My 6 Month Old

Was it not just yesterday I was pushing for two hours so I could meet my baby? Was it not just yesterday I was praying and calling out to God that he would save me from the threatened C-Section?

Where in the world have the last 6 months gone?

Miss Lily has become quiet the personality in the last 6 months.

She is for the most part a happy baby. She is her mommy's girl through and through. If I enter a room and neglect to talk to her or pick her up she will wail in protest no matter what mood she was in to begin.

She wrestles with me as I try to change her diaper or dress her. She wants to sit up or play with the stuff around her. She does not have time to be changed right now, thank you very much!

She can sit up unsupported for longer periods of time now. She can't quiet get herself into the sitting position, but if I tried as hard as she does I would have abs of steel right now. The belly crunches she does when trying to sit up are impressive.

She is very curious. Always looking around, grabbing at things, and talking to the objects around her.

She has experimented with this laughing thing though she is still trying it out. I love to hear the few giggles we can get.

She can pull up to a standing position with some help and this is her preferred position.

She loves her Lily Leap Up (or Johnny Jump Up). She can bounce in that for half and hour to an hour with no fussing.

She loves her brothers and sisters and absolutely ADORES her Jonathan. When he walks into a room her whole face lights up. The feeling is mutual.

She has just discovered babbling and she takes great delight in doing that.

She is a true miracle, I just wish time would slow down some...

Be Blessed!

Merry Christmas

Is this not the best Christmas idea ever??

I gleaned it from Dollar Stretcher.

Give envelopes with a gift a month. For example:

One month could be for a night at the movies.

One month could be for lunch out.

One month could be for a trip to the park.

You get the idea.

Fantastic idea.

Just wanted to share that idea with ya'll.

What are some other ideas for an inexpensive Christmas? What would you include in your envelope a month?

Be Blessed!

Home again, home again, jiggity jig.

I just spent this last week in NC with some friends welcoming their second grand baby. A boy. The first for their oldest daughter. It was so much fun. I remember all to well snuggling up with this new mommy when she was a preschooler. Such memories. It's a joy to be home again. While, Roy, Lily and Kelsie were with me, I had to leave the rest of my little chicks behind with their grandma. I am so sincerely blessed to have such an amazing mom. She dropped everything to look out for my little ones. I am glad to be home to my nest and my babies. Right now they are all outside playing while daddy finishes cleaning out the car. I am supposed to be getting the house back in order and finishing up some school organizing that I never completed. It's why my school year has been so rotten thus far.

I just wanted to stop in here and say, "Hi!" While my blogging has been sporadic lately it is something I enjoy doing. I have not given it up. :) Needless to say my bedroom did not get finished this week. :) So, I will be aiming for next week.

I am blessed to be going to a wedding tomorrow of a wonderful friend. She is a widow with four beautiful children and God has now brought an amazing man in to come alongside her as a father figure. She is so excited. I can't wait. Next week is full of Drs. appts for my mom. Please pray that on Friday her surgeon will give her the ok to become mobile again. She is getting bored sitting at home. Wednesday our homeschool co-op is having a Thanksgiving feast. I can not believe how quickly this month is moving by.

Well, that is my week at a glance. I hope you all are going to have a blessed weekend and week as well.

Toodles.

What happened?

Don't you love my new bedroom?? LOL
No, that is really not the finished product. I have been working steady but it took a little longer than the week I was hoping it would take. Illness, doctor's appts. and life in general just kind of took over. Not a bad thing, just slowed me down some. I'll be finishing the cleaning of my room this week and working in the boys room as well. I'm so excited because once I get all the clutter out of the bedrooms and give them a good scrub down I am going to be adding some things to really make the rooms shine. I love fall for all of the colors and freshness. The coziness and the smells. That's what I want for my home.
Be Blessed!

And the next day...

I just realized yesterday that I have been duplicating a lot of my pictures in posts. I guess you can always tell which ones are my favorites. LOL

My bedroom project is moving right along. Last night I made sure all of our bed linens were washed. It was wonderful to go to bed on clean fresh sheets. Today when I got up I took the time to make up the bed. I cleared all the clutter from around our bed. I made sure all of my pictures were in the picture box and pulled out the framed ones that I want to hang up in the room.

I finished sorting through the baby stuff on one side of the room. Almost everything has a place. I have to clean off my shelf to make room for the rest of the stuff.

Today I will tackle the side of the room that somehow became our clothing storage spot. I have all the kids "winter" clothes in boxes on that side of the room. I need to get those moved to their closets. I also have a few baby bags to go through over there.

As a bonus I found a couple of packs of size one diapers we will be whipping through the next two weeks. A friend dropped off a huge pack of size 1-2 diapers so we will be set, I think. I have two smaller packs of size 3. I don't forsee buying diapers for a few months. :)

It's so freeing to say goodbye to stuff!!

My Bedroom Challenge

Whew! Time sure does fly right now. We finally got back into school slowly but surely. Hoping we can build some sort of momentum.
But for now I really want to post about my bedroom. Just a note though, there are NO before pictures... I am hoping for some after pictures. LOL

About a month before Lily was born my nesting instinct was CRAZY and it all focused on my bedroom. I had hubby finish putting in our new floors and paint over the red walls with a nice light creamy yellowish white color. We were in the process of finishing painting and rearranging everything when my water broke a week early. My room has stayed in a constant state of chaos since!

Today while I was nursing Lily I decided to watch an episode of Hoarders. Ladies, if you want inspiration and motivation to clean up your house look this show up. It's on Netflix Instant Play right now. Talk about a swift kick in the seat!

I ended up watching two episodes and then I hauled my lazy rump off the couch and hit my bedroom running!

Right now I am sorting through my baby clothes and boxing up the newborn clothes for future use, I hope, one day. I also still have some bags with baby gifts in them that I am going through. I took a water break and though, oh let me post this on my blog for accountability.

Hopefully next Wednesday I will be back with some after pictures. That is my plan. I wish I could do it all in one day, but I do have a family that needs me. :)

So, I am challenging myself to make a clean, organized, peaceful space for me and my man (and our little baby girl who shares our room right now).

Plus, honestly, how can I get onto the kids for not having a clean room, when mine is such a disaster???

Join me if you'd like!

On the homefront

We started back to school today. PHEW! I have some tweaks and changes to make but we will get there. It's definitely different with the baby around. She did well though and enjoyed watching Jonathan while we did Phonics and Math. He kept looking at her and asking if she was watching. LOL She giggled and cooed.

I want to make some changes to our housekeeping, but I think I will wait until after next week to start that. My problem is I try to start everything at once. It rarely works out. Right now Karly and Kelsie rotate the dishes. I really want to get Tamara and Adrian involved in that as well. They are both getting old enough. Also, because of the baby some of the children are slacking in their areas. I need to get back on top of that.

I checked out a comprehensive baking book from the library. I will be dragging the girls into the kitchen to go through it with me. It looks like a lot of fun and I think the girls will enjoy it. Starting next month sometime we will start working through the Raising Maidens of Virtue book together.

I'm looking forward to spending some time with them. With Karly turning 13 this past April I am all to aware of how quickly time is going. I want to make good memories with my girls!

Be Blessed!

Just an update

Things are going well around the house. We are settling into a routine with Miss Lily and gearing up to start formal schooling next week. I have everything but Science and Latin.

Lily, of course, is starting her 3m growth spurt and I am trying to keep up. She fusses most of the day and I feed her most of the day. The great thing though is that she normally sleeps through the night. I'm talking almost 8 hours. I usually have to wake her up and play with her for a few minutes to get her to eat. My milk supply seems to be hanging in there. I have heard that around the 3 month growth spurt is when a lot of moms lose it.

We celebrated Tamara's ninth birthday this month. It's hard to believe that she was only 3 when she came to live here. How time flies!

I'm thinking of rearranging my house again. I sometimes get this idea and it won't leave me until I do it, so I will probably just do it. LOL

Well Lily is awake so I must go feed her.

Be Blessed!

Where's the gung ho?

I was thinking the other day about when I started this whole motherhood/homeschooling/keeping the home journey. It seems so long ago. I was SO gung ho. I just knew it was what I was meant to do with my life.

Four years and six kids later I am wondering what happened to the gusto? When did I loose the joy and passion. Oh, it's still there. I can feel it. It's the implementing I am having the trouble with. No, it's not all pregnancy/post partum drama. It has not been there for a while now. Some days I think if my kids weren't so far behind in their schooling I would put them back in school.

Hows it going?

My plans last week were thwarted over and over again. Of course that's how life goes. :)
I overslept two days and one day I spent at the hospital with my mom for some fixing up on her. She's fine. Of course carting around Lily in her carseat was no fun. I'm definitely getting a Moby wrap until she is big enough for the Ergo without the infant insert. I am really sad that the infant insert is not working out for us.

The rest of the week was a blast! We went to Chuck E Cheese, the beach, bowling, and the museum. The beach was HOT! I now remember why we go around 4pm when we go. But we had fun with our home school group. Lily did awesome and I had some more practice nursing in public. I don't think I will ever get used to it. :)

This week we started our informal school schedule. We are working on workbooks until the end of September when we start our real school schedule. Today was almost a bust because I had to take my mom to the social security office, but we were in and out so I was able to get home and do some more schooling before lunch.

Slowly but surely we will get back into the groove. :)

Be Blessed!

How do you get back to normal?

I have a few steps I am going to take.
The first one is to make sure that I pick up my Bible and prayer journal every day. Why is it that the first thing to go when your life is topsy turvy is your Bible reading? Shouldn't it be the one thing you continue to do during the chaos? Crazy!

The second is to sit down on Sunday evenings and come up with a meal plan and schedule for the next week. Right now working out a schedule on a week by week basis works for me. I can glance at my calendar and see what is going on for the week and plan around that. Like I said before this week will be a really fun week, but I would like to start our read alouds again and I want to get some projects done as well. I have to loosely schedule everything right now with the baby, but having written down what comes next will help when I am pulled away by my precious baby.

The third thing I will be doing is revamping our chore system. I need to streamline it more so that I can check up on how everyone is doing in a more efficient way. I'm still noodling this as I'm not sure how I am going to work it out. I need to give Jonathan some chores and really Tamara needs to start learning how to work in the kitchen. So, lots to think on here.

And the fourth thing I am going to do is continue to read other peoples blog posts and ideas. It sounds like it's counterproductive to getting more organized, but it's what motivates me. My new favorite thing is the link up on Raising Homemakers. I am so motivated just from that! I am the type of person who reads Little House on the Prairie, Janette Oke or an Amish fiction book and I want to hop right up and go make my house a little homier. Blog time for me is educational time. I'm constantly learning.

I hope to get back to semi regular blogging. It's a nice outlet for all the thoughts in my head. :)

Be Blessed!

Getting Back To Normal

And what exactly is this normal I am speaking of?? :)
It's being a wife, mother, and homemaker. It's trying to re-prioritize my life. It's recognizing that this small wonder really needs me right now, but so do my other children. It's eeking out time with my wonderful husband and trying to reestablish a comfortable home life for the rest of the family.

My baby is growing up so quickly. She is already 2 months old. Where is the time going??

I have tried off and on to get some school going but it's not working out.

Next week we will celebrate the first week of public school here by playing.

We will play at Chuck E Cheese on Monday, the Museum on Tuesday, the beach on Wednesday, bowling on Thursday, Friday is TBD.

I plan to post on my Large Family Review Blog about how we managed the whole week affordably.

After our week of play we will buckle back down to our Read Alouds and finishing up workbooks.

The last week in September we will formally start our new year.

In the mean time I will be thoroughly cleaning the house and rearranging/reorganizing some of the more cluttered areas.

I will be working with the children to reestablish their chores. Right now it's almost an anything goes scenario with their chores and that is SO not working out for me. :)

Lily is getting older and is establishing a more set routine for herself. Right now it's totally baby led as far as feeding and napping. But I am seeing more of a pattern.

My kids need more of a routine, my hubby needs more of a routine, and I surely need more of a routine. It's been pretty chaotic around here.

I have new ideas and new tricks up my sleeve. We'll see how it goes!

Lily Grace's Birth Story

I have been working on this post for weeks now! Weeks! Hard to type when my hands are always so busy. But, oh, how much I love it!! This is our first picture with all three of us!

After praying all week to go into labor naturally, my water broke at 2:15am Friday June 18. Even though I kept telling people all week that I was going to have my baby on Friday, I did not have my bag packed, her bag packed or the car seat ready to go. Thankfully, even though my water broke I was not experiencing contractions or other problems. By 3:30am we were walking out the door.

One last picture before we go. See, I told you I was getting huge! Roy was so excited. I was just nervous. Of course it was also at this moment that I realized my plan was to do laundry all day on Friday so the kids would have clothes to wear while I was in the hospital. Thanks to my wonderful friends and mom who put together outfits for them all.

Oh yeah.. I forgot to put gas in the car after running all of my errands on Thursday. Roy was so nervous he pressed the buttons to fast and actually had to go in and pay. He was not happy. I was just walking around the car. Still no contractions.

This picture is just for posterity. This was right after she was born. Lovely picture.LOL

At the hospital we were informed that our birth plan had been completely changed. I would be on a glucose and insulin drip during labor, I would be on pitocin, and fluids. We finally agreed to a low dose of pitocin because contractions were still very very mild.

This was the next day. Roy was beat. He stayed with me the whole time.

I did manage to labor with no epidural until about 1pm. I was at 6cm and they wanted to up the Pitocin some more because of the slow progression. I knew if they upped the Pitocin I would pass out. The contractions were already so bad that I spent ALL of my energy trying to relax. Plus, the contractions were in a weird place. I felt them in the very tops of my legs. No matter what position I tried I could not relax that part of my body enough to deal with the pain.

The look of pure relief on Roy's face when I consented to the epidural made it worth it.

My blood sugar stayed pretty stable throughout labor. I think it went to 148 once while I was pushing. If it stayed between 80 and 100 they did not have to do insulin or glucose. I think they only administered the insulin twice and the glucose three times.

I labored well for another five or six hours. When my nurse came into to check me I was at 8cm and then she said something horrible. I was swelling on one side. She said if she told Dr. B then he would start prepping me for a c-section. She finally decided to tell him that I was progressed another 1/2cm. She then laid the bed flat and turned me on my right side.

I remember tears pouring down my face as I cried out to God. Friends came in a prayed. The pain was becoming unbearable but I welcomed it because I was praying that the contractions were working.

Nurse Kim, then brought in her replacement Nurse Becky and told me she'd hand picked her just for me. When Nurse Becky checked me a little later I was at 9 1/2 and ready to push. It was 8pm.

The first few pushes weren't so bad. Although, the epidural was only working in my legs at that point. The anesthesiologist was called in at one point and asked to administer some morphine. I remember that all very vaguely. I do remember staring at him and thanking him. LOL

I pushed and pushed and pushed. I remember Dr. B finally coming in. I looked at him and said, "Hi!"

Here's where the story gets funny.

I'd been pushing and only grunting a few times. I thought I was doing pretty good. Dr. B does not do episiotomies. At the time he told us that we thought that was amazing. So shocked that we did not ask him how he avoids them.

When he did the perinium massage I screamed and might have actually stood up on the bed.

Yeah, he thought I was more numb than I was.

He was so shocked that he actually got onto me. I missed a whole contraction while he explained very sternly that I needed to get control. (Just know he's still my fave!! He made up for it later)

This is Nurse Kim. The nurse I told you about earlier. Isn't she beautiful? I LOVE her.
I pushed some more and then, THEN! they told me to stop pushing b/c the Dr did not have his scrubs on yet. OH yeah, the top of my baby's head was sticking out and my contractions were constant! I remember begging Dr. B to help me. He kept telling me he was coming. The next thing I knew he was above me and my baby was slipping out. I felt the head, the shoulders, then she was on my stomach and he was beaming like a proud papa.

It was later described as a frantic birth. Once she started coming she was coming. LOL

Stuff was knocked over in the haste to get his scrubs on. His hat and shoe coverings were actually tossed to the other side of the room before he could get those on.

The best part was when they announced that my baby was 7 pounds 1oz. Dr. B turned slowly towards the nurse and in disbelief asked her to repeat. She did.

Then he turned back to me with a huge grin and kept saying, "Your my hero!" He then told everyone in the room about my diabetic journey. LOL

I asked him why he ever doubted me! :)

After the room was cleared out and Roy had gone to get our family waiting in the waiting room Dr. B came back in and gave me a hug as we admired my new baby. He then apologized for getting on to me and told me I was still his favorite patient. He waxed on admiringly for a few minutes about what a great job I'd done during the whole pregnancy. It was pretty sweet.

We had a pretty uneventful stay. Though the next day they informed me that they thought Lily had an infection and wanted to start antibiotics. They took her to the nursery to get the IV in and two hours later they were still trying to get a vein. When they brought her back in to me she looked at me wide eyed and breathed a little sigh before snuggling in and sleeping for three hours.

All in all I think it was a pretty positive experience. The hospital was great and my nurses were the BEST! I loved them. I ended up with a 2nd degree tear but it healed up nicely in just a couple of weeks. I was in some pain but I was able to get up and move around about an hour after birth with no problems.

Lily ended up with Jaundice. They started talking about all the treatment options, but I knew if I could just get out of the hospital and to my holistic pediatrician it would be ok. I knew she would just have me nurse, nurse, nurse.

Her levels continued to go up but they did discharge us because I had an appointment with her pediatrician the next day. And of course she had me nurse, nurse, nurse and her levels went straight down!

Breastfeeding went well and is still going great. I had some issues the day my milk came in. Bad enough that Roy went to Walmart at 11:3opm and got a manual pump. I pumped it out for a day and she ate from a medicine dropper. After that I only used the pump to get the milk started for one day and then after that she has been a pro.

She is a wonderful baby. A true gift from God. I just can't believe how blessed I am. I still get a little teary eyed when I look at her.

Thank you all for your prayers. I am convinced she is such a healthy, happy baby because of all of your prayers. Our God is an awesome God.

Here it all is finally! Sorry I have been away so long. She is a month old now. :)

Be Blessed!