Letter to our Baby Boy

Baby boy,

We are getting SO excited for you! This pregnancy is flying, no doubt because your sisters are keeping me SO busy! Physically this pregnancy has been easier than my last one, so that is nice! Maybe it didn't get harder until later... I can't remember. But I'm enjoying feeling somewhat human :). I am reacting to the progesterone injections that are keeping you snug and warm inside, so that is a bit scary, but trying to trust that everything will be ok. So far I'm having to miss one of my two shots per week, and have had to be on antibiotics for that area getting infected. I found it weird that I never had this problem the last two pregnancies (well maybe once or twice but never recurrent like this) but apparently with it being in oil, you can develop almost an allergy to the oil. I guess not allergy but intolerance? So that's potentially what's happening but... they don't make it in another oil! Just a small price to pay for my sweet boy. If only I could get your sisters to quit bouncing off my right side!

Today at library story time there were 3 different babies all crawling age, and all boys. Both girls loved them and kept rubbing their heads and backs, and watching them crawl. It got me sooo excited to see them with you!!!! It still blows my mind that you're a boy, and it's been fun watching other baby boys because I really only ever imagined myself as a girl mom! I ordered a few newborn sleepers and it was really fun to get them in the mail and try to picture you wearing them. Ms Natalie (mommy's best friend and your future Godmother!) got me the diaper bag and dinosaur muslin blanket I wanted. It makes it feel so real! In a few months you'll be snuggled in that blanket! You are such a wiggly guy and I wonder if you always will be. You seem to be more "hands" than feet. I feel those hands going ALL the time, but only get truly kicked once or twice a day. I love you and can't wait to meet you.

Love
Mommy

Oh My, Apple Pie

This morning I made an apple pie. That might be a regular day for some people, but I really struggle with baked goods, so I don't make them often. But I realized that never having them does nothing to help my girls, and I want them to have memories of us baking. So when I came across an apple pie recipe that sounded good to me (pie is usually not my thing!), I ripped it out and decided to make it at some point. Then Steven's mom asked me to bring a pie for Thanksgiving, and the girls and I had so much fun making a chocolate chess pie. And I happened to have one crust leftover so.... now there's a freshly baked apple pie on my counter waiting for dinner time tonight! I know lots of people bake around the holidays, but it's hard for me to rationalize that knowing that we're already getting lots of extra treats around those times. I need to get better at making treats here or there in the longer spells without holidays/treats/candy. My neighbor bakes all the time, and usually ends up giving half away as soon as she makes it. This sounds painful to me :), but certainly healthier than standing in the kitchen silently eating a brownie while my kids play in another room!

Homeschool Update

Well, since I never posted about starting homeschooling, I guess this isn't really an update :). I started pre-k with Felicity in September, right after our family beach vacation. So far we are absolutely loving it!!! I spent a ridiculous amount of time researching for a couple years (we have known we wanted to homeschool for a while). I stumbled upon Charlotte Mason, and then Mater Amabalis which is the Catholic version, and it was love! There is very little formal schooling before age 7, and lots of time spent outdoors/in nature, coupled with living books instead of text books, and lots of high quality literature. Could it be any more perfect!? I'm sure I will tweak it a bit each year, but so far I've been really happy with it and I'm eager to do kindergarten with her next year! We are in the first year of "prep level" this year. There were one or two things I removed, but otherwise I'm following it pretty closely. Our day generally looks like: breakfast while I read a bible story, followed by any table work we are doing (writing, math, workbooks- which are NOT Charlotte Mason but my kid loves!, etc). Then we move out to the couch for reading time. Generally we do arts/crafts and one other thing in the afternoon; usually a hands on phonics or math game, and then we spend as much time outside as possible. I aim for about 2 hours a day... that'll increase when they can go outside without me, either because of their age or because we FINALLY build a fence ha! Sometimes they scooter and play with friends, and other times we go on nature walks, hikes, or make "soup" out of mulch, rocks, and berries. We have started nature journaling a tiny bit, but mostly I leave nature time pretty unstructured for now. I would say all in all, we spend 40 or so minutes a day doing "school" when you think of the more formal things, but of course Felicity is learning tons outside of that when she helps me clean, or cook, or just asks questions on her own. We normally do about 4 days a week with maybe a super quick thing to wrap up the week on the 5th day. Next year will go up to about an hour a day. One of the biggest perks for me has been doing art with her. She not only loves it, but I am enjoying it and learning so much, too! We've learned about a couple different artists now, and my favorite so far has been Kandinsky who created abstract art. There is a book "The Noisy Paint Box" that has SUCH a wonderful message for young kids, with his actual life experiences and quotes in it. I highly recommend checking it out! We are going to start some music study soon (and by study I mean painting or coloring while we listen to a composer and me mentioning his name :) ), and we are going to The Nutcracker next month... can't wait! So far homeschooling gets 2 thumbs up from all of us!

Five Minutes NOT About Thanksgiving :)

It would be easy to use my journaling time today to recap what we did for Thanksgiving but, let's face it, that would be kind of boring. What I'm going to share is related, without a play by play. After we ate yesterday, we went to my mother and father in law's new/old farm. I say new/old because it has been in their family forever, but they are the new owners. They have lived the last 30 years in a small ranch home not too far from this land. My MIL's mother and father had this land and the buildings on it until she passed earlier this year. There are 6 children and they split up the land, animals, rental trailers, and farm equipment between them. No one else wanted the actual farm, but my MIL did. My FIL was a bit resistant, mostly because of the amount of work it would take to keep up with the small farm property, and then to sell their house they've lived in for decades. But since no money had to be exchanged, they can take their time with both getting the farm house ready to move into, and selling their current home. There are many old sheds and buildings on the property, but one is the house my MIL grew up in that had no electricity or running water before the current house was built. It is so crazy to think about that! Yesterday we walked down to the creek and saw the spring that her parents would get water from. It's now fairly dilapidated and stores old farm stuff, but it is really cool to have that piece of history on their property. After they split everything 6 ways, my in laws got about 10 acres of land including the house, one of the pastures, some woods, and the creek. I cannot tell you how excited I am to have my kids grow up visiting and playing here!

One of my internal struggles since choosing the Charlotte Mason method of homeschooling for my family is that there is quite a lot she recommended, that I agree with, that is really hard to provide in many modern day settings. For example, she suggested that kids be outside for 4-6 hours a day. I actually totally agree with that, but when you have a toddler and live in the suburbs with small lots, you have to supervise everything, and who has 6 hours to sit outside each day!? Any day that's nice, we aim for 2 hours, and my kids LOVE nature and being outside, so it's working. But I do still with that I could open the back door and send them out into our expansive field of a backyard to run, play, and collect bugs. Buuuuut I really like having neighbors and short mowing times and Target, Chickfila, and Starbucks 5 or so minutes away :). So, in a way, this is the best of both worlds. I keep my modern conveniences (I'd still like a bit more property at some point in our future, but for now we are staying put!), but we have 10 glorious acres of land we can hop in the car and go play on and explore for the day. I'm not sure why we didn't feel like we had that same access when Steven's grandma was alive... certainly I don't think she would have cared, and probably would have loved it!... but this certainly feels like opening a whole world of nature and fresh air to my kids. Yesterday they spent about a half hour running across the tops of hay bales. I can't wait for more of that!

To Tree or Not to Tree

I've obviously been thinking a lot these past few days about letting go of stress and choosing joy, even amidst certain circumstances that I can't change. I came to a pretty big (for me) decision today that I still have mixed feelings about, but I know it's the right decision. A few weeks ago, I sent Steven a Five Below ad and asked him to swing by and pick up their $5 4 foot artificial Christmas tree. I knew for $5 it would probably be a Charlie Brown tree, but I figured that would be perfect for a tree that the girls could decorate and undecorate to their hearts' content. I got a few wooden ornaments from Michael's that they can paint, and we have plenty of kid friendly ones in our stash. At that time, it was going to hopefully be a way to keep Clare from undecorating our real tree, like she did last year. But today I had a light bulb moment. Eliminate stress, choose joy. Let the girls have their tree as OUR tree. Charlie Brown and all, who cares? They certainly won't. They'll be thrilled to be totally in charge of the tree. And it will save us the money of buying a real tree (which I LOVE, but it does get pricey year after year), and the time of getting it, getting it set up, watering it, vacuuming the needles every few days, feeling stressed when ornaments are being taken off, and eventually having to take it all down to the curb, and scrub out the tree stand from all the sap. A year off? I'll take it. I don't feel pressure at all from my family; I know the kids will love the little tree, and Steven is very pro reducing stress for me. But I still feel that outside pressure, imaginary maybe, of anyone coming in our home seeing that we don't have a 'real' (live or more legit artificial tree). There's always that neighbor or friend with the show worthy house that you can't help but think "man, they're going to think this is so lame". But.... like was on my list, I need to let go of expectations- both expectations I have of myself, and ones that others may have of me (or that I assume they have of me). So I am letting it go. This year we will embrace and enjoy our Charlie Brown tree! And next year we'll have a crawler, so this may be a tradition for a while ;). As Felicity popped up this morning at 6:15 and said "Happy Thanksgiving Eve, mama!!!!", it helped me realize that she cares about the same stuff I do... the people, the joy of the season, the excitement. She doesn't need anything fancy to enjoy the fun of the day, so neither do I!

Changes on the Horizon

So out of the list I linked to yesterday, there are definitely a large handful I think I could benefit from. I know that if I go 'whole hog" into it, it won't last, so I'm hoping for some slow changes. The fact that I'm journaling for the second day is hopeful :). I also know I may lose and gain momentum at various points, and I want to be ok with that as long as there's over all progression. So here are the things I want to focus on, eventually:

Take time in the morning to find your center and set intentions for the day.
One thing I love about Felicity's preschooll curriculum is that it includes actual bible readings each morning. A lot of curriculums for that age would be kid style bible stories. Because this is actual scripture, I've found myself benefitting from it too! And now that both kids are sleeping well, I'm hoping to have a few minutes each morning to wake up and get my head in the game before they do. This happens a couple times a week right now, and is so helpful! So this one I will keep trying to improve, but I've unintentionally been working on anyway.

Consistently let go of expectations. 
This one is actually addressing expectations you have of yourself and that others have of you, but my bigger stumbling block is unrealistic expectations I can sometimes have of others. So that's going to be my bigger focus.

Enjoy nature.
Another thing that has been enhanced SO MUCH by Felicity's curriculum! We have been doing nature walks, hikes, and nature journaling and I would lying if I said it didn't benefit me as much as it does her :). Even the simplicity of watching my girls collect acorns is so relaxing. I like enjoying nature AND enjoying them in nature.

Eat nourishing whole foods.
Yeah, this is a big one I need to focus on. I will definitely have to do it slowly but I know this is a big part of my problem.

Get up and dance when you feel too serious.
At first the thoughts of this made me want to punch someone so I was going to toss it in the "does not apply" pile. But who I do spend my whole day with? An almost 5 year old and almost 3 year old. I think this could diffuse many a situation or tense mood!

Unplug your devices and relish in the stillness.
Well, there's no stillness here, but I certainly could stand to reduce my screen (phone) time!

Be mindful of complaining too much/Practice radial gratitude/Seek out the good in a situation (all similar so I combined them).
I'm awful about this. I could have 8 beautiful hours in a day and I let 1 really hard hour overshadow all of that. I'm going to focus on more intentionally noticing what things I am grateful for and what things are going well. I tried this at the park yesterday after reading this list. Clare was having a REALLY hard time, as she has been for a few weeks now, but in all reality that was 30 minutes out of 2 hours and 15 min. So I sat back towards the end and relished in how nicely they were playing in the sand and how most of the park trip had actually been delightful!

Get lost in a storybook.
Work in progress! I am generally in the midst of one fiction book and one or two nonfiction books, but part of putting the phone down will be picking the book up more!

Set goals and take daily action to make them happen. 
I sort of do this now, but could use improvement. We have Felicity's lesson plan laid out, and I always have a general list of what I want to get done that day. But I still waste a lot of time and let a lot of projects fall by the way side. I am good at keeping up with daily tasks, but not so good at things like cleaning out closets, spring cleaning, etc.

Formulate a person mantra.
This one sounded cheesy to me at first, but I do think in those tough parenting/stay at home mom/homeschooling moments, it could be helpful to have a mantra to repeat while breathing.... "you are a good mom, your children are good children, you can do this". Something like that, maybe.

Don't assume.
This mostly applies to my husband. I need to communicate with him more and assume less, especially because my assumptions at the end of a long, tiring day (for both of us!) are generally neither fair nor kind.

Laugh as much as possible. 
Another thing I am terrible at! I am way too serious for my own good, and I need to learn to find humor in things, to laugh at myself, and just relax a little!

This took way more than the recommended 5 minutes of journaling a day, but it's worth it to have it all in one place that I can look back on when needed! Plus my kids are (mostly nicely) coloring in the other room while I'm doing this :).

Trying Something New

I've been on a search the past few days of how to "thrive" instead of "survive". I feel like I have spent the majority of the past 2 years in survival mode. That doesn't mean there hasn't been joy; there has been a LOT of joy. But for me it means there hasn't been enough joy or gratitude, I've stressed to much, I've had too high of expectations of myself and others, and I haven't dealt well with circumstances outside of myself and/or my control. I've been thinking about how we are going into a season of actual survival after the baby is born, and how am I doing that when I still feel like I'm in survival mode right now??? So I've been hunting for books and podcasts to help. I haven't found a ton as far as practical help, but I did find this article that has quite a few things I want to implement (and also some fairly woo suggestions lol).

So one of the suggestion is to journal for 5 minutes a day. I think, ideally, that would be handwritten form. But this is so much easier. For now, I'm going to aim to do it here. If that doesn't work, or it begins to feel too personal to post to the general public, I'll switch to actual journal form. If I keep up with this for at least one day, I'll be back tomorrow to share which of the 31 I want to work on implementing :).