18 months-ish

Noah is 18 months old now! Well, he's actually almost 19 months, but I'm late as usual. We have absolutely loved the past few months with him. He has so much personality and is very independent. So he can make us laugh and bring joy, but also go play by himself and be happy. I continue to be amazed at his verbal ability. He'll say sentences and repeat almost everything we say. It's just crazy to me. He's also getting closer to running instead of just the fast walk...if you have a toddler you know what I mean. His current favorite books are the Biscuit books. He LOVES biscuit (who is a dog). And one of my favorite parts of the day is sometimes when we are putting him to bed we'll get him all ready: noise maker and sleep blanket on, he turns the lights off, and then he will say, "chair mommy!" And I go sit in the rocking chair with him and cuddle until he gets bored. I'm not sure how it started, but I love it. Some nights I'll say, "chair?" and he says, "no, night night mommy." I don't get it. Any other kid would probably jump at the chance to delay bedtime, but not my Noah.

All of these pictures are from the bath tub because his 18 month page in my scrapbook has bath time stuff on it:) Plus I think he is super cute naked.

Apron

No description needed:

Baby 3 at 20 weeks

We had our ultrasound last week and they said that everything looks great! The baby is measuring right on target size wise which is good, but I'm still hoping to go a bit early so Ian can get the last week of school off. Because he doesn't get enough time off already:) I'm feeling baby kick pretty often now which is one of my favorite things about being pregnant. Here are a couple pictures of us:
Here is baby at my last appointment. Almost 21 weeks.

Here we are at 20 weeks. I really feel like I've popped out a bit more since then so I'll have to remember to take another picture sometime soon. This weekend we're leaving the house a bit more...so maybe I'll put on some normal people clothes:)

Daddy Daughter Dance

Last weekend Ian and Mary went to a Daddy Daughter dance at the community center. I think I was more excited than them...but they both had a great time! Ian said her favorite parts were riding in the elevator (or elegator as she calls it):

And eating the ice cream at the end of the night:

I hope this can become a fun tradition for them because they are SO adorable all dressed up!

The next day he asked her if she wanted to come lay down and watch football with him. And she did. For about half an hour she just laid there!

I hope she's a daddy's girl because she has a great daddy!

Problems with Homeschooling

Maybe it would be more accurate to say problems I'll encounter with homeschooling...the problems aren't with homeschooling itself. I'm currently reading a book called The First Year of Homeschooling Your Child. I wont say it's a great book, but some things have been helpful. The chapter I'm reading right now is called first year hurdles and there are two specifically that she mentions that I hadn't really thought about:

The first is how defensive I get when people question us. I always saw this as other peoples' problem. They were being critical, insensitive, and ignorant. And that is part of it, but my being defensive isn't helping anything. In the book one woman shared her story and said that she realized that people weren't always out to criticize her (although some were, no doubt), but some people just really wanted to learn about what she was doing. She also pointed out that the way to convince people that you're not a weirdo who lives in a cave and never lets your family out, is not to argue back with someone and be insensitive yourself, but let time and your family's example do the convincing.

The second thing the author pointed out is that you may lose friends. I had never thought about this and I hope and pray that doesn't happen! She pointed out that some people will just plain disagree with you and it will be hard to be around them. Others schedules will change as their kids go off to school and there will just be less time. I noticed this with all my friends when we started having kids and some people went back to work. I hated that my circle of friends shrank then. I have met a lot of new friends since then, but I really don't want to ever just hang out with people who are the same as me!

Luckily for us we have a lot of support. We have a good amount of friends who are homeschooling too. And I think our parents are just so used to us doing everything differently than everyone else that when we told them we were homeschooling they responded, "oh, ok." Our parents are super supportive in terms of providing learning games and aides as gifts and a few of my friends will make us little activities to do as they make their own for their kids. God really provided for us here and I'm so thankful. I guess I just need to put on my big girl panties and learn to deal with some of the obstacles we'll face!

First Birth

Last week I experienced my first birth as a doula. It was such an incredible experience and I'm so glad that I decided to go down this path. Her labor was about 7 hours and I was only with her for the last two. She was standing almost the entire time including when she pushed her little girl out. After that she got the rush of hormones that only those without drugs will experience. It was unreal to see. She was beaming and practically bouncing up and down as she sat on the side of the bed. She couldn't believe that she'd done it and that she had this beautiful little girl! As I left I felt incredibly blessed and satisfied with the experience.

I have to keep in mind that my goal was for her to have a satisfying birth experience and to help her stick to her plan as much as possible. It's easy for me to focus on some of the frustrating things that happened. Like the nurse making the comment, "well, you didn't have an IV so we can't give you pitocin to get your uterus contracting back down." I wanted to say out loud, "well thank God you didn't have time to get the IV in then!" But I refrained. Does the nurse not know that God made the body to have kids and recover? There was no sign of any problem with her uterus contracting down, in fact my client had been wincing every few minutes with the contractions after the birth...so clearly her uterus knew what it was doing without the help of your synthetic drugs. Thank you very much!

OK, I'm down off the soapbox:) I need to keep in mind that hospitals are run on the 'there's a problem and we need to fix it' philosophy. This is a big issue in birth because labor and birth are not problems. They are natural occurrences which, left to themselves, will go along quite well most of the time. I wish hospitals would operate on the, 'we're here if you need us and we'll leave you alone otherwise' principle. I think interventions are fabulous when they are necessary! Life saving! But to just shove them down each and every woman's throat and then judge the ones who wont comply is really frustrating. There were a couple other comments made by nurses but I wont share them here. The hardest part for me was seeing a woman who just gave birth be SO ecstatic and then have nurses make these cutting remarks. Everything went well! Everyone was healthy! And the mom could get up and walk around to tell you about it! I don't know what they had to complain about.

I will keep this in mind as I prepare for my next births. This is why being educated about the things that are happening to us and in us is so important! Don't let them get you down girls!

Vaccines

Recently I've been bombarded with lots of information from both sides of the spectrum on disease and illness. We've been seeing a chiropractor for Noah and they are anti everything medical. No vaccines. No surgery (for things like ear infections, tonsillitis, and other common childhood illnesses). No routine antibiotics. And then of course you have the medical side of things. With Mary we were immediately referred to an ENT (a surgeon) when her ears weren't getting better and her tonsils were the size of golf balls. No discussion of seeing a holistic doctor, chiro, or herbalist. We went to the ENT because we didn't know what else to do and we wanted her to get better. I don't regret our decisions with her. We prayed and prayed and I believe God let us experience that for her health and also for our education. Those things helped her tremendously. But they were extremely expensive and now I wonder if there was a less invasive way to solve her problems.

The chiropractor has really been helping Noah. His ear problems went away and he's even been sleeping better (if you can believe it). The doctor (of chiropractic) sent us a slide show that has all this information about vaccines, ear infections, ADHD, asthma, etc. The common childhood concerns. It has been very informative and eye opening. But my degree is in statistics. I'm glad I have that background because I can look at this slide show and see some things that make me cautious about how quickly I accept this information. I love hearing this side of things, but I also want it to be balanced. As a doula I've seen (but mostly just read about) some of what goes on in the medical arena so I'm also weary when I read their side of things.

I mostly made this post so I could share about this book pictured to the left. The author is obviously a doctor so he recommends all of the vaccines be given to your child. But he also gives a very real and honest look at the problems vaccines can cause. I think he is very fair. For each vaccine he gives what the disease is, how it is transmitted, if it is serious, how the vaccine is made, side effects of the vaccine, why you should give it to your child, and why some parents choose not to give it to their child. I found this book so VERY helpful and informative and mostly unbiased. He genuinely seems to care for these parents who don't vaccinate their kids. A lot of doctors will judge the crap out of you for not vaccinating your kids or skipping some like us. But Dr. Sears does not do that. He really understands and respects some parents for choosing to skip some or all vaccines.

Luckily I found a couple doctors in our group of peds who are supportive of me. Or at least, when I turn down a vaccine they just say, "OK! You'll have to sign this paper." And that's it. The first ped we saw was super judgmental and even talked me into a couple things I didn't want (giving Mary some formula and her first vaccine). After I left I decided I would not see her again and if I did for a sick visit I would go in with my mind set and not let her talk me into anything else. I also use the excuse, "This is something my husband and i already decided and I wouldn't feel comfortable reversing that decision without first discussing it with him." Works like a charm...unless he's there:)

New bed

Mary is finally in a real big girl bed and she LOVES it. Noah loves it too. The first night we had it up they sat on it for about 30 minutes before bed time and played. We told Mary that sometime soon we were going to turn her other bed back into a crib and Noah was going to sleep in it. She was super excited then and wanted him to sleep in her room that night. We're not quite ready to make that leap yet though...


I don't know why his shirt is off in that picture. I was probably trying to get him changed into pj's when he saw the new bed and ran away! Also, we had our first real snow the other day. It was maybe .25-.5 inch but that's all it took to get Mary excited for snow.

Aprons

Mary and I got matching aprons for Christmas. Mine says "head cook" and Mary's says "mom's helper". Mary doesn't really like wearing hers yet, because she hates things being around her neck...but I know some day she will like to wear it!I finally got her to pose and smile

Christmas

Well, it's been over a week since Christmas but I finally got my pictures on my computer! The kids were, of course, spoiled this year and Ian and I got a lot of great gifts too. One of my favorite moments was when we sang happy birthday to Jesus in front of a birthday cake I made for him. We brought it to my mom's family Christmas (about 40 people) and I thought just a few of us would sing...but everyone sang! It was awesome and Mary loved it. She did ask where the baby was and why God wasn't there. Ah...she will understand some day.

Here are the kids bugging grandpa tommy after he went to use the bathroom. They do this at home too...
Cutie pies:)
My babies and Brooklynn posing with their gifts on Christmas morning
Yes...we made Noah wear these shoes all day. They were super cute!
And this is at my family Christmas. It was around 8 PM by this time and can you tell that my kids were being themselves at this moment??? Mary is playing with my cousin's cell phone after she had just done some laps around the room and Noah is going to sleep in the middle of the floor. My aunt was kind enough to rub his back for him. It was really cute. When she stopped he looked up at her with the saddest face!