Category: Kids

This is a real conversation that happened late last night. basket nike tn soldes I had gone to bed around 11, nursed Sarah, chaussure air jordan and we were both falling asleep. I hear the door to the bedroom open. I squint towards the door, cheap ugg boots which isn’t helpful because I can’t see anything without my glasses. oakley sale 2014 A small person comes over to the bed. adidas yeezy boost (I will not reveal identities to protect myself from backlash when the said child is a teenager and realizes I blogged about this event.) Me: “Who is that?” Child: “There is a wet spot about this big (demonstrates with hands) in our bed.” Me: “Well, nike air max command what is it?” Child: “I don’t know if we spilled water or if someone peed.” We get up and go to the bedroom. There is definitely a pee spot on the bed. air max 2016 I say, Adidas Zx pas cher “Well, nike soldes did someone pee?” Child: “I don’t know.” Me: “Well, whose panties are wet?” Child: “Well,

This has been a pretty exciting week for me so far. Naomi started 2nd grade last Thursday, and Rachel and I have started our preschool lessons. I am also starting a new household management regime along with my good friend, Fernanda Powers. We’re following The FlyLady’s Beginning Baby Steps. Check it out if you, too, are excited about housekeeping (or not).

Rachel will be going to Kindergarten next fall. Since we have decided to put our kids in public school, this is my last year with her at home (subject to re-evaluation, of course). My goal for this year is primarily to introduce reading skills. Naomi did not know how to read when she went to kindergarten (at a different school than the one we are at now), and had no trouble picking it up quickly. She reads well above her grade level. But the school here places a strong emphasis on kindergarteners learning to read (sometimes I think too strong), and I am afraid of Rachel going to school, having trouble learning to read, and becoming frustrated instead of enjoying her first year. So my philosophy may seem a bit backward, but the basic plan is that I will teach Rachel to read now, and so when she gets to kindergarten, the work’s nearly over. She can focus on other parts of going to school–learning how to act in a classroom, keeping up with her schoolwork, being part of a class, etc.

Since I never taught Naomi to read, this is a new adventure for me. Last year Rachel and I followed the Abeka Homeschool curriculum for three-year-olds and introduced all the letters and letter sounds. We worked for about thirty minutes a day, three days per week, for just the spring semester. This year, we aren’t using a real curriculum. I have purchased the first set of BOB books, and also found two “Getting Ready for Kindergarten” workbooks on clearance. Our lesson time so far has been 20-30 minutes of doing worksheets (tracing and writing letters and numbers, mazes, dot-to-dots, and matching) and then 15 minutes of reading the BOB books. I am so happy with the BOB books. Rachel loves them. The first book only uses 4 letters, so she could read it by herself in just days. She is now on book 3, and is learning how to sound out words and use picture clues to read to me. How awesome it is to hear your child read and know that you have been a part of making that happen!

I am a quiet person by nature. I like to be home, I like to have a regular routine to my day, I like to be able to get all my housework done without being rushed. Up until this summer, the kids have easily gone along with me, finding ways to play together and entertain themselves throughout the day. However, Naomi has only been out of school for 3 days and it seems like she is always wanting to “do” something! Apparently, “Go play with Barbies in your room while the baby naps” is not cutting it anymore! I’m so thankful for the cooler weather here, so she and Rachel can get outside during the day and run off their energy.

We are whole-heartedly taking advantage of the library and the park, and playdates with neighbors and friends. But the bottom line is that for this summer, we have a baby that takes two solid naps per day. And Sarah is just not happy if she misses a nap and neither is Mama. I’m fine with “sacrificing” naptime once or twice a week so that we can enjoy a longer activity somewhere, but any more than that and Sarah is really not happy. So it seems I am going to have to come up with some activities they can do when Sarah is sleeping or the weather is rainy or too hot for outdoor play. Activities other than watching “Tangled” every day would be ideal.

Does anyone have any suggestions??

Sarah is 7 months old today! She is a very happy baby. She loves to cuddle. She is exclusively breastfeed and is now also eating 3 meals a day. She’s almost 17 pounds and is 27″ long and is very healthy. She is sitting up by herself. And she absolutely doesn’t sleep through the night.

On a typical night, I put her to bed around 7 p.m. I nurse and rock her and she is usually asleep in 10 minutes. After that, she will cry approx. every 30 minutes -1 hour. When she cries, I will go and retrieve her pacifier, and sometimes she’ll immediately go back to sleep. If not, I will get her back up, and rock/nurse again. She will go back to sleep very quickly, but the whole thing repeats itself throughout the evening.

When I go to bed, I put her in the bed beside me and we co-sleep for the rest of the night. I typically nurse her around 11 p.m. or whenever I put her in our bed, and on a good night, she will wake up once around 3:30 to nurse, and then wake up around 6 or so to nurse, and then sleep about another hour before getting up for the day at about 7:15. On a “not so good” night, like LAST night, she will wake up 5 or 6 times between 11 p.m. and 7 a.m.

Since she is right next to me, it is not very difficult to nurse her throughout the night. And she usually only nurses for about a minute or two before going back to sleep. But obviously she can’t get herself to go back to sleep, after she wakes up, without me. Sometimes I can use the pacifier, but many times I give up and just nurse so I can go back to sleep myself!

I enjoy cosleeping and having her beside me. But I feel we are creating some bad habits that are going to be really difficult to break down the road, especially when I start to think about weaning. And frankly, I would like an uninterrupted night’s sleep. She has such a sweet spirit, that I can’t stand the idea of leaving her to “cry it out” during the night. Are there any other options?

I admit that sometimes I wonder what life would be like if we did not have kids yet. The first thing that comes to mind is how CLEAN my home would be! Imagine only having to pick up after myself! And no one would suddenly decide to get out the Play Doh right after I finished vacuuming!

And sometimes I imagine life when Tim and I retire (if that ever happens! The kids are our “retirement fund,” lol). I think about being able to travel with just one suitcase apiece. Or just sitting around the living room at night, then deciding we want to go to a restaurant, and getting up to go to the car without first having to tie someone else’s shoes or find three pairs of mittens.

But despite these fantasies, I am really very terrified of one day having an emptier home. Of one day not having a baby that needs to be rocked to sleep, or a three-year-old that wants to play princess with me, or a first-grader that is just learning to keep journals and write out her thoughts and feelings. I know how fast the days go, because today  I have a seven-year-old when just yesterday she was an infant.

I was watching an episode of one of those “Hoarder” shows the other week, and the lady on it had saved every toy, etc. from her kids’ childhood. Her children were mostly preteens-teens now. She just couldn’t accept that they were growing up. For part of her therapy, her counselor had her repeat over and over, “I can’t get their childhood back.” She kept crying as she said it; you could see how much she was trying to hold on to a time that had passed.

Now, I am not at all a hoarder. I am more likely to do “clean sweeps” of all the kids’ toys three or four times a year and get rid of stuff as soon as I can. I can’t stand clutter. But I understand this lady’s heart. One day I will be in her position, with grown children.

Tim and I hope we are not done having children yet. I would love to have more babies. So my “baby-free” days may well be years and years away, but they are still there. I can enjoy these moments, cherish the times, slow down, savor each day, and all those other cliches you hear about having young children…but the days will still pass and just become memories.

I never considered parenting styles before we had our first baby. I was the first of my friends to get married, let alone have a baby, so it was not something that came up often. Now, 3 babies later, I think about parenting styles quite a lot. I read parenting books and magazines and blogs, and now I have lots of mom friends to share with. But I don’t think I can define my parenting philosophy. I also think it has changed over the years.

When Naomi was born 7 years ago, she cried A LOT. I remember that Tim and I would have to walk her up and down the hall in our house to get her to sleep (rocking her wouldn’t work). We took 2-hour shifts at night! Maybe it was colic; who knows? Neither of us had any real experience with babies, so we thought it was normal. After a couple of weeks of this, I read a book called “Babywise.” I don’t remember everything the book said, and I don’t have it anymore, so this is all based on my postpartum memory from seven years ago, but I do recall that it advocated getting the baby on a sleep/feed/wake time cycle, where the baby nurses when she wakes up, then is awake for awhile, then goes down for a nap (without nursing to sleep). Following this advice, and probably also due to Naomi’s own temperament, Naomi got on a very good, consistent 3-hour daytime feeding schedule and spontaneously slept through the night on her own at around 2 months, and then consistently slept through the night thereafter. We had a lot of trouble getting her to go to sleep at night, though, and we did choose to follow the “cry it out” method one night, which, although it was a difficult experience, worked and she then went to sleep on her own. And although we started out with Naomi sleeping in our room in a cradle, she was in the crib in her nursery by two weeks of age. She never slept in the bed with us at night, but sometimes, she would wake up at 6 a.m. and I would nurse her and just lie her back down in the bed and we would all go back to sleep for another couple of hours.

Rachel didn’t cry nearly as much. She and Naomi were sharing a room, but again we put the cradle in our bedroom, and she slept in the cradle for about two months. Rachel was a good sleeper from the start. After she was born and I took her home from the hospital, the doctors told me to feed her every 3 hours around the clock, so I actually set an alarm at night so I could nurse her. At her one-week checkup she was gaining good weight, and they told me I could let her sleep until she woke on her own to nurse. I think she slept through the night for the first time at 5 weeks old, but it was not consistent. She went through phases of sleeping all night, then waking up again for that first year. She had a flexible schedule, which became more fixed the older she grew.

And now Sarah. Sarah is definitely my “happiest” baby. She is very content. She spends a lot of her awake time quietly studying things, although she has recently begun cooing and vocalizing and it’s so sweet to hear. As I write this, she will be 4 months old in just a couple of hours, and she is still sleeping in the cradle in our bedroom. For the first two months, Sarah probably slept in the bed with us 85% of the time. Lately, I have begun putting her in the cradle more, but still, she sleeps in our bed frequently. She has randomly slept through the night on a handful of occasions, but most of the time she wakes up at least once. When I nurse her in the middle of the night, she is not hungry when she first wakes in the morning, so I have started trying to get her to go back to sleep without feeding her, but I probably still do a middle-of-the-night feeding about 50% of the time. She follows the same general sleep/nurse/wake-time cycle that I used for Naomi and Rachel, but not on a specific timetable. She will go four hours between nursings, then want to nurse after only two hours, etc. She’ll take long naps one day, then lots of short naps the next.

So, I realize my parenting style has changed. But what do I believe is the best way to raise a baby? I felt guilty for having Sarah sleep in the bed with us those first few months, so I worked to get her to sleep in her cradle. Then I read about all the advantages of bedsharing, and felt guilty for making her sleep alone. I used the cry-it-out method with Naomi, but couldn’t bring myself to do so with Sarah (luckily she goes to sleep pretty well after being rocked for a short time). So I feel guilty for using that technique with Naomi, even though it worked and gave everyone much better sleep at night. I don’t know if I agree more with attachment parenting or…whatever not-attachment-parenting is called. I nursed all my girls, although I weaned Naomi at 9 months and then gave her formula until her first birthday. I nursed Rachel for one year, then had her weaned within two weeks. Neither of them had any problems when I decided to stop nursing. Sarah is almost entirely exclusively breastfed, because I am not working now and am able to be with her 24/7. She has only had a few bottles of breastmilk. However, when she was only a couple of days old, and we were just home from the hospital, I did give her a bottle of formula. She was up at night, crying, inconsolable, and I had been nursing her repeatedly, but my milk wasn’t in yet. She was hungry and I knew it, and she was upset. I didn’t want to give her formula at all. But was I going to let her cry and be upset, when I had my free sample of powdered formula in the cabinets, just so I could be proud and say my daughter never had any formula? I gave her a couple of ounces of formula, and she was much happier after that. My milk came in the next morning and we were all happy then.

As I write this, Sarah is sleeping beside me on the couch. She woke up about 30 minutes after I put her to bed tonight, apparently considering what I thought was an appropriate “bedtime” as an “early evening nap.” So she got to watch TV with me and Tim and fall asleep in the living room. Something I don’t recall Naomi or Rachel doing often when they were babies.

All of my children are very healthy, and for that I am very grateful. They all understand and feel how much they are loved and valued. I hope that, as they grow up, any parenting mistakes I make will not have any ill effects on them. I hope they will understand why, maybe, I did things differently as their sisters were born and our family grew. And I hope that, maybe, I will be able to let go of my guilt, and my constant questioning about what is the RIGHT thing to do, and spend more time just enjoying my girls for who they are as individuals, and meeting those individual needs.

When Naomi was a preschooler, she was not one to pull everything out of drawers or crawl into the forbidden kitchen cabinets. She didn’t put dangerous objects in her mouth or stick her fingers in the outlets. (She really didn’t prepare me much for raising Rachel as a toddler!) I would describe her as “careful.” She is still a very deliberate child. Watching Naomi grow up is, a lot of the time, like reliving my own childhood. I look at her, and she is just like me as a child. She is quiet, shy, and cautious. And she loves to read. One morning Naomi told us she had finished her Junie B. Jones book the night before. We were confused and asked her when she had read it. She replied that she read it after we  put her in bed!

Lately Naomi’s favorite game to play is school. She is the teacher and Rachel is the student. Yesterday she was carrying a stack of notepads and pencils to set up “school” and she looked at me and sighed and said very seriously that teachers were very busy. One afternoon Naomi and Rachel were on the front porch playing with chalk, and Naomi wrote the numbers 4 and 100, and then asked Rachel, “Which is greater, 4 or 100?” Rachel answered, “Um…4!” Naomi says, “No, 100,” and draws the greater-than sign between the two numbers.

In the mornings, Naomi is never the first to wake up. But when she gets up, she immediately comes to check on Sarah. She excitedly reported to me last night that Sarah smiled at her 9 times, which was more times than she had smiled at daddy (4) and still more than she had smiled at mama (0 that day).

When we were considering moving to Colorado, we told Naomi and Rachel that we might be going to Colorado so that Daddy could be a pastor for a church, but that we had to pray and ask God what He wanted us to do. We asked Naomi and Rachel to pray, too. She took it quite seriously. And she was so excited when we decided that God did want us to go.

Naomi, you have a soft and tender heart. You are a protective older sister. You know more Old Testament Bible stories than I do. You do not like jelly on your peanut butter sandwiches. You hate picking up your toys. You miss my mom’s cat, Tiny, from Alabama. You love to play dress-up and this year for Halloween you have been, or will be, at various events, Cinderella, Ariel, and Barbie. You like to eat chicken nuggets and chef salad from the school lunchroom. Your favorite movie is Barbie’s “The Princess and the Pauper.” You and Rachel frequently like to dress up and act out this movie. You are always the princess; Rachel is the pauper. 🙂 You don’t like it when I put bows or barrettes in your hair. You loved taking ballet last year, but the recital outfit was scratchy. You are a blessing and I love you and I feel honored to be able to watch you grow into a young lady.

A brief photo history of Naomi’s life:

I have decided to make this post all about Rachel, my 3-year-old, as the first of a series of blogs dedicated to each of my children. The main point of this is personal, so that I will remember life as it is now, since I am not keeping up with the baby books and scrapbooks like I used to! Today, I was squished between Naomi and Rachel in the back of our van because Tim’s parents were with us as we drove through the Rocky Mountains. Rachel asked me very seriously, “Do I have to take my shoes off when I die?” I did what I always do when I don’t know how to answer my kids’ questions about life, death, or difficult spiritual matters–I look to my husband, the pastor. ugg boots He is laughing in the rearview mirror. I say, “What do I say to that?” He says, “Tell her yes.” So I say, “Yes, you take your shoes off.” She replies, “So they won’t get wet?” AHA! See, Rachel is a very brilliant child. A few weeks ago Tim was discussing baptism and Rachel was in the room and overheard him explain that, when being baptized, going under the water represents dying to your self and coming back up out of the water represents becoming a new person in Christ. Two weeks ago, Rachel also saw a baptism take place in our church–she saw two girls go into a big tub of water and get wet–and now, logically, wants to know if she will have to take her shoes off when she “dies” or is baptized. I just love moments like this as a mom. Rachel is learning to count and it often goes like this, “16, 17, 18, 18, a hundred!” She likes to sing “Do you know the monkey man?” And then she asks me what his name is. I’m like, I don’t know. air jordan hydro He lives on Mulberry Lane. She excitedly told me a few days ago that Sarah (our six-week-0ld infant) said her first word. air jordan 1 soldes It was “ahhh.” Rachel went to Disney World when she was 20 months old. Today she asked me if I remember going to Disney World, and when we came back to the hotel, that all of her stuffed animals were in the window (where the housekeeping staff had arranged them for us). It is kind of scary to me that children remember things that happened that long ago. I also recently uploaded pictures from my camera onto the computer. I found several that Rachel had taken…like maybe 100…ok maybe not that many, but quite a few. nike air trainer I loved seeing how the world looks to her. Most of Rachel’s shots were, alas, deleted, but I saved some of my favorites. air jordan kids Here they are: Rachel’s favorite red shoe: Footed pajamas: Rachel capturing our cat Calvin in mid-flight as he leaps from the couch, resulting in a rather unflattering angle: Our ceiling fan: Looking out our front window: Rachel’s doggie bank, one of her favorite toys: Rachel, I never want to forget how you are as a 3-year-old. nike dynamo You are bouncy, loud, playful, imaginative, inquisitive. You sometimes take naps, but sometimes during naptime I peek into your room and find you siting on the bed amidst a pile of books, which makes me smile. You like to help Daddy cook. nike air force 1 ac femme You usually pick up your toys if I ask you to. Your favorite toy is a stuffed white tiger named Toy Calvin. oakley holbrook You are very serious about which toys and movies are for “girls” and which are for “boys.” Your best friend is your big sister Naomi. You love your new baby sister and like to give Sarah her pacifier whenever she cries, whether she wants it or not. new balance shoes You were, until recently, scared of Veggie Tales. (who knew??) You are extremely affectionate and love hugs. You are happy that I can pick you up now that I am not pregnant.

This past Wednesday I hit the magic 28-week mark in this pregnancy, which signals the official entry into the third trimester. This being my third time around, I can’t help reflecting on differences between how I am feeling now versus when I was expecting our first or second child. Maybe some of you can relate!

I no longer own a copy of “What to Expect When You’re Expecting.” I read this book cover-to-cover with my first pregnancy, including the scary chapters on “complications.” I now purposely try to avoid reading about pregnancy complications! I don’t want to know what can go wrong!

I wrote down each week’s passage on my calendar so I can tell at a glance how far along I am. I always knew off the top of my head how many weeks along I was with my first child, but not so this time!

I’m gaining more weight with this baby. blah.

I never had morning sickness with any of my pregnancies, but I did throw up a couple of times with both the first and second. I have not thrown up at all this time, which may be one reason I was so inclined to give this baby the middle name “Joy.” (just kidding!)

However, starting about a month ago, I get what I think is acid indigestion almost every morning…

I am still not sure about when to go to the hospital when I’m in labor! I’ve never actually timed any contractions. My water broke with my first, and I was induced with my second. So, I will be right there with all the first-time moms, wondering if it’s real labor or braxton hicks.

I am inspired and intrigued by those moms who deliver at home…but am not ready to head down that path!

My birth plan: 1. Avoid being induced (I hated being strapped to monitors and IV poles). 2. Avoid a C-section. 3. Get to the hospital early enough to get an epidural!

I am looking forward to nursing this baby more than ever. With my first, I expected nursing to be difficult and exhausting (it was).  I looked at it more as something very beneficial for my baby that I was willing to sacrifice my body and energy to provide for her.  I have found, though, that nursing was a special time with my babies that I miss. It was a sacrifice, but honestly, after those first early weeks, I think nursing mothers have a much easier time because we don’t have to deal with mixing formula or washing bottles.

Any other moms out there…feel free to share your own reflections on your pregnancies! You know how we love to bond over those stories!

I don’t write much poetry, but this came to me while sweeping the floor…

A Mother’s Home

My house is clean enough; I don’t think you’ll get sick
If your cookie falls to the floor and you pick it up real quick.

But don’t open any closet doors! Don’t look in any dresser drawers!
Don’t judge me by the laundry that is piled upon the floors.
Don’t check for dishes in the sink, don’t look under any beds!
Ignore the dust on the piano, and all the clutter–instead–

See the toys upon the floor, the library books dropped by the door;
the crayon drawings on the wall, the crooked pictures in the hall;
Hear the children as they play with sidewalk chalk on a summer’s day;
and see the glitter and the glue on cut-out hearts that say, “I love you.”

My house may only be clean enough…but it is bursting out with love!