Lately 8/14/18

It's been a while, hasn't it? I'm sure you noticed and missed me desperately, right? (Ha.) Well, I'm pleased to report that I'm still alive (as are both children and the husband). We've just been busy and I haven't felt the desire to sit and write when there is so much else we could/should be doing! That's summer for ya.

Anyway, here's a quick overview of what we've been up to:

Lately 5/24/18

+ We've been starting to explore our local nature classroom/"food forest," and it's proving to be an interesting experience for both of us. First I attended a little workshop they gave about how to use the nature classroom, and we've also been starting to go to the weekly community play time they have on Thursday mornings. It's not really my idea of fun to go stand in the hot sun for an hour and a half, even if it is morning, but E has been loving it. Part of that might be because her cousins meet us there (and she practically worships them), but she talks about the stuff she did when we come home--and even recreated one here--so I think she's getting into the activities more as we keep going. If you have no idea what a nature classroom or food forest is, Google it. It's a neat concept, and I'm really surprised/impressed that our city actually has this. Perhaps I'll write something more detailed another time.

Zoey: 6 months

Weight: 16 pounds
Length:

Lately 3/28/18

+ Reading everything about Charlotte Mason that I can get my hands on. The more I read about her ideas, the more sense it all makes and the more I feel an inner peace about following her recommendations. It just clicks, y'all. It's not, maybe, as simple to understand as some other homeschooling methods (probably because it's so much more than just a homeschooling method), but it's worth the extra work it takes to gather the full picture. If you're a homeschooler (or want to be in the future), I highly recommend looking into her ideas.

Zoey: 4 months

Zoey: 3 months

+ Zoey has become a much better napper over the last month. She's even started to occasionally stretch one of her naps longer than the others--I'm hoping that's a sign that we'll have some success when it's time to move to two naps a day down the road. However, she is really fighting our SwaddleMe swaddle--she cries while being swaddled and doesn't stop until she's got her pacifier and is starting to drift off. She escapes the swaddle, too, and sometimes wakes up super early in the morning because both arms are waving around like it's party time. But if she has her hands out to start, it's a total disaster. It seems like it's just a lose-lose situation for the time being.

Zoey: 2 months

+ Stats (my own DIY-at-home measurements)
          Weight: 12.8 pounds
          Length: 24 inches
          Head: 16 inches

+ We're getting into a nice eat-play-nap routine during the day. The nap portion is often way too short, though--and she wakes up angry, so there's no chance of getting her to go back to sleep. Tips, anyone? I'm considering trying out a Love To Dream Swaddle Up to see if having her hands more accessible helps--but that's a lot of money for one swaddle blanket. We currently use a SwaddleMe, but that keeps her arms strapped to her sides, and I wonder if that's what is ticking her off. Does anyone have experience with the LTD? Other recommendations?

+ She sleeps. through. the. night. Praise Jesus.

Welcome 2018

Christmas is my favorite holiday, and I love that the new year starts right in the middle of the Christmas season. Fresh starts, new goals, a clean slate. Diving into a new year is like taking that first deep breath of fresh air after a long car ride. Call me a sap, an idealist, or a dreamer, but it's the best.

Lately 12/21/17

+ E is obsessed with The Nutcracker. We read an adaptation by Susan Jeffers (lovely illustrations, but the text isn't great) and then watched a performance of the ballet on Youtube. Ever since, she's been pretending to be Marie. She dances around the kitchen wearing scarves (which are apparently her ballerina dresses--she demands that I say "ooo!" when she puts on the sparkly one), and she carries this giraffe baby toy around as her nutcracker. Hilarious.

Zoey: 1 month

I know there've been a lot of Zoey posts lately, but buckle up for another one. Zoey Bird is officially a whole month old!

Weight: 11 pounds (This can't possibly be right, can it? I think my scale is off.)
Height: 22.25 inches
(These are both my own measurements, not the doctor's, so take their accuracy with a huge grain of salt.)

Zoey's birth story

Little Zoey was born on a Thursday night--all souls day, actually. I had hoped we could wait one more day--November 3rd last year was the day we buried Ruthie and Judah, and I saw something beautiful in having her birthday be a sort of redemption of that day for us. But doc couldn't make the 3rd work, so we were scheduled for the 2nd. She was overdue (as I knew she would be) and she took her sweet time coming. We went in for induction around noon--the doctor broke my water at about one, and I expected things to take off pretty quickly from there like they had with her older sister, who also had to be evicted. But Zoey seemed to want to prove right away that she's going to do things her own way.

Our first two weeks with Zoey Claire

Well, we've officially survived two weeks as a family of four. I still feel like we're in survival mode, and things aren't really "settled" yet. I also haven't braved any sort of outing by myself with both kids--that thought still strikes fear in my heart. BUT, I can already tell that the second time around the baby block is way easier than the first in many ways. And it's funny how much I find myself thinking back to when E was a baby and noting all the things that are surprisingly different or exactly the same this time.

Meet Zoey

She's here! Our sweet little Zoey bird was born on November 2nd. Her labor wasn't quite as cut and dry as her sister's--there was pitocin involved and an epidural that the anesthesiologist forgot to actually hook up (I wish I was kidding)... but she's here. And she's lovely and so, so very loved. 

Lately 10/27/17

+ We're still waiting for baby girl to make her grand entrance (official due date is the 30th). Honestly, I'm OK with the waiting. C and I were talking at dinner last night about how the whole we're-going-to-have-more-than-one-kid-in-the-house thing hasn't really hit home just yet, and we think stretching out these last few days with just the three of us is a good thing. So take your time, sweet baby.

+ I've been reading a little bit out of You are the Beloved: Daily Meditations for Spiritual Living each morning. It's a devotional consisting of excerpts from Henri J.M. Nouwen's writings. Nouwen was a Dutch-born Catholic priest and prolific writer who died back in 1996. He wrote more than 30 books, but his name was totally new to me until earlier this year. I've actually never read anything by Nouwen before, so this devotional is a nice little taste. (At the library book sale this week, I spotted his name on the spine of one of the books in the religion section and snatched it up, so soon(ish) I'll be able to change that.) The book is dated, so I started near the back in the month of October and will just flip back to the front when the calendar rolls over. Most of the excerpts are about a paragraph in length, so it's a really quick read right away in the morning. I like that it's so short--if I'm pressed for time, it's still easy to get it in. And if I have a few moments to sit and savor, the day's reading makes for good journaling fodder. Each entry also notes which book of Nouwen's it is taken from, just in case you want to go read the complete original.

Lately 10/8/17

+ I gave myself my first black eye the other night. I had to get up and use the bathroom in the middle of the night (#pregnantproblems), and I guess I wasn't awake enough to be fully aware of what I was doing. I ran face-first into a shelf that hangs on the wall next to the bathroom door, and by the next morning there was a big ol' bruise. I've never had a black eye before, so I kindof wish it was a better story. But still... it takes talent to do that to yourself, right?

Where to start when your upbringing didn't teach you how to build a family

Technically speaking, I am what people usually refer to as a "cradle Catholic." I was baptized as a baby, spent years in CCD classes, and was confirmed right on schedule. I even attended a Catholic school for a time. But don't let that fool you: my upbringing wasn't really all that Catholic. My family didn't attend Mass, didn't pray together, didn't observe holy days or saint feasts, and didn't really talk about faith in general. I was put through the motions (because as a kid in this setting, it certainly wasn't MY idea of a good time), but that was the extent of it.

On top of our lack of faith activity, my family had its share of issues in the bonding department. I remember lots of visits to Grandma and Grandpa's house a few hours from home, and one big trip to Disney World, and even a camping trip some time before that. Bright spots there, for sure, but not much in the way of day-to-day nurturing. Perhaps there was more of an effort made when I was too little to form a long-term memory? What I remember from the later years, however, is a whole lot of television, being on my own, and mutual disinterest.

My family also fought a lot. That's probably normal--families fight. But the four of us fought in truly awful ways. We were spiteful, vindictive, dismissive, cruel, even violent. Let me tell you, handling conflict like this doesn't set you up for success in any relationship. I didn't learn to fight "right" until after I was married--I still don't know how or why C ever put up with it.

Why am I airing all this dirty laundry on the internet? Well, because this rocky upbringing is, for better or for worse, one half of the foundation C and I are working with as we build our own family. The way I grew up influences the way I live and parent. And these three areas--faith life, family bonds, and conflict--are preeeetty major. Having what I call a "deficient background" in any one of them, much less all three, is hard to overcome. And if I'm not very intentional and extremely careful, it could spell disaster for my little family. The internet part is because I don't think I'm alone in this situation, and maybe someone else needs to see that. Or maybe, when I get down to my "resources" list below, you'll have something to add.

Dear E [9/12/17]

Dear E,

Today we attended our first day of "classes" at the homeschooling co-op we're trying out this fall. You're taking music, a nature play session, story time, and ABCs/health, so it's nothing rigorous. I just really wanted to get us out of the house and in the company of other like-minded people (meaning homeschoolers). It's a social thing at this point.

I have to be honest here: I've been pretty nervous about this whole venture. Not just because of my own shyness, though that's definitely a factor. But also because you, my little bug, are rather shy yourself. Six months ago, you cried at the playground because another little girl wanted to play with you and be your friend. I know you've grown up a lot since then and have been doing better interacting with other people, but I still wasn't sure how you were going to handle something so foreign as a preschool class. So it was with some doubt that I got you up this morning with the excited exclamation, "It's co-op day!"

Lately 9/8/17

+ We took E to the apple orchard last weekend, and she got to be "Annie the apple farmer" (it's a little board book she got as a gift and has been obsessed with off and on for a while now). The guy working the u-pick stand let her take a wagon--I'm not sure if they normally charge for that or not, but we were the ONLY people there so we got to just grab and go. E rode out in her wagon, then started pulling apples off the lowest branches of the trees. It only took her about five minutes to fill up her bag--turns out, apple-picking isn't quite the all-day adventure I had imagined. Dad lifted her up on his shoulders so she could snag a few from the higher branches, too, just for fun. Then we went back to the snack barn and nibbled on popcorn balls and apple donuts for a while before heading home. Fall bucket list win, right there. E hasn't stopped talking about it since, and she loooooves eating the apples she picked herself. I think she'd eat herself sick on apples if I let her.

Lately 8/18/17

+ E and I started pulling out a morning basket during breakfast each day. I have a plan written out, and each week we read books and do a few activities covering stories, saints, math, the alphabet, and religion. We also work on memorizing a prayer and sometimes do motor skills practice. It sounds a lot more involved than it really is, I promise--almost all of it is stuff we'd do organically throughout the day anyway. Having it all in the morning basket keeps me organized, though, and helps me make sure I don't forget to read that book we got at the library or forget to ever play with patterns with her or something like that. I've been reading a lot about Charlotte Mason--in fact, I just started digging into her first volume, Home Education--and plan to keep things very simple until E is six years old or so. For now, we're just doing our morning basket. It doesn't take much time at all and mostly involves me reading aloud to her (which we'd be doing anyway). She loves it and asks for me to read "her stories" every morning.

Baby gear: little sister

Three months until baby arrives! My to-do list is eight hundred miles long, y'all. I've resigned myself to the fact that it's not all going to get done in time, but I'm still chipping away as much as I can. I've spent what feels like an eternity washing, folding, and putting away clothes and unpacking baby gear. It's still a little all over the place, but I make progress little by little.