Hello

Every time I think, "I should post something on the old blog," I get totally bogged down with the amount of catch up that needs to be done. Then I think to myself, "Who says it 'needs' to be done?" To which I reply, well, your grandmother would probably like to see some pictures of what you've done this summer. And then I realize I could just email her. And then I snap out of it and stop talking to myself.

So I think I will just say hello, tell you that I do still occasionally read blogs at night, but I've paired way down to just friends and a few of my favorite food/home blogs that don't make me feel too guilty about my diet/house.

Here's what's going on today:

• School- Cooper and Adeline are both in 2nd grade (although we will finish up around Christmastime) and Thomas just started kindergarten. He will be 5 in November, but he is loving his Saxon 1 math and the Phonics Museum. I'm loving a little face-to-face time with my loner 3rd born. We are all doing Tapestry together for history again, and it's a perfect fit for us, with lots of crafts and read-alouds. My sister-in-law is teaching the older two about the birds and the bees (not literally) with Apologia Science this year, and they love having a "class" to go to. Thomas goes to art during the same hours down the road at my mother-in-law's house. It's a cousin party every week with the 11 of them.

Making a bug board for science class

•  Kitchen- I'm currently smoking two slabs of homemade bacon, straining some raw milk yogurt, and getting ready to make tacos for dinner so I can head out for an evening grocery trip. In order for school and chores (and naptime) to run smoothly I have to go at night, although I'm usually pretty wiped out by 7pm. 

The kids decided homemade marshmallows were better than store-bought. Big win! Especially since they were honey-sweetened!

Homemade peanut butter cups were a favorite

Bacon has cured, ready to cook...greek yogurt straining in the background

•  The boys are outside in full army get-up, playing in their "fort." Adeline is reading, and the baby is napping. "The baby" is a name she will soon give up to the next baby girl, due in about 10 weeks. Amelia is kicking away, doing her usual thing. I'm slowing down (just from sheer size!!) and while I'm not ready to have a baby as far as getting life in order goes, I will be happy when she makes her entrance. The sleep deprivation is hard, but I really do love those newborn days and the triumph of not being pregnant anymore.

I seriously don't remember the toddler years providing us with such mischief. But this one gives us plenty. At 19 months, she JUST started walking, and now I know it was a mercy to keep her a little slower for my sake. She climbs, she explores, she destroys. Each day.

• The house- We are 5 weeks into a basement renovation project that is almost complete. Warren took 1100 square feet of mostly unfinished basement and turned it into a small apartment, a school room and nook, a laundry room, pantry, extra bathroom, and storage area. I have a new-and-improved school area and shelving to my heart's content. I think most of the renovation money was spent on shelving. The apartment is for our old friend (son of one of my elders from Florida) and new tenant, Gabe. He's getting his PhD here and was very interested in living on some land and getting the opportunity to have animals and a garden. We've loved having him here, and he tolerates the kids and all the noise (we did try to warn him!) and farm life very well. He eats with us many weeknight and on the weekends, so that has helped me to be a little more on top of menu planning and food prep. That may change some after the baby comes!
• The garden- This was not our year for gardening. Not that we didn't try, but with all the rain, it was a tough year, and being pregnant (and having a toddler) led to less motivation than ever. We currently have about 20 pepper plants full of peppers I need to harvest, some pumpkins and butternut squash, and a little lettuce. We gave the kids each a 3x3' garden and theirs were very productive, including zinnias in Adeline's garden that graced our table all summer long. We also enjoyed months and months of sugar snap peas, which was a treat!
• The farm- This Saturday is our final chicken processing day of the year, and we have over 200 chickens to "dress" and sell. We only did pre-sales this year, which really took the pressure off and eliminated the need to market. It did not diminish the workload (!) but with the baby coming and a bigger vehicle to purchase, and government furloughs affecting paychecks, it is a blessing to have this extra source of income. We also have 11 pigs that will soon go to the butcher, and hopefully after that, things will slow down around here, just in time for Amelia's arrival. Warren still milks twice daily, and with that brings milk for cheese, yogurt, and butter.

  

  Know anyone who needs a sweet six-passenger Honda? We are sad to see it go!

  
  

  

  Nevermind that it's before 8am and those of us who are staying home look like we just rolled out of bed. This is our new 12-passenger van, purchased from my parents (they are downsizing). I'll have to post a cuter picture of my family (and my hair) at some point.

• I am about to make myself a chocolate frappaccino, Trim Healthy Mama style. I highly recommend the book, and before I got pregnant it helped me learn a few lifestyle tricks to lose about 10 lbs. I'm not too concerned about weight gain during pregnancy, but it continues to help keep it in check as my belly grows. Not related to the THM book, I am off all grains once again for these last few weeks of pregnancy in order to alleviate my heartburn and the subsequent throwing up that comes from it. If I eat a bite of pasta or bread (even GF!) I am burning up, but without it, nothing. It's really amazing, and only spending night after night puking would convince me to give up such a large food group. But it's temporary.

It's tea time, here, so the kids are asking for a snack and we need to keep this day moving. With my current rate of posting, I should have a baby to show off next time I post! :)

This one's for Moriah

Just so you know you aren't the only one who has days like this.

Friday was a terrible, no good, very bad day. Although there were lots of graces when I look back. The glass that didn't hit his eye. The lego piece was retrieved from the body cavity. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

I woke up on Friday feeling especially sick, but when you are pregnant, it's hard to know if you are sick sick or just normal sick. So I plowed through our morning routine, eeked out two math lessons from the couch, and did some reading with the kids. My stomach pains and nausea were unpleasant, but that's part of pregnancy, right? The baby screamed through her entire morning nap, so after 30 minutes of it I got her up, hoping that would mean I'd get a good afternoon nap. I am very thankful to have semi-trustworthy kids (haha...more on that later) so I was able to leave them all reading quietly in the living room for 30 more minutes while I napped. Eleanor was in the pack and play, and was quiet enough for me to fall asleep for a few minutes. I promised the kids that after a short nap I would be up and running again (that's what usually kicks the nausea). So, that was a grace...they did let me sleep.

I woke up, still in my pjs, feeling no better. The kids watched the grumpy nap-protesting baby while I directed from the couch, and soon enough, it was noon. Sigh. We made it to lunch time! I made smoothies and leftover waffles, all in disposable cups and plates so the kids could throw everything away and clean up after themselves. I did have to spoon feed the baby, but did it all in 10 minutes and fell back onto the couch, feeling triumphant to be in the PM part of the day. Naptime would soon be here!!

In the mean time, no breakfast dishes had been done, none of our morning routines had been checked off (dishwasher unloaded, bathroom given a once-over, rooms tidied, morning chores done) so the house was slowly deteriorating. But we were alive and fed, except me, who wasn't managing much in the eating and drinking department.

Naptime arrived, and I put the baby down around 1pm, got the kids settled with a marathon Little House on the Prarie movie, and emailed Warren to let him know I'd be out of reach for several hours. I turned my fan on high, cozied down, and fell asleep for 30 minutes, until the sound of a lawnmower woke me up. A thoughtful friend was mowing our yard for us, and even had been considerate enough to come at a time when we weren't usually resting. Within moments, the baby was also awake, despite the roaring noisemaker. I quieted her, laid her back down, and got back in bed, hopeful for another hour or two of rest.

Two minutes later, I heard a crash- which I admit- I decide to ignore. Thomas came upstairs screaming, which is what I actually hoped would happen if something was really wrong. Turns out that the mower kicked up a small stick that came blasting through our basement door window panel, blowing glass to the back wall of the basement, 20 feet away. Glass on my laundry, in my mending, in my food dehydrator, computer desk, all over the floor. A few hours ago it was a triumph to get myself off the couch for 10 minutes to make lunch, and now I was realizing I had a big job ahead of me, and it didn't really matter how sick I felt.

Another grace- Thomas was standing at the window when the stick barreled in, but the stick came through the upper window panel, and not the middle one he was peering out of. The result was only a small hit in the head (which didn't even draw blood) and boots full of glass, which only produced a tiny cut. (He got new rubber boots the day before, so he had been wearing them all day.) The bad part was that he came upstairs and dumped his glass-filled boots on the upstairs floor, making a mess upstairs and down.

After a brief cry in the bathroom, and a reminder that God was with me in this day, planning every moment, and a quick debate about whether or not I should call Warren and ask him to come home, I sent the kids outside, left the still-screaming baby in her bed, and got to work. It took me an hour to clean up, and I noticed I was having slight contractions, which I figured were just because I was dehydrated, but I was a little worried.

After the mess was clean, I rescued the baby from her crib prison, gave the kids a snack, got dressed, and told the kids to follow suit. If the baby was going to be fussy, and I wasn't going to sleep, we were at least going to check some things off my to-do list. We had overdue library books, and I needed to get some bloodwork done. We piled in the car, and about 5 minutes into the trip, Thomas says, "I think  my lego guy hand is in my nose!" What on earth? I told him to blow his nose, and that he was probably wrong and we would find it in the car. I asked the phlebotomist for a flashlight while he was draining my body of blood, and I got a funny story about a barbie shoe in a nose from him, and a marble from someone else. But he had no flashlight, so off we went to the library. More grace: due to a computer glitch, no fines were showing up on my account. The librarian said, "oh well, let's just go with it" and I was thankful for that little ray of sunshine in my glass and nausea filled day.

I talked to Warren on the way home, and he offered to leave 30 minutes early so he could be there when I got home. I don't think I've ever felt so relieved to pull up and see his truck in the driveway. He also told me to call the midwife and let her know what was going on. After a few minutes she said, "I really think you have the flu," and the lack of eating and drinking was causing some other unpleasant symptoms.

So, Warren got the lego guy hand out of Thomas' nose with a flashlight and some tweezers, we threw some leftovers on the table, the baby went to bed super early, the kids watched another round of Little House on the Prarie, and Warren and I snuggled down to a movie in bed. I was asleep shortly after 9:30pm, and he even left the house the next  morning before 8am to feed the kids at his parents house, so I could sleep in a quiet house. Twelve hours of sleep and a quiet morning seemed to do the trick, and my bad day dissolved into a Family Fun Saturday with barely a trace of the flu.

Friday morning I read this article, which was timely, and helped me remember that we are all experiencing days like this from time to time. http://www.stevewiens.com/2013/03/12/to-parents-of-small-children-let-me-be-the-one-who-says-it-out-loud/

Of course, the next night, Adeline threw up from 10:30 to 4:30am. But that was another day, with new graces and several more loads of laundry.

This several month break brought to you by...

...baby #5.

I'm not sure I can blame such a long break on an 11-week old baby in utero, but that's my story. It probably has more to do with baby #4, but that's another whole story, which I may or may not get around to. This pregnancy is going very well, and I'm encouraged to think that at almost 35 years old it's not as rough as when I started having babies almost 8 1/2 years ago. God is good!

could it be?

One year already?

On Friday, Eleanor turned one. I think of first birthdays as a celebration of mother AND baby. We made it! All the sleepless nights, the baby illnesses (and this baby girl has had her fair share of that), the ever-changing habits. Plus the memory of labor and delivery is not so distant, so a first birthday is a remembrance of that glorious yet rough day when this sweet baby entered the world. All that to say, we celebrated, but we both enjoyed a few treats.

She enjoyed some skinny chocolate (homemade coconut oil/cocoa powder chocolate) and strawberries for breakfast

Eleanor is following in the footsteps of Thomas and Adeline, and has spent the last few months discovering all her food sensitivities. Some of them are already losing strength (she used to throw up within minutes of eating a banana, but she ate half a banana yesterday...big victory!) but her big ones right now are eggs and dairy. So finding a cake she could eat was tricky. It is amazing how much the world of food allergies/sensitives has opened up in the last few years. Adeline couldn't eat wheat without breaking out in a blistering rash, so this is her first birthday picture:

Who needs cake? How about ice cream?

 But now there are all sorts of allergy-friendly recipes out there, so we tried this Ooey Gooey Butter Cake from the Spunky Coconut. I think I spread it too thin, so it was more like a cookie bar, but she loved it, and it made this mama's heart glad! It is dairy, grain, sugar, and egg free, so we could both eat it. I'd make it again, only in a smaller pan.

Not happy to have her hands held back from that cake while we took the time to sing a round of Happy Birthday. Don't cross a one year old!

Fortunately, all the angst was soon forgotten, and cake enjoyed.

Happy Birthday to the girl who makes our hearts sing! I really do think that having babies- while physically harder with age- only gets sweeter as the years go by. You start to realize how fleeting these days are, and the harder parts seem less of an inconvenience (although they don't go away!). Plus, now we have a whole group of people to enjoy her baby antics. We love you, Eleanor!

I might be gloating

Or just praising the Lord for the little things. Take your pick.

I am always teasing Warren about how much time he spends perusing Craigslist. I don't think he actually does spend inordinate amounts of time, but he checks a few categories every day. Thanks to him we have an extra fridge for eggs (free!). We have a meat slicer that is super handy for making deli meat. We have a food dehydrator that came new in the box and the person just wanted to get rid of it because she wasn't on speaker terms with the friend who gave it to her. (?) I could go on and on.

Over Christmas I joked about needing a new vacuum cleaner, and wanting a Dyson. Warren had never heard of the pricey suckers (he knows outside tools better) so it was quickly determined that would not be happening any time soon. No worries...my old vacuum still works, so it wasn't a need anyway.

But then lo and behold, what did he find on Craigslist, but a Dyson for $80! The man was moving back to China and needed to sell all his worldly possessions in a short timespan. I knew I would love it, but I would gladly do commercials for that company, for free. I even used the brush attachment to clean the boys off after their haircuts yesterday. I just sucked the hair right off their back and heads! The hose attachment reaches all the way to the top stair from the bottom of the staircase! I can't use too many exclamation points! We vacuum all the time now, just for fun!

Even the baby likes it.

Could have been awesome

Avacados on sale for $0.50 each= lots of guacamole. Did you know you can freeze mashed up avacado? So I bought 25, because we're big fans of guacamole around here. Good fat and protein, and the baby loves it. But alas, it was not meant to be. And my antique 1960's turquoise bowl was also not meant to be. Some days are just like that. Even in Austrailia.

coming and going

We're all about teeth here these days. Eleanor's are coming in like a flood, and I expect by her first birthday- in a month- she'll have four new ones on the top. You can just barely see them peeking out in perfect hillbilly fashion.

On the other end of the spectrum, this girl smiles a little bigger so as to show off the gaping (at least in her mind) hole in her mouth. One Morning in Maine declares her a big girl now that she's lost this first tooth. I'd have to agree.

first snow

My sister, Molly, is here for a visit and this was just what she was hoping for! It is beautiful, but I am content to take pictures, make hot tea, keep the fire going, and hold the baby at the window so she can watch some of the fun.

I'm not sure Warren loves the thick, wet, snow, but he loves making his kids happy

Coming in for a warmer pair of gloves

how we get 'er done

I never said it was pretty, but it's how we get things done around here. Many hands make light work!

On making goals or not

Difficult is the task of jumping back into writing one's ongoing history. It seems there is always too much to explain, too many back stories, and excessive qualifying of statements. To dive in and give a little update would make me seem excessively weird(er). And yet to forego the jumping in means I just have to stand on the side of the pool shivering in my bathing suit while everyone else has fun. You can see my predicament!
It looks as if I really have no "choice" but to close my eyes, hold my nose, and hope the splash isn't too embarrassing.

So what's up at our house this week? Today a friend came over to give me a pedicure, fulfilling a promise given at my baby shower with Eleanor. She used to work in salons, so she was the real deal, and it was a sweet treat. I am still shying away from nail polish these days, just because chemicals seem to wreak havoc on my body, but that was just a minor part of it anyway. Thanks, Hannah! One little fun find in the process: I couldn't use her foot scrub because it had several dyes in it, so I pulled out my coarse sea salt, some sugar, coconut oil, and 3 drops of peppermint oil. It was such a great foot scrub, and we've been using the leftovers to wash our hands. Much cheaper than the fancy shmancy stuff they have in the bathroom at my health food store!

My sister is staying with us for a month while we try to help her with some food sensitivities. She seemed to develop "allergies" to wheat and certain chemicals this summer after she had her wisdom teeth out. The only thing I can attribute it to is either the massive amounts of antibiotics and meds she was on making her liver less functional OR her immune system in general is more weak and not able to handle what was already a slight sensitivity to milk and wheat. Not sure. We are starting with this Candida Diet, which is only 2 weeks long and a good cleanse of sorts. She's been a great sport for a 14 year old having to down glasses of loose herbs in smoothies and foregoing wheat and sugar for a WHOLE two weeks. Our whole family is mostly doing it with her so as not to tempt the poor girl, although I finally gave in after a week and made my kids some bread products. We've had some awesome meals- so I don't think any of us are suffering. Except maybe our grocery budget...eating no grains is expensive! I spent almost $70 in produce this week. And the amazing thing is that we will eat it all. Is it gardening season yet?

  Speaking of the Candida Diet, I'm not one to follow fad diets (wait 'til I write my Paleo post), but after several years of struggling with my health, I finally found a short, powerful plan, and I can't believe how well it is working! My hormones were c-razy after this baby. I actually thought I was pregnant a few months ago because my PMS was so severe. My cycle after I finished this cleanse was a non-event. I also realized how bloated I'd been for years but just thought I was fat from having lots of babies (there might be some of that going on, too). I should back up and say that the reason I decided to try this was because I've been taking certain supplements for years and have seen little to no improvement in my labwork for Vitamin D deficiency, certain hormones, and even some basic minerals. I know that candida can actually consume your nutrients, so this was a logical step. I could write a whole post on this, but a huge contributor to candida is steroid drugs (which I chose to take for a few months due to adrenal problems both before and at the end of my pregnancy), and another is bio-identical hormones (e.g. progesterone), which I was on for my entire pregnancy with Eleanor. My last three babies have all had yeast problems, so I knew they were getting it from me. I've never had a yeast infection so I guess that's why I never thought to look here. I don't think it's the answer for everyone, but it is nice to have some answers (and some stabilizing).

Roasted Cumin Carrot Fries

 I've decided to post my kitchen experiments over here on our farm blog. We've been busy with meat and even lard. I never thought it could all be so interesting!

I'm reading Call the Midwife, which my step-mother thoughtfully sent me for Christmas. We've only watched one episode but the book is great, too. I wanted to make a list of 50 plus books to read for the year, like so many fabulous blog friends do. Truth is, I have made some goals for the year and I know I need goals for productivity in life, but I'm struggling with balance. I'm so task-oriented, and feel like such a failure when fill in the blank doesn't get accomplished the way I'd hoped. Right now, I have one child who needs so much attention and nurture and TIME that it seems like all other goals pale in comparison. I don't know how to get things done and really nurture the relationships I have with my children. I'm sure it's an on-going challenge!

Speaking of which, the baby is up and needing me. These are the kind of interruptions that derail goals. But with those sweet cheeks, it's no contest!

My parents came for a quick visit to drop off Molly

Hopefully, now that I've taken the plunge I will stay in and enjoy the water for a while! Hope to be back soon!