After 5 years of being a stay-at-home mom, I found the wonder of mothering slowly starting to get crowded out by the mundane feeling. I realized our world seems to surround people with the negative, and complaining about blessings seems totally acceptable. So I decided to fight against that "normalcy" and focus only on the positive. I look back to my first year as a mom when everything was new and keeping house was fun and I aim to have that attitude again. This blog is my outlet to showcase the daily miracles that surround me in my blessed life as a stay-at-home mom so that I will never forget the wonder of it all.



Tuesday, August 30, 2011

Pink Baby Carrie

She's done!
And I love her.
I want to play dolls again in the uninhibited way of a four year old.





Felicity asked for a "Pink Baby Carrie" (can you guess what we're reading?) for her birthday.
She's not too babyish looking.
But I hope she fits the bill.
This is the most fun I've EVER had sewing and next week I'm going to order my supplies to start another Waldorf doll for Kian's birthday.
I'm hooked!


Sunday, August 28, 2011

Lately

Lately around here we've been...

*** finding lots of bugs ***

*** catching lots of bugs ***

*** inviting bugs to join us for lunch before releasing them ***

*** having little lessons in table manners due to Mama's frustrations in this area ***

*** playing LOTS of dress up ***

*** FINALLY harvesting these on an as needed basis and very impatiently waiting for the green tomato bounty to ripen ***

*** eating lunch in the clubhouse to get even more time outside ***

*** working on special gifts for a very spoiled birthday girl ***

*** laughing about how we can work on her gifts right in front of her.....often even with her lending a hand!  :)  ***

*** surprised by this boy's new attitudes and fits as he most definitely and obviously is closing in on his 2nd birthday ***

Thursday, August 25, 2011

In My Humanness

I have been reading the blog Raising Arrows, and in it she had a post titled the same as mine where she talked about her struggle with the longings that come from being human, while still clinging to God and His plan.  I loved how raw, open, and honest she was in her post, and I wanted to share some of my raw self with you too.  I think its important to acknowledge the normalcy of grief, and share it. 

I am having one of my "hard nights" tonight.  They come about once a week and I grieve for my lost baby.  They always catch me off guard, but I always embrace them as it feels good to grieve.  The only thing I can do for our lost babe is grieve it, and remember.  So tonight, I do. 

In my humanness, I ACHE to feel a baby move inside me. 

In my humanness, I know how many weeks I'd be if I was still pregnant.  I know what stage of growth the baby would be at.  I don't need to read books to know what I'd be feeling and how the baby would have grown by now.  I've done it enough times that my body innately knows those milestones.  I grieve those milestone weeks passed and unmet.

In my humanness, I sometimes feel a sharp twinge when I'm counting heads at the park and feel like I'm missing someone even once I count to 3.  And then there in the park, it all floods back.

In my humanness, I love when my daughter asks again why the baby in my tummy died, because then I get to talk about it....acknowledge it.....know it was there.....know it happened.....say it existed.

In my humanness, hearing "you've got your hands full" for the umpteenth time feels a bit sad, as they really do feel emptier than I had expected.

In my humanness, I want to hear people ask when we plan to have more, like they asked after Logan was born, and like a few asked after Felicity was born.  This is the longest stretch we've had between babies but no one notices like when you only had one or two.  People assume you don't want more.  And I want more.

In my humanness, I long to be pregnant again.

In my humanness, I want it to happen this month.

God, forgive me for my humanness.  Forgive me for wanting.  Please help me to remain patient for Your perfect timing and Your perfect plan.  And thank you for so many daily reminders of the one forever in my heart.

Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Makeup vs. Mud

Well, last night I got some alone time with my girl, and tonight I got some alone time with my boys.  Felicity is spending the night at Grammy's house, like Logan did last night.  When it was just us girls, there was nail polish, lip gloss, and chocolate.  Those were all Lissy's choices, I should add (well, I DO love chocolate).  I'm a no makeup, no polish, no fuss girl.  My daughter, however, loves all that fuss.  :)  So how did my evening differ when it was just me and my boys?

It started off calmly, with a quiet project as I was EXHAUSTED!  Sleep has been eluding me and I was the type of exhausted where you feel physically sick with a side of restless leg syndrome.  THAT kind of exhausted.  I taught the boys how to harvest my dried lavender and they set in on it. 

Breathing it in.

"Look Mom!"

This is the look he gives me when I say, "Why are you so cute?"

Kian played mostly.  Though he was very capable of harvesting the dried lavender, he's not ready to do a repetitive task like that so he filled bottles with the stalks and dumped them out and harvested a bit and wiggled around and transferred lavender buds from bowl to jar and on and on and on....always moving.  But he had fun.  Logan, did a great job and got quite a good jar full in the end.  His lavender will either go towards a gift from him for Felicity's birthday, or his aunt's birthday.

After a sitting activity, the boys needed to move.  I wasn't tempted to go outside as it was HOT, but I knew we needed to.  So out we went.  I turned on the drip hose for the boys because we have some drip "straws" that empty water into their mud pit for their mud pie kitchen.  Then I crashed on my cushy outdoor chair.  I couldn't help it.  My exhaustion plus the heat got the best of me and I dozed off and on while they splashed.  I opened my eyes once to this muddy boy leaning over me.  :)

Logan decided to see what happens when you put the drip straw into one nostril.
In case you are wondering, multiple things happen.  You can blow great sprays of water out of your nose, or your nose can drip like a fountain, or you can actually suck it carefully in and drink it, in a sense, through your nose.  Who needs a Netti Pot when you have a drip hose?

Of course, baby brother had to be taught.
Both boys were thrilled with this.

There was lots of water play....

.....mud raking....

....mud art created on the porch siding with a stick of kindling...

...and lots of body art and mud sloshing, of course.

After I put Kian to bed, Logan was thrilled to help me water the garden "like an adult."  We do this chore after the kids are in bed usually because that's when the heat breaks.  When we were done, he asked if he could stay up late and help me clean the house "like Daddy does."
ABSOLUTELY!!
So he and I puttered side by side for HOURS.
The play room is now organized and immaculate.
The kitchen is clean.
We tidied up.
And my bathroom got some organizing too.

Cleaning the house is not exactly the plans I'd made for my evening alone with Logan.  I'd planned some lively rounds of Go Fish with some Martineli's Apple Cider (his fav), but I ran with his idea and oddly enough, he LOVED it.  He was thrilled to work beside me in the quite house, just he and I.  He tried so hard to stay awake "like an adult" but when we finally finished up, he passed out here next to me in about 2 minutes flat.
I'll take that as a good sign of an evening well spent one on one, even if it WAS cleaning.

 

Monday, August 22, 2011

Girls Night In

What do we girls do when the boys are away and the baby is asleep?

We make a fort....

....which doubles as a bunk bed for some friends....


....we gather supplies....

....and paint each others' nails....

(I know you're jealous of my manicure)

.....we act goofy...

....and then cuddle up WAY past bedtime to read Farmer Boy while eating chocolate mint cookies.

OK, OK, so that's not it.  We MAY have also gotten a bit carried away in the polish department.

Tuesday, August 16, 2011

The Farm Dream

I've had it my whole life.  I'm not even being dramatic.  When I was little I used to play house like every other little girl, but my house was always a prairie house.  I pretended I was wearing long dresses with an apron and a bonnet.  I envisioned a simple kitchen with wooden spoons and bowls which I made cheese in.  I loved the Little House on the Prairie books and read them all.  When my sisters and I discovered the American Girl dolls, I was instantly sold on wanting Kirsten because she was from a simple farm family.  I have always wanted to milk a cow and come to think of it, I never have!  The farm dream was not created in me by visiting other peoples' farms or hearing people talk about their farm.  No one we knew had a farm.  The farm dream is just a piece of me that has always been innately ME.



I grew up in Goleta, a suburb of Santa Barbara.  What kid wouldn't love that?  Me.  Yep, I was odd.  Yes, the beach was fun and all but I remember feeling stuck (for lack of better words) as a kid.  Stuck in a neighborhood.  Stuck in a seasonless environment.  Stuck in an area that never seemed to change.  Stuck in the crowd of people.  I always longed to live on a farm with room to run and get away from the crowds.  A place to watch the seasons change and things grow.  I LONGED to keep farm animals.  Little did I know, my mom dreamed that same dream...even PRAYED for it....for 14 years!  I never knew that until her prayers were answered.  When I was 15 we moved north and my parents bought 14 acres.  I was home!  Those 14 acres were never farmed, but there were seasons, and space, and things grew and changed.  My mom usually kept a veggie garden and for the first few years, I helped my dad upkeep the walnut trees until the market for walnuts wasn't worth the effort and the trees were left to the squirrels.

My mom and my boys watching cows


I am lucky to be married to a man who shares my dream.  He has been known to spend hours researching how to harvest rain water, how to tend rabbits, keep bees, and raise chickens.  Our desire to homestead has only grown over the years, while the housing market has declined.  For now, and probably a while, we are here.  We could stand it no longer and as soon as we read The Urban Homestead, we got to work on our little plot.  For now, that is fulfilling part of our desires.  But we still dream.  Don't get me wrong, we are very content in life and feel blessed by our little plot.  But one can always dream right?

Kisses for Daddy


That they can.  And it was brought to my attention today, that the farm dream is quite innate in our oldest son.  While we were driving, he excitedly shared with me his "great idea".  "Mama!  Let's sell our house and buy a NEW house with land so that we can have rabbits and goats and sheep and chickens who can lay eggs in their little nests in a barn!"  His enthusiasm was so sweet and so full.  I told him I had the same idea and that it WAS a great idea.  Perfect.  In his mind it was settled then.  All that was left was running the plan past Daddy and then we'd be in our new farm in no time.  He so pushed this plan that I finally had to tell him about money, which is something I don't often talk to him about as I'd like to shield him from its powers for as long as I can.  The disappointment in his face literally brought tears to my eyes.  Maybe his too.  "But Mommy, I just want to have some goats and get the eggs from the nests and we can have lots of room to run and play and get our energy out!  And we need to grow our food because God likes it when we grow lots of food."  Again, I assured him that I wanted all those things for him too and if I could, I'd make it happen.  But for now, it was out of our reach.  I KNOW his disappointment.  I could feel it in the core of me as I saw it on his face and in his body.  I knew it as a kid and know it as an adult.  I tried to encourage him by pointing out how blessed we are to have some space to grow plants to eat and tend to our bunnies.  He cheered up at that.  And I told him about how his Grammy had also dreamed of having a farm for a very long time and she prayed to God about it.  I told him praying doesn't mean we will get it, but God likes to know the desires of our heart and sharing those desires with Him can feel good.  So he prayed right then....for his farm....and his goats....and his chickens with the eggs in the little nests in the barn.






Maybe the farm dream is genetic.

Sunday, August 14, 2011

Lake, Lake, Lake

That's what we did this weekend.
Once a year my Uncle and his family join us on the lake we live near for a few days of fun on his Waverunner.  Here's my cousin, Alex, with Kian.




The kids like to inner tube and go for rides on the Waverunner, but they're more than happy to just play in the water and float around as well.

I loved seeing my kids have fun on the inner tube, but I think floating around is what I prefer, so I'm glad they like it too.
I have problems worrying too much out on the open lake with lots of other boaters jetting by.  :)

We were pretty tired after a few days on the lake in the HOT sun, and we wanted to make EXTRA sure the kids were worn out tonight as none of us have been sleeping well around here.  So Zac set up a pile of cushions and pillows in front of a stool and the kids had a blast exerting any last bit of energy before bed.




Yep, even I got in on it......and was reminded that my body is feeling a bit older this year.  :(

The kids went right to sleep.  :)
Here's hoping they sleep all night!