start this curriculum the previous week and had stayed up into some crazy, obscene, long hours of the night the weekend before to get everything ready. On that Monday we jumped in... or rather, I did.... but the kids did not... they had already experienced the boredom of the three weeks prior with our other curriculum and let's just say they were resistant and cranky... I did not go well. We got enough ready to move on to day two and had gotten up that morning and gotten off to a good start. Most of our core subjects were done and I think the two older girls only had math to do. I was feeling like it was going to be a better day and then, we went out to feed the animals since it had not been done at the correct time. Caden was inside watching TV and the rest of us went out. Sahara and Sierra tired of our animal duties and went back inside. Shortly after, Sierra opened the back door and said that Sahara was hurt and had fallen. I honestly did not take it serious until I got to the door and saw Sahara trying to stand and walk and stumbling around. I took her in my arms and tried to calm her, but she was just crying and groaning. I tried the usual tricks to see if she would "forget". It was just not happening, but she was not screaming hysterically. That was odd in itself. Cody called and I told him I was dealing with a head trauma, but even then I did not take it too seriously. I thought she would cry a little and be okay. She was starting to fall asleep and I tried to keep her awake, but she drifted out. I lay her in my bed and then, nurse the baby who also fell asleep. I put her in the bed away from Sahara and checked on Sahara, again. She was fine.. or seemed so. A few minutes later I her rousing and crying and I went to her quickly. I got her up carried her to the living room couch to keep from waking Sienna. She began throwing up. That's when I knew this was not just a little bump on the head. Called the pediatrician. They said to take her in. Called Cody. He came. Long story short... it got scary... She was disoriented, dozing in and out, slurred speech, hard to understand, made little sense, was abnormally quiet. Five hours later and CT scan later she was clear of major injuries and it was determined that she had a concussion and could go home.

For this reason we only did core subjects the rest of the week and stopped with Expedition Earth, so my focus could be more on watching Sahara closely. I am happy to say that she is doing well and we managed to complete a full school week this week. Yeah!

Take Two.... We Switched Curriculum!

2011-08-22T22:21:00.000-05:00

Wow! Was this past weekend ever a long weekend for me. I started the weekend thinking I might make some changes to our curriculum. I was planning some drastic changes that involved a lot of work for me. Well, I did make some drastic changes and they were a lot of work for me... but still less work than I would have been doing. I decided to switch to Expedition Earth and say my farewells to My Father's World. Let me say this... I STILL LOVE My Father's World, but while my kids are all still young I need something that is even more simply laid out. Most all of the same books are used for this curriculum. The ones that are not used are the ones I don't like. It is just what I wanted. And I can still add what I want to this curriculum (not because it needs it). There are a few things that I had ordered that were part of MFW ECC (plus the deluxe package) that I want to still use. We will still use the Hero Tales book and the Christian Heroes series of books (six of those). All those books are about Christian heroes and now that I have seen them I just want to read them. I will also still use the Origami book when we do our Asia study. We will be using the Animal Search book because we all really like that book. It is like an I Spy book. Another great book we are keeping is The Complete Book of Animals.

What we will not be keeping from MFW ECC is the Student Sheets, Teacher's Supplement packet, The Classroom Atlas (because I have some others), World Geography (TCR... worksheet booklet), Properties of Ecosystems, and the MFW ECC Teacher's Lesson Plan book.

I am also making some additional changes to our "core" subjects. I have followed a lot of MFW's suggestion and done some of my own things. I have used Primary Language Lessons and loved it, but I think it is too much for my 2nd grader when I look at it now. My oldest daughter was a bit older when we used it for her. Also, Intermediate Language Lessons and Writing Strands were part of my plan this year for my oldest. Scratch that!!! ILL makes and aggressive jump forward that I nor my daughter are ready for. It is mostly just too time consuming for me to have to do with her. And Writing Strands... well, I think it will just teach her to hate writing. Neither of us liked it by week number two. So, I am just going to pull together some other stuff here that I think will work better for us. Anyway, so now we have a whole new plan!

If you are interested in looking at the differences in Expedition Earth and ECC you can click on the link above and there is a download for a sample of one of the weeks. That download show the Table of Contents and also all the curriculum books needed.

Getting Started With My Father's World ECC

2011-08-20T19:47:00.000-05:00

It seems I always start a new curriculum with a bit of struggle. This year I thought that would not be the case. I thought I was prepared, but once again I have much to learn. I clearly did not fully realize what I had purchased when I ordered My Father's World Exploring Countries and Cultures. I had this vision of fun little moments of cultural adventure and pointing out the countries on the map. That was my vision, but as usual I soon lost "my" vision. I have been trying to do everything in someone else's vision. And I did purchase this curriculum to get the expertise of that "someone else" and their vision, but I have got to start remembering that I must not lose my own vision in theirs. We have to give ourselves room to change what we need to change or simply omit some things.

This weekend I shall spend some time rediscovering my vision. I already know some things I will change. Right now I want to share a little about what we like and what we don't about this curriculum. First of all, I think there is a huge mix of age ranges within the books. The problem with that is that there are a couple of books that are way to complex in my opinion. On the other hand I can see where some people might not like some of the more youthful books and the music CD. I myself have to ease myself into the "hokeyness" of children's music, but now that I have I would say there is much to learn from it even for older age groups. This curriculum also has a lot of worksheets and labelling of maps and that equals dullness to me. I know that sometimes learning can be dull, but these worksheets require way too much labelling. I would rather do a puzzle of the world or the country we are talking about or some other hands on activity. I think they can learn as much that way without getting severe hand cramps. I can see having a worksheet with a list on the side and drawing arrows to the location or using an "A,B, C..." type code. I do see the value of some mid to older age range kids learning the spellings of the countries and geography words, but my 2nd grader is not able to write in all that information and even my 5th grader is stretching it a bit with as much labelling as the sheets have. I will go through the books one at a time and tell what I like, so this will be sort of a product review. Keep in mind that we are only beginning, so maybe I can update this as the end of the year.

Teacher's Manual, 2nd Edition = Great organization; Organizational format is like Adventures and has a great weekly Grid

Parent/Teacher Supplement (required) = We have not used this, yet.; Looks like extra copies of the maps and Geography game; I am not sure if this is necessary

Student Sheets (purchase one per student) = About an inch thick; I am not fond of all the maps to label; the coloring pages look fine, but the sort of thing you could pull off the internet for free; I do not like that they have it altogether for you, though.

Flags of the World Ultimate Sticker Book (purchase one per student) = Great stickers that allow one for each country fot the passport and one for the coloring page; I think that there is only one country that will not have a sticker and we will probably find something on the internet to glue and paste into our passport and coloring page; My kids will like this.

Passport (purchase one per student) = Looks official

World Geography (purchase one per 3rd-8th grader or photocopy) = Do NOT like all these worksheets; dull; I showed my husband (teacher/principal) and he did not like it, either; just too much unnecessary busy work that could be done hands on for the most part; We might use some of it, but very unlikely that we will use more than a couple of pages

Hero Tales = Awesome book for Bible time and copywork of character qualities; I like the format with short readings 3-4 days per "hero".; I do wish that there was modification for younger children as the copywork sentences are lengthy. I was going to make these and realized that someone on the MFW ECC Yahoo Group has done this in the files sections and there are two versions.

Window on the World = Awesome book for Bible time; Readings appear lengthy, but the information is very interesting even to my 2nd grader.

God Speaks Numanggang = This book is read a little each day for the first couple of weeks and is written by the Hazell's; It is very informative about the need for and process of Bible translation. This book really conveys the vision of My Father's World. I do not know if it is schedule to read again throughout the year, but I think it would be great to re-read about once a month to remind the students of the MFW vision.

Illustrated World Atlas = I like this book. It is definitely one of those that you would not want to read everything, but rather summarize and it gives an overview of each country.

Classroom Atlas = Well, I guess you can not expect and Atlas to be exciting. It is what it is... factual. Necessary, but we will be summarize and not bogging our brains down with too much detail. I will show the kids the maps, etc. and discuss it according to interest level.

Wall Map of the World = I do not like things on the wall... but it is a nice map; I will deal with it and it is useful. ;)

Maps and Globes = This book looks like a child's book; however, it is quite detailed and it is great that it is read in small sections at at time over the first couple of weeks.

Geography from A to Z = Great book with colorful drawings to go with each geography word (used for weekly vocabulary terms); definitions are a bit lengthy, but good... I shorten them for the kids.

A Trip Around the World = Worksheets (more elementary level) and coloring pages; This looks good. Even with older kids I think they need to do the fun stuff like this and not all the dull stuff.

Another Trip Around the World = Same as above

Properties of Ecosystems = I do not like this overly wordy book. My husband and I both agree this book should be highschool to college level and is rather dull. I do understand that it gives a wonderful Biblical perspective, but I think you can do that with something that is more relateable to children.; Definitely, MUST read AHEAD and SUMMARIZE this book and share the pictures with the kids.

Living World Encyclopedia = This is an Usborne book and I do not like the busy-ness of the pages, but the kids seem to like them. I think it is best to summarize some of the information on the pages.

Global Art = Great book to have all the project options in one book; I do think this book would not be necessary and the projects could be found via internet. We will enjoy the book and not having to look up the projects elsewhere, though.

Wee Sing Around the World = I myself have to ease myself into the "hokeyness" of children's music, but now that I have I would say there is much to learn from this CD even for older age groups. I love the songbook and the pictures in it. It also has great little maps of the countries that I think would have been sufficient for making copies for projects.

Deluxe Package Items:

Kingdom Tales = Ahhhh! The controversial book in the group. It is an allegory much like the Chronicle of Narnia. My kids call it the creepy book, although they (7 & 10 year old) understand it is not really creepy. It just starts out with a two young brothers at their mother's funeral in Enchanted City surrounded by fiery furnaces (represents Hell). I thought I would not like it, but now that I have moved beyond the first couple of chapters I do like it. It does go over MY head some, but we get the main points.

Christian Heroes: Then and Now - six book set = Very much like the Hero Tales book in that it tells about a Christian hero, but these are individual books about one hero each. We will like these books.

Cameron Townsend = same as above

Amy Carmichael = same as above

Nate Saint = same as above

David Livingstone = same as above

George Müller = same as above

Gladys Aylward = same as above

Inflatable Globe = We like this, but we have not gotten to it's use, yet. It is a ball that you blow up... looks like a globe... how can you go wrong with that?! I think it is for a game, but you really could use it for your globe rather than buy one.

The Great Animal Search = My kids LOVE this book! My kids love "I Spy" books and that is just what this is. It has great pictures and facts to go with it as they search for each animal. LOVE!

Fun with Easy Origami = Sure we will love this one, also when the time comes to use it.

Overall, it is the map labelling, overabundance of worksheets, and book choices for Science that I do not like. I love the Biblical perspective of MFW. I only share this because I think the more you are prepared for what you are getting yourself into the better. Had I realized some of these things I probably would not have gotten so panicked once we started using it and realizing how overwhelming it would be for US. I will try to update with my plans later. Off to brainstorm about it all....

Birth Posting, Sienna 4 months, Job Changes, & A New School Year.... Oh My!!!

2011-07-21T00:44:00.000-05:00

So, my blogging in pretty sad these days. Time is something I seem to always be short on. One thing that is driving me a bit crazy is that I wanted to make one last post to the series regarding Sienna's birth. I wanted to post about Caesarean recovery, but honestly I can't formulate good enough memories to put it down. There were just too many drugs and too much pain. I will say that my recovery was one of my hardest and was followed by a series of illnesses and setbacks even after I was back home. It was a good 6 weeks before the illnesses all passed here and try as I might I just can not put together a decent blog post about it. So sorry if I left anyone wondering.

Next thought is that my tiny baby girl is no longer so tiny. She is already four months old and I have been loving every ounce of her!! My kids adore her, too. I love watching all of them interact with her. Caden is a bit rough, but she smiles about it (when she is not frightened... sometimes he startles her). Savannah gets to hold her walking around some (with caution) and she has changed some diapers and clothing. Sierra is jealous... not jealous of the baby, but that Savannah is allowed to do more. Savannah is 3 years and 3 months older than Sierra. Sierra is allowed to hold Sienna, but is not supposed to walk around with her or get her out of her highchair, etc.. She does it sometimes, anyway... and gets scolded. Sahara loves to crawl in the baby bed and lay beside Sienna and play with her. Caden does this some, also. And yes, I let them. Call me crazy, but I let my kids love on the baby as long as it is being monitored for safety and such.

Our Summer has not been what I wanted. Chaos has kind of been the mood around here this Summer. I do not like chaos. Goals have not been achieved and I am pretty sure I am the only one that cares. LOL! Only it really is not that funny to me. ;) But our Summer is coming to a close. Normally, my husband would go back to his normal teaching job about a week before the students would. That date would have been August 16th and that would leave us with almost a full month of Summer left. That will not be the case this year because quite unexpectedly Cody got an Assistant Principal job at a local elementary school (Pre-K thru 1st grade). It is very exciting! His first official day of work will be August, BUT unofficially he is already working. He interviewed on July 11th (Monday) and was supposed to find out the next day; however, within a few hours he got the call. He signed the contract two days later on my birthday (Wednesday). Then, he had a teacher workshop to attend the next day and went to work on Friday. That was last week. This week he will be working four days. Next week he is supposed to work on Monday and be off the rest of the week, but we will see. Other than the possibility of being off some next week our Summer has come to a close. That's okay with me, though. I am reading to get back to a routine!! And it is pretty exciting that what we have wiated for has finally happened. We could not ask for anything better! ... and honestly we are having a hard time processing that this is reality because it is so stinking perfect! God is good!

My closing thought is that I am prepping to get out schooling underway. For the most part when Cody is at work we are at work/school. It is just easier to follow his schedule because when he is home our schedule goes out the window. And as I type this I wonder if that is the case for other homeschoolers out there. Are you able to get school done when Daddy is home or does it just get too crazy?

Mushrooms

2011-06-30T20:21:00.000-05:00

I should have a picture, but I was just sitting here and thought I would share this. Make them and SEE them for yourself.

I have to share with you MY stuffed mushrooms, but they are bit messier to make. Oh but they are oh so yummy!
You will need:
-Mushrooms
-Mozzarella or Monterey Jack Cheese
-Seasoned Bread Crumbs
-Garlic Powder
-Egg
-Oil for frying
Take the stems out of the mushrooms. Insert a small cube of cheese in the hole. Dip in the beaten egg mixture. Coat with the bread crumbs (before this step add a little garlic powder to a bowl of bread crumbs). Set on a plate to prepare to fry (this step is to save your sanity). When you have them made up you are ready to get frying. I fry them in about 1" of cooking oil. Set them in cheese side up and just cok until they brown up. They are melt in your mouth yummy. I save the stems that were removed to dice up and add to another dish.

Summer is....

2011-05-31T16:17:00.000-05:00

Everyone is talking about Summer. School is out for public schoolers and many homeschoolers. Everyone is talking about plans... plans for vacations... plans for their schooling during Summer and in the Fall. It seems there is so much to think about. For us Summer is....

Going to be a time of slowing down a bit in some areas. Our regular school plan will change.

My husband will be off work after next Tuesday, since he is a public school teacher.

We are not planning a vacation this year; however, you never know when that might change.

My brother, his wife, and their daughter are moving bake to Texas this Summer.

I might rip out all the carpet in this house (my big fantasy). The problem with this little fantasy is that there is only plywood underneath and since we want to try to pay off our mortgage within one year we don't want to spend money on flooring. So, we have to decide if we can hold off until the mortgage is paid off or if we can find a cheap or temporary flooring solution. I despise carpeted floors. Upstairs we have some painted floors, but it looks "right" because it is a board floor. If I had a faux flooring solution for plywood that would look nice I could live with that for a year. That would allow us freedom to be messy with our artsy craftsy time. After the mortgage is all gone bye-bye we could change if we wanted to hardwood floors.

We will do some special schooling... I am planning to use "Consider God's Creation" (Science) some. I would also like to do some art curriculum that we have not been faithful to complete (or really even begin). We will continue to keep math "fresh" for Sierra and read a lot. Savannah will actually finish up her Grade 4 math and possibly begin her Grade 5 math. She does not know it yet, but I have decided to detour that plan a bit, though. I am awaiting the arrival of the first book in the Life of Fred series. This Summer I am going to let her try that. I originally thought it was just a supplemental thing for math, but have recently learned it can be a complete math curriculum. I also hear that the kids who put up a fight to do math actually beg to do this... It's worth a try! Sewing is top on the list to do with my older ones. There should be no excuse to not have time since my hubby will be off and there are no scheduled vacations.

And if it will ever rain I would love to focus some more on growing veggies!

Oh yeah.... we HAVE to build a chicken coop.

And we will be selling seven baby bunnies.

And I would like to have some lazy days like this little momma (Sahara) and her babies.

A Boring Life

2011-05-22T22:12:00.000-05:00

Please keep in mind this post is intended to be comical...to some degree. ;)

I was just thinking yesterday that I would really like for life to be a little more on the boring side. Lately, it has just been a little too exciting around here. Now, of course, some of the exciting things like our precious little baby girl have been wonderful. Other things have been a little exasperating. In the first five weeks of that little baby girl's life we had three viruses run through this house and I got all of them, also. As if it was not difficult enough to heal from a c-section... and the infection I had at the incision site... and the anemia that I developed. And there are those moments like when I was in the hospital and my husband tells me he is going out of town in three weeks for the whole weekend.... and it so happens that that is when one of the viruses hit our home. The night before he left Sahara was throwing up all night. I was planning to do as little as possible and had set a very low expectation as not to become overwhelmed. I was just going to do the basics and leave all the major chores until after the weekend, but all that throwing up left me with several loads of laundry that just would not wait. Then, there were the twenty plus baby rabbits that had to be sold. As we are trying to form a routine with the new baby and continuing schooling the phone was constantly ringing and people coming over to buy rabbits. Oh it was pretty exciting! It was fun, though! And my older two girls really handled the rabbit sales and did a great job caring for the rabbits. And they learned a lot about money management and commerce.

Well, I could go on..... and on... and on. I'll just end with a couple more, though. Three mornings ago I was lying in bed and heard Caden crying out. I thought he was having a bad dream and I did not run to him right away. Within moments Sahara began screaming. By this time they were both screaming and came running into my bedroom.... Caden was covered in blood! A nosebleed.... a really bad nosebleed! Imagine he wakes up bleeding and starts screaming, which awakens Sahara. That poor baby awakened to the sight of her brother screaming and covered in blood. It is quite funny looking back, but at the time we were all horrified.... and it made for another load of laundry, also!

Yesterday, we had a busy day taking Sienna to the doctor and we had a homeschool co-op field trip to Gator Country (popular for the Gator 911 TV show). We had a great time and returned home. Savannah ran out to the back of our house to the rabbits and chickens. She came running in the house very quickly with blood pouring from her foot! She said she stepped on a stick and sure enough she held out her sandal and there was a stick still stuck up through the bottom! That stick had punctured right into her foot. Ouch! It was in that moment that I looked at them all and thought, "I am ready for some boredom!" After bandaging her up and cleaning up the blood, she hobbled around on crutches the rest of the day. I am hoping she can get around today without those today.

And that doctor's appointment for Sienna was to check some knots that I found on the back of her head. I thought they were some sort of cysts. We have been very concerned about those over the last week or so. I am very happy to say that the doctor said they were just swollen lymph nodes. I had no idea that there were lymph in the back of the head. Even after having five children it seems there is always much more to learn. And I am thankful for all my "reasons" to not have a boring life! It would be nice if there was a little less bleeding around here, though...

Sunday Ponderings While Enjoying The Breeze

2011-05-15T15:42:00.000-05:00

We have had some odd weather, so I am sitting outside enjoying a very sunny, breezy day. No, I am not sweating even though I am in Sooutheast Texas. Sienna is laying on me taking a nap cuddled close to my chest. Cody just rocked Sahara to sleep after she pleaded (and won) her binky. The older three kids are playing in the backyard in the new above ground pool (half filled) we bought and playing on their playground with their new (and only) neighbor child. And I want to freeze time..... So, I sit here with my thoughts.....

Life really is a matter of perspective and perspective is constantly changing. Right now everything is great. In an hour I could be fully stressed. We have to focus on focusing on the "great". Yes, "focus on focusing". I love that it is Sunday and I am doing what I should be doing.... not working... resting.... somewhat resting. Of course, there is always work to be done and some will get done, but my focus right now is resting.... rocking my precious baby... watching my precious children... enjoying the breeze.

My mind goes quickly to the goals I want to reach... the list I ponder making, yet stop myself from. It is a time to enjoy and not quickly lose by getting wrapped up in thoughts of "doing".

I ponder this adorable bundle in my arms and wonder how God could possibly see me as fit to rear her. As she lies in my arms dreaming and grinning I am truly overwhelmed with her perfect love.... or rather God's perfect love through her to share with me. This week I am fully aware that she is not truly mine, but merely on loan to me from her Creator. I am honored to be the only one that was chosen for this duty. I pray that God will allow me to share her for many, many years to come. I want to grow old rocking HER babies one day.

And my thoughts wander back to a couple of weeks ago... We really have very little "control". Danger is all around us and we can't save our children from it all. Specifically, Caden shattered a glass top end table, but only suffered a couple of minor cuts. From where I was sitting I could only see him fall, see glass flying, and hear the crash followed by Caden screaming. I truly lost it. I thought my baby boy was severely hurt. I screamed something like, "My baby, my baby...." as I scrambled with Sienna asleep in my arms to get to him. After an hour or so we had all calmed down and gotten the cuts doctored and the glass cleaned away. But that moment confirmed what I have always known. We can't truly protect them. And they are merely on loan to us. So, I want to freeze time. I want to watch them fly down the slide... splash in the water... chase their siblings and their only neighbor child around the yard.... grin mischieviously.... and all the things they do. Oh yeah, and cuddle this sleeping baby... listen to her squeak, sigh, coo.... watch her wiggle and grin.... feel her breathe... and breathe her in.

It amazes me how love increases. I find that holding and loving Sienna reminds me of loving all my others. Amazingly, my love for her increases my love for each of them. She reminds me to love them more.

I Like My Blog Again !

2011-04-26T00:38:00.000-05:00

A while back I made some changes to my blog design and I have not like it since then! Blah! It was messed up for awhile and I just did not want to commit the time needed to fix it. I decided to just change it and let it be plain even though I did not really like that change much either... but it was better than it being messed up. Finally, I have a picture I am happy with and I like my blog again! The faces of my children are just what it needed. This picture was taken Easter morning before we headed off to church. It was a special day for our family not only because of Easter, but because it was the first time our whole family has attended church since Sienna's birth.

Tongue Twisted

2011-04-18T09:40:00.000-05:00

Kids are so funny! Savannah can not say "M&M" to save her life! "Em-an-Mim"... 10 years old and it has her totally tongue-tied. But we are having great fun with her! Everytime she says it she says it a different way.

And why is it that some things are tongue twisters for certain people. Yesterday I was looking for the "blue broom". The first time you say it is no big deal, but by the time you have gone through the house asking everyone where the "blue broom" is you start to stammer. Pretty soon you are saying things like "blue bloom".... especially, when no one is listening to you and you have to ask each person about ten times. ;) So, I said, "Try saying that ten times fast!" Interestingly, people actually hear you when you say something irrelevant (and not about cleaning). Of all the people here my husband is the one that could miraculously say it with getting tongue-tied! This is the man that I proclaim all the time "can't walk and talk at the same time", but he can say "blue broom" ten times fast.

And you should hear Sierra say Ecclesiastes !! She calls it "Ecclesi-nasties". I highly encourage you to teach your children the books of the Bible at an early age. Other than the obvious fact that it is great to learn it is also highly entertaining to listen to.

Embrace the tongue-tied moments. Before you know it they will mostly be gone. I have always loved the mispronunciations my children make. I have had relatives fuss over it and worry that they won't be able to talk right. Funny thing is that kids seem to learn in spite of a momma trying to keep her babies babies a little longer.

What Have We Been Up To?

2011-04-06T19:31:00.000-05:00

Little Sienna is already three weeks old. Time is flying by already. A lot has happened... or rather not happened around here. ;) I stilll plan to post about c-section recovery, but I had to delay due to a stomach virus that we all got (Savannah & Sienna did NOT get it). And now... well, some other virus has hit some of us. Yesterday I had chills and fever and all the aches that go with that. Today was better. Thank God!!! It's a little crazy here.

Birth Surprises TIMES FOUR !!!

2011-03-28T22:23:00.000-05:00

If you have been around here long, you will know that this series of posts about "birth surprises" has nothing to do with human birth. It is all about these crazy rabbits we have. We started with THREE rabbits and we have now had FOUR surprise litters. We also had someone deliver a Lop to us that they needed to find a home for. Ironically, they showed up to deliver the Lop as we were about to drive off when I was in labor with Sienna.... never a dull moment here!!!

So, this past Friday we got another surprise litter... eight more babies! Apparently, this rabbit bred on the same day she delivered her first litter. Bllleeeeechhhhh! What is it with these rabbits!??... don't answer that~!~ ;) I thought we were in the clear on this one because she carried the litter for 32 days. The rabbit books we have say that they typically deliver on the 30th day and there is little variance on this rule. One of the babies died and we discovered that today. So, she currently has seven living babies from this litter. Our total for rabbits in currently 36 now and it is safe to say that we will be selling some "Easter Bunnies". Serioulsy, we are just going to have several that are ready to go around Easter. We plan to give some away to friends and the rest that we sale to will be for a small fee to offset some of the feed cost. They are starting to go through some serious amounts of feed. I try to get the kids to pull plenty of weeds to supplement their diet each day, but they have to be reminded. If I forget to remind them, then it just does not happen.

Anyway, we have bunnies running out of our ears!!!

Sienna's Birth Continued -- Part 3

2011-03-27T12:14:00.001-05:00

First of all you will want to read Part 1 and Part 2, if you have not already done so. And if you want to see pics of Sienna you can see some here, as well as, her birth stats.
I am gonna start this post by saying the memory is a strange thing. Apparently, there are some things I am remembering differently than what is reality. At 4:00 this morning we awoke to my four year old son crying and soon realized he had a fever and belly ache. Sienna got woke up because she was wanting to nurse and Caden was calling out for Momma. Momma simply can't be in two places at once, so Sienna had to wait a few minutes and got fully awakened. Since Cody and I were awake we started talking about the birth happenings. Apparently, that whole thing about the people in the elevator happened on our way INTO the hotel. And it makes sense, but for some reason I am thinking there were people in the elevator as we DEPARTED, also. He says there definitely was not. Maybe I was just afraid there were going to be people in the elevator. Who knows..., but I wanted to correct it here.

Anyway, back to the story... so, we arrive at the hospital and I take my ride up to labor and delivery in the wheelchair. At this point it should be noted that just by making the decision to come to the hospital I will be having a c-section. It is not a question of whether or not it is necessary. They simply will not allow VBACs even though this hospital does not have a ban on VBACs. The doctors that work for this hospital will not do VBAC births. So, really we already know how this story is going to end. I am simply recounting some more of the details here for others that might want to know, that might one day go through this, that want to avoid this, and for my own "therapy" to get it written down.

The entire time we were at the hospital the staff wanted to know why we waited so long to come to the hospital and were fishing for details related to the midwife. We were honest to the point that we were attempting a VBAC birth, but we were not telling details that would get anyone in trouble. The midwife ("labor assistant" in our case) followed us to the hospital, escorted us in and up to labor and delivery, and slipped out when she was no longer needed. From the very beginning we had relinquished her of all liability and that is how we wanted it for her and her family's sake. If her license were to come into question she would be at risk for her losing her family's primary income.

The hospital staff was pleasant, but very obvious about thinking we should not be trying to VBAC or take the risk. All of which I told them I felt should clearly be my choice to make and not theirs... nicely, of course. I let them know that even though I knew I would have to have a c-section now I was glad that all of this had been my choice. Our careful consideration of the risks is what lead us to make the decision to come on to the hospital. I asked them to please not drag it out or make me lay in a bed for and hour or two if it was not necessary. They assured me they would not, BUT that they needed to check me out first. They didn't really take my word for anything. The fact that my water broke and that I was dilating were all things THEY had to check BEFORE they would even call in the on-call obstetrician. They started with having me put on a hospital gown, pee in a cup, hooking me up to an IV, strapping on the fetal monitor, putting on a constant blood pressure cuff, and then doing a cervical check. The latter of these things had to be done while I was lying flat on my back. As was the case with the midwife, the cervical check threw me into a series of difficult contractions, but it was worse with all these things attached to me and being that I had to be on the bed the whole time. I was pleased to hear that I was still progressing and had dilated from a 3 to a 4 in about a 30 minute time frame. Even in this confined state the babies heart rate nor mine ever went up into a dangerous area and I had no other bleeding. We had left the hotel at approximately 1:30 AM and this cervical check was done about thirty minutes later. The baby was delivered at 3:14 AM. In that almost two hour time frame there was never any other signs of possible danger. I just had to lay there through all those contractions either on my back or on my side feeling like my hips were being broken with each contraction. I don't say that to be dramatic. It is just that if I had been allowed to stand up I could have managed the pain without yelling out in pain. As it was I was not only in pain, but I felt like a fool that was quickly losing control with no option but to just get through it. I prayed that God would impress on the doctor that was called to come quickly and not linger and that God would just help me manage the pain for the duration. Time seemed to drag on, but at the same time it passed quickly... I know that makes no sense, but I was in a state of just making it from one contraction to the next until it was time to go to the operating room. This is where I really needed someone to be MY advocate. My husband really just did not know what to do to help me. I wanted him to demand they let me stand, but it is not really in his nature to take control of such a situation. He was able to talk me through the contractions and breathing and that was very helpful. If I had it to do over I would have had someone there that would really speak up on my behalf and be demanding even if it "stepped on toes". At some point they shaved the area for the "bikini cut" and started to insert the catheter (bladder). I asked if they could please wait until right before the surgery for the catheter and I was, at least, granted that request. They did do it sooner than necessary, but I was able to have a little more time without it.

I was taken to the operating room and my husband was given his "scrubs" to change into. I then had to sit up and curl my back forward to get the spinal block for surgery. This is an excruciating thing to do during contractions. At first I was not able to manage staying in a curl position, but after a couple of contractions this way I mustered up the ability to maintain the curl. It seemed to take a while for them to get the spinal block administered, but soon I was no longer feeling anything from the ribs down. Shortly after that I was transferred over to the actual operating table and my arms strapped down and all the draping attached and draped around me. I could feel them scrubbing my belly and prepping for surgery. I questioned how much I could feel and they did some test pokes, etc. to make sure the anesthesia was working and as a few minutes passed it was clear it was in fact working and they began the surgery. Soon Cody came in and was seated by my head.

In the past I have had one birth that I could feel a lot of pain due to anesthesia not working properly, so I have a huge fear of this. At that birth I felt the pain of a lot of the surgery. For this one I felt a lot of the surgery, but it was not painful at all. I could feel their hands up inside my ribs, but it was almost like a tickle. It was very strange, but not scary for me. I was thankful there was no pain. For whatever reason the doctors had a difficult time getting Sienna out. Maybe it was how far she was descended into the birth canal. I don't guess I will ever know, but I know that I was continuing to progress beyond that check that was done at a 4.... I could feel my hips spreading through those contractions. It took them several minutes to get her out. If you are familiar with having a c-section you know that it is usually a matter of seconds. C-sections deliveries often go very quickly, but this one was much longer. When she came out she looked like a tiny little Summo wrestler. She was short and fat and had a head full of thick dark brown hair. In spite of the change in plans all I could do was cry tears of joy that our little Sienna was here and we were both healthy. Cody got to see her right away and cut her cord (or rather re-cut it). He was able to watch her be cleaned up and hold her right away. That is something I have always wanted to experience, but it always gives me great joy to know that he gets that time with the baby while I am waiting and listening. Soon after, Cody and the on-call pediatrician brought her over to me and I was able snuggle her check to check for a few moments while they took pictures. After that Cody left with her and they went to the newborn nursery.

I am truly thankful for the on call doctors, anesthesiologists, nurses, pediatrician, etc. and for what they do. Even though they obviously did not agree with my choices they gave me great care and I did feel really bad about them having to be awakened and come in to do my surgery. After they finished my surgery I was wheeled into recovery. I was there for about an hour and a half and then I was taken to a room. I was able to see Sienna in the newborn nursery as I was wheeled past. I was finally able to hold her when she was brought to my room at 6:30 a.m.. The pediatric nurse that brought her in said that Sienna was "capping" and had a hematoma on the back of her head from the pressure. She stated that she felt that the baby may have gotten stuck, if we had proceeded with the VBAC. My thoughts on this are mixed. At first I held onto these statements as confirmaion that the c-section was necessary; however, by the time I was holding Sienna there were no signs of "capping" or the hematoma. I have been told that true "capping" and a hematoma would not go away that quickly and the hematoma would be evident 24 hours later. Whether the c-section was medically necessary or not I can not say, but being that the midwife made the call to transfer to the hospital our only choice would have been to stay and do it all on our own. That was not something we felt comfortable doing; therefore, for us the c-section was necessary. I feel we made the right choice in the situation. I will always wonder and this will always be something I struggle with. I don't know that I will ever feel totally at peace with it, but I am totally at peace with knowing my little Sienna is safely in my arms. I would go through a hundred surgeries for that.

So, I guess that is her "birth" story. I will be writing about our recovery, so this series will continue a little longer. I think it is a very important part of her birth story because it turns out that this c-section was one of my most difficult recoveries in some ways. I think it is important to include this information because it is truly why I wanted to VBAC to begin with. C-sections are not a natural part of birth and there are always complications that go with it.

To be continued.... once again... ;)

Sienna's Birth Continued -- Part 2

2011-03-25T12:14:00.000-05:00

Truly, I am sorry for leaving you hanging, but I know this post would never make it further than the drafts folder if I did not get it posted. If you have not read the beginning, then scroll down to the post titled "Sienna's Birth" or simply click here to go directly to that post.

Continuing -- Part 2 --
So, we arrived at the hotel and got all of our stuff unloaded, except the birth ball and the birthing pool. As Cody brought the stuff in (and it is a lot of stuff) I tried to manage arranging it between contractions. The room was a Suite and the way the room was set up you walked into a main sitting area that had a TV, fold out couch, etc. with a long countertop along one wall. This was a sort of kitchen area that had a microwave and mini-fridge and plenty of space to serve as meal prep area... or in our case the perfect place for the birthing supplies. A doorway beside this countertop lead to the bedroom and bathroom facilities. It was very spacious and really a great set-up for the birth. It is strange how you never know what is going to be the thing that relaxes you during birth, but it turns out for me it was the bedroom window. The window ledge was waist high and about 8" wide and made a great place to lean on and look out at the freeway. For some reason I had thought the traffic would bother me and it turned out to be the opposite. Maybe it was the fast movement of things around me or the lights at night and the street noise.... whatever it was it seemed to calm me to look out the 3rd story window of the hotel and I would lean on the ledge with my elbows and sway back and forth. Sometimes I would even squat some and come back up. And that was the way I managed the contractions while it was just me and Cody.

Cody prepared the bed. Originally, the plan was to strip all the hotel stuff off, but with the supplies I broughht he decided to skip that step. He pulled the sheets and bedspread back to the end of the bed and covered the mattress and sheets with a plastic mattress cover. He then put on a set of our sheets from home and layered on a "plastic backed disposable sheet" that I ordered with my birth supplies. On top of that would be a "chux" pad each time I lay down for a cervical check. I plan to do a post later of birth supplies and explain the usage for those that might wonder what is needed.

Once the midwife arrived she had me sign a form aboout consent and liability and she observed me for awhile to see how I was handling contractions and how intense they were. It was decided that she would check dilation and we would move to the water. Instead of the birthing pool Cody and the midwife decided that we should try using the whirlpool tub. Cody began filling the tub with warm water and poured in about an ounce of Povidine for sterilization. As the tub was filling we did a cervix check and I was dilated to a 2. I was very excited to hear this. I had never dilated before and had been lead to believe my body was not capable of dilating! It may not seem like much to some, but I thought it was awesome. The down side to the cervical check was that it threw me into a series of very intense and difficult to deal with contractions. For me lying was the worst position to be in for contractions, so that made it worse. As soon as I was able to manage getting up I went to the window once again.

After about 10:00 PM time had no relevance to me, so I can not even estimate time frames any longer at this point.

The next goal was to get into the water. Again, I have no idea what time we started this. I put on my water birthing dress. It was suggested that I go naked, but I had not quite lost all modesty, yet. ;) As I was getting into the tub the midwife suggested that Cody get in with me and sit behind me to support my body. To my surprise he did! It was a bit crowded, but it worked. My husband is 6'2", so he takes up a lot of space. ;) At first I thought the water was not going to work well for me and I was tensing up. Cody was reminding me to breath correctly and the midwife started telling me to just relax my body and let it fall into the water. In my waterdress I felt comfortable letting my legs fall open without feeling like I was "showing it all". The simple thought of letting my pelvis fall into the water was just the thing to relax me through contractions when I would start to tense up. Cody and I would both have some cramped up moments in the tub, but we would shift a little or reposition slightly and carry on. It was going well. Periodically, during contractions and after the midwife would ask if I felt any pain at my incision sight or in that area at all. I never did and would even say that I felt great. Nothing at all was concerning me about the incision. I was feeling very good about the labor and how I was handling contractions.

Now, let me be very clear here. I am not saying that I did not have any pain. I could often be qouted as saying it feels like my pelvis is breaking apart. Not in a frightened way... just as a statement of observation. For someone who has never been through labor it was just something of an observation for me. In the past I had thought that dilation would be more of a muscular type pain, but in fact it felt like the pelvis bones were where the main focus of the pain was. As long as I was off my hips this was a manageable pain, though.

During this time in the water I began to need something more to soothe me. I had been praying through contractions from the time we were in transport up until now. In the weeks leading up to this point I had been "collecting" Bible verses and songs, as well as, a few motivational thoughts to help get me through labor. I had printed them on pretty paper with a plan to hang them around the room somehow... only I did not bring tape. Anyhow, I did scan over the list a couple of times, but while in the water I could not hold onto a paper list. I started to ask Cody for my music. The original plan was to play the songs on the list via my computer and youtube. I had this all set up in the sitting area, but we were in the tub. I started asking Cody for my music. I told him, "I need my music." He finally came up with the solution to play Pandora Radio via the iPod. Yippee! And amazingly beginning with the first song that came on they were playing the music from my list! I was not really shocked. I knew God was in this, but it was beautiful affirmation of it for me. As I listened to the music and sang with it I was truly relaxed. I would stop singing only when the contractions were more intense and I needed to focus on breathing evenly.

Somehow, a couple of hours must have passed and the midwife wanted me to get out of the water and do another cervix check. I did not want to get out nor did I care about a cervix check. I stayed a bit longer mostly because I simply did not want to move from where I was. Finally, I got out and dried off a bit. Again, I went back to that window for comfort while managing contractions out of the water. After a few minutes they convinced me to lie down for a cervical check. I knew this was going to be a painful time for me and I was not eager to get to do the check. I knew it was likely to throw me into another serious of intense back to back contractions. When the midwife checked me, sure enough the intesity rose. It seemed like forever to me that she did this check. When she pulled her hand back there was a gush of liquid with some blood mixed in... nothing bright red or alarming to me... it was what I would describe as more of a bloody show mixed with otherwise clear amniotic fluid. Being on my back when these intense contractions began I felt like my hips were breaking. As soon as I got through the first contraction I got up and went to the window with the "chux" pad between my legs to manage this series of contractions. I had a few moments of dripping some blood, but again it was not a lot or was it bright red or alarming to me. And it stopped after these few intense contractions. As I stood at the window the midwife checked the baby's heartbeat through a couple of contractions. After that she walked into the sitting room area for a brief moment. As she walked back in she announced that she thought it was time to make a hospital transfer. Honestly, I was shocked. She said that the last two times she had checked the baby's heartbeat it had been high and this last time it was 174. I knew from my own research that the safe range for the baby's heartrate was 120-160. She said I was dilated to a 3, so that was progress (in my view), but the baby's head had "capping" or swelling from pushing up against the cervix. The fact that the heart rate was rising was a sign that the baby was not handling the contractions well and there was too much pressure on her head causing the "capping". She also said my heartrate was rising, but I must say that I don't see how it could not during contractions.... especially, during these intense ones set on by the cervical check. I also think the bleeding scared her a bit. But the thing was is that she was making the judgement call that we should transfer and ultimately if we had not help and she was leaving then, my options were gone unless I was willing to go with an usassisted birth. I was not willing to do that. I stalled a moment.... not purposely. I neededo process it a moment and I said that a couple of times. I also needed to clear my head between contractions (remember they are consistently every 3 minutes at this point and had been for several hours), so I could decide what in the room needed to go with us to the hospital. This is were it all changed for me. This is where I had to let go of what I wanted and succumb to what had to be. It was not my choice, yet it was for the safety of the baby and myself and it was clear my husband could not do this without a midwife to guide him.... nor could I. I needed someone to coach me through.

I changed and we quickly gathered a few things that we knew we needed and left out for the hospital. We got to the elevator at the same time as a couple with a toddler. There was no option, but to get on. And you have to remember that we are at hotel trying to conceal that I am in labor. Somehow I managed to not have a contraction in that elevator and made it through the front lobby and out into the lobby and onto our shuttle bus without it being obvious I was in labor. As soon as I stepped foot on that bus... that very bumpy bus... my contractions came back in full force. Transport time to the hospital was under five minutes, but it seemed longer through contractions. During this drive I begged Cody to please not let them torture me once we got to the hospital, although I new it was inevitable. I had done this part before when I went into labor with Caden two days before his scheduled c-section. We parked the bus and I walked into the emergency room with Cody and the midwife who had followed us in her car.

We registered at the desk and they quickly put a hospital band on my arm and within minutes I was headed up to labor and delivery. They brought me a wheelchair and I asked if I could just walk. Of course not... and that is where the torture began. They don't mean to torture you. It is just that in following "their rules and protocol" that is what it ends up being. I could have walked and managed those contractions while standing, but they "required" me to ride in a wheelchair.

And that is where I am going to have to end for now. Sorry, but it is one week and three days after this birth and recovery had been difficult. Just last night I was throwing up and feeling very ill, again. I am supposed to be sleeping right now while my husband is gone with the kids to homeschool co-op. So, I am going to cuddle my tiny one and snooze and I will continue the rest of the story as soon as possible.

To be continued.....

Sienna's Birth

2011-03-23T19:50:00.000-05:00

I so want to get this written and posted, but I have been sooooo tired. It is with pure joy that I share this story about Sienna's birth. I have said all along that this journey for her birth is not about me simply "getting what I want", but about making the best decisions in the situation when the time comes. I wanted this birth to be a successful VBAC and I do count it as a success; however, it did not end the way it was planned. The success was in the trying and in the wisdom to make the right call at the right time for God's glory. This pregnancy, this baby, this birth were all gift's from God. This journey has been a difficult, trying, lonely time in my life in many ways, but it has been a journey of growth. I am thankful for it all! And on with the birth story...

I admit I was very nervous in the weeks leading to my approaching due date. All those things about birth start to go through your mind. There are so many uncertainties. You never know when it will happen, where you will be, how long you will have, how you will truly want it to happen, what will soothe you, what will annoy you, what will hurt, what will help, etc... And then, there of the thoughts of this enormous thing passing out of your body and what that will be like. Oh, don't we all pray that we will be that woman that does not feel the pain of labor? LOL! On the other hand there is a part of you that looks forward to drawing closer to God through it all and depending completely on Him. As the birth approached I wondered when it would be. The unpredictable goes against the grain of our nature. We are generation that can schedule just about anything. Ahhhh.... and the list of modern due dates adds more to the speculation. According to doctors they go by the LMP date, which made the EDD (estimated due date) March 11th. This due date did not reflect the reality of my six week cycle and my known date of ovulation and known dates of conception that could be pinpointed to two possible days. I choose to mostly ignore this date from the beginning. Using my "known information" I came up with and went by (as well as the midwives involved) March 16th as my EDD. With more thought I also acknowledged that the EDD really could be the 14th or the 16th depending upon which date of conception was the actual. I looked at my past birth history, but since they were all c-sections that gives little to judge by. My one spontaneous labor was with Caden and I went into labor two days before his EDD. For the most part I was hanging on to the 16th as the day. As it all got closer I starting realizing we were going to have a busy day on the 14th and I just hoped we would make it through those tasks. Three of the kids had dental appointments that morning about an hour away from home. I had a Fetal Monitoring appointment after lunchtime, but not wanting to keep it due to dragging all the kids to it. And one of our dogs had an appointment to begin heartworm treatment at 4:30 that afternoon, but fortunately Cody was taking the dog to that appointment. Yep, the closer it got the funnier it got to think that the 14th would probably be the day I would start labor. It became quite the joke at our house! And in essence even if the 16th was my EDD it would follow the rule of going into labor two days early... as if all things are predictable, right? LOL!

So, the morning of Monday the 14th we got the kids up and got them ready for the days adventure to the dentist. My husband was to go back to work on this day following his Spring Break. Our little homeschooling schedule was to resume until the baby decided to come. I had mixed feelings about it all. What was the point of getting back into our homeschooling schedule and do school for say three days and then, I go into labor and we have to repeat the week later anyway?... Hmmm... what to do? I was wondering if we should just take a break until after the baby was born. On the other hand it could be a week or more before I went into labor and we would be more behind in schooling. So, anyway we went to the dental appointment an hour away in the rain (that is another story, but it always rains on the day we make a dental trip). I cancelled my fetal monitoring appointment because I was feeling plenty of movement and have my own fetal heart monitor (professional). The plan was to go home and get busy schooling, but I had the incredible feeling that I should go home and rest. I picked up lunch to go and feed the kids on the way home and when we got home I did something I NEVER do. I locked the doors and put a movie on for the kids to watch and I lay down on the couch to try to sleep. I dozed off and got some rest! Woo hoo! Until Sahara awoke me by poking her finger in my nose. ;) Oh the joys of the motherhood! I continued to lay there and rest some until Cody got home. When he arrived it was decided that he would take the two oldest girls with him to the vets office to get the dog's treatment shot. They left and shortly after that I felt a slight crampiness in my pelvis. It was like a gas pain, but really low in my pelvis and I thought very little of it. I did go to the restroom because I ALWAYS need to pee. The only thing is that once I peed and stopped I was about to get up and I peed again... or so I thought for a brief second. One thing that is important to note is that peeing is a voluntary action. You control it (mostly) and you stop it and start it. It is not something that just happens on it's own usually. I began to pee involuntarily... well, not pee... obviously, my water had broke. I knew I had to act quick, so I ran to the other bathroom for a pad and quickly put it in place. very quickly it was filled and I had to have another plan. I layered in three pads with the thinking that as one soaked I would simply remove it and I would still have more underneath. Within minutes I had gone through all of them and was trying to come up with another plan. I had "chux" pads that I had purchased for the birth, but my thinking was that those were for saving the sheets on the bed from getting wet, so I did not want to use those up. I had plenty of pads, but they were just not going to cut it for the big soaks. And this is where it gets kind of funnny. I ran to the baby changing table and grabbed some leftover size 5 diapers that my son outgrew and decided they would make a better "pad" because of how wide they are in the crotch area. This is also the moment that I realized why some midwives have Depends underpants on the birth supply list. They would have been perfect for this moment. I highly recommend them!

I am guessing the time to be about 4:45 PM when my water actually broke. Cody and the two girls arrived back from the vet and Sierra came in first. I said to her, "Go outside and get your Daddy and tell him my water broke."

She looked around puzzled toward the main bathroom and said, "The water's not broke on this end of the house."

I said, "That's not what I mean. Just go tell your Daddy and he will know what I am talking about." So funny!!!

Cody came in shocked and ready to get moving. I had to reassure him we had a few things to pack up and we had time. Contractions had not begun. Well, technically contractions are what was pushing the amniotic fluid out, but I could not feel those contractions and there was not pain involved. I made a few phone calls to let people know that "something" was starting to happen. I called a couple of ladies that would likely keep the kids, another friend that was anxious to know, and the midwife. It turns out the midwife was in my area and would be having dinner with a client that evening, so she would be staying in the area pretty late. She would be easy to reach and close by. We finished getting things together and packed up. Within about and hour and a half my contractions were started to come on... and strong. They were about ten minutes apart. By about 8:00 PM the contractions were coming about 3 minutes apart and we made the decision to get to our hotel and settle in. As we headed out the door I began to throw up beside our sidewalk. That was when I knew it was about to get intense and it did. The ride to the hotel was bumpy and uncomfortable. When we got to our first choice hotel it was all booked up except for a few room options we did not want. That meant we had to change the plan. We went with our original first choice after stopping in the parking lot of a few minutes to get through some rougher contractions. Cody drove the short drive to the other location and at one point due to the bumpy roads I had him pull over to give me a break and I got out and walked around and got a breath of fresh air. Cody was getting very nervous, so I got back in and we headed to the hotel. He went in and got a room reserved and came back for me. After he helped me upstairs, he went back for all the birthing supplies, luggage, etc.. It was about 9:00 PM at this time and he called the midwife and she decided to head on over.

To be continued....

Sorry to leave you hanging, but I figure if I post this much then I will get extra motivated to tell you the rest of the story. If I don't start somewhere it might be another week before I get this posted.

Welcome Our Sweet Sienna !!!

2011-03-18T21:26:00.000-05:00

Sienna Faith

Water broke & Labor began at 4:45 p.m. on Monday, March 14th

Born on Tuesday, March 15th

at 3:14 a.m.

8 lbs. 9 oz.

20 1/2"

I wish I had the energy to share the birth story right now. I just am soooooo sleepy. I do want to share pics and in doing so I have to tell you that we are obviously at the hospital. It was not part of the plan, but that is what we needed to do and I am happy with the decision we made to assure a healthy momma and baby. I will try to post some details very soon. The most important thing is getting my friends out there pictures!!

Sienna in the incubator for her transfer from the operating room to the nursery. Birth day, Tuesday, March 15th.

My first time to get to hold her! She was born at 3:14 a.m. and this was at 6:30 a.m. ..... Finally!

Coming home day.... Thursday, March 17th.

Sienna in her car seat. I could not resist a pic of her little bare feet sticking out. I despise baby socks & booties because they just will not stay on. She had them on for some of the pics upstairs, but as soon as they fell off I chunked them to the side. Blankets are much more reliable for keeping their little feet warm.

A van load! Literally, we are AT our maximum capability for this van. Anymore additions to the family will require another vehicle purchase or using our shuttle bus.

Belly Shot 3/10/2011

2011-03-10T22:00:00.000-06:00

Well, it was just wrong of me to write about my belly and not post a pic, so here it is.

Pic was taken by my seven year old, Sierra.

Thank you, Sierra!

One Week Until Due Date

2011-03-09T23:07:00.000-06:00

I am only one week from my due date and I go for my appointment tomorrow. I really want to post some pics of my big ol' belly, but no one takes pics of me. I tried standing in front of the mirror and taking my own pic, but that did not work out. And someone little cute guy in my house lost the parts to my tripod, so I can't set my camera up and take a pic that way. Hopefully, I will get a pic soon. Maybe I can get Savannah or Sierra to take a pic for me. Cody only takes pics of himself. :) Men! That's is all I am saying on that one. My girls will do it, but I am not sure how good the pics will be. I guess I will take what I can get, though.

My friend, Michelle, came over yesterday and she has not seen me in quite a while. As soon as she saw me she said, "Oh my gosh!!!" and her fourteen year old son said, "That is the biggest belly I have ever seen!" I laughed! They have seen me with all my pregancies and I always get a really profound belly, but I was telling Michelle on the phone earlier that day that I thought I had gained 40 pounds this pregancy, but I can't see that it is anywhere but my belly.... none of the usual facial swelling or added pounds on other parts of my body. I really do not understand where the 40 pounds is, except the belly. I may be wrong, but I think I normally gain about 25-30 pounds. It is something I try not to think about, so I don't remember exactly. I mostly watch my body for signs of fat gain vs. belly gain and try not to think about the numbers. Anyway, even though I had told Michelle about the 40 pounds I don't think she really "got it" until she got here and saw it. My mother-in-law stopped by a couple of days ago and said that I reminded her of when she was pregant with her twins. They still think I have an extra one hiding in there. I don't, but my belly is crazy big!

Now you want to see don't you.... sorry... I will try to get a pic and post it.... ASAP!

Even More Birth Surprises!!!

2011-03-07T17:46:00.001-06:00

Yes, even more birth surprises... And they are still not about me!

So, Sierra is outside checking on the all the rabbits and she screams out that the momma to the first litter, Mary, has picked up one of her four week old bunnies with her mouth and shook it. She also pointed out that there was freshly pulled hair in the cage and she thought the momma might have pulled some of the hair from the little bunnies.

Now we are not expert bunny raisers, so everyday is a new day around here with these little creatures.  Cody and the kids decide they want to move the four week old babies to another cage to seperate them from the mother. I quickly run into the house and google when to seperate the mother from the babies, because we do not want her harming them, of course. I come back out tell them that what I have found says that they usually need to stay with their mother for about eight weeks. Comments are going on amongst us all about the hair pulling. I am telling Cody that it is possible that she bred with the male the day the other litter was born, since the bunny birth was a total surprise and we are not sure how long he was still in there after the babies were born. And the timing woud be 29 days and that is pretty darn close to the 30 day estimated gestation for rabbits. I also point out that Mary (momma rabbit) is stretched out and breathing heavy like the day the other momma rabbit (Patches) had her babies. Of course, Cody is rolling his eyes at the ridiculousness of this all... and I admit I was only speculating at the mere possibility. I did not really think it could all be so. We decide that for now we will keep Momma with her four week old babies, so they move her to the cage that they had just moved those babies to. They fluff it full of hay pull some weeds from the yard that the rabbits love to munch on. We leave them all as a bunch of happy, frolicking rabbits. All the four week old rabbits are having a "hay day" digging around in the hay.

Fast forward about one hour or less. I had gone in and was reading more online about rabbit care and once again we hear a scream from outside (the back door was open). This time the scream was from Savannah stating that she thought there was a newborn dead baby rabbit in the cage. Everyone came running and to our surprise there was a tiny little baby rabbit lying in the middle of the cage still enclosed in the amniotic sac. Cody tried to help it, but it was cold and lifeless. Inside the nesting box I reached in to feel the warmth of 5-6 warm little bodies surrounded by hay and freshly plucked fur from their momma. We are in amazement!

So, back the momma, Mary, goes into her original cage and we move the nesting box full of new babies into the cage with her. The four week old babies are officially being seperated from their momma. I am so glad they are thriving and doing so well. I did come back in to find that the article I was reading when Savannah screamed did go on to say that baby rabbits can be weaned and seperated from the mother as early as 4-5 weeks. And that is a good thing, because I don't think we have any other option.

So, let's recap.....
We started with one female rabbit, Patches. We added one male and one female from two seperate litters, Mary and Peter. These two stayed together because we thought they were too young to breed. ;) We discovered 4 weeks and one day ago that we were wrong and arrived home from church to find 6 baby bunnies. Apparently, we now know that some breeding went on that day, as well. We moved Peter in with Patches, since we only had two cages at this time. We totally were prepared for the possibility of more babies in thirty days; however, were surprised to find Patches laboring only two weeks later in the middle of the day. Peter then had to move to a dog kennel temporarily when Patches birthed her 12 (later lost 2). And today we once again had another birth from Mary and for now I am going to estimated the birth at 7 with one loss making it 6 living.

Here's the math....
+ 1             Patches (female)
+ 2             Mary (female) & Peter (male)
+ 6             Mary's first birth
+12             Patches' first birth
- 2             Patches' losses
+ 11           Mary's second birth
-   1             Mary's loss
   29            Total Rabbits (Revised Total... There were more babies than we originally thought in Mary's second birth.)

What I Did This Morning!

2011-03-07T12:44:00.000-06:00

I have been getting a lot done. Most people would not want to post about the disaster around their house, but it is part of my "real" life. Since we started our homeschooling journey a couple of years ago maintaining the clutter and cleaning has taken a backseat on the journey. We still try not to be too terribly awful, but with six people in the house it does not take much for the disaster to take over. And so it is a gradual process to find the house underneath it all. ;)

It is those little things... you know the mail is delivered and you stick it in a pile. As the month goes you realize you have a three inch pile and at our house payday is once a month, so I handle that area of life only once a month. That means that all the junk mail is there in that stack, if I have not removed it as the mail comes in. Don't get me wrong... I skim through the mail to see if there is anything important in there that I need to see immediately and deal with. If time permits I weed out the junk mail and trash it, but everything else stays in the pile. And so it is with many things that come into the home. There are the Sunday School papers and Wednesday church class papers. Of course, the kids come home with many works of art and you just can't chunk them in the garbage as your child is handing them over to you. You have to hang on to it awhile, then slip it into "file 13" (a.k.a. garbage can). There are the special projects we start that simple take up room like the Pioneer wagon we are building.... verrryyyyy sloooooowwwlly.... over the course of the last three months. There's the stack of coupons that get accumulated by the bread basket. And some how there is all the stuff that ends up in the bread basket that is not in anyway related to bread. Clutter! It just accumulates. Awww.... and I have to mention the refrigerator. It is the place the kids want to display their artwork even though we have other designated places in the house. And it is the place that a new snapshot of photo from a friend lands. Every so often I ambush it and wipe it out and discover there is in fact a refrigerator underneath it all. Today was that day. Now I have to clean the outer surface because you really just do not realize how grimey it gets even under the pretty little photos.

So, this is how our "relaxing" Spring Break has gone so far....

Saturday I spent the day cleaning CONSTANTLY, but I will say this. That is the only day I am going to spend like that. It was ultraproductive; however, with less than two weeks until my due date I just think it is not the way I should spend my days. It was an extreme day of THIRTEEN HOURS of straight cleaning. I only stopped to eat meals and it is the first time in weeks that I have not gone outside to even check on the bunnies (the kids and hubby did, though). And being that I have had some sinus issues you would think it would have been way too hard on me, but fortunately this pregnancy has been kind to my energy level. Still I do not want to spend all my time cleaning and not enjoying. Note: This was our one hour focus day for the three bathrooms... we went over that time because let's just say an adult male member of the family is very slow at cleaning and became quite obsessive.
Sunday... ahhhhh, a day of rest. Not completely, but I did only do a small amount of projects and our one hour focus day room was the living room. I purposely assigned this one to Sunday because we had little to do in there and I thought we could do it in half the time allotted. But did I mention that adult member of the family that is very slow at cleaning? Well, let's just say in my preggo state I can work circles around "someone" and I had most of it done in 30 minutes while he was dusting approximately eight shelves.... I think he finished in about an hour and a half. And so, later that evening I decided to go ahead and do the dining room by myself even though it was the one hour focus room assigned for Monday.
With Mondays focus room done that means that today I can busy myself with various little projects adn trust me there are plenty of those around here to keep a girl busy.

But what I really want to tell that I did today was...... drumroll, please..... SLEEP !!! I do not sleep well in all my roundness and this baby is all in my pelvis, so I have a lot of hip pain when I sleep. About every hour I awake hurting on one side and roll very awkwardly to the other side heaving my body/belly with all my might. ;) And then there is my squished bladder. It seems this little miss is only requiring it to fill to one ounce or so at a time, so that keeps me up even if the hip pain does not. As of last Wednesday I had a sinus/head cold set in that makes it impossible to breath... as if my lungs were not already restricted. :) Truly I awaken about every hour, but generally I am fortunate that I fall back to sleep quickly. So, I am missing out on sleep, but still getting enough overall. This sinus thing had my throat sore last night, so around 3:AM I got up and had some hot chocolate and did some reading for about and hour. I went back to bed and sleep until daylight o'clock (whatever time that was) and got up. I went to lay on the couch and read another birth book ("Silent Knife"). After awhile everyone in the house was awake and migrated to that very room to watch some cartoons. As I lay there I started to doze off, so I looked around and all were entertained and Daddy was there... soooooo... I WENT BACK TO BED !!! I still awoke periodically and did my whole flipping thing, but would doze back off and I did this until..... drumroll, please..... about 10:AM !!!! This is huge because I am one of those "get up with the sunshine" kind of people and our whole household is that way. My husband was not, but he has had to adjust due to little faces coming in the room and putting their little faces in his and saying, "It's morning time Daddy!" or "Wake up Daddy!" (in ultra cheerful little morning people voices). Sleep... it really is great!

What I Am Wearing For My Waterbirth

2011-03-04T13:58:00.000-06:00

I am not extremely modest, yet I am. I am very open and honest when discussion come up about the body and I don't mind other people touching my tummy. In many situations I am quite comfortable showing my belly to other ladies and even have had a photo session in the past for belly shots. Although, I must admit I have them put away for my viewing only. I don't have issue with belly shots on the wall it is just that when it came time to hang MY belly on the wall I decided I was content with just having them for a keepsake tucked safely away in their envelope.

But when it comes time to bare all.... really bare all... I have just not been comfortable with the idea of those present seeing it all for extended periods of time. With a waterbirth that means there are some limitations on what I can wear. Most ladies I see in birthing videos seem to go completely nude or wear a sports bra and go nude below the boobs. That is not gonna be modest enough for me and I have been trying to decide what to do about this. I was wanting something like a swimsuit, but with longer skirting. I had considered cutting the panties out of a one piece maternity swimsuit that I have, but a couple of weeks ago we were out of town and I used it in an indoor pool and decided I liked it too much to cut it up. I also considered wearing my prepregancy swimsuit tank top, but in my present condition it does not quite cover even my belly and therefore, would definitely not cover my "below areas".

This is NOT what I am wearing, but it is a great sample of the type of thing that would work well in my opinion and is similar to the one I purchased. Mine has no sequins or beads and is a black and white print. I thought black was a little dismal for the birth. I would have preferred a pretty color, but I only had two options in the Motherhood store I was shopping at.

I can actually get some other use out of my dress as well. I am not one to wear dresses this short, but I am considering wearing mine around the house for comfort in the coming weeks to get some extra use out of it. I will use it for my water birth. And after the fact it is very lightweight and I think it will work well for a classy little sleepdress and be nursing friendly due to the stretchiness of the top. If you are looking at this type of thing for an option I would recommend you choose one that is lightweight and is stretchy Lycra blend. Cotton t-shirt material would be too stretchy when wet... and too heavy.

Bunny Update

2011-03-04T10:55:00.000-06:00

I had a request for a bunny update and because they are soooooo stinking cute I am just gonna have to do that. First a little review.

The first litter is now 3 weeks and 5 days old. That litter was six and all of them have survived. One was dropped by an adult that was visiting and we were advised to "put it out of it's misery", but it was not showing signs of pain. We decided to pray for it and wait awhile and that little one has made a full recovering as far as we can tell.

The second litter is now 1 week and 4 days old. That litter was 12 and we have lost two. The momma rabbit stuffed some towels into the nesting box and one of the weaker ones was unable to get to her to nurse, so we found that one dead and dehydrated. The other one that we lost was a couple days later and again the momma rabbit stuffed a towel in the nesting box and as she was leaving out she accidentally drug out several babies behind her and one got squished behind the nesting box. It was also one of the weaker ones. So sad to lose them, but that it nature and with 12 babies we knew from the beginning that we would probably lose some. There is one that is half the size of the others, but the others are doing well. We are trying to help this little one by taking it out and letting it nurse from it's momma all alone.

This is the little one (black & white) that is so much smaller and weaker. It is hard to tell by this pic, but it is half the size of the others.

Another pic of the tiny one (black & white).

This is the daddy rabbit of all the babies. He is now in solitary confinement and obviously very lonely in his new cage.

These are our new cages that we were able to get for a great bargain. We were going to spend our day last Saturday building cages, but I got these cheaper than I could buy the supplies to build. We only needed one set, but thinking into the future I wanted to get more while the bargain was there. Each large section is 5 seperate cages that each measure (30" x 30"). That times two is 10 cages . We got this all for $120, which is the equivalent of getting each cage area (30" x 30") for $12 each. That also comes with the water sysem in place and feeder trays. Our only issue at this point is that we will need to eventually have a roof of some sort over them. For the time being Peter (daddy rabbit) has a piece of tin over his cage and we move it to open his cage (cages are toploding).

This is a pic on one of the healthy bunnies from the second litter. Size is about 3" long by about 1 1/2" high. They have their fur some, but the eyes and ears are still closed and they resemble puppies at this stage of development. Miraculously in a matter of days they will appear more like bunnies and the eyes will open. Soon after the ears will open up. It is truly amazing to see them transform.

This is not a great pic, but this is the 10 youngest litter in their nesting box.

This is our first momma rabbit and her 6 babies that are now 3 weeks 5 days. They are about 7" long and 4" high. Bunnies are fast growers! Her litter has three that look like the daddy, two like the momma (like the one on top of the box), and one little "black sheep of the family" (black & white). Savannah has named and claimed this one as Zebra (her favorite animal).

Zebra got a trip inside the house. Zebra was not so sure about the surroundings.

Zebra gets cuddled like a little baby.... they all do! ;)

These little bunnies are not going to allow this much longer, though. They are started to kick their little "Wanna Be Mommas". Sierra is quite happy to be holding and mothering them while she can, though! We are all thoroughly enjoying our bunny babies!

And we have learned so much from them. We have dropped our Science curriculum for now and loving it. They are amazing little creatures and there is so much to learn about them. I have been truly surprised at some of ways rabbits mother their babies vs. the way humans do.

The mother actually stays away to protect her babies from predators. Mom has a strong scent that attracts other animals. The babies have no scent.
She usually on feeds them a couple of times at night to when predators are not around. That includes people, so you are not likely to see her feeding them at all, if you are trying to observe this. We thought our first mother was starving her babies.
If mother does not feed them it would be rare to be able to save them as there is nothing that can replace rabbit milk. A mother can be held on her back and forced to nurse one that is not getting feed and this is what we have had to do with our weaker babies from the larger litter. We are only doing this with the one little one now.
Male rabbits can maturely breed by only 10 weeks old.... Good to know. Seriously, there is no way to tell the sexes apart until the male is "mature".
Females can breed again as soon as their babies are out. So, solitary confinement for daddy bunny is a must.
Mother starts to run from her babies by the time they are about two weeks old. She is not willing to be a "human pacifier" like some of us human mothers. ;) She is one smart cookie!
Babies hop, but seem to lose this ability in several days. They then start to walk first on all fours and around two weeks they begin to hop, again.
And many more random facts.....

And they are really fun!!

Holy Moly Time Ticker!

2011-03-03T21:50:00.000-06:00

Holy Moly that little time ticker says I only have 13 days until my due date! Has anyone told my housekeeper this???!! ... Oh that would be me (the housekeeper)... this place is a disaster. I so do not want anyone seeing our chaos. Our house is very "lived in" although I have a LOT of issues with that. I hate clutter, messes, junk... but it seems to gravitate here. ;) Anyway, if I can just make it through tomorrow I have a plan to get the house ready for baby in just one hour per day while we are all taking Spring Break. We'll do a thorough clean of all the bathrooms on day one and move through the house one or two rooms at a time for seven days. The final day is the entire upstairs, but that will mostly be tidying up the kids rooms and not a thorough cleaning thing. I have some special projects to get done and some cooking for the freezer, but with my husband home and the kids taking the week off from schooling it should be easier to do some of these things.

More Birth Surprises!

2011-02-23T00:53:00.001-06:00

Yes, more birth surprises and they are not about me.... but I do only have THREE WEEKS UNTIL MY DUE DATE!!! .... Okay, back to what my real topic is, though. Two and half weeks ago we came home from church to find a surprise of baby bunnies from our rabbit, Mary (or that is her most recent name). We immediately removed the male (Peter) and placed him in with our other female (Patches). We knew when we did this we would likely have more baby bunnies in 30 days, but we were so wrong. Fifteen days passed and we noticed Patches was making a nest with her fur... and lying inside the nest and breathing rapidly. As we played with our recent litter of two week old bunnies I asked my older girls if they had ever seen Patches behave like she was behaving. They said they had not. We left Patches alone and went in the house for a while. When we came out the nesting box was filled with fur. Let me just tell you that if they do this you probably already have baby bunnies... and we did. This was Monday afternoon by the way. I reached in the nesting box and could feel the body heat and tiny little bumps that were bodies. Immediately, we once again removed Peter. As both our rabbit cages are now occupied by mothering rabbits Peter is temporarily in a portable dog kennel and looking very lonely, but never fear we plan to solve that problem this weekend.

So, this morning we checked on the rabbits and I was very curious as to how many new baby bunnies Patches had. Mary's six seemed like a lot to me, so when I reached in and started counting it went something like this...

1, 2, 3, 4, 5... Hmm... she might have as many as Mary....

6.... She does have as many as mary and I still feel more!

7, 8,... Still I feel more... wow!

9.... No way! And I am still feeling more!

10 !!!!!!...... Nope, that's not all!!!!

11..... Hmmm... Getting closer...

Well, just how high do you want to go?!! A DOZEN!!! Patches must have been listening the day my husband said, "Time to make the donuts!"..., And thought he said, "Time to make the bunnies!" A DOZEN BABY BUNNIES! So, I think we better get on that cage project! These little guys grow fast. We went from THREE rabbits to TWENTY-ONE rabbits in a matter of two weeks. And I am soooo glad I am not a rabbit... twelve at a time would be way too much... even six would be way too much. ;)

Four Weeks Until Due Date

2011-02-16T22:02:00.000-06:00

I can hardly believe how fast the time is passing. I only have four weeks until my due date. And I don't feel like my belly can stand to be any larger. With this pregnancy I have felt like I am riding a roller coaster. At any moment I feel like my stomach is going to flip and it is very strange. She is a wiggler, but not anymore than the others. I am in awe of why it feels like she is rearranging all my insides. Maybe I have just forgotten the feeling, but I really do not think so. And as much as she moves I really have not seen the large body parts like and arm or a leg move across my tummy. They do... but I mean when you clearly know that is an arm you are seeing. Her head is pressing down in my pelvis a lot and I really think I am carrying her lower than I have with my other four babies. They were always high. For some reason she seems to favor the right side of my pelvis. On the last ultrasound she had her arm up by her head and it keeps me wondering if she still has it up. I so hope she does not or that she will put it down before she attempts her exit. So, these are my thoughts... and I wanted to capture them here, so I can look back on it later.

Birth Surprises!

2011-02-11T16:06:00.000-06:00

We came home from church this past Sunday to the find a little surprise in one of our rabbit cages. There were six baby bunnies in there! We did not even know that the momma rabbit was expecting. Yes, we have had her caged with a male rabbit the whole time we have had her, but we did not think she was old enough to have babies. She is only about five months old and the male she bred with is about 2 weeks younger than she is. The kids went out to check on the rabbits and came back in saying they thought there were baby bunnies in the nesting box. I was about to dismiss their talk as just silliness, but something they said about the nesting box being filled with rabbit fur got my attention. Many times they have tried to convince me that they "think" baby bunnies are on the way by telling me that a female has been pulling out her fur. I go to check and find tiny amounts of fur in the cage due to shedding. This time something was said about their being a lot of fur and even mention of seeing something they thought were babies. Knowing that there was also a male in that cage I suddenly felt an urgency to check it out. What I found was in fact a nesting box filled with rabbit fur and the male rabbit inside. I startled him and he got out and immediately due to the movement he caused in the nest I saw little wiggles all amongst the fur! I immediately got the male out of the cage and moved him in with our older female rabbit (and yes, I realize that could mean I have another "birth story" to tell in 30 days). Back in the nest I could see several little heads bobbing up and down and I was immediately able to tell there were, at least, five babies and I estimated that it could possibly be as many as eight. That is quite a litter either way! Uncertain what we should do I decided we should leave them alone as much as possible to avoid traumatizing the mother. The problem with that is that the weather has been a bit extreme here for our area and for rabbits. We have had a lot of cold weather in the 20s range. Even with a heat lamp and tarps completely around the cages there was definitely cause for concern for the survival of these delicate little babies. Domestic rabbits (those are rabbits living under the care of humans) are at a huge disadvantage concerning weather condition versus rabbits living in the wild. In the wild a rabbit tunnels underground to a burrow, which protects it from extreme cold and heat. I really wanted to leave these babies alone to be cared for by their mother and not disturb "nature"; however, in reality the very idea that we have them in cages for pets means we have already disturbed nature haven't we? That being the case we have an obligation to help increase their survival rate in my opinion. And let me just say here that my husband did not agree. He thought we should just leave them alone and let them live or die. Okay... whatever... difference of opinion. ;) That night the forecast called for temps around 37 degrees and I knew they were probably okay with our heat lamps and tarping, but in the early hours of Monday morning I started to feel a bit anxious. I went to check on them early and was pleased to find that it was quite warm and there were in fact lots of warm bobbing bodies in that nest. Whew! Sweet relief!

We have confirmed that there are six babies! ...and one little "black sheep" in the family.

(Please overlook the nasty towel. In an effort to be quick I did not "pretty them up" for picture time.)

As the day passed and I checked the weather I knew the temp would once again be dropping into the 20s again... for one night... then, up to the upper 30s the next night.... then, back down into the 20s again for a few nights... or more. I told the kids we would be moving the rabbit cage inside the house when their daddy arrived home from work. When Cody arrived home I told him we were going to bring the cage in. I think he did not truly believe me and he went about doing his own thing. I persisted and slit open a large black garbage bag to lay down under the cage for sheeting to protect the floor area and catch the rabbit poop. I then, started considering what to do to have the cage raised, so I went into the potting shed and got five equal size flower pots to to sit the cage on (one fore each corner and one for the middle for added support). The only thing left to do was get the cage in. By this time I think Cody finally realized I was serious about it all. Together we picked up the cage and carried it in. It is very lightweight, but large and we did not want to jar the babies in their nest. So now... well our house kinda smells like a farm inside. Bleeeeechhh!

Of course, being humans we can not seem to "leave well enough alone", so we spent the first day fretting about the momma rabbit not feeding her babies. She never went in to feed and for this reason I was concerned that moving them in we may have done more harm than good. After a full day of worrying about this I finally found some information online. Apparently, a mother rabbit stays away from her babies due to instinct to keep from drawing attention and unwanted predators to the nest. See the momma has a strong scent and the babies do not, so they are safer with the momma away. Also, often the momma will only feed a couple of times and during the night when there is less activity around. And here we were thinking she had abandoned her babies... all the while she was protecting them. Amazing!

And in case you might wonder we have dropped all other Science for now to observe real life Science! The kids (and I) have learned so much and have had a great time.

Level 2 Ultrasound Scans (Pics)

2011-01-30T22:19:00.000-06:00

I just wanted to share the Level 2 Ultrasound scans that we had done this Friday. These are the 3D images. I loved seeing her moving around on the 4D images, but they would not let us video that. Bummer! The cord goes up her body and is tucked under her chin is these scans. No harm. At first Cody was alarmed and thought it was around her neck. At that point the ultrasound technician explained to him that even if it was it would not be cause for concern and they only get concerned when they see it wrapped around the neck twice. Then, she showed us how it was coming up from the belly button, up her chest, over her shoulder, and under her chin. Likely it is only staying there because she is snuggling it up and tucking her chin in.

In this first scan you can really see her features. She looks like my others and has that same little nose.

She looks like she is really resting here, but let me tell you she was very active during this scan. She kept kicking and punching the scan wand (transducer).

In this one the tech zoomed up and cropped out the areas around the face to focus on the face. Again, you can see that same little nose and if you look closely you can see that she has the same lips like all my others. The top lip has very define "peaks" and to me her lips look a little on the "fluffy" side like her brothers. And I can't tell you how much I love his big fluffy, juicy lips!

I am glad we got the chance to see this little glimpse and check out all her parts to make sure she is thriving and I am so excited that we will soon be seeing her in real time soon. I do however want to hold onto these moments of her squirmy little body safely tucked away inside of mine while I can. They grow up way to quickly and every moment is a treasure that I don't want to rush!

Baby Predictions Game Time!

2011-01-30T15:21:00.001-06:00

I have always wanted to do this, but never have actually take a sort of poll on what people's predictions are for the upcoming birth of my children. So, this time I am going to. Why? Simply.... I need something fun to do besides obsessing over the other birth details.

First I am going to give a few clues or things you might wonder about, then I will list the questions. The fun part is where you tell me your predictions.
My children's names are Savannah Faith, Sierra Faith, Caden Reese, Sahara Faith.... and so it is a given that her middle name is going to be Faith. All of my babies have ranged from 7 lbs. 6 oz. to 8lbs. 8 oz. with my smallest one being a schedule caesarean a couple of weeks early. My son is the only one I went into labor with and he was 8 lbs. 6 oz., if my memory serves me right. My labor started two days before my due date with him. My due date is March 16th. The level 2 ultrasound two days ago showed her weighing 5 lbs. 5 oz. already with almost 7 weeks until her due date. Also, this ultrasound showed a due date of March 11th. The first ultrasound shows a due date of March 16th. As far as length... I think they were all under 20 inches. Take all that for what you will. What I want to know is what you predict!!!

First name?
Date of birth?
Weight?
Length?

So, who wants to play along?! I am so excited to see what you all predict! I will try to repost this periodically until the birth and then, after the birth let you all know!

So, What Are We Going To Name This Little One?

2011-01-29T20:25:00.000-06:00

Today I got a message from my dear friend Tara asking me if we were going to name this baby girl with another "s" name. Well, that is a very interesting questioning and one that I can't even believe that I have not blogged about! It has actually been pretty interesting. And just to let you know we are not going to reveal the name or decide for sure on the name until the actual birth, so I will refer to one certain name as simply "X" in this post.

First of all, I want to state that we never planned to name our children with any particular letter, or theme, or other strangeness. And, I think God gives parents the names for their children in many different ways. I have one friend that prays and researches in depth and always tries to have her babies name all picked out before she ever knows the gender or sees the baby on ultrasound. I know others that purposely choose biblical names and others that try to find the most unique names or spell them in a very unique way. To each their own. I think God can give us all the names for our children in a very personal way for us. I will say that the only real "rules" that I have purposely followed are: (1) I don't like for names to be shortened (like mine.... fortunately, no one has ever called me Shan as opposed to my real name, Shannon), so I look for names that simply can not be shortened. (2) I like a lot of syllables and even long spellings, but it is not a"requirement"". (3) And I like gender specific names (if they are girls, I want it girly sounding... if they are boys, I want it masculine).

So, the next question to answer might be how did our other children get their names... or rather, how did we get them. Before I was EVER pregnant I had the name "Hayley" picked out for a girl. Loved it! It reminded me of all the old Haley Mills movies from my childhood and I just thought it was a pretty name. However, a few years before we actually joined the parenting world the name gained popularity and even a cousin of mine named his daughter that. Okay, so I am not one to intentionally name my children a popular name, so that was out.

When I was actually pregnant with Savannah I made a list of names and we just talked about them and thought Savannah was the one. Her middle name was also one of those names I had wanted for her first name, but thanks to Faith Hill making it popular I decided that it was better suited for her middle name. And Faith was chosen simply because I wanted her to have a strong faith in God. So, our firstborn was named Savannah Faith.
Shortly (like a week) after Savannah's birth I was sitting around watching TV and there was a character on a show named Sierra and I had the thought, "If I ever have another girl I like that name." I never told anyone... it was just a thought in my head. A few days later when my husband was off work and we were outside in the yard he looked at me and said, "You know, if we ever have another girl I like the name Sierra." Wow! Now, that was easy... the middle name.... not so easy. As with Savannah, I wanted Sierra to have a strong faith. It was suggested we use Hope like so many people do... Faith, Hope, Charity, but those are not the same as Faith. After much deliberation we decided that they would have the same middle name and it would be a wonderful thing when they grew up and married and still had there middle names in common when they changed to their married names. We found out later that this is actually quite common. With that settled our second child would be named Sierra Fatih.
When I became pregnant with Caden we realized that we had a little trend going with the girl's names and before we knew his gender we were pondering boy and girl names. It is really then that we realized that both of our girls had names that were geographic locations and both started with and "s". Also, not only were they just geographic locations they were also deserts. So, when we found out we were having a boy that was one less dilemna to deal with and we were happy not to have any "rules" to consider for his name. We never really had too much of a list for Caden. Boy names were hard for us and there were few that we really loved. I am not sure why. Caden was really the only one we were heavily considering. I was on the way to church one Wednesday night for a ladies Bible Study when the name Reese came to me. I believe God gave me that name for him that night. Strangely, as the weeks past I began to see the name wherever I went. I wanted to name him Reese Caden, but sadly I did not listen to God fully hear. I had several family members telling me it just did not "flow" right and that Caden Reese was the way I should go. Confession... I caved.... and it is one of my biggest regrets because I really think Reese is the name God gave him. Oddly, it was a couple of months AFTER Caden was born that we realized what we had done in regards to more complexity we had added to "the name game". Now, all the females in our home had "s" names and the males had "c" names. It was a total accident, but people think we did it on purpose. And it is embarassing to say, but we did it in total cluelessness, because we are smart like that. LOL! So, that is the story for his name, Ceden Reese.
And then it was time for another girl in our house. I really felt that if her name was too different from the other too girls it would not seem right. I wanted to name her Sahara because it was beautiful and mysterious. It also just happened to be my favorite and followed all the girl "rules" that had developed. Let's just say we had a LOT of opinions about what we should do and I knew after what I had done with Caden's name that I had to really NOT listen to what others opinions where on this. Her name was too important of a thing to let others sway me again and I wanted no regrets this time. I kept it secret (and boy my mother-in-law was not happy about that... it was nothing personal, but still she was not happy about not knowing the name). I did tell a few people that I knew would not try to influence our decision. The big reveal was at the time of birth.... Sahara Faith.
Now that brings us to the current little one in the womb.... now this one is really interesting, I think. Shortly after Sahara was born I started to have thoughts about a certain girl "s" name. I mentioned it to my husband, but it was just small talk and nothing more at the time. We were considering not having any more children due to the repeat caesarean births. Time moved on and lots of discussion and two years passed. We had started wanting another baby when Sahara turned one year old, but knowing that it would be caesarean I was not open to it at all. After discussing the possibility of a VBAC over the course of the next year we decided that under those circumstances we would have another baby (if God saw fit). And let's just say God saw fit INSTANTLY. Bam! Conception! LOL! We were on vacation for five weeks at which time this child was conceived and I was starting to show slight signs of the possibility of pregnancy before we got back from this vacation. What a cool souvenir! As we were heading home we dropped by to visit Cody's parents. His mother asked it I was pregnant to which I responded, "Why would you ask a thing like that? Not as far as we know" ;) The next week she dropped by our house and as soon as she arrived she started questioning if I was pregnant and we since we had planned to keep this a secret until we did some midwife research, etc. we were trying hard to change the subject. She finally said, "Well, if you are I have a name for this one! You should name her "X"!" And first of all I was thinking she has lost her mind, but how on earth did she come up with the name that has been on my heart. And we do not even know the gender. And she was one of the ones that always gives us a hard time about the "s" name thing. As time is passing everyone is asking about the name and we are able to brush it off mostly, but my mother would not quite calling me to give me her list of names... ranging from Sydney, Sheyenne, Shenandoah (because it matched mine more), and on and on. I kept telling her that I was not naming this baby until birth and I would "consider" them all, but no promises. She was persistent and one day she calls me and says, "I have the name for this baby! Your daddy picked it out. He has been out riding the four wheeler and he came in and said to me, "I have a name for Shannon's baby. It's "X"." I almost dropped the phone. Also, as I was dropping Sahara off at the church nursery one day and one of the nursery workers ask me point blank, "So, are you going to name this one "X"?" I had a teenage girl from our church ask the same question one morning. As well, even a few near strangers. I find that very peculiar, especially since "X" is not a common name at all. The real irony in the situation is that I had decided that it was time to break all the rules and go with a name that was totally different than the others for a first name, but I think God has already named her. ;) That that is the story up until now for the name for "Baby" Faith Swafford.

Level 2 Ultrasound Update in Galveston, TX

2011-01-28T22:47:00.000-06:00

Just for the record I want to say that I am glad we did the Level 2 ultrasound. Some of the images are still kind of strange for me because the bubbly look all over the surface of the baby (looks kind of wart-like), but it is simply amazing. I actually preferred seeing the portion that was in 4D. The 3D is the part where it looks kind of bubbly on the surface. The detail in all of it is simply amazing! I will have to see if I can scan the images to show here. I have a new scanner in my printer, but am clueless about it. I will say this though... there are no surprises as far as the baby's looks. She looks like all my other kiddos. Her lips look just like Caden's. All my children have the same lips for the most part, but Caden's are ultra fluffy. This baby's lips look ultra fluffy, too. Same little nose and ... well, everything. We got to see little wisps of hair floating around her head, too. Interestly, she had the umbilical cord tucked under her chin, which kind of scared my husband. The ultrasound technician pointed out that it is very common to have a cord around the neck and that it is no big deal, but this baby's cord was simply coming up from her tummy across her shoulder and under her neck. So glad she was able to tell Cody that and put his worried mind to ease.

We got great news about the placenta. It has moved up away from the c-section scar. And not just a little.... like WAY up.... like 6-7 inches up!! And the reason that is such good news is that we can rest assured the the placenta is not connected to any uterine scar tissue and it is safely out of the way for a vaginal birth. It was a double whammy in the joy category.

I have a lot of amniotic fluid .. like 24 percent, so I am going to double check with the "medical midwife" that is handling my case to make sure my bloodwork showed no sugar problems. They just referred to the amniotic fluid level as being "borderline" on the high side and sometimes that is seen in sugar level problems. I really do not thing that it is an issue, but will make sure we watch that.

Also, this little one is already estimated to weigh 5 pounds 5 ounces with 7 more weeks of growing to do. No surprise that she is bound to be a big girl. I expect she will be in the 8-9 pound range like my others. I was pondering the thought of her weight and thinking about how many babies are born and this one's current size. Amazing to me. I would like to have a small baby, but I am quite thankful that mine or very healthy babies and that this little one seems to be also. That is the most important thing of all. They checked her heart since her brother was born with holes in his heart (that later closed) because that is a genetic trait. All looked great there.

It was an exciting fun time for us and the kids to see the baby! Afterwards, we took them to eat pizza and shopping at the Dollar Tree. Love that we can let them pick out anything in there and still get out cheap... especially, since we went to The Rainforest Cafe after that to ride their jungle ride. That is getting to be an expensive little "treat". I was shocked when the man told me it was $32. And that was with Sahara being free to ride. $5 a ticket adds up quick when you multipy it times five. ;) And there will be a day when it will be times 7! Yikes.... nevermind... let's not think about that. LOL! Then, we took them down to the beach and let them run around for about 30 minutes or so. It was warm and sunshiney, but still kind of nippy with the gusty wind from the Gulf. We left Galveston via the ferry and we all enjoyed seeing the dolphins. We saw dolphins on the way there and on the way back. Very exciting!

Level 2 Ultrasound Today and "Advanced Maternal Age"

2011-01-27T06:59:00.000-06:00

So, today I having a 3D Ultrasound (or whatever... 2D). I don't want to do it and I originally declined, but my husband wants to "see the baby". Is it just me, but am I the only one that thinks these things are creepy? ;) I find the images disturbing for some reason. So, maybe it will be different when it is my own baby we are looking at.

And just for the record there is no "real" reason for the ultrasound. They want to do it because of my "advanced maternal age". Simply because they think 38 is old. Ha! I get that some women are "old" at 30, but I am not old. In fact, this has been the easiest of my SEVEN pregnancies! So, in your face Mr. Medical Whoever that label us women over 35 as "advance maternal age". Pregnancy is not an illness and I am not a victim of it. I feel awesome! Ladies, don't let them convince you that your are old. And all pregnancies are different. I have had rough ones and easy ones and I am guessing that my age is not a factor since this one has been the easiest.

Wow! Only Seven Weeks Unitl My Due Date / Birth Info

2011-01-27T06:46:00.000-06:00

I redid my little pregnancy ticker that you see with the little baby floating around because it had the wrong due date. As the day passed I was thinking about how far along I am and thinking I still have close to eight weeks left. As I pondered this I realized I have not been "deleting" any days off in my mind. I have been at like "8 weeks and holding". ;) Not on purpose. I have just been too busy to think. Anyhow, I decided to look at my little pocket planner and there it was.... my countdown. As of today I have seven weeks until my due date.

I really wanted to keep up with this pregnancy on my blog, but since I have had some not-so-nice comments about my pregnancy I have not done that. I have chosen to follow this scripture during this pregnancy:

"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." Phillipians 4:8

It is hard sometimes to do that... to think on the good, the pure, the lovely. We live in a world today where if you do anything that is out of the norm people will have something ugly to say about. I have three strikes against me concerning this pregnancy in the eyes of the world. First, I already have four children, which is "way too many". Second, I am of "advanced maternal age" (38). Third, and the last one... the most controversial we are "homebirthing" with a "high risk pregnancy". I love all this I must say. ;) Let me just hit a few points here about the latter of the three because that is the one that has kept me from blogging about this pregnancy. We are not really "homebirthing" as most people view it. I won't be here surrounded by my children in the loveliness of my home because my home is about 30 minutes (speeding) to the nearest hospital. If our area had a birth center we would be doing that, but since it does not we are kind of creating our own. And oddly, according to midwives it is quite common to do this. It is called a hotel. Really? Really. Took me some time to get used to the idea... and really I am still getting used to the idea. Unless I can find a home to "borrow" or rent for the day this is the only way I can be right around the corner from the hospiatl. And as "dumb" as some people think I am smart enough to know I need to be near a hospital. So, we have checked the local hotels that are nearest to the hospital and compared the layouts of rooms, the layouts of hotels, the ease of entry/exit routes, and the drive time required to transfer to the hospital. I have spent my time reading and educating myself about birth (normal, high risk, and possible problems). I will have a midwife with me, but my husband and I will be watching for problems that would require a transfer, also. One of the things we will be watching closeley will be the baby's heartrate. If the heartrate is out of the normal range for labor we will transfer to the hospital. Blood loss is another thing, since this could be a sign of uterine rupture or placental abruption. Some bleeding is expected in birth, but not a constant bleeding or passing of blood clots. Fever is an absolute no-no. Pain at the previous incision site is cause for concern, but as I have read is not a clear indicator of trouble. It is advised to transfer to the hospital, if there is pain beyond normal labor pains, though. Those are the main things. I have also read alot about different laboring positions that help the progress of labor and done some researching specifically on shoulder dystocia and manuevers that can be done if that were an issue. Now, I am sure you can see how it is hard to focus on the good, the pure, the lovely when you are reading all this stuff. ;) But really there is more of the good, the pure, and the lovely in these books than the negative things. In wisdom I feel I must educate myself of the negative also, though. I have said this before and I will say it again.... I did not "pick out" the books I have. I simply went to the library and ask to see what books they had on childbirth and there were only four, so I checked them all out and brought them home. I believe God lead me to those books. They are all very positive about real childbirth. They all have sections that are devoted to the "epidemic" of caesarean birth in our country and how to change it. They all have sections in them supporting VBAC deliveries. Now, I am not saying they all say "I" should try to VBAC, but that simply they are supportive of VBAC. The books I have are:

Ina May's Guide to Childbirth by Ina May Gaskin
Active Birth: The New Approach To Giving Birth Naturally by Janet Balaska
A Good Birth, A Safe Birth: Choosing and Having the Childbirth Expereince You Want by Diana Korte and Roberta Scaer
The Birth Book: Everything You Need To Know To Have a Safe and Satisfying Birth by William Sears, M.D. and Martha Sears, R.N.

I am reading the last book now and the others I have completed. They all are very different, yet very much the same. They all say that there is too much hospital intervention going on in birth in our country. They all say that birth is a natural and not medical issue in most circumstances. And they all say that a woman's body is designed to give birth and in most cases it can and will if left to do it without all the interventions. They all say that the interventions are usually the cause of fetal distress or failure to progress in labor and are responsible for the high caesarean rate in our country.

Amazingly, one of the things that are used to scare women away from trying to VBAC is that there is a 1 in 1,000 chance of placental abruption that puts the mother and baby at risk. What the doctors will not tell you is that there is a 1 in 1,000 chance of dying from having a caesarean. I find that very interesting! And just to be fair here is the qoute from the book, A Good Birth, As Safe Birth:

"The true caesaren maternal death rate, or the odds of a mother dying after a caesarean delivery, are about one per 1,000. Certainly this relatively high rate, compared to vaginal delivery, should be a strong reason for caution when the question of caesarean comes up." (Page 163)

This book goes on to say that:

"Almost half of caesarean mothers have serious complications from the surgery, some complications more easily treated than others. The three most frequent serious complications are infection, hemorrage, and internal problems from scarring or injury to other organs...." (Page 164)

Anyway, that is just a tiny bit in that chapter... yes, there is a whole chapter about "The Caesarean Epidemic" in that book... about 30 pages of information. I just qouted two parts that really stood out for me. If you have ever had a caesarean or might ever have one you should read this stuff. And again, I will point out that I have had to really try hard to focus on what is good, and pure, and lovely. And it may not seem that I am to an outsider, but this stuff I am reading is very empowering to me. I don't feel a sense of fear or anything like that when I read it. I view it as more of a gift that others have put these books together for me to learn from and to help me make the best decisions possible (along with my caregivers).

"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." Phillipians 4:8

Honestly, I have little support and very few people that I can even talk to openly about this birth. My family does not support me nor do most of my friends and that is sad because in the end they should be the ones I can turn to. When you get the "crazy look" or the unwanted advice you know that there is no point. But I am not trying to win them over. This is really between me and God and that is where my faith is. I believe that God designed my body and He did not design my body to be faulty. And not just my body. I am talking about the women in our country. The caesarean rate in my area is near 50% (and this varies regionally within the country and some places are more like 35%, etc.). Those two examples imply that 1/3 to 1/2 of the women that God created have faulty bodies. I don't buy that. I think we have a faulty medical system and women don't know what to do about it and are too scared to try. So, for me I am going to attempt to turn this thing around. I believe God is going to honor my faith in Him! I believe God is going to make this happen.... not me.... not the midwife... or anyone else.... just God and when He does I want Him to get all the glory.

"Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." Phillipians 4:8

{Negative comments will be deleted! This blog is for my children, myself, and my bloggy FRIENDS!}

It's All About Me!

2011-01-21T23:44:00.000-06:00

Well, not really, but I have been a bit "me focused" lately. I am absorbed in this pregnancy and the details that must be worked out. It has been very interesting and everytime I think there is nothing more to plan for I discover that there really is more. I have been planning for ordering my birth kit and some homeopathic remedy stuff. Also, I am trying to plan for all the things I need to take with me for the birth, as well as, the unresolved detail of where the birth will actually take place. So, yesterday I am thinking of all the things to have on hand... some garbage bags for various things, plenty of towels, and the little things like bendy straws. I realize that I have a pretty good list going and am feeling as if I may have everything on the list when a thought occurs to me, "If I have the bendy straws for drinking during labor, I probably need a cup!" Oh my gosh! It seems never ending! LOL! Okay, so I decided it might be wise to get a package of disposable cups. It is the small details like that that drive you nuts when planning for a birth outside of the hospital... and outside of your own home. I won't have my things or a nurse that I can push a button for. I will have a labor assistant, but she surely will not have a travelling closet of everything I get a whim for. So, I must prepare and think it all out... eshaustively. LOL! It is pretty funny. And the most surprising thing I think is that the midwife asked to have a crockpot... really? Apparently, they like to keep diluted olive oil warmed up in a crockpot of perineal soaks. Who knew?! So, now I have to pack up a crock pot of all things. I was thinking the microwave would do for anything that needed to be warm... and maybe it would... I better add that to my list of things to ask. See what I mean?! One thought leads to another thought and before you know it I am stressing over wondering if I have it all. Of course, I am sure I will never have it all, so I guess I better just chill out.

Anyway, it is not all about me.... but I seem to have slipped into my own world. I have to remember to come back to reality sometimes... Call a friend, send and email, post a facebook message, post a blog post, or go outside and try to find some sunshine. I am still out here everyone! And I have not forgotten everyone in my life or tried to alienate myself as it may seem. I just have a lot of little details to work out.

This Is What An Almost Seven Year Old Looks Like

2011-01-08T14:37:00.004-06:00

Sierra

6 years, 10 months, 3 weeks, and 1 day old...

Soon to be 7.

Interestingly, all of my kids have looked like carbon copies of one another for the most part, but something about Sierra has always been a tiny bit different. There is a uniqueness about her that is hard to explain. She is the easiest of my kids in many ways, yet has a very complex emotional personality. She is the most helpful, most thoughtful of my kids. She obviously has the gift of service and is eager to help most of the time. She is always making us stuff... usually out of paper... cards, crowns, paper toys that little hands destroy as soon as they touch them, etc.. She tries everything with gusto. She outdoes her older sister on many things and with a 3 year and 3 month age difference it is hard to imagine it is possible. Poor Savannah gets so frustrated about it. Savannah learned to ride a bike and Sierra was doing it a few short months later. Sierra can climb trees better. Sierra can blow bubbles with her bubblegum. She gets twice as much schoolwork done (not because she is smarter, but because she is a doer). Sierra started out very reserved and afraid of many things, but one day she just changed. She was a shy baby not wanting to be in the spotlight, but you would never know it now. She wants to be a "rock star" (not really a "rock" star as she does not truly know what that means, but she loves to be the center of attention). At church she is the one singing out uninhibited. She is a leader. She is usually trying to control us all and I tell everyone that she is going to be the President one day. She is the little Momma around here... and quite often has to get disciplined for it herself. ;) She is the one that at the age of two was telling me how to drive the car. No joke! When Savannah was in public school we would have to go pick her up and Sierra would always tell me to go (in the stop and go traffic of the pick-up line).. she would say, "You are going to miss your kid!" I would turn to her and say, "I think I know how to drive." and then, I would realize I was talking to a two year old. Quite funny indeed. She is controlling and highly irrational and emotional. I don't claim to always understand this one, but I do love her. I worry about her extreme emotions and guiding her on how to manage those emotions. I think that is a hard area to understand with anyone, but when you are the Momma you feel like you are responsible for teaching them how to handle their emotions... even when you are not so good with yor own. ;) At any rate we will make it through and I know that one day she is going to be one incredible little lady. And I think she is so very beautiful.

I just don't understand how six can look so much older. I am not one to adorn my children with bows in their hair (a few times a year) or add to their appearance with other things like lipgloss, etc.. I don't fuss daily over vanity and the perfect outfit. They can pick what thye wear unless we are going somewhere and even then I am not too picky as long as they look "cared for". I don't even care if they match sometimes. What I am saying is that I am not about vanity with my children, so it surprises me how they look so "big" and in the little everyday moments how beautiful they look.

Is It Crowded?

2011-01-08T00:27:00.001-06:00

Imagine this picture in a couple of months with one more little one on Daddy's lap.

I wonder if he can hold a baby and and iPad? ;)

I wonder how Princess Goo-Goo (Sahara, 2) is going to react to sharing her space.

I wonder where they will all find a place to fit on the couch to get a view of the iPad.

I wonder how safe it is for them to be sitting on the chair arms and back of the sofa. ;)

I wonder if Daddy's arms are going to be overwhelmed.

Time will tell very soon!

Tic-Toc, Tic-Toc.... Slow Down

2011-01-07T00:27:00.000-06:00

Wow! Today I was looking at my little pregnancy ticker on my blog and it says I have only 63 days until my due date! So, I realize that is only BARELY over two months. Then, I get an email from a fellow blogger congratulating me on only having NINE weeks left! What?! Seriously, that sounds even shorter to me. I think that really woke me up! Tic-Toc, tic-toc, ... the clock is seriously ticking away. I want to slow it down some.

Yep, you heard me right. I want to stay right here with my big round belly a little longer. Now, don't qoute me on that at 40 weeks when I can't reach my toes. ;) And don't look at the strange facial expressions I always seem to make in pictures.... I have mini-photographers here and they do not wait on the perfect look. ;) I figure if I don't just suck it up and post a pic you will never know what I look like at all. I must say I love how my floors don't look nearly as dirty in a snapshot as they do in real life... maybe I mopped that day. Anyhow.... So, this is me with two months (or NINE weeks) to go. I am only barely 5'3", so every bit of pregnancy shows on me. There is no hiding my obvious condition even early on. And aside from the rude comments from passersby I really do not ever want to hide it. I love having a big round baby belly. And right now I am sitting here feeling that little body roll around inside me. I just felt of some little part, which I can never figure out... maybe it is an arm or the bottom of a foot... maybe a knee... I don't know, but I know that as I felt it, rubbing it with my fingers that the little one inside is feeling me feeling of her and there is just nothing more precious than being the only one to experience that. And right now I can feel her pushing into the right side of my pelvis. Seriously, I have to move sometimes when she does that because it is so uncomfortable... not painful... just that I have to move to give her some room to move. And if that clock keeps ticking away so fast all this is going to be over way to soon!

Don't Overlook This Post on MY VIEW on Birth Control

2011-01-07T00:00:00.000-06:00

http://littlethingstx.blogspot.com/2010/12/brith-control.html
Sometimes these posts get all out of order and I don't want you to miss this one. Click on the link and it will take you to my post or scroll down the page and search for it.

Is Your Tree Still Up?

2010-12-29T08:51:00.001-06:00

Our tree is still up and we are going to need it here for the next few days to brighten up the gloominess! The weather forecast for the next FOUR days shows cloudy, windy, rainy days. Percentage of rain chances are 80%, 70%, 60%, 20% (Wednesday through Saturday). Blah!

Hmmm... I am thinking indoor "project time"! Movie Time (watching the Love Saga series by Janette Oke)! Cuddles with kiddos time!

What I Am Reading...

2010-12-26T12:25:00.000-06:00

Sorry... this has nothing to do with our homeschooling. I am actually reading something other than homeschooling stuff! Amazing! ;) I have decided to spend my last trimester of this pregnancy reading books about childbirth. I went to the library as a start and looked there and was surprised that have very little there, so I checked out the FOUR books they did have. Yes, they only had FOUR books on the topic of childbirth. These are the books I checked out:

Active Birth: The New Approach To Giving Birth Naturally by Janet Balaskas (1992)

A Good Birth, A Safe Birth: Choosing and Having the Childbirth Experience You Want by Korte & Scaer (1992)

The Birth Book: Everything You Need to Know to Have a Safe and Satisfying Birth by Sears & Sears (1994)

Ina May's Guide To Childbirth by Ina May Gaskin (2003)

I am scanning through them all, but the book I am reading is "Ina May's Guide To Childbirth" right now. I recommend this book to EVERY FEMALE.... anyone that could one day be pregnant, anyone that is pregnant, midwives, obstetriciatians, and nurses (or anyone else connected with birth in any way).

This book is so empowering! Just reading it confirms what I know... that the human body was designed to birth and that the alarmingly high c-section rate in this country is avoidable. When this book was printed the c-section rate in the United States was 24% (2003) and now it is closer to 50% (2010). In the area I live in the hospitals here have a 50% c-section rate. I think they need the read this book because the midwifery center that is run by Ina May is less than 2%. Wow! That ought to make the medical community stand up and listen and want to learn from this! And I must add that this center has been deliverying babies for over 30 years and has had thousands of births. I am tempted to relocate to Tennessee temporarily for the month of March! :)

Please do yourself a favor and read this book! I wish I could buy a copy for every woman I know and even the ones I don't.

Negative Commentors.... GO AWAY!

2010-12-17T20:11:00.000-06:00

I would put it mildly, BUT since some recent commentors have been so rude I will just say it....

GO AWAY !!!

I have been nice about it, but when you start directing your comments directly to my bloggy friends I will not tolerate it. This a friendly blog. I welcome SOME GENUINELY concerned comments, but rudeness will not be tolerated. I will promptly and happily delete your rude comments. Encouraging, Godly comments are always welcome on the other hand and I appreciate those that have a genuine concern in my situation. If you are truly concerned and you are a Christian I ask that you cover my situation in prayer. Please pray for God's will and the safest possible situtaion for the birth of my baby. There are those that simply do not understand that my situation could be dangerous no matter what route we go and that is why I want it covered in prayer. I believe that God will work it all out. And when He does I will give HIM all the glory. I will be happy whether He works it out in the form of a vaginal birth or repeat c-section.

Again, rude comments will be promptly deleted. Thank you very much and

GO AWAY !!!

Brith Control

2010-12-14T21:14:00.014-06:00

Q: Do I use birth control?
A: Yes, I do... natural birth control. By that I mean I am very aware of my ovulation time and menstrual cycle. All of my pregnancies.... yes, all SEVEN of them... have been either planned or left to chance knowing that it would be possible to get pregnant.

Q: Seven pregnancies? But you only have four children...
A: Savannah in 2000, miscarriage in the 6th week, Sierra in 2004, fetal demise at the 20th week due to a previous fall, Caden in 2006, Sahara in 2008

Q: Have I ever used synthetic birth control of any type?
A: Yes, for almost ten years. I got on the pill when I was engaged at the age of 18 and I thought it was the best thing ever. I went from having extreme cramps during my period to a very little pain and I thought I had truly found heaven. I never got off of it after that even when it was not necessary to have a birth control method. I stayed on it for the fringe benefits of not hurting so badly during menstruation. I stayed on it until I was 27 and my husband and I decided that we were ready to try our chances at being parents.

Q: When did I realize how bad it was for my body?
A: When it took NINE months to get out of my system (or mostly out... who knows what affect it still has on my body even now?!). Yes, I said nine months and what I mean by that is that I was always a 28 day (4 week) cycle kind of girl. After quitting the pill my cycle was like 8 weeks and over the next nine months slowly got back down to a 4 week cycle and that was the month I got pregnant. I was very aware that there is no way that had been good for my body. While I sat back and saw people all around me getting pregnant easily I had to wait for the pill to get out of my system.

Q: Do I ever wonder if my first miscarriage was a result of the affects of the pill?
A: I do wonder. And I suspect that it could have had some affect. In the case of my miscarriage the egg did not implant high up in the uterus like it needs to. Rather it implanted low down at the edge of my cervix. Who knows why? Only God. I will never know, but one thing I did know is that I did not want to ever use the pill again, just in case it had been partially or fully the reason. It was then that God really started to change my heart about who should be controlling how many children I have. It is not me, but God.

Q: Do I think it is "wrong" to use birth control, such as, the pill, IUDs, the patch, implants, etc.?
A: I think for me it is, because God has given ME a conviction about it.

Q: Do I think it is "wrong" to use natural methods of birth control?
A: No, because I think God gives us these "signs" in our bodies that are not wrong to follow naturally. If we are overwhelmed with what our life is, I think that we should use wisdom regarding adding more to our lives. Or in some circumstances, like mine, I was very cautious about getting pregnant again after four c-sections. For a while I just avoided "activity" when I knew I was ovulating.

Q: Is it harder to avoid "activity" during ovulation? (And this may be too much info for some of you, but I am addressing it because in private conversations with other ladies it comes up and most are ashamed to talk about it.)
A: I think God gives all of us a natural "animal instinct" and I find that it is harder to avoid "activity" during ovulation. Much like animals in the wild I think men and women are drawn to each other during ovulation and it is much harder to resist. I think it is just part of God's design that we "be fruitful and multiply".

Q: Do I ever wonder what blessings I have missed out on because of my choice to use the pill early on?
A: Yes, when I look at my beautiful children I think about how there could be even more of them. I think about it, but it is too late to spend my time regretting it. My husband and I agree that we wish we had started sooner with having children. I think about my older daughter that does not like being the oldest. She wishes for an older sibling all the time and she does seem to be "not quite right" as an oldest child and that makes me wonder if maybe she wasn't supposed to be the oldest. I wonder if one (or some) of those times that I was ovulating if an egg that was supposed to be fertilized was hindered from it by the pill and flushed straight out of my body without fulfilling it's intended purpose in life.

Q: Do I believe synthetic birth control can cause abortion to a fertilized egg (AKA baby)?
A: Yes, I do and I think it can happen and you never even realize it. If you have ever had a very heavy period or one that lasts longer than usual it is more likely than you may realize that the egg was in fact fertilized (became a baby) for a brief time and was aborted by birth control and flushed out of the body. It is a sad fact that few people realize when they choose synthetic birth control methods. I never knew it was a possibility, but no one tells you about that part. So, if you are pro-life and do not believe in abortion you might want to start rethinking synthetic birth control.

Q: What will I do in the future?
A: I wish I knew. I do not feel it is safe to continue having c-sections. I am stepping out on faith and using a midwife for this birth, but if the end result is another c-section I might have some important decisions to make and that may include sterilization for one of us. It will be a sad choice for me, if it comes to that. I am saying it now and CLAIMING IT... God is going to honor the choices I am making to attempt VBAC and I think it will be successful and I will not have to make any drastic decisions regarding sterilization. And that is why I am writing this post on birth control... it is well on my mind right now and I have a huge internal struggle to sort out. It is for all of you out there, as well, that might be going through a similar struggle or just do not realize some of the things that you might want to know.

I could go on and on.... if you have a question, please feel free to ask me. In the meantime I encourage you to educate yourself more and not to simply trust others (friends, doctors, or even me). This is not a topic that you can afford to make a mistake on. And all of us are going to have to answer to God one day for our choices. I recommend you pray about it. And remember God forgives us for our past choices if we just ask. Follow the convictions God gives YOU.

Note: Absolutely no negative comments will be allowed or responded to, so don't bother. Keep it friendly or keep it to yourself. My blog, my right to express my view and that is not an invitation to for opposing views. ;) Let's keep it friendly and God honoring on here, please.

A Full Week

2010-12-14T08:54:00.000-06:00

We are going to do a full week OF SCHOOL this week! I don't think we have done that in a while. We have had some crazy weeks and some stressful days for Momma to work through. Sometimes it was the things weighing heavily on my mind that kept us from doing a full week of school, but mostly it has been things on our schedule. Sometimes you just have to roll with it. If it is going to make life crazy, then it is better to not be crazy. Last week we had a week that went something like this:

Monday was free.
Tuesday the older two girls had an invitation to go to a play with our neighbor at their homeschool co-op.
That night would be 2+ hours of practice for our church musical.
Wednesday was free during the day, but church at 5:45 - about 8:30 with more practice for the church musical.
Thursday my husband took off work to spend the day with us and go to Seussical The Musical.
Friday was our Homeschool Co-op day.

From the beginning I knew we would only have Monday and Wednesday to do schooling, so two days does not make much for a week. I decided we would do some review work rather than try to tackle a week of work in two days. In reality my stress level was reaching all time highs about needing a caregiver, so we did one day of schooling in the end.

This week there is nothing on the schedule at all... even Wednesday night church services have been cancelled for the next two weeks. We will do a full week of school for both girls and then, my husband will be off for his public school Christmas break until January 3rd and so will we. So, it is going to be a "full week"..... happily, it should be an easier week for us, though.... since we don't have a crazy schedule.

Okay, so you might want to see a pic from our church musical....

Sierra is the one in the really large burgundy costume front row.

Savannah is all the way to the right.

Cody is the tallest one on the right side (He played the role of Cascius, the tax collector and had a lot of lines and some singing parts... He was nervous, but never missed a beat!)

The whole cast was awesome and put in a lot of hours of work on their parts and the real live Baby Jesus just made it so beautiful! Our church is a huge blessing in our lives!

What The Kids Are Getting For Christmas

2010-12-12T22:22:00.048-06:00

Since I posted about what the kids all want for Christmas, I thought I might post about what they are actually getting this year. I have the shopping done for them, so there should be no changes. I am not just posting this to tell the world about their presents. It will serve as a great reminder for me of what they are getting. I was thinking that it might also serve as ideas for others out there that need ideas for their own children. Or there may be families out there that wonder what a family with four kids buy their children.

First of all, I want to say that we don't set a dollar amount for spending. On average it probably turns out to be $50 a child, but we don't focus on that. Last year I think we spent under $30 on one of the kids and $70 on another. And I don't worry about that because my main focus is on getting something that is their "heart's desire" (heart's desire item = an item that will make them really happen... even if it is not something they asked for). My kid's have never gotten a really large ticket item from us and I don't want to set the expectation that they are entitled to that. The grandparents have done some pricey gifts, but that is out of my control and not something that thrills me.

THE FOLLOWING IS WHAT THEY WILL GET FOR CHRISTMAS (approximate cost is included just for curiousities sake):
Savannah:
Rapunzel Barbie (Tangled) with Forest Friends that braid the hair ($34)
One of the Barbie Flaries from the Barbie Fashion Fairytale Movie (Shyne, Shimmer, or Glimmer) ($10)
One of the Littlelest Pet Shop Pet Sitter Sets ($13)
PJs ($4... special purchase)

Sierra:
Fashion Fairytale Barbie with light-up wings ($20)
One of the Barbie Flaries from the Barbie Fashion Fairytale Movie (Shyne, Shimmer, or Glimmer) ($10)
One of the Littlelest Pet Shop Pet Sitter Sets ($13)
PJs ($4... special purchase)

Caden:
Blue Guitar ($32... to replace the well-loved one that he wore completely out)
Fisher Price Whirling Airplane ($10)
Blow Up Punching Bag ($4)
PJs -- Two sets ($4 each... special purchase)

Sahara:
Pink Cowboy Boots ($12.... Yes! At the Dollar General Store!... and soft rubbery soles!)
Pink Ukelele ($10... so she will have a "mini-guitar" like brother)
One of the Barbie Flaries from the Barbie Fashion Fairytale Movie (Shyne, Shimmer, or Glimmer) ($10... so she will get a big girl doll like her two sisters... and was easier to buy all three dolls than deliberate over which to get)
PJs ($4... special purchase)

Stockings will have various age appropriate things in the them. The older three have some $1 craft kits, bubble gum tape, novelty chocolates, funky socks, ring pop suckers, or whatever seemed fitting. Sahara's will have a tiny cheap baby doll in it, a novelty chocolate, and ring pops.

I think they are going to be thrilled!

ooohhhh... also, I picked up some funky toe socks for my older two, so that will be an "extra"... I could not resist! And I got a $10 Nativity Scene Set! I could not pass that up either, because I have not been able to find a Nativity set at all locally.

Look at me.... I seem to be posting this week. ;)

All I Want For Christmas Is....

2010-12-12T22:03:00.000-06:00

Well, I don't actually have anything I want for Christmas, but I thought I would post my kid's requests just for fun. BECAUSE they are so unique! I love it. We don't make a big thing about asking them what they want or what they want Santa to bring. I can say that was really drilled in Savannah's head when she was really young by the relatives and it made for some greedy past Christmases. But obviously that sort of thing can be turned around and there is hope that you can get the greedy out of them. So, without further ado I will start with SAVANNAH'S requests. She wants chickens!... and a male rat terrier (dog)! Pretty odd requests I would say. Over the past few months we have gotten three rabbits and she loves them and has always loved animals. I guess she thinks chickens would just be fun to have and she talks about us having eggs that we would not have to buy (...I have made this poor child ultra frugal it seems...). The male rat terrier is because she wants to have puppies by one of our other three female rat terriers. She is a total animal lover. She also wants to move to a farm.

Now the others are not nearly as interesting, but I am impressed. Why? Because they are so simple. No big flashy, splashy, high dollar requests. Just simple things. And I might mention that we no longer have our Dish Network as of last June, so they are not getting commercials streaming toys at them all day long anymore. It is quite refreshing! SIERRA wants any kind of Barbie doll.... maybe two. She has listed a couple of specific ones, but when asked which one she wanted most she easily narrowed it down to the Barbie Fashion Fairytale Barbie with the light-up wings. An easy $20 gift and she will be pleased... not bad.

CADEN doesn't even realize he has options and will be happy with any boy thing like a helicopter ("hopper copper"), airplane ("a-plane"), tractor, etc.. Pretty easy.

SAHARA is also clueless that she has options and will be happy with any variety of baby doll. In fact, I had a $10 doll picked out and she chose a $3 over that one.... and it is like one she already has. Whatever she wants, I supposed.

It is going to be easy to satisfy them all and that makes me one happy Momma! Not because it is all cheap stuff, but because they are easily satisfied. And, just in case you wonder, they are getting more than they requested and I have all the shopping done for them. ;)

So, Why Does It Matter HOW A Baby Comes Out?-- UPDATED

2010-12-12T15:54:00.001-06:00

Ahhhhh... the question everyone seems to want to know these days, yet few understand. Let's face it... in the United States most areas have a 50% c-section rate and most people have just gotten use to the idea of c-sections as part of birth. Some even prefer it, so they can "plan" it. I will never understand that, but it is the outlook for many women today. In my case I only "planned" to have two children originally. Even so, I still wanted a natural birth, but ended up with a c-section for my first birth. A couple of years later the hospitals started changing their policy to more of a "once a c-section, always a c-section" philosophy and started BANNING VBAC births. After my first c-section I had no options that I knew of and had to (or thought I had to) have a repeat c-section. Life changed and God changed my heart about children. I absolutely loved being a Momma.... and loved my children. In fact the first moments I held Savannah for the first time I said, "I could do this three or four more times!" Most women don't say that immediately after birth, whether it be via c-section or natural delivery. And when people ask how many children we will have I say, "I don't know, but I just take it one pregnancy at a time." At this point in my life, though.... it is a bit different. After FOUR c-sections there is more to it.. Is it safe to continue having c-sections?.... No. There is no doubt about that. If I am going to have more children there is going to have to be another way. If I can not have a natural birth I am going to have to reconsider having more children.... for the safety of the babies... myself... and so I will be here for the children I do have. So, for ME that is why it matters how a baby comes out.

I believe God designed our bodies and He designed our bodies to birth vaginally. There is a place for doctors when they are needed, but I do not believe pregnancy is an illness. I believe too many interventions are taking place by doctors and their staff that are creating an epidemic of c-section births. I also believe that one day they are going to answer to God for it. They have a chance to change things and now is the time, but as the doctor I saw about a VBAC delivery clearly stated that they just don't want the commitment it takes. Once a VBAC patient goes into labor the doctor is required to stay by her side to monitor her for a possible rupture and that could mean hours of waiting. Midwives are the only ones willling to do this it seems, but even they are put in an uncomfortable situation by hospitals that have banned VBAC births. That means midwives that take on VBAC clients must take on the extra risk of not having a hospital OR (operating room) down the hall in the event of a rupture. Even with ACOG (American Congress of Gynecology) stating that a trial of labor is always the safest way to attempt birth.

If you are facing your first birth... or second, etc..., it matters how that baby comes out because even if you think that may be the only baby you ever have life changes and sometimes your mind changes or and accidental pregnancy happens and you never know what that first c-section will mean for your future in birthing your babies. The more natural you go the better and save the interventions for when they are necessary. So, that is my view.... it matters how a baby comes out and I am proof.

UPDATE: In the above statement that I made about doctors having to answer to God about all the c-sections I was not referring to those doctors that are making that decision when it is necessary. I do believe it is sometimes necessary. I am referring to those doctors that are misleading their patients are rushing to do c-sections as a matter of convenience. I have also become aware that some doctors actually use a method called "Pit to Distress" to cause a situation where it is necessary to c-section. It is never my intention to offend anyone on my blog. This is simply a place for me to release the thoughts in my head (journal) because I have absolutely no one in my life that I feel I can share all these things with now. One day I want my children to be able to read about my thoughts in hopes that it will help them in some way.

Finally... A Care Provider!

2010-12-11T11:26:00.000-06:00

This has been one crazy little journey and just when I was at the brink of giving up... and having a breakdown... I finally have a caregiver. Last night I got a return call from a midwife literally as I was on the brink of throwing up my hands and giving up. You know it is really hard to not have a breakdown in front of your kids and I have managed to keep it together regarding the caregiver issue in front of them, but I was holding back the tears and holding on by a thread last night. At one point I told my husband I needed a rescue and needed him to make dinner.... AKA pancakes or something very simple, which midway he decided that hotdogs (bleeeechhhh!) were a better option for his cooking abilities and time limitations. I am just glad they all got fed something, if it is not what I would have fed them. I got to have a long conversation with this midwife and was so surprised she agreed to take my case on.

So, I have written a couple of posts recently on this subject, but to update everyone on why this is such a big deal I will give a quick rundown of the situation. First of all current stats... I am at 27 weeks and my due date is March 16th, 2011. I have had four previous c-sections. My situation is a bit extreme because I have had so many c-sections that is dangerous to continue having c-sections. On the other hand it can be dangerous to attempt a vaginal deliver due to risk of uterine rupture. I am at a crossroads in my life. I never thought I would want to have children, because my completely devoted mother always complained about motherhood. I was convince that was something I never wanted to experience for a long time. At the age of 27 I decided that it was not a part of life I wanted to miss out on with regret and my husband and I decided we would have our American Dream family... two kids and be done. They would be grown by the time we were both 50 years old and then, we would do whatever 50 year olds do when their kids are grown... move on to grandchildren, planning for retirement, etc.... who knows. It was a plan of sorts. Except, we quickly learned that our life is not always going to go according to our well laid out plans.... and THANK GOD FOR THAT! God has had a lot to teach us over the last eleven years. One... things don't have to go our way. Two... our plans need to align with God's plan and the Bible. Three... well, the list goes way beyond three points, but I am going to end it with this one... The world is likely to think you are crazy. ;)

So, here I am seeking out a VBAC delivery (VBAC = Vaginal Birth After Caesarean) for my fifth birth. My motivation is controversial to some and honestly most people do not even believe why I want this. I want the SAFEST option, but most people seem to think that this is about me wanting to have a "natural" vaginal birth. SAFETY is my first priority and I am tired of having surgery, IF it is not necessary. IF it turns out that it is necessary, then I am 100% for surgery. I just do not believe it is and the only way to know is to attempt a VBAC birth and a TOL (trial of labor). So, in the beginning of this pregnancy I contacted a midwife, Diana, that I knew had done a recent delivery for a friend of mine who was a VBA4C. After much consideratin, research, and tested she decided to take on my case with the understanding that the plan could change if she became uncomfortable with the situation and that I knew that the result could end in an emergency c-section. Unfortunately, a terribly tragic string of events have played out over the last 6 weeks that have made it impossible for her to continue with my case. None of these events are directly related to me, but greatly affect her decision that she can not continue with my case (and I totally understand!). About six weeks ago Diana had a VBAC client in labor that started screaming in pain and grabbing her incision site. With any VBAC client there is a risk of uterine rupture and they made the judgement call to transfer to the hospital, which resulted in an emergency c-section. The client did NOT have a rupture, but the fear of losing the mother or the baby was very traumatizing for the midwife. She contacted me to let me know that she needed to reconsider my case and that she was also leaving out of time for the birth of her grandbaby and would be gone for about a month. All was well, but I needed to start thinking through the possibility of a new plan. I wanted to give Diana space and time to be with her family as they prepared for her grandbabies birth, so I was determined not to call unless necessary even though she said to feel free to call. I did call her after about a week because my anxiety about the situation was starting to rise. She told me at that time, if I needed an answer now that the answer was going to have to be know because she did not have peace about it. At that time I decided to start searching for a doctor that would do a VBAC. Some do, but they are rare and most will not even consider my case. I had a couple of possiblities, but in the end... long story short.... the answer was no. Not because it is not possible, but because the doctors do not want the commitment it takes. With VBACs once the patient goes into labor the doctor must stay with the patient until birth is complete. Even if you can find a doctor that is willing to take on this commitment, then you have to consider their On-Call backup doctors. If they won't do it, then you are taking a huge chance since you have no idea of when you will go into natural labor. I had one doctor give me the lowdown on how high the risks of uterine rupture were as he explained why he can not take my case. A few moments later he proceeded to tell me that before hospitals changed their policies he did VBAC deliveries all the time with no problems.... Contradictory. He did not even realize he had killed his own case trying to convince me to c-section. Anyway, in the end I decided to give Diana time to deal with the trauma in hopes that she would decide to continue with my case.

Fast forward a few weeks as the wait was on for the birth of Diana's precious grandbaby. Finally, the mother went into labor on November 30th, but it ended in tragedy. The baby was stillborn. Horrifying! Obviously, it was not a proper time to contact her about my own dilemma. My dilemma over what to do could and would have to wait. This past Monday I received a call from Diana to discuss my case and little did I know there was so much more to this story. The day her grandbaby was stillborn one of Diana's fellow midwives had attended a funeral for baby that was the result of a uterine rupture. Diana was obviously not going to continue with my case.... and even attending any birth for her would be very difficult.

So, left with few options I began to try to sort through this all in my mind. I felt God was still wanting me to continue with a midwife, but I just did not even know where to begin searching now. Few midwives will even consider a case like mine, but Diana had given me a couple of names to try. I had the support of no one.... no one... not even my husband at this point. Actually, he was not even capable of having a rational conversation about any of this. He has a difficult time dealing with all of my pregnancies... he is a worrying to the extreme. And that is a whole other very long story. My option at this point was to call my preexisting doctor. I had called his office the week that Diana started reconsidering my case and they said they would take me since I was an established preexisting patient there. So, I called and they said they could not take me after all. !!! Seriously, are they kidding me. I actually laughed in hysterics as I told my husband later. ;) There recommendation was that I go to the clinic and schedule a c-section for a hospital in Galveston, TX over two hours away. My first question was, "What do you mean by a clinic?" Hello! Clearly my options were becoming the most limited imaginable. After discussing this with my husband I decided that for now my concern needed to be on getting prenatal care. We both agreed that the idea of going to Galveston for the birth was not an option we were going to consider. Even if I HAD to use a clinic for prenatal care I was not going to schedule a c-section in Galveston. I would just wait until I went into labor and go into the hospital of my choice locally for and emergency and take the Doctor On Call. I have been through that before anyway when I unexpectantly went into labor with Caden. At least there would be some chance I would get my preexisiting doctor who is an excellent surgeon. With that thought in mind I did a few online searches and found listings for midwives that were connected to this clinic they suggested, but apparently these listings were internet errors. While making those calls I was told that at least one branch of these clinics would not even take me at this point in my pregnancy.... Again, I laughed slightly hysterically as I told my husband. Imagine the possibility that not even the clinic would take me.... this is true craziness.

So, Thursday I talked to a friend for the first time about this... I have kept most this to myself other than what I have posted on my blog. She so sweetly listened to me ramble and said she would pray for me (you know who you are.... thank you for listening). On Friday we went to our homeschool co-op meeting and there are some ladies there that have used midwives. My mind was heavy with the thoughts of what to do and I had intended to make a phone call before leaving that day to contact one of the midwives Diana had told me about. I was still quite confused about what to do. I asked one of the ladies about her midwife and then, went in to do my nursery work for co-op. One of the other helpers in the nursery has used a midwife and moved to our area about a year ago. I was talking to her about the situation and confessed that I really had not called all the doctors around and she told me that it would be a waste of time anyway. She had moved here during her 28th week of pregnancy and had called every doctor in this area. She said that no one would take her that late in pregnancy even with prior prenatal care. And that is why I have not made those calls... I know in my heart that it would be the same for me. I have known that for a while, especially if it is for c-section. Their c-section schedules are filled.

So, I came home with the extreme burden of making those midwife phone calls and.... company dropped by. Sometimes you start to wonder if you are ever going to have time for what you need to do. ;) And sometimes you just need to sit and visit, anyway. So, I did. By the time my husband got in from work around 4:PM I was feeling the urgency of making some calls before the weekend. I called the first one... no answer.... left a message. I called another and had a great conversation, but she said no. And another... another great conversation and lots of recommendations and offers for support, but she also said no. That is when I told my husband it was time for a rescue... I rarely ask for a rescue, but I was in need as I was holding back tears of distress. And the phone rang! She probably thought I was crazy because the first thing I said was, "I am so glad you called because I am seriously stressing at this moment." We began to talk and I honestly thought she would also tell me no.... even after over 30 minutes of talking to her. I really thought she was going to offer to handle my prenatal care, but nothing else. Much to my surprise she said she would take my case. She even told me a story about a birth she attended of someone who had a VBA4C in which the baby was over 11 pounds to encourage me that it can be done. So, Sallie will be my new midwife.

And I have to share this because it is so sweet. This is what is so different about midwives. Sallie needs my records from Diana, so I will need to contact Diana in regards to that. She wants to take Diana to lunch and try to be an encouragement to here during this traumatic time. Also, there are always two midwives present at a birth nd she wants to see if Diana will be the second midwife in my case. I just love the compassion that midwives have for their patients and fellow midwives.

Lobster and Maps Discussion and ... Skeletons

2010-12-02T13:35:00.000-06:00

Today, while the rest of the homeschool world is making Christmas crafts we made lobsters! You can follow this link to find some super cute directions for egg carton lobsters. We studied Maine in our Adventures (My Father's World curriculum). As I am not one to stick to the "plan" I added this cute lobster craft. You are supposed to use PAPER egg cartons, but I had the styrofoam ones. I just went outside and spray painted them red. Within 10 minutes or less they were dry.

Also, we discussed directions on the map. The curriculum says to have the child(ren) find the state that is farthest east on the map. The problem is that my kids know which way is north at our house, but they had the idea that on the map north changed depending on where the map was at. Confused me a bit.... so, I thought this would be a good time to try to correct their misunderstanding. It was quite funny, though. Great teaching/learning opportunity!

We might just have to hang those lobsters on the tree.... Hey! They are red! I am thinking that they will look very cute alongside our skeletons on the tree. Well..... I guess I will have to explain that, also. ;) A couple weeks ago we started studying Colossians 1:18 for one of our memory verses ("And he is the head of the body, the church...") and the study extends to science and the body some. I thought it would be great to do a skeleton craft that I saw here and label it with some "members" of the "church" (the people in our immediate family and extended family, church leaders and teachers, etc.... click on the pic to enlarge to see labeling).

25 Weeks Already!

2010-11-30T17:19:00.003-06:00

It hit me a few days ago that I had hit the 25 week mark in this pregnancy! I have this little pregnancy journal that is divided into trimesters and it says I am in the third trimester! Can that be already???!!!! Really, this is zoooooooming by for me.

As a little update I still do not have a care provider, but hope to have that worked out soon.... hopefully. No worries. I am stepping out on faith and trusting God to work out the details. I have not missed any "appointments", yet. I will be due a check-up in the next week or so and probably glucose testing soon, but nothing major. I do feel that after the next week or so I will need to act more urgently about working out some details. If things don't fall into to place, then my best bet is to do some serious detail sorting over the Christmas holidays while my husband is off work.

Ooops! This was not supposed to post, yet. I must have had a finger slip.... I was going to add a pic.... that will have to come later, I guess.

I Am THRILLED!!!

2010-10-30T23:22:00.000-05:00

No, this is not some spooky post with a play on words for the sake of Halloween. I really am THRILLED and I wanted to let my bloggy friends know. I am so amazed that that you are all still out there reading my lonely little blog on the rare occassion that I post. I would have thought you would have all given up on me. It is a great feeling to know that even when there is not a lot being posted that you are all still out there. I am truly blessed! And I am still reading your blogs, as well. These days I do it much more quickly and I leave less comments than I used to. I have often found myself thinking how far I am from the blogger I used to be. I use to try to leave a comment on almost every post I read. Whew! I just have had to reprioritize my time allowances and now I try to stay off the internet during most of my time with my kids. And a huge thank you the helpful tips that have been coming my way.... regarding my blog "mess" and regarding midwife/doctor issues.

And just for fun.....

Here's wishing you your own THRILLS

on this Halloween!

May GOD bless you with lots of REAL THRILLS !!!!

And one more THRILL for those that might have missed it in my other post....

I am THRILLED to share that we are going to have another GIRL!

Blog Issues and The Big Reveal

2010-10-30T01:52:00.000-05:00

First of all, it migt take me awhile to straighten out this blog mess I have here. I think I have some old embedded html code from a prior layout that is causing my header portion to be all crazy looking. Any tips would be much appreciated on how to fix it. My new design elements are for http://www.thecutestblogontheblock.com/ and I tried another website before this and had the same problem. My old template was from TCBOTN, also and I remember entering the code in a different way than the simpler way they have now. I just can't remember the more difficult other way, so that I might take out the old bad code elements... and I have searched every aspect of Blogger. I am truly at a loss... and meanwhile my blog is stuck like this until further notice.

But on to the fun stuff.... Time to reveal the gender of this baby that I have finally been feeling kicking around in my belly as of tonight. There were some slight bumps over the last week, but they were just too faint to say for sure. Tonight this little one was kicking HER legs. Did you catch that?.... It is another girl! It seems that pink is the dominant color around here. We found out on my little boys fourth birthday. He has been dreaming of a "blue baby" that he wants to name "Blueberry", so I was very uncertain how he would react to the news. I started not to tell the kids at all for fear of breaking Caden's little heart on his birthday. In the end my husband was really pushing me to tell them and the kids were begging to know. I took a little trip to the store and bought a sweet little pink sleeper outfit and I wrapped in up in birthday paper. When I got how I told Caden he had a present to open, but this present was for our baby. I asked him if he understood and he really did, so I proceeded to tell him that he would get to open it for the baby. If the outfit inside was blue, then it was a boy and if it was pink, then it was a girl. As he tore it out he saw that it was pink and started jumping around like crazy and shouting with pure excitement, "It's a girl baby! It's a girl baby!" I was pleasantly surprised by his reaction. Sierra was a little pouty later because she wanted Caden to have a brother, but I told her he was happy and that was all that mattered. It really doesn't matter what the gender is. God sends us just what we need!

My Blog Needs Some Work So....

2010-10-29T12:14:00.003-05:00

You may see a big MESS around here for awhile, but that's okay because I am used to MESSES. I just hope I can clean this one up, if it gets too bad! LOL!

Got Plans?! Be Ready For Change!

2010-10-29T10:21:00.004-05:00

It seems that I sometimes get comfortable and lately I have to be honest I was thinking that I am really in a comfortable place. I don't know about all of you, but that makes me nervous. When I am content and think there is a plan in place I find myself wondering when the next trial is coming... and how am I going to handle it. I have been calmly wondering what is up. Not to say that I had all of life figured out, but some things regarding our birth plan were just "falling into place" and I resigned myself to just waiting quietly and patiently for all the final details to "fall into place" as well. My thinking is that there is no point in worry about things that we have plenty of time to think about. I mean, I am only at 20 weeks now, so there is time. Anyhow, I am not saying I "expect" things to fall apart.... not at all. I just tend to think that life is a series of necessary trials and times of growth. Well, I like growth... even if I don't always enjoy the trial, so when I am not "feeling" the trial I am not "feeling" the growth and I want growth. I have been having growth, but it has not felt as intense. Does that make sense? I have totally had to step out on faith with the birth plans for this pregnancy and that has been a huge period of growth, but at the same time it has been almost too easy up to this point. And I like easy, also, so I was not at all complaining. I was just choosing to handle it in a "quiet and still" sort of way and go with the flow and trust that God would work it all out. Well, He is... but it seems He might have a different plan. The uncertainty for me is the trial that I did not see coming. I like a PLAN! I like knowing somewhat what is going to take place even if there are certain aspects oout of my control. I am okay with that. So the plan was to use a midwife and when labor began I would call her and she along with the other midwife that would assist would come to my house for a homebirth. And in all honesty that was the one detail that I was not completely decided on or comfortable with and was still considering another option of some sort. I was still considering a different location for the birth that was close to a hospital. With my history (4 previous c-sections) I would feel more comfortable really close to a hospital. Part of that birth plan was careful, constant observation and immediate transfer to a hospital, if we felt there was any danger. That was Plan "A".

So, last Thursday I went for and ultrasound and all went well (I'll get back to the u/s in a later post), but that evening I got a Facebook message from my midwife that said she had had a bad experience with a VBAC delivery the day before and she was reconsidering my case. Can you imagine my shock? I am at 20 weeks! On the one hand I have plenty of time to finalize small details, but on the other hand 20 weeks is pretty far into the pregnancy to be just starting to develop a plan... a new plan. The thing is not only did my midwife have this really traumatizing delivery experience she also had a meeting with her midwife group the next day and they came down really hard on her about taking on VBAC patients. And let me say that I find that apalling. I thought that midwives were our (VBAC patients) were our advocates. I thought they were there to offer us a way and a choice that doctors don't want to offer for fear of lawsuits. I would think that her midwives friends would be proud of her for supporting mother's choices. I am confused by that. But that is okay... I don't have to understand everything. I do realize that her license and everything she has worked for would be at risk, but that is the case with any VBAC case that a midwife might take on. There is always a risk of rupture and it increases with with the more c-sections that have been done; however, a VABC after one c-section could rupture. A VBAC after four c-sections might be the one that goes perfect.

So, I waited a few days and called her and said I really need to know, if she is going to drop my case so that I can start searching out my options. I got a call back Wednesday and I could hear by the tone in her voice that it was not good. She basically told me if I needed an answer now that she does not feel at peace with continuing my case. In a month or two she might feel differently and that God might be trying to teach us both something here that we have to wait out to learn. My problem is... I am already 20 weeks! How long can I really wait it out. In two months she may still be saying that she has no peace about it and I would be 28 weeks. So, I told her that I would let her know about my appointment next week... That is another complicated part of the story. She is out of town to deliver her grandbaby and visit for a few weeks, so I was scheduled to see the other midwife that will be present at the birth. This lady has advised my midwife not to take me on as a patient. I am having a hard time with that because she would be the assisting midwife at the birth and I think she needs to be on board with the birth plan, also. So, I am just thinking I should not go to that appointment in light of the entire situation. I have to drive an hour and a half away for this appointment when I may be dropped as a patient, anyway. I would rather stay home and get school done with my kids and accomplish things than have a depressing day. There is nothing about my health that is in question, so I don't feel I "need" to be seen. I also have a fetal heart monitor, so I am able to check everything but my urine sample and fundal measurement... and the fundal measurement is going up at the right rate I am certain. My belly proves it well. ;) And I have been pregnant enough times (7) to know that all is well.

Yesterday, I made a call to doctor's office that takes VBAC patients. Again, this place is one and half hours away. I am okay with that. The hospitals and doctors in my area (within 30 minutes) do not allow VBAC deliveries. Now I might point out that a patient has rights that say that if they come into a hospital in labor they can not be refused care. The patient can refuse a repeat c-section, also and the hospital must provide them with care. BUT that does not seem like a fun situation to be in. It is an option for me.... wait until labor and just go in for a hospital delivery, but I don't want to be stressed out in labor fighting for my rights to choose my own birth style. Doesn't sound fun or likely to go well. So, at this office I called (and I am purposefully leaving out all locations, names of docs, names of midwives, etc.) that will take on VBAC patients is supposed to be calling me back sometime today to let me know if one of the doctors is willing to take on my case. If not, my next option is to start searching out options in Houston and that could add up to an ADDITIONAL hour drive into the plan. Laboring on the road for a lengthy time does not seem fun, either. ;)

So, I pray for clarity as I sit hear typing. I pray that all the people involved in the decision making for this birth will get direction from God. I pray that the safety of this baby and me or the first priority. My case is not an easy one.... there is no 100% safe way to go. If I have a repeat c-section, it is not safe. People want to believe that it is, but I assure you that I have four and their have been problems. At the end I have lived and had a healthy baby, but that does not mean it was safe. If I have a natural birth, their are risks there, also. I believe through my own research and educating myself that this is the safer of the two options. I believe I should have a Trial of Labor after Caesarean (TOLAC). I believe that a TOLAC should be the first route to go with a back-up plan for a repeat c-section, IF NECESSARY. And there are signs. There are indicators when you are in trouble and need to change the plan. A trained midwife or doctor should be able to recognize the signs in enough time to take action. You don't wait until it is a bad situation to change the plan. That has been my feeling all along. I have never been set on "just getting my way". This is about SAFETY for me and the baby. That is all I want. I can't tell you how many times I have heard the ridiculous comment about whether I just want to be able to say I had a natural birth. If that were the case I would never have had the first c-section. It was about SAFETY. And I was being told that my baby might die if I kept trying to have her natural... I later found out this was not so, but that is not part of this story, so I will spare you. ;) Truth is had I not had all the hospital/doctor intervention I probably could have had her and my other three natural just like God designed my body to do. We live in a culture that trusts Science over God. I want my trust to be in God. Having had four c-sections I realize that I might be at the mercy of Science for intervention because my body has already been damaged by Science. If that is the case I will trust God to get me through that as well.

But I say all this as a message, also. It's not just that I want to share my current dilemna about this time in my life... this trial. There is a message here to all. If you have a plan and it is not God's plan be ready for change, because he is going to give us what we need. It might not always be in our comfort zone, but have FAITH! God's plan is always greater than our plan!

Just A Few Pictures So You Know What These Kiddos Look Like

2010-10-18T17:40:00.005-05:00

I thought I would share a few photos, since I am so bad about not doing that. Those little faces on my sidebar have aged by about a year and a half! Maybe some day I will update those! ;) For now I will just share a few snap shots that kind of reflect normal life around here.

This is Sierra doing a little of her math.... outside. We have been trying to get outside and enjoy the fabulous whether we have been having this fall. I wish it was like this most of the year! I could really get use to temps ranging in the 70s and mid-80s for the highs. Check out Sierra's giant marker she created while we were sitting here. She was quite proud of herself. I want to note that this year when I bought the new Crayola Washable Markers I was a little surprise by the solid black tube. I am quite impressed that Crayola made this switch for environmental reasons. The only down side that I have found is that when the cap is not on the marker you don't know what color you have. Or if your six year old mixes up her marker caps and you decide to borrow one you might want to read the tube BEFORE writing. Twice I have been surprised by the color that comes out on my paper. ;) This problem could easily be solved for pre-readers by putting a color dot or sticker on the side of the tube.

This is Savannah looking at her math book. She does a lot of "looking at it" as this is the first year we have used a textbook. She has had a hard time with this switch, but the math, Rod & Staff, is a great book. I am very pleased with the layout of the book. I do sometimes wish it was a workbook, though.

This pic is of Savannah, Sierra, and Caden.
They were ready to play cowboys and indians with another homeschool family. All those things are homemade stick horses. That mischevious grin that Sierra has is because she is pointing a toy gun at the camera. Caden is pretty excited, too. Can you tell?! Savannah is looking very tall and grown up in the pic with exception to riding her zebra stick horse. She will be ten next month and Caden will be four this week! Time is flying by!

I caught Caden "reading" to Sahara while we were doing some school work. This was a sweet moment. He was telling her about all the pictures of our family at the zoo in this little scrapbook. I love sweet moments like this because usually when they disappear for a couple of minutes around the corner it looks more like this.....

Ooooooh! That was bad day when Daddy got home.... we were very busy with schooling that day and time got away from me and we did not get it cleaned up before Daddy got home. We meant to. In fact, that is the only reason I took a pic. I thought I would show Cody what the missed out on.... but he got to see it himself. Not a good moment!

But you can't stay mad at this face long! Even with snack crumbs on his face he is pretty cute. All boy... All mischief... all mess maker and he is pretty good at recruiting Sahara to be his "partner in crime". They do get in a lot of trouble on a daily basis!

Where Have I Been? Focusing! & Baby Update

2010-10-13T15:13:00.006-05:00

Well, no where really... right here at home taking care of my little family. Sometimes I think we just need to focus on what we have in front of us. I have missed blogging, but I have been really busy and I have spent a lot of time focusing. I have been focusing on:
... my kids and staying on track with their school
... staying up to some sort of "caught up" on laundry
... being what things we "need" in our lives and eliminating the things we don't need
... on being still and quiet as I prepare for the arrival of this little one
... and many other things.

I don't always stay focused, but I have been making a better effort of it lately. ;) My husband is well known for being a bit ADHD and tends to drag me around like a crazy woman and run me ragged. Even for him I am simply saying, "No, go if you want, but you are going to have to go alone." I realize there may be some of you out there that would not agree with that, but I have to take care of me and sometimes (usually) no one is going to do that but me. And trust me I am not very good at taking care of me, but on some level I am taking a stand during this busy season of my life. If I am not asked with consideration how I feel and how it affects me when my husband is making his spur of the moment plans, I simply point that out and say, "No." If he is saying that he wants to go to visit his parents two hours away I point out that I have stuff to prepare for the kids school and they are obviously not going to learn if I am not teaching them. It's working. By the way, my parents live two hours away, so this applies to seeing them, also. I simply have to slow down and do what I can manage. If I can't manage it, I don't need to be doing it.

Now, just a little update on my pregnancy...
I am 18 weeks, feeling great, getting round, hearing a strong 150-160 range heartbeat, not feeling movement due to caesarean nerve damage, anxiously awaiting feeling movement probably around the 20th week, using a midwife and loving that they come to your house, not getting enough exercise :( , and trying to avoid thinking of labor for now ;) , feeling and seeing my varicose veins surface (bleeeeek), thanking God that varicose veins go away after birth, eating healthy.... I think that is about it.

I will be using a midwife and that is very different. I have had four caesareans and only gone into spontaneous labor one time. Because of my birth history I can not use our local hospital. They will not allow attempts to VBAC. There are a couple of hospitals over two hours away that will allow VBACs, but I have decided with the midwives recommendation to stay home. The midwife says that mothers just react better to birth at home and it is much easier on the mother. Homebirth is not something I am completely comfortable with, but that is the route we have chosen. And that is why I have trying to be quiet and still and focused. I know that I need calm all around me right now. In the event that the midwife sees a need to transfer to the hospital we will make that decision and be able to be there in under 30 minutes. If that happens I will have to have a caesarean and if that is necessary I will be okay with that. I feel I am in good hands and my midwife has a history of good judgment calls.

One last thing and I am getting back to the reality that is calling all around me... I LOVE this time of year!!! This is my favorite time of year and I love the fall weather. I hope you all are enjoying your fall and if you live somewhere as hot as Southeast Texas I hope you are getting the relief we are enjoying right now.

Funny Things They Have Said Lately.... Mostly Caden

2010-08-21T07:26:00.001-05:00

Caden: Momma, can you get me something to drink?
Me: Do you want some lemonade?
Caden: Yeah! Lemon-lade is good!

Me: Caden, what are those things flying in the sky?
Caden: A-planes and Hopper-coppers.

On vacation this Summer everytime Cody would walk away Sahara would start calling after him.
Sahara (Goo-Goo): Daddy, I hudge you! (Daddy, I love you!)

Savannah: Meeting! Meeting! We're having a little kids meeting. Mariah and Anaiah are coming over. Daddy told me the secret!
Me: (from around the corner as I hear it all) Hmmm... Daddy told you the secret, huh?!!!
[Daddy has a worse time keeping secrets than the kids do at this house. ;) ]

Caden wanted to swing on the big kid swing rather than the toddler swing and asked me to help him on. Surprisingly, they grow so fast that he really is old enough for it much to his surprise. As he was swinging his feet were little dragging in the grass below and with a very surprised look on his face he said, "Wow! How did that happen?!"
I said, "You grew!"
Caden, "How did that happen?!"
Me, "You grew! I bet you can even get on it all by yourself, if you try."
Caden hopped off the swing and attempted to get back on unassisted. Success! His face was glowing with excitement and surprise as he said, "I did it!"
Me, "You are really a big boy now!"

Caden had been told to go upstairs to get something and he started up the stairs, but came running back saying, "I'm scared!"
Sierra said, "Don't be scared. God is with you and He created you. He is this great big Creator! I'll go with you."

Morning Sicknes Is SO GROSS !

2010-08-20T15:58:00.003-05:00

.... But I am glad it is NOT me!! I am starting to think that Caden is having morning sickness for me! Yes, my three year old! I know it seems crazy, but when we were on vacation around the time that morning sickness normally starts (approximately 4 weeks gestation) Caden started having an extremely sensitive gag reflex. It was quite funny to laugh about! Here was this little three year old boy that would smell something foul smelling along with the rest of us, yet he would begin gagging over it while we all watched in horror at the possibility of him puking. Today he ate his lunch... watermelon... a half P, B, & J... and one apple wedge. He asked me for another apple, so I cut it up for him and called him back to the table. He walked up with a scrunched up nose and said, "Ugh! What's that awful smell?!" Then, he started gagging as I laughed, but tried to calm him. Then, he puked up ALL his lunch to my horror! GROSS! So, what do you you think?????? Can a three year old take on Momma's morning sickness? I have had NONE!!!! NONE!!!

Our Curriculum Choices for our 2010-2011 School Year

2010-08-20T14:28:00.005-05:00

Animal Study: "Patches"

Character Training: "Patches"

Life Skills: "Patches"

I just wanted to post a list of the resources we will be using this year. I seem to be seeing this sort of thing all over the blogosphere, so I thought I would share mine. For the most part we use My Father's World and I highly recommend it, but we do alter it to "fit" us and some of our preferences. For instance, they recommend Rod and Staff Spelling for 2nd grade, but after that they recommend switching to Spelling Power from 3rd-12th grade. I like Spelling Power and I almost bought it last year, but we LOVE the Rod and Staff Spelling. So, for now we are sticking with it... maybe later we will change to Spelling Power and only time will tell. No more examples... I'll get on with my list.

Some things we will do together, some things, seperate and I will try to note that clearly.

1st Grade-- for Sierra:

MFW 1st Grade (minus Drawing With Children; minus the recommend Math book -- for now)

A Beka K Math that we did not finish, yet. We will zoom through this really because I have it already. Once we finish it up we will get the recommended Math or something else. I kind of forgot this detail this Summer. Shhhhh!! No big deal, because I won't need it right away. ;)

4th Grade-- Savannah:

MFW Adventures (because we did not finish last year or this Summer as intended. Once we finish this up we will go straight into MFW ECC and it is likely that we will speed up some of Adventures where we can)

Rod and Staff 4th Grade Spelling

Primary Language Lessons (1-3 Lessons per day: I confess I was adjusting to homeschooling and this is recommended for 2nd-3rd grade, but we are using it for 4th: once done we will order Intermediate Language Lessons and begin that)

Rod and Staff 4th & 5th Grade Math (We used A Beka last year and I used it a slower pace, but still Savannah has done most of what is in the R/S 4th & 5th grade books, so I am going to pick and choose what she needs from the two books. She should complete the year ready to start the 6th grade books even though she will only be going into 5th grade level... ??? Confusing, huh?! David Hazell says that if your child knows what grade she is in you are probably doing something wrong... We must be doing something right!)

Letter Writing.... not a book... we are just going to have Savannah write! We met Amish Pen Pals this Summer and possibly some others.

All Ages-- Together:

MFW 1st Grade (All will participate in calendar time, Science, Storytime & crafts when possible, and phonics & math games)

MFW Adventures (All will participat in History & Science when possible)

Consider God's Creation Science (This is a 2-3 year program, but do-able in 1; I just love it so much that I want to use it even though MFW is VERY complete. We will use this to add to MFW 1st & Adventures and work through the rest of it as time allows. My kids love Science, so I hope it can be a great motivator to get Savannah to focus.)

Cooking/Sewing/Homemaking-- I do not have a "curriculum' for this, but I want to really train my kids this year to be helpers to one another. We need teamwork and I plan to have them in the kitchen as much as possible, as well as, helping with daily chores that are in need of focus. I want them to leave home one day knowing how a home should function and well equipped to manage their homes and families. To make it fun we will be using two children's cookbooks ("Williams-Sonoma the kid's cookbook" and "Kid's fun & healthy COOKBOOK" by DK).

Art: We will be continuing with "I Can Do All Things" that is recommended for Adventures; Draw To Learn About Jesus by Notgrass (Had I been thinking I might have bought the one for Proverbs, since you learn Proverbs weekly in MFW 1st); Dover Coloring Books (Sea Life; Exotic Butterflies & Moths; Backyard Nature) & Dover Stain Glass Coloring Book Kits (Wild Animals; Fairies; Butterfly Designs)

Music Time: I will try to play random music all day (children's music; Bible songs; bluegrass ... my kids want to learn to play fiddle; worship songs); hopefully, violin lessons (online or in person); Violin study using "Violin Primer For Beginners" by Jim Tolles and "A New Tune A Day for Violin: Book 1" by Sarah Pope

Audio Story Time: This will be used for listening to things such as Jonathon Park CDs, books on tape from the library, etc.

Video Time: When we left in June on our five week vacation we cancelled or Dish Network. I believe it needed to be done for several reasons: commercials, inappropriate content on even children's programs, personal self control (my husband), & it was waste of our money for the lack of usage other than cartoon channels. Caden was addicted, also... and that is all he was wanting to do. Regarding my husband, what I mean is that he watched very little, but what was drawing him in was not appropriate. He might want to watch the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), but the Spike channel is full of trashy commercials and "bleeped" out words. I think your mind still "imagines" the words and that is as bad as them being on the TV. Back on topic....... I want to still allow my kids some movie time. We still have our own movie collection and I think one every other day or so would not be so bad, especially the ones from Lifeway, etc..

Exercise & Free Play: Thank God Fall is coming!!! I want to get outdoors. I NEED TO to prepare my body for labor, but have been taking it easy until the end of the first trimester. The kids need exercise to, of course! Gymnastics is still up for consideration, but I just do not know if we can swing it in this "season" of our life.

Computer time: Games, Learning games, Typing, Spanish, etc.
4-H (not sure what we are doing, but "Patches" could get involved
Co-op classes (For us it is all about friendships and anything they learn is just a "bonus"; Savannah will be taking World History and Gardening 101; Sierra will be taking Missions which includes some geography and cultures and Math Using Learning Through Literature); I am sure we will attend several theatre productions again this year as that is a love of ours and enjoy park day time after co-op.

FOR ANYONE OUT THERE READING THAT MIGHT BE INTIMIDATED BY THIS AND THINK IT IS AMAZING WE WILL BE DOING ALL THIS.... this is a ""plan" and we alter our plans alot! :) Mainly, it is a guideline, but we are not bound by it. Some of these activities are for "busywork"... You know, if "idle" hands are left with nothing to do, they start to get into trouble. If the kids are grumpy are arguing it might be a good time to pull out an "Art Activity", game, puzzle, or do a craft. I want alot on the "plan", so I have a lot to choose from.

As far as our schedule.... I don't have one, but we are jumping in full force Monday with or without one anyway!!! Sink or swim we are diving in!!! A schedule will have to "develop". Ha!!! It'll work out. Last year I fought with the perfect schedule, but by year end we had one that was very variable and it worked for us. This year we will do a similar thing and let life form the schedule.

ENJOY YOUR YEAR!!!

My Favorite School Supply Find

2010-08-19T21:51:00.003-05:00

Every year I have a hard time finding brown construction paper. It seems like this would be a standard color in the multi-color packs, but it is not and for some reason it seems to be the color we need the most. This Summer while on vacation I made a quick run into Hobby Lobby for an unrelated item and I stumbled upon their construction paper aisle! They have all the colors of the rainbow and beyond. Prices are $1.77 for a package of 50 sheets! The brand is Sunworks. And they are not bond like a tablet, so you are not always having to be careful not to tear your edge. I picked up a package of brown while on vacation on the off chance this was fluke Hobby Lobby and the other locations do not have this. I did NOT want to miss this chance to get my hard to find brown construction paper. Eventually, I plan to go buy a package of every color they have. This makes me and my kids soooooo very happy! ;)

Apparently, they also sell it at Amazon for $1.40, but the shipping is $3.95
http://www.amazon.com/SunWorks-Construction-Paper-Heavyweight-Sheets/dp/B001E6681O

Staples also has it for $1.49, but not certain or shipping or if they have it in store.
http://www.staples.com/Construction-Paper-9-x-12-Brown/product_402629?cm_mmc=GoogleBase-_-Shopping-_-Office_Supplies%3ETeaching_Supplies-_-402629-PAC-103605&cid=CSE:GoogleBase:Office_Supplies:Teaching_Supplies:402629:PAC-103605

Office Depot has DARK Brown has for $1.79, but again I am uncertain of shipping or if they have it in store.
http://www.officedepot.com/a/products/368009/Pacon-SunWorks-Groundwood-Construction-Paper-9/?cm_mmc=Mercent-_-Google-_-Paper_Forms_Envelopes-_-368009&utm_source=Google&utm_medium=CPC&utm_campaign=plusbox-beta&mr:trackingCode=1B9B6C72-E85E-DF11-BAA3-0019B9C043EB&mr:referralID=NA

First Day of School 2010 & Our Focus

2010-08-19T13:28:00.004-05:00

Today is our first day of school. Sort of.... we are getting back in to our routine gradually. I realized mid-week that My Father's World recommends starting 1st Grade on a Thursday and after looking closer at the lesson plans I agree that is the best way to use this curriculum. Also, this is going to allow us to make a smoother more gradual transition into our year. Today and tomorrow we will only do 1st Grade with Savannah (4th) sitting in. There is nothing for Savannah to really do with us these first few days so we are focusing on character training with her. Our focus this week for her will be to not be a distraction. Savannah will do calendar time and those basic math activities and then, she can sit and read, etc. for this hour that I work with Sierra. Savannah tends to try to talk to us about what she is reading or show us everything which is a major distraction. I love that she wants to talk to us, but it makes what we are doing take twice as long. I think these two days will be a great chance for her to practice not being a distraction. As well, I want Sierra to learn to focus on her work and not allow the distraction to suck her in. During these days our focus with the two little ones is strictly character training. It seems some little boy thinks that every thing is to be throw wildly through the air like a grenade. So, Caden will be learning NOT to throw things and Sahara will be learning not to follow his lead in doing so. Caden will also be learning to clean up his messes, which is a big deal for him. He is still a baby in many ways and does not think clean up is "really" his job. Time to change that line of thinking. ;)

And because we do things just a bit different than everyone else this is all of the kids on our first "practice" day of school one day last week. Daddy was home still and let's just say that that week did not go as planned. The plan was to "practice" our school routine all week. It worked on the one day that Daddy was gone, but even on that day it was obvious I had to figure out really what I want this year to be like. I still don't fully know, but we will do this gradually instead of jump in trying to do school all day and burn them our before we get going good. I am thinking that next week we will step it up a notch with 1st grade and ease into some of Savannah's 4th grade. As the weeks progress we will add a little more to our day. I tend to try to take on the world from the beginning and end up in total frustration. This year I want them to love it... and it become their way of life... an enjoyable way of life. I will try to post more on that later and our curriculum choices, as well as, our extras (ya know.... what they call "electives" in public school"). We are going to have a lot of extras.

Our focus this year: Character and being helpers to one another while getting in some real learning.

1st grade today:
Calendar time and 100 day chart with calendar coloring time
Place Value cups
Days of the week song (I almost forgot the words ;) )
Letter Practice for A, B, C -- writing and sounds
Discussion of SCROLLS and the way they were used in Bible times
More Letter Practice for our scroll pages -- A, B, C
There was not a specific suggestion for books for today only that we do about fifteen minutes of reading, so we read:

Zink The Zebra by Kelly Weil (about a zebra that is different.... the moral of the story is that is okay to be different)
Smudge by Clare Newberry (about mischievious kittens... great charcoal drawings)
Not THIS Bear! (about a little boy that is mistaken for a bear in his fur coat & hat on his way to visit his aunt)

And I guess I have resigned to the fact that we will be adopting a similar school year schedule as my husband's public school. I want to school year round, but it is not working well when he is home. I have wanted the flexibility of year round schooling, but it is just not working for us. Maybe someday. This does not mean we will be on their exact schedule. Public schools actually schedule in more days than required and so we will still take off most or all of December. Also, I am due to have a new baby the week AFTER his Spring Break, so we may have an extended Spring Break... who knows, but I am learning not to plan it all out too much and just roll with what life hands us.

Are My Kids Missing Out?!

2010-08-17T13:41:00.005-05:00

Sometimes as homeschool mothers we want to know if we are making the right choice. Skip on over to one bloggers post where she questions this, then come back her and read my comment:

My take is a bit different for this topic.

First of all we are starting our third year homeschooling. My kids grade levels this year are 4th, 1st, along with two toddlers. My oldest went to public school for Pre-K, K, 1st, two months of 2nd. My other one went to Pre-K for just two months. After a hurricane evacuation and a temporary school closing we decided to TRY homeschooling on a trial basis because my oldest was begging to homeschool.

My younger that only went a couple months of Pre-K has been VERY easy to teach. She does not have the pre-set idea of school that my oldest has. My oldest fights me all the way and it causes us to miss out on a lot of fun. Much of it is due to public school. She did have fun and had lots of parties, but it is just not have you fantasize it to be. For instance, a party at school is not like a party at your house. At home kids are walking around playing during a party. At school they all had to sit at their desk, then snacks and drinks were passed out. Occassionally, the kids would have a few songs they would gather in a circle to sing for the parents or something of that nature. They gather their stuff and party over! It is really not much fun, but they do usually get a little (or HUGE) bag of excessive party favor junk to take home to clutter up your house. By the way, you usually have to pay for this junk. ;) ... or make cookies... or buy an assigned snack.... or purchase and bring these favors.

Another thing is waiting in line... I would spend 30 minutes waiting in line to drop off my kids and another 45 minutes waiting to pick them up. And that doesn't count the Pre-Ker. I had to actually carry in two babies for walk-up pick-up (for safety). Not to mention the time your child spends waiting in line... ALL.... DAY.... LONG.

Next issue... SOCIALIZATION.... now this is a big one because we all want our kids to have friends, but we don't really think about some of the details. At lunch as they sit across the table from their friends they are not allowed to talk to them. And what friends they make this year are just "disposable", because the next year they get a whole new class with mostly different kids and their old friends move on to a different class and they rarely see them. I think this is training our kids that their "friends" are disposable. The same is true of their beloved teachers. Kids get very attached to their teachers, but next year they have to "move on". When the kids are free to play outside freely for recess it is poorly supervised. My daughter was put in a headlock by a schoolmate when she was in K. The teacher was so far away she did not even see it or know about it. My daughter had to fend for herself. I went to visit the school another time during recess and witnessed a boy putting a girl in a headlock. I went to the girl's aid and told the little boy to keep his hands off of her. There were NO teachers around.
School supplies.... ahhh, the joy. The joy of searching and purchasing things they often will never use. ;) A great example is this cool little tap-n-go glue cap for bottled glue. You have to go to an office supply store to get it and it is almost $2.... for a CAP! They NEVER used it nor did we get it back at the end of the year. Some stuff you do get back that they never use, so at least you can sometimes find a use for that stuff.

Snacks for younger kids... older kids are not allowed snacks even if they are hungry. For younger ones you have to supply snacks for the whole class. For me I would normally choose non-prepacakaged snacks for my kids, but when you have to supply for a group of kids you are usually required to bring individually packaged snacks for the kids. It gets pricey. Also, when my oldest was in the 1st grade they could bring their own snack; however, if some child did not have a snack they would all sit there eating in front of the ones that did without. Now that is teaching them something!

Lastly, the wasted time.... waiting in line already got mentioned. Waiting for one on one time when they do not understand something.... or when they do understand, but others in class do not... your child will have to wait. Simply put 1/2 day Pre-K is 4 hours. I can teach Pre-K at home for 30 minutes - an hour and learn as much. Oh and we can take the day off when we want and they still can learn better because they have one on one time with us. And our life....it's on OUR SCHEDULE. That's all for now. ;) Hope this helps some.

{This the brief version of my answer. I also have a conviction about homeschooling now. This post is just to discuss a bit regarding "What Are My Kids Missing Out On?".... There are many more reasons to homeschool than what I listed above and there are some great things about public schools, also.}

What Do You Need For The Fifth Child?

2010-08-16T06:58:00.003-05:00

.... Just the fifth child!

Really, I had a dear friend who has five of her own an one on the way ask me this recently. Of course, there are always things that you want to change or do differently or just get new. For the most part this baby could be born and male or female we would have everything we have to have. That is a great feeling! Nothing to do but prepare a closet space and wash all the things, clean the carseat, bring out the tiny baby things that are stored away.... there is some work to do, but nothing we HAVE to buy. Well, maybe diapers.... ;)

As I sit here unable to sleep since 2:35 this morning I thought I would tell everyone my thoughts on what I MIGHT do different this time and some of the things I have already done:

First and foremost, I want to simplify. The month before I got pregnant I actually made the decision to get rid of some things that I would not want whether we had more children or not. We got rid of a lot of toys just for the sake of decluttering. I want to continue to do this once a season, I think. I also got rid of the Jumparoo, exersaucer, walker, and baby swing. I do plan to buy a newer baby swing, but plan to find one secondhand. I don't think I really need the clutter of all those big toys, though. They really make me crazy. I could possibly get a simple exersaucer, but I am going to give serious thought to doing without it for the sake of less clutter.
With my second child I had a vintage changing table and loved it. For some reason I got rid of it. I am thinking about buying a white changing table... secondhand, also. I have a plastic organization center I have had since my first child and I think a changing table would be more useful and much nicer.
As far as clothing goes I have kept the nicest of the girl things and all of my boy stuff was loaned to my cousin who has them boxed up at her house. Either way, we have most all we will need. I will probably buy new onesies, etc.. And we always like to make some new baby things.
I might consider using some cloth diapers this time. I am a big SKEPTIC of the simplicity of these, but I am trying to be openminded. One of my friends had some given to her and decided it was to good a blessing not to attempt to use and was surprised to find she likes them. I am thinking I might, too.
Sometime today I am supposed to be contacted about a hospital grade doppler heart monitor that I am buying secondhand. I have wanted one for a few years after the loss of my third pregnancy at 20 weeks. Heck, with all these kids it would have been a great investment a few kids back. I think it is a $600 doppler and I am paying $250. And I can use it on my friends, also. ;)
I am taking chewable vitamins for me this round after reading the Duggar's book.
I MIGHT considering using a My Brestfriend for holding while nursing and walking around.
I will making or purchasing a Moby Wrap.
Blankets.... have a TON. Blankets are the number one gift people give and after four kids even getting rid of some of the blankets I still have and overabundance. I will probably make or buy one or two new ones just because. As for all other linens... overabundance, as well.
Mostly, it will be about closet preparation and washing everything that I have. I am going to wait until probably the sixth month to do the washing, so it will be fresh.
I will not be using baby shampoo or baby soap. I have long since found mild soaps that I prefer to the toxic baby stuff. I no longer use baby powder due to the health dangers. In exteme need I now use corn starch straight from the condiments aisle of the grocery store. I use the mildest lotions (or Arbonne) or pure coconut oil now for my babies. And yes, it is the same coconut oil I cook with. Diaper rash ointments used to be something I slathered on. Desitin was my first choice, but mostly I use vaseline now. I have read recently of the dangers of petroleum based products, so I am looking for an alternative and I am thinking that pure lanolin like the stuff I use for breastfeeding will be my new "ointment".

Mostly, we just need the baby~~~!!!

Breastfeeding Cover FREEBIE

2010-08-16T06:45:00.002-05:00

Before today I had never heard of this company, but it is the same kind of thing as Hooter Hiders...

www.uddercovers.com

They sell the breastfeeding coverups that are so popular now.

Anyway, I saw this local informational post saying that you could get one free, so I went to the website to chek it out. I was skeptical, but to my surprise it is absolutely free. You do have to pay $9.95 for shipping and handling, which is a bit high. Still you can't beat it if this is the kind of thing you would use or give as a gift to an expecting friend.

The original cost of the Udder Covers are $29.95, so if you had to pay that plus shipping you would normally pay $39.90 ! With this savings code you can get it for just $9.95 !

CODE: cranberry2

I have no idea how long this code is good for, so you might want to hurry. Also, all of the color choices say they are on backorder until September 15th, but that is not big deal to get a bargain, right?! Anything good is worth waiting for!

The Business of Being Born -- GET EDUCATED !!! THINK !!!

2010-08-16T04:19:00.005-05:00

I want to share a link with you that some of you may need to see. It is a movie on YouTube called "The Business of Being Born". You can watch it on YouTube for free or you can buy the movie. This is the link to the first part. It is uploaded in 10 parts by YouTube user "jelenastamb1". And yes, there are other uploads of it, but this is the one I watched.

Also, there are other videos like this on the topic of birth, midwifery, etc. and as I find out about some of those I will share that information. It is time to educate ourselves and stop blindly letting doctors make choices for us. Hospital birth with a doctor present is not the only way. We have been programmed to think that because the era we have grown up has been this way. Amazingly, people are so easy to convince that we should do things the way "someone" says to. We have got to start thinking for ourselves.

Seriously, I just found out some interesting information in the past months:

Did you know that birth control had it's 50th anniversary this year?! It is really a very new thing. And it was discovered by a man that was trying to develop something for infertility.
Did you know that public schools are "babies", also?! Two hundred years ago everyone was taught at home.
Did you know that up until The Depression students only attended school through the 8th grade?! The government changed this. I discovered this only a few weeks ago while reading a book about the Amish.... And did you know that the Amish still only attend school until the 8th grade and then, they train for life skills and how to use their education?!
Did you know that the food in America has all sorts of strange chemical additives that are illegal in other countries due to the dangers?! In America it does not seem to matter if it will cause you cancer or make you sterile.... or cause birth defects, if it makes your food last longer or taste better.
In America we choose doctors rights over patient rights.... And I do get that this is partially caused because of a sue happy culture.
Did you know that the U.S. has the second highest death rate for maternity and birth, yet we trust the doctors to make choices regarding birth for us?! Doctors are for curing diseases and illnesses. Normal pregnancy is not a disease or an illness. We really only need doctors when there is a problem.
Did you know that birth control, tubal ligation, and vasectomies really will KILL you?! Both are leading causes of cancer. Think! If you cut the vas deferens and the "stuff" that is supposed to flow out can no longer flow out what do you think is happening to it? Is it magically "absorbed" back into the body? Do you really believe that? It stays in the body rotting. The same is true for a woman's fallopian tubes. Where do those eggs go that should be going down and out? Hmmmmm... THINK! You do not want stuff rotting away in you! And birth control pills, IUDs, etc. .... well, when we take meds that disturb the normal cycle of our body and prevent it from doing what it should naturally do should we really be surprised that they are doing our body harm?! I am not saying to use birth control, but if you are going to try to prevent pregnancy use a more natural way... the ovulation method, withdrawal method, condoms, etc.. or ABSTINENCE. ;)

We have to start THINKING!!! Thinking for ourselves! I realize that some of the items in the list above have nothing to do with birth, but they are great points in general about what happens in a society that does not think for themselves.

I have some huge decisions to make about my upcoming birth and I am going to take the next seven months to get educated about MY choices. They are MY CHOICES and am intelligent enough to make them. I am not going to keep letting dangerous decisions be made about my life by people who are not really in my life. I am more than a statistic. I am more than a number in a file system. My body is not a chopping block for doctors to keep hacking away at. I will say this again... there is a point when repeat c-sections become more dangerous than the risk of placental abruption and I passed that risk marker about two c-sections ago. And I have to say that I watched some c-section procedure videos on YouTube, also. They make it look so cute. They don't tell you that they take your uterus out and massage it so it will contract and then stuff it back inside you. They don't tell you about the risk of damage to your bladder and other organs, either. They tell you the part THEY WANT YOU TO KNOW. They tell you it is "the best thing for your baby" and that you "weren't able" to birth your baby or that "the risk of natural birth is too great". They make c-sections look like your safest option to save you and your baby's life! This is how my husband described my first c-section to me, "They gutted you like a deer!" He was so shocked at the way they handled my body and once I was cut open the doctors put their full weight on my upper belly to push the baby out. My body was being jerked around on the operating table as they tugged the baby out. And even I rarely mention the bruises all over the right side of my baby's body from the trauma of removing her "in the safest way". You see, they were afraid she would get stuck in my pelvis and in reality she ended up getting stuck in her unnatural c-section birth. Ironic isn't it? And there was great deal of trauma to my bladder, as well. After removing my catheter I was unable to urinate (Sorry... TMI) until I double over in excruciating pain and a nurse had to come in and replace the catheter and drain like a quart of urine off my unfunctioning bladder. It did eventually regain function.

Maybe I will upload the video of my second child's birth in the future. Wow! That was one for the memories. Pretty scary! If anything would have gone wrong... really wrong... it would have been bad. There was hospital error at every turn of her birth. She and I both are a testament of the body's resilence and God's grace. It started simply enoough with me being wheeled into the operating room and overhearing them say the peditrician's name. I told them that was not my pediatrician. They sent the pediatrician out! Without a pediatrician present! They called in our pediatrician who arrive over five minutes after the birth! My baby lay there unattended by anyone after nurses quickly placed her to the side to get back to attend to me... and I have no idea why there was not a nurse specifically there for my baby. There wasn't and we have the video to prove it. Anyway, before the birth they administered my anathesia in my back. I could feel that the anesthesiologist had gone to the left a bit and I knew something was not right. I did not go numb right away like I had with my first c-section. It took like 20 minutes to start going numb as opposed to my previous that was only seconds. I told them, but they would not listen to me..... until they were operating and I was feeling a lot of the surgery. They still made the comment to my husband that "your wife must have a low tolerance to pain." When they saw the look on his face as he said I had a very high tolerance to pain they began shooting syringes of meds into my IV and literally throwing the syringes as they went. I remember probably six as threw them past my head. They realized in that moment that I was right when I told them that the anesthesia was not working fully. That was my smallest baby, because they took her two weeks early... ya know, the standard for scheduled c-sections. She was not ready for this world and I am really surprised she did not have health issues due to it. For the first few weeks of her life we could not even awaken her for more than 30 minutes a day. All she would do was sleep. I would have to tickle her and unwrap her for nursing sessions to get her started nursing. She still would not awaken and would just sleep through her feeding. Thank God she had the natural instinct to suck and nurse as she slept. She was precious, but she simply was not done and it was obvious. After her birth I was so drugged up from all the extra meds they gave me. I spent a great deal of time throwing up. And have you ever thrown up repeatedly after your abdomen has been cut open? It is quite painful. You be the judge.... does any of this sound like the safest way to birth a baby?

Still, though... I had been convinced I was "defective" and it wasn't until I went into labor with my third child that I start to THINK.... I realized they were wrong and my body DID know how to labor. After three days of attempted induction with my first child the doctors and nurses had convinced me that my body was incapable of the onset of labor, as well as, convincing me that my pelvis was too small anyway. So now at birth number three I knew they were wrong about my body being incapable of the labor, at least. Still I was convinced that they must be right about my defective pelvis. I had started to THINK, but I had no options of my own. I was not allowed to try to labor and birth this baby naturally, either. I was told to get to the hospital immediately for an emergency c-section. I immediately did as I was told and they immediately hooked me up to IVs and monitors and made me lie in bed even though I wanted to be up. My "emergency" c-section was TWO hours later "at their convenience" while I was forced to lay in a bed to labor uncomfortably. I would have handled it much better, if I could have stood up.... but then, they could not "monitor" me. ;) At some point in the middle of a very hard contraction they offered me some drug that would "take the edge off" and before I realized it they had shot it into my IV and I have absolutely NO memory of the next 45 minutes of my life. NO memory of it... they could have done anything to me and I am certain I would have consented because I did not even know who I was. It made me so groggy that I barely even remember the c-section when they got around to doing it. Once again, I ask you do you think this is the best way to birth a baby? There is just too much doctor and nurse intervention. I should have been allowed a trial of labor my way as long as it went well. Knowing what I know now, I would not have gone straight to the hospital. Even if I had to stand out in the parking lot to labor I would have done it.

With my last birth I just did it all once again. By this time it was all an old routine and I took what I had learned and used it to the best I could. I would get through this c-section and go home to my family. But on the operating table all the stress and unexplained anxiety of the last eight months flooded my very being. I was consumed with fear for that moment. That moment that should have been all joy! I was so afraid. For every c-section.... for every major surgery I had one more little person back home needing me... needing me to live .... needing me not to be some statistic of doctor error. I realized that all my misunderstood stress of that pregancy all came down to that moment... surgery. That is the moment I told my husband, "I don't want to do this again." I did get through it and I was a trooper. I had a great anesthiologist that listened to my concerns about my past spinal block not working properly and she gave me stronger meds ... and administered it correctly. ;) I did throw up due to the stronger meds, but I didn't feel it as much. LOL! I was up and moving around that hospital the same day. The nurses were in awe, but I had good meds and I was taking all I could to speed my recovery. And here's a little tip, IF you do have c-sections I have learned that your body can relax and recover quicker if you take the meds. Take the meds! Set an alarm and ask for the meds as soon as you can have them! With my first birth I tried to avoid the meds and had a very difficult recovery. Forget your previous concerns about drug usage and TAKE THE MEDS! With this last delivery I stayed at the hospital alone at night and got a lot of rest and cuddle time with the baby. It was by far my best c-section delivery, but I knew I still did not want to do this again.

Exciting News To Share

2010-08-12T20:09:00.006-05:00

Well, I have some very exciting news to share. It seems that there will be a new baby in our home in the Spring. I have been wanting to share for a while, but I have been waiting on the right time. I have been trying to just soak it in and be quiet and still.... waiting to hear from God about every aspect of the situation. When to tell. How much to tell. What birth plan to follow. Who to contact for healthcare. By LMP I am at 10 weeks, which amazingly makes me almost done with the first trimester! Seriously, most moments I still don't fully feel I am expecting. I have had very little nauseau.... so little that it could easily be car sickness or fatigue. My belly has started to bulge, but other than that I have felt pretty normal. Okay.... well, I have been somewhat sleepy, but not like the major sleepies that overtake your very being. And occassionally I get sudden desperate hunger. Overall, though.... I just have not thrown up even once and without that I just do not fully register that I am actually pregnant.

Also, we have not wanted to share the news just yet with anyone, but even waiting on God couldn't keep this news at bay. I guess I'll have to wait on God on all the other issues I listed, because the secret is out. You see.... my momma bumped into me... into my belly... and with a shocked face she said, "Your belly is hard! Are you pregnant?" I tried to laugh it off, but as mothers are she was peristent and asked a few more times! I could not lie. Immediately, she told my daddy. I told them the kids did not know.... and my daddy immediately walked in the house and told the kids that Momma was going to have another baby! Yikes! That was not quite what I had in mind for breaking the news to the kids. Within thirty minutes or so my daddy was on the phone calling anyone he could think of... my brother... he left a message on their voice mail... my cousin, who told my aunt, who told my other cousin, who posted a congratualions on Facebook.... to which the phone rang and another aunt was calling my momma to find out why I was being congratulated! Yikes! I got on the phone and text my husband to tell him to tell his family immediately. You see my mother-in-law was asking a few days prior for some reason and we had managed to avoid a real answer with her. She left with us trying to convince her that it was a silly notion... she wasn't believing us. Seriously, I will never get how people figure these things out so quickly. My friend Michelle dreams that I am pregnant..... my daughter in past pregancies has told me I am pregnant... my aunt and/or cousin always "sense" it and say they already new when they get the news... and my MIL usually has some idea before we break the news. It is just weird... I don't get it... oh and my mother had said, "I had a dream you were pregnant! It was a nightmare!" about a week before I took a test.... Hmmm..... see why we were trying to keep it a secret for a while.

I wish more people got excited for you. All they seem to focus on is the negative... or they fake it! I prefer the latter, but really I know these people and I know they are faking it. ;) And, of course, they assume that it is an unplanned surprise and then, they end up being the ones surprised when I tell them we were not at all surprised. ;) And while we are on that topic.... Where we "plannning or trying" to conceive? Well, we made the decision for me not to have my tubes tied, cut, burned, etc. when Sahara was born. She was my fourth c-section baby. I can tell you that on the operating table I told my husband, "I don't want to do this again." I was talking about surgery. My husband contacted a doctor about a vasectomy and set up a surgery date. I did not want him to have it, but it was not my decision alone to make.... but when the paperwork was mailed to our house I found out that I had to sign on it. I could not do it. I told my husband that I could not do it, but he could forge my signature if he wanted to. He would not do that and realizing how strongly I felt about it he cancelled the surgery. Around the time Sahara turned a year old he began to get that twinkle in his eye. He seems to always fall in love with our babies even more when they are that age and start to think about what another one would be like. I on the other hand was saying no... as I laughed at him. I just did not want to face surgery and adjusting to homeschooling did not seem to be the right time to add to the family either. My ovulation cycle is VERY clear, so I would just avoid him during those times for the most part.

During this time my friend, Michelle, was going through pregnancy and was using a midwife. She had also had four past c-sections, as well as, two vaginal births. I was so happy for her that she was getting to make her own choice and have a VBAC. Her history was c-section, vaginal, vaginal, then hospital/doctor policy changed and she was forced to have c-section, c-section, c-section due to her first baby being a c-section birth. She knew she could birth her own babies, but her choices were not her own to make as long as she used an Obstetrician! She found a midwife that agreed to take her on. Today she has a beautiful six month old baby that she had vaginally as a result! And she paved the way for me! I am truly amazed at the way God works!

As time went on it has become harder to just avoid my husband when I know I am ovulating... and I honestly did not want to. I just did not want another c-section. I began to talk to him about trying a midwife, if one would take me on. He finally said that we could try that if I wanted to.... if we ever had to make that decision. I started slowly educating myself about VBAC, but still was uncertain I could find any midwife that would take me on. You see... my first doctor said that in his opinion I could never have over a five pound baby due to my pelvic size. My babies are all eight pounders!.... and fat even at birth! This is called CPD (Cephalo-pelvic Disproportion) and this made me "defective", which convinced me that I was "defective" and the best choice I could make would be to consent to a c-section so that the baby would not get stuck and die. It is just lovely how they convince you of these things! And in this moment I began to believe that I was one of "those women" that would have died in labor with her baby if it were not for c-sections. And within the next year and a half most hospitals nationwide changed their policies to no VBAC (Vaginal Birth After Casaerean) and this meant that I would HAVE to have c-sections if I wanted more children. All my choices were made for me, but at some point it actually becomes more dangerous to have repeat c-sections and that is where I am now. Four is enough. In saying that I do realize that I could very well have to have another c-section and if it is NECESSARY I would, but this time I am searching out other options.

So, yesterday I went to see a midwife and she did pelvimetry to access my "defective" pelvis. And guess what?! To both our surprise I apparently have a normal pelvis. Not only is it not defective, but it appears to be quite favorable for birthing a child. Plenty of room for a baby to pass through from what the midwife can tell! Click over and read about pelvimetry... it is short, but very interesting about the likelihood of "false diagnosis" and why it is not good to "labor on your back". I linked to the Wikipedia definition as not to give a "biased" definition. You know that if I used a definition off of a midwifery page, then we would all be wondering if it was a "biased" definition and vice versus if I were to use a definition off of an Obstetrician page.

So, now I have some decisions to make. The midwife wanted to pray about it and for me to pray about it. Clearly she is ready to take me on, but she would like to take this first step and I surely wouldn't argue with that. God should be at the head of this decision. And so I wait... to hear from God... for my husband to be on board, because he said he will support my decision.... but, he has to be totally on board... and I need to be in a constant state of prayer over every aspect of this decision. And it is not about "getting my way"... I want to do what is best. I know that God's design is what is best! And He will guide me if I listen. Anyone that feels lead to please pray that we will make the best decisions and in the end God will get the glory and honor.