New Year's Eve

I'll write now, because tonight there's a game night at the church and we'll all be busy going back and forth to that, deciding who takes the children back home.  I've been trying to decide if I have any resolutions for the coming year, but I'm stuck on what they could be and I'll have to come back to them.  Today we'll do a bit of shopping, I might try and make something to bring tonight, and then we'll nap.

And I feel that sense of decluttering that comes over me at new year; I'm determined to get something done today.  A few months ago I really got on a big organizing and throwing away kick, and I got rid of garbage bags full of toys no one played with, clothes no one wore, ripped books and what have you.  And then I had a baby, so pretty much everything stopped in its tracks.  I'm not sure how it happened, but we have way too much stuff again.  I know that really, we're not a 'stuff filled' family - we don't have an awful lot, it's just that we have 5 people living in a very small house so it looks like a lot.  But...I'm still overwhelmed and I dislike clutter intensely so I want it all gone.  I want clean, smooth lines throughout my home so I feel peace.

But, and here's the problem, I can't bear to get rid of things that somehow I still see as useful.  So that's always a struggle for me.  I like it when a toy breaks because then I'm confident to throw it away!  I have stacks of blankets that we simply don't need, and pillowcases...don't get me started on those.  And jackets, and crayons and cookbooks and...

Sick

I'm sick, and it's an odd experience for me.  I don't get sick very often, really; my whole family doesn't.  The children don't go and see other children often and we tend to cocoon during the winter so...

It's an ear infection, I'm pretty sure.  I've done all the things you can do at home and now I'm just waiting, drinking a lot of fluid, waiting, waiting.

I'd be a lot more patient with all of this if I had a maid to take over from me and the library was open.  Neither is going to happen.

Learning Notes For The End Of The Year

So, we've been home schooling for four months now and it looks totally different than what I thought it would.  We started out with workbooks, lots of nature walks, reading a lot of books aloud and some educational television, plus the occasional craft or activity when I had the energy and time to set it up.  That lasted about, oh, a week.  Pretty quickly I realized I couldn't manage that level of schooling while holding a baby and entertaining a two year old.  The baby cried a lot and the toddler needed constant attention and entertaining while I was attempting to explain a work page or craft to a four year old.  When I left the two year old alone she would destroy things and when I left the four year old alone he would take initiative and try and finish pages he didn't understand - essentially wrecking them.  And they wouldn't work together, so essentially it was impossible.

I knew there would be bumps in the road, and honestly I was okay with this.  We switched 'off' school while we dealt with colic, and tried a more unschooling type approach.  These days we go to the library for storytime once a week, and read together at home, we have our eldest go to a Bible club one night a week, and we also try to attend a weekly playgroup.  Beyond that we don't do outside activities, which I'm okay with because getting everybody out of the house is a disaster waiting to happen.  At home we do activities that require very little prep time, and we still watch educational television and listen to a lot of music and stories.  Nature walks happen, but not as frequently as before mostly due to the weather.  And we look for learning opportunities where we are - talking about stars and machines and bugs...it's been pleasant.

Do I crave structure?  Yes!  I'm a person who simply couldn't unschool for the long haul; I love and believe in structure, but life is full of seasons and this season is one of loose unstructured learning.

Learning Notes

Sunday, Sept. 21st - 

We spent the day in church.  It was my first morning teaching the adult Sunday School class so I was running around scattering Bibles and pens and bit of paper and trying to debate how to explain the Apocrypha to an unknown number of adults with unknown Christian education backgrounds.  The children sat through most of the service and then afterwards sat in the hall, colouring Bible pictures.  After church there was nap, during which I listened to the eldest playing 'church' in his room.  His theology is coming along pretty well, and all of a sudden he'll launch out into something totally heretical and hilarious.  We followed David to the nursing home service and played at the park and talked about wild mushrooms and whether there are trolls living under bridges. 

Monday, Sept. 22nd - 

S went on errands with David and on their walk they discussed numbers and what plumbers do.  Once he got home we tried more numbers again - there seems to be some difficulty with his understanding of the difference between a number and a letter.  I'd ask him to draw an animal with a certain number of legs and we'd count them (an octopus with 8, etc.)  Then he practiced drawing shapes.  

After table work we sat and read a book about dragons and then the two oldest went outside and built a huge fort in the backyard while I tried to figure out what we were doing about S's physical activity for the fall.  We did soccer this summer, but I was disappointed in it.  Swimming was on the schedule for the fall but now that may not happen, and regardless of whether it does or not I still need to figure out what we're doing over the winter so now I'm calling arenas and community centres and hoping that somehow something will fit into our schedule.

There is nap time for C, and quiet time for S, who plays with Lego in his room and, when asked, tells me that he is making Batman tools .  David pops in to tell me that the Operation Christmas Child kick-off is this Saturday at the same time as the church-wide auction, which reminds me that I'm supposed to be baking for this auction.  He also tells me that the congregation members who are moving auction items from our garage are arriving TWICE on Wed., not once, so I need to be here, with occupied children, for the entire afternoon.  And then he goes outside to pack away the barbecue and throw out the tent the children have destroyed over the summer.

In the afternoon we work around the house and watch Victorian Farm.

Tuesday, Sept. 23rd -

I had to funnel prayer requests to prayer chains this morning, so the children were all ignored and given large amounts of dip to consume on the upholstered furniture.  Super fun for all.  They watched educational cartoons - The Cat In The Hat episode about pandas and a math show.  Then David took them to the library for story time and a craft, which turned out not to be going on so he took them to the grocery store instead.  The rest of the day sort of disintegrated in terms of education.

Wednesday, Sept. 24th - 

The children watched a Cat In The Hat show about hibernation and then played outside in the morning; S came in to show me how spruce branches are prickly if you stroke them one way and smooth another, so we had a discussion about angles.  Then everyone trooped in to work on a puzzle about fish, which was interrupted by a trip to the grocery store - we also started practicing tying our shoes today.

I hoped to talk about numbers and colours at the store but the kids were waaay too crazy.  After the groceries David had the morning Bible study group at the church, which we joined him for - S did a match-up alphabet game and coloured pictures.  After lunch everyone rested, somehow...kind of.  I had a number tracing page for S to work on ready to go if the noise level got too much in his room and I did some curriculum planning work.  I went to get a book on spruce out of the big box of homeschool non-fiction (to follow up with the conversation we had had in the morning), but ended up finding a nature book that got Sl interested in fossils and sea cucumbers - so we got to talk about how fossils are made.  And then he found a book on making castles.  That was pretty much the end of anything schoolish.

Thursday, Sept. 25th

The children watched a National Geographic kids show on Australia while I tried to wrap my head around the day, but they didn't like it and refused to sit for it so instead I gave C a chore and S sat down with his workbook  for about an hour - he did a lot of work on numbers, colours and shapes and then started alphabet work.  I was amazed by how great he was at his first lesson on left and right, but he had a lot of trouble understanding simple patterns so we skipped that and will revisit it sometime later.

I was gone for the rest of the morning and exhausted and working on housework for the afternoon, but knowing how much book work we'd done made me feel okay about not doing a lot of other school today.

Friday, Sept. 26th

We did nothing today.  Really.  I was overwhelmed with church things.

Saturday, Sept. 27th

Today was the big auction, and I had a lot to do so S was  on his own for a lot of school stuff.  I had him come with me to the grocery store and on the way we played a 'matching colours' game he made up, and we talked about how God created people and looked at footprints and revisited the idea of rocks eroding after contact with water.  

Auction

It's Wednesday, the day I've been dreading all week - the day that people from the church come to help empty out the garage and cart all the stuff that has been getting shoved in there for weeks to the auction that the congregation is holding on Saturday.  It's going to be a big, substantial event that will undoubtedly fill the hall and empty the garage, but I don't like the stress involved with it at all.

Not only does the garage emptying happen today, in two sections with two different crews, but I figure why not make it a whole DAY of auction stress and also bake the dessert I'm supposed to be delivering.  I was going to make baklava, but then (and this is going to explain a lot to you about how remote this place is) no one had heard of baklava.  I asked many people...okay I think one person liked it but most were confused.

So then I thought 'do I bake this dessert that will not get purchased because everyone is so confused about what it even is?'  And now I'm backing and forthing about the whole thing but think that what will actually happen is I'll make cookies.

Unmarriageable children and too much food.

You know, for me one of the absolute hardest things about the Christian life is somehow trying to maintain this acknowledgement of grace and gratefulness and such in the face of what is really a crummy time.  Like, a super crummy time.  Crummy?  Yes, okay, that's the word I'll use.  It's also the period of life when I find it really hard to fight against the ingrained training of my pre-Christian years when 'crummy', as an example, would not have been the word I would have chosen.

Yesterday I don't even think I managed to get on the computer at all, and of course my inner desire to blog daily has been totally hampered by life, mostly in the form of the eldest daughter, who is two and trying to kill me.  I swear that child is one good screaming fit away from needing an exorcism.  "How she will EVER find someone to marry her is beyond me" I say, and David responds with "Well, they say there's someone for everyone."  And then we look dubiously at our eldest daughter and sort of tilt our heads like dogs do when they hear a far away noise.  Except none of the noise here can be termed 'far away'.  None of it.

Hallelujah!  Onwards and Upwards!

I moped yesterday with what we call a First World Problem around here - We had a LOT of food in the house, and then I kept buying more, and then I decided to stop buying it so that we could use up what we had, and then surprisingly my clay jug did not perpetually refill itself with oil and my bag with flour and lo!  We ran terribly low on food.  And so then I bought a Whole Bunch on Thursday, and came home and people had somehow sensed through the universe that the pastor's family had been low on food but the message had been on time delay and so when I arrived back at the house the next two days was FULL of people bringing me yet more food, and now I cannot, honestly cannot, fit anything else in the cupboards, fridge or freezer.  Which actually means that there are several grocery bags on the floor in my kitchen which are holding the over spill of food. And my dishes are ornamented with cans of pasta sauce, and there are two giants bags of onions in my linen cupboard, and 10lbs of potatoes in with the saucepans.

And here we are, on a cold but otherwise nice looking day, and I am full up with chores and things. It's just all cyclical, and perhaps I'm crazy for this but come what may I'm blogging every day this week.  I am.

Fruit

I was lying in bed last night reading the last of a book I wanted to return to the library today and thinking over what I'd accomplished.  I'd say not much, except that in the evening Samuel and I hiked out to the park and picked a bag of crabapples and then over to an old apple tree in town and got some of those as well.  Best apples in town in my opinion.  And then we came home and I wrote down what I needed to make pickled apples and apple chutney, so I'll be doing that today and it makes me feel better.

Today is Tuesday and so it's also the day for stitching group and I'm trying to decide if I should bring the sweater I'm crocheting for Samuel because it's so cold I should really get that finished, or if I should bring some rug stuff and start another rag rug.  It's a nice problem to have.

I froze 6 litres of peaches yesterday and I can't wait for the cold February day to come when I can pull some out of the freezer and make a cobbler.  It's a wonderful feeling knowing that I have them and the strawberries and rhubarb.  I wish I'd managed to get some raspberries in as well.

I went out and cut away at the weeds overtaking the raspberry canes in the backyard and I'm more confident now that next year we'll get some fruit.  I'd cut them all down last year so I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that they didn't fruit but I was disappointed.

Rambling thoughts about getting ready for winter

All around the area here people are getting ready for winter and handling the excess of fall.  It really is fall, too, all you have to do is look at the trees everywhere to see it.  I was out last night in the garden and my tomatoes have decided to actually grow fruit now, in September, which is not great and I'm going to have to look and see if I can keep them from frost long enough to get something off them.  I pulled half the beans as well and the almost last zucchini but I'm still holding out on the peas.  Every time I think the peas must be done and I should pull them they get more flowers.

Notes from this year:

I will not get peas that need to be removed from their pods again.
I will not buy climbing beans.

I think, no, I know, that I will need to go to the farmers to get more produce to put up.

And whatever I do is going to have to be done fairly soon because mornings are very dew laden these days and I just know that one morning soon I'm going to look out and the fields will be white with frost.

Anyway, today I need to grate another zucchini for the freezer and blanch a handful of beans as well - I'm almost out of produce for the freezer.  Next will be a focus on, I think, probably fruits.  And I'm debating whether to pickle but my husband's family makes such wonderful pickles that I feel as though there's no point in that.  Salsa, though, I should make salsa.  And relishes, maybe chutneys.

I spent a long time last night organizing a huge pile of knitting needles that my father in law gave to me.  It took a while because, seriously, it was a huge pile.  I can't imagine how I would need this many needles.  I don't even knit socks so why I'd need so many sock needles...but I can't help but want them.  It must be something in the cold air.

Off to get the car dealt with today.  I think there's a leak in the oil tank now, oh my word this car is such a pit.  All I can think of is that if it isn't the oil tank, then what is it?  Hopefully it's cheap, and just somehow makes the car manage for the winter because we cannot buy another car right now and we're really hopeful of a trip to visit some family this coming weekend who we haven't seen in a long time.

Alright, off to handle the day.

books

I have plenty of things to blog about but then I sit down to write and my head goes blank.  I think it's a combination of stress and the certainty that anything I debate in my head at this stage of life is foolish or uninteresting, which, while possibly true, is not an excuse for not writing it down. There is one topic I keep coming back to and at least remembering when I sit, and that's what I've been reading lately, so that's what you're going to get.

First up is Michael Pollan's newest book - Cooked.  It's a history of why we cook our food, and the methods etc.  It's supposed to be that, at least.  It's really more a discussion of how to cook a few specific dish in each section.  I've enjoyed the writing he did on cooking one pot meals more than the discussion on barbecuing and I'm really looking forward to the section on fermentation.

Let It Go by Karen Ehman - this is the Christian reading I'm doing.  It's a book about learning to let go of controlling situations, which I think is something we should all be reading.  A great book but an awful writing style.

Rural Free by Rachel Peden - a farmwife's journal from decades ago, excellent.  I love journals and her writing is exquisite.

Hens Dancing by Raffaella Barker - I don't know yet since I've only just started but I'm thinking this might be a romance.  If this is the case I won't like it.

There you go.  I wish the list were more interesting but, well, that's about it for me these days.

Shots

So we've spent the past three days at Bible school for Samuel and now that that's finished I thought we could get other chores done, and so far it's not working very well.  I scheduled Lillian's shots for today, and that means I have a fussy baby and a whole bunch of errands to run.  So I'm just carrying around a fussy baby.  I don't MIND the baby strapped to me, but it is slowing me down and tiring me out.  David's birthday just passed and we didn't get a chance to celebrate it on the right day, so we did a few errands, went to the doctor, and then went for lunch.  David wanted fried chicken so fried chicken we got.  And then more errands and home by 2 for naps.  Which is late.  So a quick blog post because I'm really trying here, and then out again - except it's raining.

Fortunately everyone agreed that lunch could be the big meal and I could produce something small for supper so we're having grilled cheese and ham sandwiches and leftover chicken soup.  Must go help at the store and at least three more errands to go before home for supper.  All with the baby, by the sound of it.

A week

It's our last day of bible school for Samuel, which means that this week the house has fallen apart.  I made a whole bunch of meals earlier in the week and we've just been eating those, but laundry and cleaning have totally become optional and it's showing.  I've loved having this chance for Samuel but I'm going to like having the house back together again.

Last night I was out in the garden picking stuff - we've actually had some harvest!  Of course if I wait to deal with it tonight it will all be awful and wilted so I've got to do it now before we go, and I'm groggy and I don't know what to do besides freeze it all.

Started a sweater for Samuel.  It's getting cold.

Summer

I have the sensation that we've done nothing this summer, that the children have missed out on amorphous 'great excitement', that life is generally passing us all by and that there are fun adventures to be had that somehow we're not having.  This is all despite the fact that Samuel has had the opportunity to play soccer, we've hosted two sets of guests, gone to the beach at least twice, made a small road trip, and other things.  I know why I feel this way - it's because of Lillian.  Having a baby throws your entire world on it's head and nothing makes sense.  Plus Samuel is at an age where no matter what lovely things you do for him they must be followed by even more.

Anyway, here we are at almost the end of August and that's that.  Summer will be over soon and we'll be in the long days of fall, with everything slowly getting colder and darker and eventually I'll need to start thinking about Hallowe'en and eventually Christmas.  I know it's four months away but it'll be here before we know it and I'll tell you one thing - I am not decorating the tree this year.

Houseplants and a blanket

I get given a lot of things, mostly clothes for the children although also food and such, but in the last little while there have been a few gifts that have come into the house that I am really pleased with and that are especially nice.  A lady from church came over with a knitted blanket for Lillian, who has a blanket for every day of the week, but then also pulled out a blanket for me, too.  It's big, and warm, and the last time I was given a blanket was in college.  I've been sleeping with it since it is just the right warmth.

I remember when I was younger that my mother had beautiful house plants.  She could make almost anything grow, and her plants were the envy of everyone they were so big and beautiful.  Now I cannot do this.  I've tried to grow things and there must be some magic to it because my plants look like a cat ate half of them.  It's okay though because I think I've discovered the solution and it is cacti and succulents.  I was given an aloe plant a while ago and the thing has grown huge, with babies, and I repotted it yesterday because it was growing out of it's pot.  It was tiny to begin with, but my special neglect is just the perfect style.

Gardens

Every year I try and have a garden.  I remember when we lived out east in a little apartment and I started seeds indoors and tried to get them to grow, without really any success.  The next year I used a plot of land in someone else's garden, and still no success.  The year after that I had my own garden space and I think I grew a few leaves - I'm really not sure what went wrong.

I was so excited when we moved here because finally I might have a real garden, and by real I mean one that grew actual food.  I even bought raised planters and dirt this time, and I planted my seeds, and while we have gotten food out of it, not to any great extent.  Last night Clara and I went out and picked our pea crop, which was sad, and I pulled up all of the spinach because it's been going to seed for a while now.  I haven't tried to harvest any lettuce but it is growing and will make one big salad sometime soon.  And there are a few beets and carrots, I hope.

My beans appear to be getting eaten by something and the tomatoes are not happening, but I'm excited for the possibility of zucchini.

At this rate I'll be growing successful gardens after many years of not successful gardens, and that means about a decade from now.  Still, I'm encouraged that each year there appears to be slightly better results.  When I was a child I remember my parent's garden and they always seemed to have so much produce, especially tomatoes, I suppose I just thought that that happened.  Now, of course, I'm wondering how anyone gets anything to grow.

Dawn is happening over to my right through the window, and it's lovely.  Time to go start the day.

I have no idea what I'm doing.

I'm so overwhelmed by life that I think if I don't just decide to post blog entries they are not going to happen.  I don't want to stop writing this blog, I don't.  I need to get past the feeling that I have nothing to say and am anxious and stressed.  I will not explain all the ways in which I am failing as a mother and a person and a Christian.

This week marks the, what, the second week of homeschooling S.  He's in preschool level stuff, but I'm already noticing that he's so far ahead in terms of numbers and drawing lines etc. and not doing letters well at all.  I would like to improve our school time together and do crafts and such, but honestly that is just not going to happen right now so we're doing workbooks.

All I do, every day, is try to keep my head above water.  That's all I do.  I wake up and I listen to the crazy happening around me and I breathe and I work on feeding people and making sure my children are wearing clothes.  I'm always one thing away from losing it.

And I've decided to cut out sugar from my diet.

I think mostly the issue is that I can't catch my breath - we have guests and then they leave and then there's a baptism and that's done and suddenly there's an event and okay now we have a potluck and then guests again and someone's birthday...I know what I'm describing is life, but it's just harder right now.

Some of the time I'm frustrated by things that just Need Doing; a dedicated person and just some time without ANY children would solve these issues - like getting my bangs cut, mending the hole in my sheet, cleaning the oven, buying furniture polish...I can't, of course, because I always have a child with me.  Even one child is too much.

It was not a good day yesterday.  The children were wired, the baby cried, the chore list was long and hard.  On the way back from a (way too long) trip into the city to buy groceries we had to stop twice to get Lillian out of her car seat and comfort her down - once in a parking lot and once on the side of the highway.  She was deeply disappointed in the lack of snuggling happening in the car and I guess this means a third child who detests her car seat.

Today is a busy one as well, but in different ways.  Lillian has a well baby appointment and then we have guests arriving for the next few days. In between there I need to figure out an entirely different handwriting program to use for my son (great, yes, just lovely and fantastic that) and get a haircut.  There are barely enough bobby pins in the house to pin back this mop.  Also there is a day camp running from the library and I thought of putting Samuel in today.

Oh my.  And balsamic vinegar.  Must remember to buy.

I had such an awful day yesterday that I decided I needed to re-vamp a few things in life.  Mainly my bedtime.  I'm going to march myself to bed at 10pm every night and Get Up Earlier.  I did, too.  I got up before dawn with a two year old.  But then I got to shower and read some of Galatians and make tea and sit at the table ready to feed my children and do morning prayers with them.

Very short time

Must rush if I'm going to actually blog this morning - I have until 8:30 and that's 23 minutes.

This past Sunday was Lillian's shower at the church, complete with delicious home made sausages and a big pink cake and way too many gifts.  She wore a new dress and a disgruntled expression for most of the event and was absolutely the belle of the ball.

Then Monday we brought he cat to the vet.  The blasted thing who has decided it no longer wants to be an indoor cat - so we can add more inoculations to the list of things the cats need.  And to make ourselves feel better we then brought a watermelon over to our friends' house and the children played together while we admired their garden.

Today David is off to the church, and I'm trying to type this out in the last minutes of cartoons.  Then I can weed the garden and tackle the laundry.  David will come back to give the children snack and I will go help the thrift store sort winter clothes.  Then we'll switch again and I'll be home and David will work.  Lunch, and stitching group and David will do naps.  Supper is fast and we have soccer tonight.

I can't figure out how to get everything to fit.

Problems Solved

The weight of little problems weighing me down...the endless solving and re-solving of what seem to be the exact same concerns - exhausting.

The garden is planted...and the tomatoes don't grow...and so I buy already fruited large plants...and they won't grow in their containers but instead look sad and depressed...and so I find them a new home (with the elderly couple next door)...solution - buy tomatoes from the Mennonites.

The baby seems contented...and then suddenly decides to nurse and cling quite literally 20 hours a day...and so I try all of the usual things, which don't work...solution - hold her all the time.

But surely there is beauty and grace here, too?

I clean

I mentioned the other day that sometimes I wake in the middle of the night and do chores, and when I thought I had nothing to write about today it occurred to me that I might discuss what I do with my time, both in the dark hours and during the day.

At night, the chores I do are mindless by necessity.  I'm too awake to sleep, but too asleep to wake, and so by mindless I mean decision-free and on autopilot.  I will put in a load of laundry, wash a few pots, empty a container of leftovers from the fridge.  I will not cook, or do anything requiring the movement of furniture (sweeping, etc.).  I putter, rather than single mindedly accomplish something.  I am always acutely aware of returning to bed.

During the day I try and do one large task.  For me this would encompass, for example, the cleaning of a child's room, weeding the garden, taking a steel wool pad to the appliances, or something of that magnitude.  I also run a load of laundry a day, and keep up with the dishes.  Our meals are very simple, and require little in the way of prep work, and I follow the adage of my mentor who feeds her family of eleven with the concept of a protein and something fresh for every meal.  I have the children help me as much as they are able to - usually by tidying.

When I am tired, I do hand work.  I crochet or knit or work on cross stitch.  I return phone calls, I make lists, I tidy.

I try to have the children leave the house every day.  On Tuesdays I make myself go to a stitching group in town.  I visit people, sometimes parishioners and sometimes not, as part of my role.

I have a chore list that I will become better at following but for now offers me a chance to get ideas of things to do.  Under daily chores I have listed sweep floors, make beds,  do dishes, and clean one bedroom.

Weekly chores on the chart:

Monday clean the kitchen
Tuesday floors
Wednesday windows and dusting
Thursday vacuum upholstery, clean table and chairs
Friday mending, decluttering
Saturday laundry
Sunday bathroom, front

The majority of what I do probably falls under child care.  I have two children in diapers, one in cloth.  I spend a lot of time changing them and rinsing diapers.  I feed them and tell them to go play, find things they can do around the house, go to soccer games and doctor's appointments and play groups.  I dress them, bathe them, comfort them and nurse them.  Two of them nap.

Approximately once a week we travel into the city to buy groceries.  On those days I do nothing else.  On Sundays we work and I am generally in the kitchen helping to keep things running at church or else keeping the children at home until the service and then wrangling them during.

Our meals:

Roast chicken with vegetables cut up and roasted with it.
A simple curry in the slow cooker
pizza made on pitas or naan with a bean salad
Chili
Pasta with tomatoes and sausage in a cream sauce, or cheese tortellini
soup and bread
beef stroganoff

For lunches:

Kraft dinner
fruit salad or smoothies
cheese and crackers
bread with home made jam, or toast and peanut butter
leftovers
eggs

The two older children are running around barefoot outside with their friend from church, exerting massive amounts of energy with any luck.  They have both gone without naps today so it is my sincere hope that we are looking at quick and easy bedtime.  I need that today - Lillian is going through some sort of hellish nurse-all-the-time type thing, which is accompanied by only-wanting-mama.  It's probably some kind of survival mechanism.

I'm sitting here watching them go back and forth around the house.  Clara just showed up with a shriveled balloon.  Samuel goes by with a dump truck.  Someone is yelling 'hello'.

My cat got out today - the brown one, not the orange one.  The brown cat is annoying the living daylights out of me right now.  He's scratched up a wall, cries incessantly, pees on the floor, and is escaping outside.  Today I said 'enough' and left him out there.

To comfort myself I vacuumed everything and washed the sofa cushion covers.  I feel better just knowing that if someone came into the house they would not hold their breath and step delicately.  Beef stroganoff for supper.

Random Things

Whenever life changes even slightly for me I immediately seem to fall into this abyss of panic - utterly unable to function beyond a basic level.  By which I mean that I had a baby, and she is nine (nine!) days old and this is the first time I have been able to blog.  It's just past four a.m., and I've given myself exactly 21 minutes to say what I can before forcing myself back to bed.

I can't even begin to tell a birth story or anything that would be remotely interesting to readers, and so I'll tell you the things that have been floating around my head.

1) Writing at night reminds me of a scene in this show that David and I watched recently called If These Walls Could Talk.  See, there's a British historian, (who is a marvelous dresser) and she discusses the evolution of different rooms in a house, one being a bedroom.  Apparently in Tudor times there is some evidence that they slept in two parts, waking halfway through the night and doing productive things that they didn't have time to do during the day - talking, reading, etc.  I don't know if this is true, but it seems as though it could be true because I also do this.  I'm very tired in the evening, and so I go to bed, sleep several hours, and then wake up refreshed at some ridiculous time in the morning and spent an hour switching laundry around, etc. before having to go back to bed.

2)  It also reminds me of a passage from Douglas Coupland's Microserfs where the main character talks about writing by the light of his laptop.

3)  The house is spared from totally falling apart because David's parents are here with us until tomorrow, when they leave to go visit other family and head home.  They revel in doing my dishes; I haven't got a dishwasher and their help is invaluable.  I have no idea what I'll do when they leave - likely curl up and die.

4)  Because I'm an idiot but the alternative was too awful to imagine, I signed my son up for soccer this year.  So tonight, instead of eating a lot of Tylenol and lying around on the sofa watching Time Team and moaning about my life, I get to get dressed and pack three children into the car and go watch my four year old clump around a field.  I hope it doesn't rain.  Otherwise I'll be watching from inside the car, and being stuck with the disagreeable two year old and a nursing baby inside a car for an hour sounds like hell.

5)  Baby and David and I have plans to drive into the city today minus the big kids, who will stay with their grandparents.  We're going to go shopping, so that I can avoid having to do that with three again for a little while.  For some reason I thought grocery shopping was a Totally Possible Activity on Saturday, with a 6 day old, and two tired small people, and me sore and grouchy and without any real list of foods.  It was NOT.  Also, I'm used to being stared at but strap another baby to me and it's a whole 'nother level.  Although one very fine lady smiled at me in the produce aisle.

6) I only have six minutes left on the self-imposed time.  I think I need advice.  Post partum clothes?  What on earth am I supposed to be wearing at this point?

7) Yesterday I came across a whole bunch of little wild strawberries.  I love strawberries.  I picked them all and brought them home and would like to do it all again today but I know my limits.  I cannot possibly go shopping AND pick strawberries and not develop a twitch.  Really, that's the sum total of my parenting advice - know the limit you can reach before experiencing facial tics.

8)  Speaking of strawberries my inlaws brought me 14 litres of them from a u-pick because, well, let's face it I'm not likely to be going to a strawberry u-pick anytime soon.  I made some freezer jam and froze the rest in bags.  I am still somehow hopeful that I can go before the  season is up...maybe next week?

No, I'm not in labour.  And I consoled myself about that fact by telling every nosey rosie who asked "Wow, when are you duuuuuuuue?" that I was due now.  Right now.  As in, right on this lovely plush carpeting in your store and oh, also I'd like to use a changeroom please.

Ridiculous people.  Stop looking at me.

Mostly I cry, and try not to yell at people, but in an effort to be productive I've been checking off The List.

We've got the garden in, have I mentioned that?  I think I have.  Anyway, if I haven't, we have the garden in.  And Samuel has already 'christened' it by falling dramatically on one of the nails and giving himself an impressive cut.  The crying, oh the weeping and wailing that resulted from that cut.  All I did was wash it and put a bit of aloe on it, and you would have though I was amputating.

I spent yesterday dealing with Samuel's bedroom.  I think it just needs to be said that my children need to have nothing at all that is even rather sort of nice.  I wish they could, oh I do.  I picture them with lovely furniture and beautiful books and toys, but the reality is that I found a chicken drumstick on the floor, and dirty clothes at the bottom of the toy box, and, oh, general slovenliness.  And I was terribly upset right up until I discovered the broken dresser drawer and then I was just angry.  Mad.  The drawer, despite both David and I working at it, will not allow itself to be glued back together with wood glue.

So I started throwing things away.  Despite the tears (tears, my children, do not move me) the tiny plastic dinosaurs left, and the army men, and the duplicated trucks and the broken bits of things.  All the very special papers, and the very special wonderful treasures that were SO amazing and necessary that they could not be parted with have been disposed of.  And the pants.  Surely *they* will continue to make pants in the future if I suddenly need more.  And the ripped stuff.  Ugh.  And the colouring books.  Worse invention ever.

Samuel's room now has a bag with some Lego, and a small plastic tub slightly smaller than my dish draining tray in area for wooden trains.  And he has action figures lined on the window sill and a few other reasonable toys that I will debate in the coming week but that is all.  His room is very spartan.

Clara's room is getting it's own sort of overhaul.  A second rod installed in the closet and a lot of clothes purged and packed and what have you.  If only there was a basement.  Or the children could wear one outfit and play with sticks.

And in the meantime I think I have accomplished most of what I've intended to do before the baby arrives. Other things, things that fall into the amorphous category of 'Wouldn't It Be Nice' have mostly been pushed to the side.

The tunnel of Parenting

My friend Kyra mentioned to me that large families start to enter an 'easier period' when the eldest child turns about 10, and that before that you see incremental improvement in life, and also that the period of parenting that I currently am in has a name - The Tunnel of Parenting.

I totally and completely agree.  It is a giant plastic garden hose like opaque tunnel of parenting.  Yes.

On the other hand, I do see flashes of what it WILL be like, one day.  Far from now.  For example, here's one of my first posts from my original blog; and I wrote it when Samuel was about 3 months old.  I'm incredulous when I read it.  Could I seriously not get my act together enough to take one infant outside long enough to buy some groceries?  That same infant can now fetch and carry for me, make his own bed, bathe himself, feed himself, help in the kitchen, play with his sister and put on his own shoes.  There have been changes, in both of us.  He's a helpful and useful member of the family and not a screaming time bomb and I am a calmer mother, one who isn't frightened of the idea of an infant crying periodically.  And when Clara was born, I went through it all again - a toddler and an infant = the worst combination ever made.

Actually, when people talk to me about being nervous to add a third, especially with the fairly short age difference I have already between children (25 months between each child) I don't always understand what they're getting at.  Hard?  Not really in the ways they mean to say.  Samuel is four, he can do so many things alone, and I encourage that independence.  Clara is two, and wants to simply be a shadow - she'll play with Sam as long as he lets her, or follow me around doing 'jobs'.  The baby?  The baby will nurse and sleep and use up diapers, and that's about it.  No, I'm not worried.

But what I am is excited about the future I hear about when my eldest is six and can brush his teeth without needing me to check them after.  I'm excited about when he's eight and is totally able to express himself verbally and doesn't need me to stand in as a constant interpreter.  I'm excited about when the children can sit still.  I'm excited for the day they show up out of their bedrooms wearing clothing that is ACTUALLY seasonally appropriate.  That one might never happen.

Oh, sure, three children will be harder in a lot of ways.  Our car is squeezed as tight as it can go - we're going to need to buy a van very soon.  We don't have a big enough table to fit everyone.  We're into 'people sharing bedrooms' stage and the choices are all awful as to whom has to sleep with whom.  I've run out of space.  And then I've run out of the extra space I found by getting rid of tonnes of stuff.  And now I just pile things.  Our grocery bill is getting ridiculous and it isn't going to look better for a long time.  I'm really tired of wiping bottoms.  I still haven't totally figured out how we're going to leave the house.

Yes, harder, but in the meantime the older ones are growing.  They don't stay babies.  The tunnel of parenting ends.  And at the end is the fantastic world of getting to sit down after lunch and have a cup of tea.

Batman, etc.

It's raining outside, and I'm uncomfortable and depressing to be around, and so I'm mostly spending the day doing things that require a minimum of movement.  I'm going to throw out old magazines, and go through more boxes of little boy clothes and give them away.  David, I think, would like to simply empty the totes of clothes in garbage bags and give them away.  But I am sentimental.  I can't.

Clara, bless her heart, has acquired two incredibly annoying traits in the past few weeks that have rendered me almost entirely unable to speak to her.  The first is to lift her voice at the end of every sentence as though she is living entirely in a huge question.  And the second is to ask, at least a dozen times a day, "what is that thing called?"  Not in itself an awful question, but essentially replacing 'why' in her speech.

"Mama, mama mama?  What is DAT ting called?"
"Cheese."
"Cheeeeeese?"
"Yes, cheese."
"Dat ting called cheese?"
"Yes."
"Mamamamama?  What DAT ting called?"
"It's cheese."
"Dat ting cheese?"

GOOD HEAVENS YES IT'S CHEESE FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT'S HOLY.

Bah.  It's a phase, it's a phase.  That particular phrase has never provided me with much comfort but I'll take what I can get.

And it is Tuesday again, so stitching group meets.  And a call has been put out at church to provide a member of the community with food, and so I feel as though I should go buy some, despite the rain, since the stitching group is right next to our grocery store.  Usually, I would tell myself to go to the less expensive store in the city but weariness is winning over logic and I'll spend twice as much here, but gain the satisfaction of actually having purchased food rather than simply telling myself I will for the next week and never remembering.

Speaking of logic or a lack thereof, David and I, despite everything that tells us otherwise, are probably going to spend about $60 on a toy for Samuel.  No, wait, it gets worse.  The toy is an almost two foot tall Batman cave play set thingy.  Lord Jesus, come anytime you like, no really.

It's just that he loves it so, so much.  On this dusty shelf at one of those old family run type department stores that exist practically nowhere.  The kind of place where the same three jars of Ponds cream have sat for a decade.  We go there to let the children ride the arthritic old mechanical pony for a quarter after I buy up all the discounted bananas from the local store.  And we HAD thought that maybe, maybe, the baby could bring gifts with her.  I know.

Ah well, he's only four once.  Would that a two foot tall bat cave could make him happy forever.

Cleaning

Another busy cleaning day.  I rearranged the livingroom furniture and put down the new rug, which has made the room feel much nicer.  I'd like to scrub, but it hurts to do much.  Then some organizing.  And some managing of clothing.  I have a bucket started for thrift store donations and I feel greatly encouraged there.

And I pestered the people who run the local strawberry patch as to when they would open for picking.  Ideally I'd like another large collection of rhubarb to boil down before the strawberries, but I'll happily take what I can get since my rhubarb decided to go to seed.

Oh, this 38 weeks thing is getting to be so much.  I'm sore and tired, and there is so much to do.

Bookshelf

I like to think I'm spending a lot of time in the house decluttering it, but in reality I'm spending a lot of time making mental lists.  Yesterday I sat on the sofa looking angrily at the bookshelf stuffed full.   How had the books gotten in such a mess?  On their sides, on top of each other, all over the place.  Disaster.  I actually got up and went over to straighten it up, and realized that there were waaaay more books than could fit on the shelves and made a revolutionary decision - if it didn't fit, I had to get rid of it.  David got into it as well and together we purged a big pile of books.  David even went into the other room and pulled a few for the pile from another shelf.  Slow and steady decluttering.

I felt so encouraged by the bookshelf that I went and dealt with the crazy hurricane of a front hallway.  Including starting phase 2 of the litter box switch.  I was tired of looking at the cat's litter, so I bought a new box with a lid and a flap door.  Except the cats hated it.  So we're slowly changing it over.  First we just switched to the new tray about a month ago, and now yesterday I put the lid on but not the door - the reaction is a lot better.  In another month I'll try the door.  Then I moved the washer and dryer and collected all of the bits of things from behind them and washed the floor.

It's mid-June, but boy is it cold here.  Because we're on a lake?  I don't remember last summer when we first arrived if it was cold or not.  Fall was here so quickly then and I was preoccupied with unpacking and getting settled in the new parish and then discovering I was pregnant again and pretty much blocking the next few months of awfulness from my mind.  I looked back and wow, I have been expecting since October.  So long.  

I know I'll feel much better when the birth is done and I can move normally again.  Move and breathe.  And reach my feet.  And take a bath.  And, I don't know, go shopping at more than one store before needing a nap.

Homeschooling

Ah, yes.  Homeschooling.

Well, we are homeschooling this September, although that seems to be very surprising to some people.  We've also enrolled Samuel in the local public school kindergarten with the idea of possibly having him attend a few mornings a week just to give him an opportunity to get out of the house, enjoy the company of friends, and let me manage with one less child for a few hours.  We haven't decided whether or not we're going to do it, but we've attended the introduction to kindergarten night and so forth.  I cannot make any decisions beyond that right now.

And I've chosen some 'curriculum'.  It seems strange to consider the books I've chosen as any sort of curriculum, actually.  I mean, Samuel is only four years old.  I thought I'd share them in case anyone was curious.

We're using the BOB Books to teach phonics.  I'm getting the first two sets and if we fly through them I'll pick up a few more, but if we can only make it through those I'm fine.  I'm also using the first level of the Handwriting Without  Tears program - My Letters and Numbers Book.  I debated buying this because I couldn't really see it being useful this early, but I think I'd like to start Samuel off on the right foot with how to hold his pencil and form letters.  We're also using audio books to introduce some classic literature.  I'm getting Beatrix Potter, A.A. Milne, Herriot and possibly the Just so Stories.  Anything more than that I'll borrow from the library.  That pretty much sums up the literature section.

For math I chose Family Math for Young Children which is a book of math related games that I think we'll all enjoy.  I really don't want to jump into math books right away.

I would like to do some poetry and scripture memorization, but instead of buying anything I'll source it elsewhere.  Same with any crafts or anything we do.

Samuel will be taking swimming lessons on Fridays with a homeschool group, and that combined with practicing on his bicycle and nature walks is my plan for gym.

That's the plan!  It's very gentle, but actually still more rigorous than what he would be doing in kindergarten.

Audio Books

Samuel dislikes his afternoon rest time a great deal - undoubtedly thinking it is beneath him as a tall four year old boy - but I need afternoon rest time like I need water, and so he takes it.  And will continue to do so until Jesus returns or I suddenly become a very energetic person, whichever comes first.

To combat this (and the endless reasons-why-I-must-leave-my-room) I'm playing him books on tape.  I don't anticipate that he will fall asleep listening to them, but I don't expect sleep during rest time.  My only requirements are that he stay in his room, with the door closed, and not make huge stomping noises or dump out all of his puzzles or what have you.  Clara, at two, will still sleep, hallelujah.  She sleeps in her bedroom with a gate at the door since she is an escape artist and the thought of her being awake, unattended, and not locked away is a terrifying one.  She, of my two children, would be more likely to eat things from the garbage, or turn on all of the taps and plug the sink, or unlock the front door and wander off.  I don't trust her one little bit.

Anyway, the tapes, yes.  Cds, actually.  He's listening to Anne of Green Gables right now.  I remember audio books as having been very expensive but that was years ago and they're quite reasonable now.  I think Anne cost less than $20 and is unabridged and read like a play.

I'm really hoping that this occupies him well.  Ideally I think I'd love 2 whole hours of napping/quiet play/books on tape but right now we get about an hour.  I'm not worried about the new baby.  New babies tend to just sort of shuffle in wherever they're put.

Tuesday

In the early mornings is when I blog.  Or write at all, really.  This isn't because I'm hugely productive at this time of day or because I especially love dawn.  I do not love dawn.  No, I write in the morning because after a good sleep I am the least stressed and anxious I will be all day and that gives me the opportunity to get at least a few chicken scratches down on metaphorical paper before someone is poking someone else in the eye with a fork or one child starts screaming because the other one got to touch the cat's ear and they didn't.

I'm sitting in bed, at the ridiculously late hour of seven-thirty, hurriedly typing because I can hear my saintly husband not yelling at whomever just clearly broke that glass in the kitchen, and trying not to think of the fact that he is going to be working all day and so am I, but in our separate spheres.  He will go to the deep, quiet church and write, and then he will likely go on many visits to the various people who need to talk to him.  I, on the other hand, will spend my morning trying to make dentist's appointments for people who hate dentists, and do so to the soundtrack of the children (who have recently discovered the cd of Shrek 'music' that one of us purchased back when we clearly the stupidest pre-parents ever and thought it would be so fun for a future child) yelling "NOT MY BUTTONS!"

That sentence might have been a bit hysterical.

Full-term pregnant women should not be allowed to manage household duties alone.  Yesterday I spent a large portion of my afternoon trying to keep the children outside while I called the local wholesale shopping place to figure out why I could not find their price list online.  Eventually my customer helper person (what politically correct term are we using for this job now?)  admitted to me that she was new at her job and transferred me to a manager.  On that topic, why on earth is the phone transfer system set up the way it is?  You explain everything to someone, then they say 'I'm going to transfer you to blahblah', and then you are transferred to someone whom they have clearly not bothered to explain anything to, and you now re-tell your tale, and then THEY SOMETIMES TRANSFER YOU.  It's incredibly disheartening.

I would say that moving closer to family would help, but probably it would not.  Probably not much other than the Holy Spirit working in the hearts of the retail industry and possibly a very large coffee is going to help me today.

Hospital Bag Packing

I’m packing a hospital bag.  Well, to be more specific it turns out I’m packing two hospital bags because something something and it all sounded logical to me at the time and now I’m too lazy to change it.  I’m too lazy to change almost anything these days, honestly.  I sat down to clean the bathroom last night.  And then I sat down again to pack some clothes into storage.  I went outside to watch the children cover themselves in mud, and I sat down.  People are starting to comment on it.

Humour me with a bit of whining.  When I sit, my back hurts.  When I stand, my feet swell.  When I lie down I get heartburn and leg cramps.  So then I stand up, and I have to pee.  So I go to pee and suddenly I’m exhausted from the effort and decide to just change the toilet paper roll and go back to bed, except when I crouch, I get stuck.  Yesterday whilst crocheting I got a cramp in my arm.  In my arm.  Not a ‘oooo, cramp’ but a ‘ AAAHHHHHH HOLY HANNAH MY ARM MY ARRRRRMMMMM’ cramp.

So pretty much I am a delight to live with.  Who knows how the family is managing it all.  David bought me a cake and I sat and ate half of it while watching Gypsy Weddings or whatever that show is where the girls all 

get tans all the time.

You want nice baby news?  Well, she’s head down.  Although that could change.  And all is well with both of us, except that I’m very large.  I think I must be the biggest I’ve ever been.  Ah well, who cares.

Today we take Clara to get her inoculations updated, which should be horrific.  And I’d like to buy more cleaning products because I am hoarding them for some reason.  And then go to the stitching group and leave David to manage everything all by himself.  And come home and eat something premade from the freezer.  Perhaps those little chicken wrapped in bacon things.  I should clean out the fridge except that I really just did, and I’m rebelling against the fact that it appears to need it again.  Why should I have to do these things that God has given me to do?  

Baby Loopy

The baby is 'due' in 30 days.  All I can think about is this baby.  Not in a 'Oh wow, a snuggly amazing baby!' way, just a never ending constant loop of baby thoughts.  This is what the inside of my head looks like right now:

Do I have everything for the hospital packed?  No, I still need to bring shampoo.  I should buy shampoo.  Am I really going to use it, though?  Those little tiny hospital bathroom stalls and touching the walls.  Maybe I'll shampoo at home instead.  Right.  So I should bring shampoo.  Wait.  Did I decide not to bring shampoo?  Forget it, come back to it, what else do I need.  I need to make some freezer meals.  I'm too tired to go find a pen.  Let's look online.  Oh but first I should go pack some shampoo.  No, I'm not bringing the shampoo, okay.  No shampoo.  What else.  Freezer meals.  No, I'm too tired to go look for a pen.  Let's finish one thing first - hospital bag.  Right.  I need clothes for me.  I should buy pajamas.  Okay I need to go start a list.  No, that means I need to find a pen.  Maybe I should nap first, THEN find a pen.  No!  Focus!  Oh my word why am I having another baby.  Okay, okay, breathe.  I need pajamas and shampoo.  Possibly.  Oh for heaven's sake just pack the shampoo already.  Right.  And pens.  Maybe I should PACK pens.  Do I need to buy pens?  No, no, calm down, we're not talking about pens.  This is too hard.

So, that's that then.

Giving Away Clothes, Having Huge Babies, Gardens

I have this very nice friend upon whom I unload all of my children's clothing once it gets too small.  The problem is that her son is under a year, and my son is four, and so the clothing is, of course, WAY too big.  She still graciously accepts it, but I feel a little bit awful giving it to her just because, well, who wants to store clothes for years in their basement?  Not me.  Noooooot me.

I just made a huge bag up for her of pjs, all sized 2T to 4T, and I'm thinking of leaving it on her porch so I don't have to hand it to her sheepishly.  Maybe this is a sign that I need to stop with trying to find 'good homes' for hand-me-down clothing and just shove it all in the donation boxes for thrift stores.

What I don't have is someone to take the too-small little girl clothes yet.  Although most of those I tend to keep since my daughters will be 25 months apart, so likely will wear the same sized seasonal clothing.  This is what I'm telling myself, anyway, in order to avoid having to make emotional clothes-removal decisions.

*****

Ways I can tell this baby is going to be huge:

1 - The heartburn in this pregnancy has me starting my THIRD giant bottle of extra-strength Tums.  Third.  I've told myself that this is because the baby is so big it's squishing all of my internal organs, including my stomach.

2 - The baby has progressed to doing that flopping movement where it feels like a huge, fat, BABY is moving in you, rather than a tiny fish, or a parrot.  No little foot motions, but, like, A BABY.

3 - I'm certain that she will be at least as big as her siblings were.  Samuel was 8 lbs 7 oz and Clara was 8 lbs 6.25 oz.  I've gained a bit more than with those pregnancies, and I'm attributing it to more baby.

4 - I'm a pessimist.

******

I keep going outside and puttering around doing garden stuff.  I have no clue what I'm doing.  Last year's garden was a total disaster, and we moved at the end of August so I didn't get a chance to enjoy any harvest we might have had.  This year I've started a bed of sunflowers, sweet peas and zinnia along the front porch, and a large window box of johnny jump-ups and pansies.  Last fall I transplanted some chives and rhubarb, and they have both come up and seem to be sort of doing something, so that's encouraging.  And a nice parishioner brought me a big bucket of blue lobelia and what I think are geraniums, so that's on the porch as well.  That's it.  But I have lots of seeds and I'm not done yet.

Prayer.

I've finally found myself defaulting to prayer in a raw way again.  I tend to vacillate on this issue, and it really is an issue.  Some days (or weeks, or months) I'm fantastic at it - I rely fully on God's grace to get me through life and I see the results from that reliance.  And then some weeks (or months, or seasons) I'm terrible at it.  I cannot fall backwards like that silly trust building workshop game tells you to.  I cannot close my eyes.  I simply cannot step out.  And I don't quite understand why, except that I know intellectually that so much sin is rooted in the same old, same old.  Pride, Self-reliance, all the way back to the garden.

This week, I have made a concerted effort to focus on several larger issues that I needed to address.  With one exception, I feel as though they have all been dealt with on some level by God.  The relationship that was awkward and faltering has been patched together, the situation that caused great anxiety and way too much in the way of 'what ifs?' has been neatly answered to everyone's satisfaction.  The constant stress of baby preparations have dwindled until I can barely remember half of what I was so worried about.

And if you live a Christian life you are thinking two things right now.  The first is this warm, glowy sense of "Oh how wonderful, God answers prayers, she's at peace on all of these topics, life is good, my prayers will be answered as well, lalalala!"  The other thought is...

"But what about the prayer that hasn't yet been answered?"

Indeed.

Isn't that just like me.  And maybe you, what do I know; I assume other people are like me although I have no reason to think that.  For we seem unable to dwell with God forever on this earth - our lives constantly bring us to a point of comparison.  She has more than me.  He has this thing that I want.  Why can't I be at peace?  Why can't I eat that apple?  Why don't I get to decide?

Because we'd fail at it, that's why.  The same way my son would soon die of malnutrition if his meal options were entirely up to him.  

I will continue to pray for this issue to be resolved.  For it to take itself off of my mind and stop weighing me down with it's constant drone.  I will pray continually although it may not be answered the way I want it to be, and then I will pray for that, as well.  And in the meantime, I will remember that the best relationships require communication, and that God will listen when I speak.  

Needs for the Baby

Yesterday marked 35 weeks of pregnancy.  I know a lot of women (myself included with my first child) who call 37 weeks full term, and therefore the ‘possible end point’.  These are the same ladies (again, I was one, too) who count the days, and are always telling you they ‘think they might go early’.  My son was 10 days late, and only arrived after two days of induction, so I think it’s safe to say he wasn’t ready and neither was I.  My daughter was born as the clock turned to 15 days ‘past due’, in the early hours of the morning, again after induction.  So...I don’t have these mystical early babies.  With this pregnancy I have zero expectations of early babies, or on-time babies, or really babies period at this point.  I’m sore, and I’m tired, and it’s only really just hitting me that in a few weeks I will actually have another child in this house.  And that’s okay – I’ve gone through the motions of sorting baby clothes and washing them all and hanging them on wee little hangers.  I’ve set up the bassinette that both of my children slept in.  I’ve washed an overnight bag, and last week I tossed a bag of newborn sized disposable diapers in the cart at the grocery store.  I’m fairly certain I have diaper cream somewhere in the house, and if not, well, whatever.  Unlike the last two end-of-pregnancy times, I have no bottles; there is no back up to nursing anymore.  I have no nursing cover, I think I’ve lost all the important parts to my fancy baby food processor and I’m fine with that.  It’s taken four years but I’m confident that the things I have are the necessities – if the baby was born right this second, I would be fine.

I’ve seen several posts about the absolute must-haves for a new baby, and most of the posts are from moms significantly more with it and together than I am.  Moms of many children, moms of multiples, moms of multiple littles, etc.  So I’m not entirely certain that I have anything to add to the conversation – but I’d like to write it all down for posterity so I can remember for myself.  And if there is ever a baby #4, I’ll be able to tell you that half of the stuff I have here is useless as well.

1)  A way to carry the baby that isn’t your arms.  I have used a stretchy wrap for both of my children so far, and it’s been invaluable – the brand is Monkeywear (it’s Canadian made) and has washed and tumble dried its way through four years, so I can assure you it will stand up to rough usage.  With Samuel we also had, oh, all sorts of other carriers – a sling, a S.nuggli, what have you.  I used nothing except the stretchy wrap.  We also have a Beco butterfly (a soft structured carrier, rather like an Ergo, except made in North America) and a woven wrap, which I am still getting used to.  But that piece of stretchy wrap fabric has saved my sanity many a time.

2)   Diapers.  Cloth or disposable, your choice.  If I was your best friend and you asked my opinion I would say buy a box of disposable diapers, maybe two, for that first little while.  Even if you want to use cloth.  Even if you own cloth.  Even if you are strongly, morally, determined to use cloth.  Buy a pack of disposables, especially if this is your first baby and you aren’t firmly in the ‘actually, I realize how much work and effort and grossness will be involved in the post partum period’ camp.  As far as disposable brands go, my theory is to buy the cheapest ones you can and if for some reason they don’t work you can always try a more expensive brand.  Cloth diapers are their own universe. 

3)  A car seat.  You can borrow it or buy it, most bucket seats seem to start around 5lbs and have a little infant insert that goes around the baby to cradle them in the seat.  We didn’t have a car for the first two babies, but we still bought a seat because you never know when you’ll need to transport the baby somewhere.

4)   Some large and small squares of fabric.  We own two Aden and Anais blankets that are huge and work wonderfully to swaddle a baby, drape over yourself if you need a nursing cover, mop up a ridiculous episode of milk being thrown up everywhere, become a blanket on the grass in the summer, toss over the backs of two chairs to make a shady tent, stand in for an emergency towel...you get the idea.  I carry one with me everywhere.  For small squares I use thick organic cotton squares that are almost a mix of felt and heavy flannel.  I believe they were intended to be inserts for wool diapers, but they’ve always been burp cloths, emergency face wipes, etc.  A few small cloths and a big one should live with you always.

5)  Wipes.  Does anyone actually live without these?  The ‘mom I have to pee but the bathroom is out of toilet paper’ situation alone would make me never leave the house without these.  The only suggestion I have is to buy a decent brand name, because the really cheap dollar store type wipes are not worth it.

I think that’s it, really.  There are nice extras of course, and I think it helps to remember that the things you need will change with each child.  For example, with Samuel I needed a breast pump, and I haven’t needed it since.  When I had Clara, I suddenly and for the first time needed a stroller to be able to go anywhere with a newborn and a 25 month old without having to worry about Samuel dashing into traffic while I carried the baby, or what have you.  With this baby, I’ve discovered that I can’t get by with a standard size of car seat in the back of our small car, and because of that an extra narrow car seat was suddenly a necessary purchase.  Neither of these things would have been must haves until I actually needed them.

Also, a lot of things that seem to be must haves for other people have just never been that for me.  Diaper bags come to mind in this category.  I have lots of cloth bags hanging around, or backpacks, or, I don’t know, the trunk of the car.  I don’t need or want to buy ANOTHER bag.  In fact, any one-use item is likely to be unnecessary.  And some of the things you’ll want to buy are actually more of household items then baby specific.  Ice cube trays, you’ll want more of those if you plan to make baby food, an umbrella for your porch table if you hope to sit outside with the baby while the other children play, these are not really baby items.

On reading Proverbs, feeding cats, etc.

Last night was the second this week to end in nightmares for me, a sure sign I'm agitated about something.  I don't go in for dream analysis, but under the circumstances I can't help but pick the dream apart again and again.  Why do I do this, when I know perfectly well that the root cause of it is worry?  And furthermore I was up at 4:45 this morning (I would like to say FOR the purpose of bible study, but let's not kid ourselves) and I read this:

"The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge"

in Proverbs, and oh of course today is that day - the day you read something that directly applies to you.  Reading the Bible is sometimes a case of just endless Levitical laws or someone droning on about something you have no interest in and then all of a sudden it isn't.  I know I should search for meaning in that which holds no interest for me, but when I come across something that does it really is easier.  And it resonates all day.  And clearly this is all about me.

On a totally different note, my cat that had to go to the vet this week came home with a moderately clean bill of health but with the admonition that we put him on a special diet.  An expensive special diet (is there any other kind?) that is, naturally, ONLY available at the vet and will cost roughly $80 a month.  The cat and I had a little chat on the way home, but he is warm and sleeps on my feet and I'm a huge sucker for this animal and so I bought it.  Naturally he detests it deeply and we are locked in a battle of wills.  I'll win, because I have the unfair advantage of thumbs and being larger than he is, but he's putting up a good fight.

Baby Clothes

Today is Friday, and Friday was the day I had set aside for dealing with the baby clothes.  First thing in the morning my friend showed up and we got to work - 4 huge totes of clothes to deal with in front of us.  I thought that things were bad, but I didn't realize the disorganization we were talking about here.  One bucket held only boy clothes, but the other three were a mix of gender and sizes, and it was awful.  I don't know how long it took us to sort them into piles, and then to put each pile into a separate labelled bag, but right now it doesn't look as if any space has been saved at all.  It will, though, when phase two:  The Storing Of Baby Clothes takes effect.  In the meantime I handled the huge pile of clothes that had somehow gotten stained while in storage.  While we watched tv I used stain remover on them and then ran them through a wash.  A few got better, but I'm trying again by soaking them in Oxyclean and hot water.  I'm about to go and run them through another wash and see if that does anything.  And I've hung up the nice clean ones, and I think I have enough so as soon as these come out of the dryer I'm done.

That's all I did for the baby, but it's taken all day to do, and my list of tasks I still need to finish in the next few weeks is much, much smaller.  I have a list to take to the store and fill, I have to make some freezer meals...generally speaking I think the big stuff is pretty much done.

I'm 34 weeks on Sunday and I'm glad to be ahead of the game.

Draining The Will To Live

The weather, I feel, has been terrible for weeks.

"It's awful." I whined to my husband this morning, while the toddler instituted her daily dose of military intensity cuddling and feeding of dry cereal.

But honestly, the grey, the damp, the not being able to dry clothes on a clothesline or fuss in the garden or take the children outside.  It's draining my will to live.

So here we are, stuck inside.  Except that today is a day where we are not stuck inside because we have to go out.  The cat has developed an expensive-looking ailment and David has taken him to the vet, and then will come home to pick us up and drive the long distance to the city so that I can wait for hours to see the bebe doctor who will weight me, poke my stomach and send me on my way.  And then as consolation we will eat at some horrendous boxy restaurant-type place and grit our teeth and go to Walmart.  If I've timed it correctly, and there's no reason to assume I haven't, we will get to the spot where we need to purchase items just as Clara breaks down into an exhausted tantrum and Samuel, overwhelmed with life, will flail about the checkout line and knock over a display of gum.

"Listen to the beautiful music!"  I'll bellow at the children in the back seat while blasting Gregorian chant.  "Can't you hear God!"  Of course they can't.  They can't hear a blessed thing over the noise of their own annoying voices howling in rage in the backseat.  They will fall asleep 6 minutes before we get home.

The backseat.  Oh my.  I ignored the endless contractions and crawled around there installing car seats the other day.  I was very very hopeful that somehow the three seats we already own could be arranged in such a way as to fit in the back of a small car.  The idea of buying another seat is too much for me right now.  And the Lord was gracious and they fit and my children look like sardines.  David thinks that we should now remove the infant seat until we need it and I firmly disagree because I'm not installing it again when I am even fatter.

A Baby Update

I’m due with our third child on the 29^th of June, which, if you’re not great at math (I’m not) is 48 days away.  Considering I gave birth to Samuel at 10 days past my due date and Clara at 15 days past my due date, I’m not expecting to see this baby in 48 days, but it’s an approximation that helps me organize my thoughts.

Those thoughts are mostly focusing around nesting.

It happened with Samuel – I turned a storage room in our tiny two bedroom walk-up apartment into a nursery.  It happened with Clara (remember the Baby Clothing post?), and now it’s happening with Baby #3 – an overwhelming desire to organize the pantry, to wash everything, to re-upholster furniture and knit things – combined with a bone numbing exhaustion.

Everything that I do allows me a chance to mentally check something off my list, which may explain how I found myself spray painting bed frames in the backyard two weeks ago, or attaching locks to all of my cupboard doors, or, this morning, scrubbing the grout around the kitchen sink.  Heaven forbid the baby experience dirty grout.

I’ve set aside this Friday as baby clothes organizing day.  What was once a neat tub of clean, stain-free, sized and useful clothing in a closet has grown into four years of wardrobes that would strike terror into the heart of anyone.  There are baby boy clothes shoved into the 24 month size girl pants section and hats with the diaper covers.  There are clothes in piles on top of clothes in buckets beside clothes shoved, unfolded, into a suitcase.  It’s awful.  I have a friend coming to help me tackle it all and I have a plan, so hopefully between the incentive to get it done with help and the organized perfection in my head, there will be order.

Coupons

How dull is it to hear about someone else saving money with coupons, or whatever?  Well, actually, I don't find that sort of conversation all that dull, but in a third-person 'put yourself in someone else's shoes' type way, I can understand why it would be.

I'm mentioning this because I've started clipping coupons occasionally, and today we're heading off to the store and getting what I think are some really quite good deals.  99 cent toothpaste, for example.  I'm not a huge fan of coupons for food because I find that most of the food is very over-processed, but coupons for toiletries and cleaning supplies are great.  I struggle with the desire to 'stockpile' necessities, and the equal and sometimes stronger urge to throw away everything I own and live a minimalist life.  I think, I hope, I'm achieving some sort of balance.

I try to live frugally, while still having a good life, and I think we do fairly well at that.  I know that I have the skills to run this house on very little if necessary, but I also know that forcing my family to live in 'survival mode' for the sake of saving money is mean spirited.  And yet, I do enjoy aspects of the frugal life a lot.  I like making the 'best' decision - finding the best price or even choosing to spend more with the knowledge that a product is higher quality.

My competitive nature wants me to push myself, and I have to find grace in life and realize that the struggle to be the best at saving is as bad as wanting to be the best at anything.

World Day of Prayer stuff, church, my children.

Well, I announced in church this morning that the World Day of Prayer is on Friday, and hosted by the United Church this year.  We need to bring two readers, and I gamely volunteered to be one of them and hope that someone else will stand up as the second so I don't have to start calling people and asking them.

Trying very hard to keep the focus on our big vacation in 10 days - we're heading off on a 12 hour drive to see relatives and shop for summer clothes and other things that are difficult to do where we live.

Also at church - a large, gooey, celebratory cake which reminded me of that passage in Lauren Winner's book Girl Meets God.  Perhaps I am meant to be an altar guild member forever.

Saturday

Oh my word I just discovered that I'm supposed to be posting for seven days, not five.  Seven.  Which means that today, which I assumed was my last day of inflicting inane ramblings on the poor folk of facebook is, in fact, not.  I need to think of things to write about for another two days.  People, I'm not that interesting.

I woke up this morning, after having slept in until an embarrassing time, and David asked me if we could have company for supper tonight.  Now, I'm almost always up for company.  No, that's not true, here's the deal: when you don't have children entertaining consists of looking through lots of cookbooks and spending an afternoon shopping for food and possibly even a few days cleaning depending on how important your company is.  And then you all have a lovely long visit and eat all sorts of things and enjoy yourselves.

When you HAVE children, you can only cook in shifts, because otherwise whomever is in the kitchen is attempting to move around whilst dragging the dead weight of a toddler clinging to her legs asking for cheese/a drink of water/ cuddles/ more cheese.  "Oh how sweet' the childless among you coo; no it is not sweet.  It is, in fact, very far from sweet.  Your options are baby gates or a spouse who can effectively distract.

There is also no point whatsoever in cleaning anything because, as my living room can currently attest to, cleaning lasts 3.2 seconds.  And I'm not talking 'well we'll need to re-fluff those cushions' type cleaning.  There is currently a torn apart bun all over the floor.

This means that the only real option is so serve something from the slow cooker, arrange for the children to leave the premises for the majority of the day (or at least just before company arrives) and tidy everything by throwing it into the playroom.  I've been told that this changes as the children get older - but I can't see it from the trenches.

So, the company.  We're having it, and this company falls into the 'I'd like things to look and taste nice' camp, as opposed to family or friend company where my hope is that they like pizza.

I think I've decided to try and make my mother's recipe for zucchini stuffed chicken, and then serve that with something totally store bought, possibly even a store bought dessert.

Friday

When you are pregnant with your third child everything is very different.  There isn't the same level of nervousness when you get your ultrasound; you can recognize things on the screen; all is fine.  We're having a girl, it was discovered, and I'm very pleased.  As is typical of us, we have no name chosen but lots of ideas.  I don't feel any panic, though.  We'll figure it all out.

Today the telephone person is supposed to come and fix our line, and I have intentions to take Samuel to the library and possibly even playgroup, depending on how optimistic I am.  There will also be something decadent for dessert, although I don't currently know what that will be.  Possibly homemade popcorn balls.

Thursday Stuff

We are so blessed today to have someone to watch both of the children while David and I head into the city for the ultrasound to find out if the baby is a lady or a gentleman and all of the other measurements.  She's a wonderful girl and adores the children, who know this and probably take advantage of it.  They're excited to have company, and I'm trying to figure out what to make for lunch so they can all eat without having to defrost things.

In the meantime I'm on cup of tea #2 in order to face the day.  And when I say cup, I mean vat, since David kindly purchased some huge mugs for me a few years ago, and I use them daily.

I have been fighting with the cats (and losing) on whether I'm allowed to keep even one houseplant in this life.  They eat everything.  And the children aren't helping the situation - but I think I've solved the problem.  Cacti.  No one will want to touch them, no one will want to eat them, and I can forget to water them.  Perfect.

In Between Day

Yesterday's trip to the OB was exactly what I had hoped for - quick, efficient and productive.  I even had all of the blood work that modern medicine seems to require done, and done quickly.  The ultrasound is booked for tomorrow (!!) and so one of today's big to-do list items is going to be finding care for the children whilst David and I make a trip into the city again.  I'm hopeful that we can get some grocery shopping done as well, buy a zipper to repair David's winter coat, some embroidery floss and possibly a storage solution for our bedroom.  The last will only happen if we have neither child with us, because then the back seat, usually filled with coats and boots and carseats and angst, will be empty.

And I came home to a functioning shower!  And a non-leaky sink!  It was a glorious day, let me tell you, and getting to have a shower in my own house for the first time since August was wonderful.

We had honey garlic marinated steak for supper, and I made a double meal and froze half, which is how I'm freezer cooking this week.  Tonight will either be green chili pork tacos or chicken enchiladas.  I think...I think I want the enchiladas.  And since I'm the one making supper - hallelujah I can decide.

And so this morning has become, through no fault of its own, an incredibly busy day.  I get to do all of the work from yesterday's cleaning schedule (Tuesdays are mopping), and today's (Wednesdays are vacuuming upholstery/dusting) and Thursday as well since I won't be home (Thursdays are scrubbing the kitchen table and highchair and windows).  But the very first thing that needed to be done was to give Samuel a haircut - which he wasn't happy about at all.

And David, before he left to lead prayer group, called the phone people to tell them that our line is still not receiving calls, and they've booked an appt. to arrive on Friday.  

Supposed to be Monday

This pregnancy is going by so much faster than either of my others; I'm over halfway (22 weeks and change now) even if you factor in that there's no chance of my giving birth at 40 weeks.  I like to think that, because it involves less pain and frustration on the other side of it all when you're huge and hot and uncomfortable and want someone to put you out of your misery and all you can do is sob to people "but I'm full term...".  No, much better to think about these things now, while I still have some shreds of sanity about me.

And this morning is the joy of my OB appointment, which I have been thinking of in terms much less pleasant than I am prepared to share, but which just now, this very moment, I have decided to be grateful for and happy about.

While I'm gone one of our handy parishioners is going to come over here and fix our shower, which I am unreservedly thrilled over.  We've been living in the parsonage since August and haven't had a working shower, only a bath.  I like baths, but having a bath seems to be Such An Ordeal in a way that showers aren't.  I need to find time for a bath, I need to prepare a beverage, a book, a schedule...is there hot water in the tank?  A shower is easy, and easy is what I like.

I am also going to actively be Very Optimistic about this shower thing because I have a feeling that it isn't a quick fix but is going to require removing part of the wall and fixing the plumbing.  And I shall write a note for the gentleman to also take a look at the leaking sink.

Yesterday, when I intended to post this, was not a great day.  I had high hopes of getting all sorts of freezerish food prepared and such, but went over my grocery budget (not surprising, I hadn't researched it well and was shopping with everyone) and that frustrated me.  The children, who had been promised rides on the mechanical pony if they behaved in the store, did not get their rides, and cried loudly.  The embroidery floss I needed to continue this cross stitch was gone from the store.  I was exhausted and barely managed chicken and rice for supper, which neither child wanted or ate anyway.  And our attempted family tv show ended in everyone going to bed.

Today is going to be wonderful!

Books and sleep and others

I'm watching out the nice window (as opposed to the not awful but certainly nothing to write home about windows) in the living room as my pastor husband makes his much-bundled way through the snow to check on his flock.  I myself have to make a trip out to relieve the thrift store workers so that they can eat their lunch in the chilly but relatively quiet peace of the church.  I'm being hampered by the fact that I decided, completely on a whim and without any thought or prayer, to teach Clara today how to fall asleep on her own for nap time.  She used to be in possession of this skill when she slept in a crib, but once she learned to climb out of the crib we had to put her in a toddler bed, which for safety sake I've kept in our bedroom (is there anything more terrifying then knowing your child can open doors and wander around the house at night?).  This means that she's fallen into the habit of needing someone to lie down with her for nap time.  I'm not a fan of this - I have little enough time (not to mention energy) to slog through the endless round that I can't be lured towards my pillow or this increasingly pregnant lady won't be up again for hours.

The church is having a bake sale today; a friend of mine commented to me the other day that we always seem to be doing things in this church, and it's very true.  I waver between thinking this is all a very good idea and that we should be more focused.  But if everyone is happy, and enjoys each other's company, well then God clearly knows this situation better than I do.  I came to the bake sale with my meager offerings - why is it that when you make something in your kitchen it always appears more substantial then when you show up with it?  I'd made a loaf of my mother's excellent cinnamon bread, and another loaf of challah, because braided bread looks impressive and people buy it.  But I sincerely hope more food showed up after I came because it wasn't much of a table.

And I'm reading a book!  Two books!  Two quite good books that I'm liking a lot.  The first is Name Above All Names by Alistair Begg and Sinclair Ferguson and the second is Left Behind In A Megachurch World How God Works Through Ordinary Churches by Ruth Tucker.  Ruth's book is wonderful in such a very relevant way.

I have to go get that child again.  Sleep isn't here.

Two Soups

We made both of these this week, and I thought perhaps, if you had similarly ravenous family members, then you would appreciate them.

Cream of Broccoli and Cheese Soup

Take three large bunches of broccoli and chop off the florets and peel and chop the stems and wash everything.  Put it in a pot with some water and simmer until they're still nice and green.  Throw them in a blender with four cups of milk and puree.  In a separate pot, make a white sauce from 2/3 of a stick of butter, flour, and four cups of milk.  Add it to the broccoli.  Grate cheese and mix.  Salt to taste and freeze it.

Roasted Vegetable Soup

Roast an acorn squash (Halved and seeded), a sweet potato (don't peel), two cloves of garlic and two green apples until the squash and potato are done.  You'll want to add some fat to the roasting pan, like oil or whatever.  Puree the vegetables with the stock from a roasted chicken.  Add a tsp of cumin and salt.