Life Plan 2014: February Summary

Two months into my Life Plan: 2014. It has been a cold winter and the months seems to be dragging on. I’m looking forward to spring when I won’t have to be battling the winter blues on a daily basis. My littlest man is three months old already and I spend much of my day holding him while he sleeps or playing with him while trying to get him to giggle. Such a precious sound! I’ve also been enjoying a lot of story time with my older two boys who have learned that, if they come sit by the rocking chair, I’m usually willing to read. I also have a skill when it comes to stories: I don’t mind reading the same book 10 times in a row. Most of the time anyway.

Goal updates:

Faith:

Read the Bible in one year: Mostly doing alright. I have missed a day or two but have been able to catch up by doing double reading the next day. I’m currently reading Numbers and Mark.
In depth book study: I have been taking my weekly “catch-up day” in my Bible reading plan to read Ephesians. I’ve read it in NIV a couple of times and, in March, I plan to read it in The Message translation.
Focused Daily prayer time: In January I had my prayer time in the morning. In February, however, Baby Bear shifted his schedule on me and is now sleeping until 5:30am and goes for a nap at 7:30am. This leaves me enough time for my Bible reading but not my prayer time. So I have been taking my prayer time around 9pm before I head to bed instead. I still need to make a prayer prompter to have more focus for this.

Wife:

Monthly “out” date with Adam: Oh my. We totally forgot to do this. We have been taking most Thursday evenings to focus on doing something together but I’ve added “plan out date” to my Sunday afternoon planning session.
Shared interest “doing something” time: We have really been enjoying playing an online card game called Hearthstone. He told me I would like it and I told him it was stupid. Turns out that he was right. I love that it involves some thinking and strategy. I also love that it is a video game that I actually can stand a chance at winning. Sort of. His card decks are all still better than mine because he plays much more but, once in a while, I get some really good cards and get to whomp him.
Kiss Adam daily: If I don’t remember this then he does. So this happens most of the time. It may sound kind of silly that this needs to be a habit we create but it is so easy for us to get caught up in the day-to-day routine and completely forget to show each other love in this simple way.

Mother:

Play: The last couple of weeks my boys have been playing so well with each other that they rarely ask me to play. There have even been times that I’ve grabbed a book and asked them if they wanted a story (they always say yes). So I haven’t been playing a lot with my older boys. I’ve been playing a ton with Baby Bear though. I need to take some of my own advice and make a stronger effort to simply enjoy my children.
Their faith: Hanging my head in shame right now. I can’t remember the last time we read the Bible at dinner. We’ve read from their Jesus Storybook Bible but not the The Narrated Bible. We rearranged our office/dining room a few weeks ago and, as I sit here typing this out, I have noticed that the Bible got moved onto the piano. Going to put it back on the dinner table as soon as I get up for bed.

Homemaker:

Cleaning: I have been mostly focusing on completing my Monday tasks, which mostly consists of laundry. I have been really good at washing everything but folding and tidying usually takes me the whole week. This week has been great though. Monday: Laundry. Tuesday: Baking. Wednesday: Bathroom. Thursday: Office. Four in a row! I hold Baby Bear during most of his naps so I make good use of my ring sling to get my spurts of housework done.
Food: I did not do any freezer cooking last month. I also did not make yogurt or bread. I’ll try again this month I guess!
Project: February’s goal of digital organization was mostly a success. I have most of my email inboxes cleared out and my digital calendar has been very helpful to me. I am mostly using the method described in Paperless Home Organization. I don’t use my to do list app a lot though. Partially because it doesn’t sync well between my devices and partially because I just don’t have that many to dos. March’s project is to plan my square foot garden.

Hobbies/Blog/Personal:

Reading: My two non-fiction books for the month were You Can’t Make Me (But I Can Be Persuaded) by Cynthia Ulrich Tobias (highly recommend if you have a strong willed child) and Your Retreat: A guide to giving yourself a personal planning day, a free ebook by Erin Odom from The Humbled Homemaker (great book but it didn’t really apply as I already had my plans in place. I’m keeping it in mind for my end of year planning session though). My fiction choice was a novel called The Language of Sparrows by Rachel Phifer (a truly beautiful book about surviving hard times and opening yourself up to being who you were made to be. This book really spoke to me!)
Writing: My daily writing habit is still sitting at about 2-3 times per week. I think I need to revise my strategy a bit on how/when I am writing. Schedule a specific time is tough with our loose family rhythm but I think that I should find a natural lull in our days. A moment when my kids don’t really need me and, instead of reading, take 30 minutes to write instead. Perhaps after lunch when Baby Bear takes his nap and before snack time.
Website: I updated my header in February but I believe I’m going to change it again as I don’t really like it (if you have any suggestions, I’m totally open to hearing them!). My tweak for March will be to add a specific disclosure page. I’ve started doing a few affiliate links and want to explain my referral and affiliate policy in a little more detail to you.
Blog: Continue guest posting at TOTS Family and consistently post once per week. My TOTS post last month was about breastfeeding as a third time mom and I posted each Monday with an extra post thrown in for Valentine’s Day about Free and Simple Ways to Show Love. I typically write and schedule my posts a couple days before they are published. It would be great to get a bit further ahead with scheduling but, for now, this method seems to be working.
Planning Session: I take an hour on Sunday afternoon to sit on my bed, with the door shut, with my laptop, smartphone, and tablet. (Yes, I’m a gadget person!) I plan meals, activities with the kids (playdough, painting, special coloring sheets), housework, office work, and blogging activities. It has been helping a lot but my mind is rather fuzzy lately and I have been working hard on beating the winter blues. I hope and pray that the sunshine and warmer days will come soon so I can get rid of the cloud that hangs over me lately.
Quiet time: I still haven’t made quiet time part of my daily routine. And it shows. I’m going to refocus and keep working on this one.
Health: Drinking water: I have been drinking more tea with the cold weather so my fluids are definitely up. Eating fruit: smoothies help and I have been buying a wider variety of fruit so I don’t get bored with eating just apples and oranges. Strengthening my back: I need to go to the chiropractor and still need to find exercises to strengthen my back so it stops popping out of place.

Reviewing goals regularly helps keep you headed in the right direction. Do you have a regular time to review your goals? If you have written a blog post on your goals, we would love to have you link up and share your goals with us. You could grab the button and put it on your post to help spread the word that we are writing these posts. Or leave a comment with a summary of how your life plan for 2014 is coming along.

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Trust: Our Spiritual Home Birth Journey Part 2

by Tessa | Motherhood

If you haven’t yet read part 1 of this story, you can find it right here.

*This post contains affiliate links. If you follow the link and choose to make a purchase, I may receive a small referral commission, at no extra cost to you.*

I crawled back into bed thinking that I should get some rest before the baby came. That lasted all of one contraction and I was back up on my feet. I told my husband, who asked if I could wake him in about an hour, when things were really going to be rolling. I went downstairs to call the midwife (who, by a miracle, came into our lives about 2.5 weeks earlier). I told her I was contracting about 2 minutes apart and she said, “Fill the pool. You know what to do. I’ll see you when I get there.” I called up to Adam to come downstairs to fill the pool. I did NOT want to do the stairs again! And, thankfully, calling to him didn’t wake the kids.

It felt like he asked me about one hundred questions about where all the supplies were and where I wanted the pool and such. I answered between contractions and I got out the birth box with all the herbs and essential oils and puppy pads all the things I thought I would need.

I was shocked at how soon I started vocalizing. I thought it was just me being a noisy birther. I decided to labour a bit on the toilet while I waited for the pool to fill up. Adam said we had run out of hot water and that the pool was leaking (apparently the plug wasn’t secured) and he hoped it wouldn’t warp the laminate (that we had just installed two weeks prior) or go down into our furnace. He was busy. I was busy.

I was in the bathroom for probably all of 5 minutes when I started to get pushy. I’m guessing Adam heard me and he came into the bathroom to find I had draped myself over the birth ball. He tried to convince me that I should move to the pool. I told him it wasn’t going to happen and I was just going to have the baby on the bathroom floor. I had it all planned out. The position I would deliver in, the way I would catch the baby and the towel I would grab to warm us. The picture was painted and I was not going to be told otherwise.

Then he did the unthinkable: he stole the ball.

He rolled it a few feet at a time across the house, bribing me to follow between contractions. He told me I would regret if I didn’t have the baby in the water. I told him I didn’t care and to just give me the freaking ball back! He didn’t. The monster! I thought, “What if Lynn (the midwife) walks in right now and is greeted by me naked, crawling along the floor in the living room? She probably won’t care, she is a midwife after all. But what about the cold gust of air that’s sure to follow?” In spite of the fact that it was the middle of the night and I was in the process of pushing a baby out, I had a surprising amount of clarity about the situation and an entire internal dialog about it. I’m pretty sure it was internal. Most of it anyway.

I crawled to the pool in about 4 contractions and Adam helped me in before he went to get more hot water from the kitchen (he had pots boiling on the stove). Due to the leak, there was only about a foot of water in the pool. I surveyed the situation and, quickly, reworked my birth plan/vision. One contraction in the pool and I told Adam that the baby was coming. He basically said, “yeah, yeah. I’m getting water.” “No Adam. Screw the water. The baby’s head is right here. It’s coming now. You need to get over here.” He brought a pot and said, “Yup, there’s the head.” I truly didn’t think he would be there so I planned to catch the baby. But there he was and he told me to get into a position to give him access. I decided that it would mean more to him to catch our baby than it did to me (which is saying a lot).

I pushed the head out and figured it would take a couple more contractions to get the rest out, as I did with Biscuit. I was mistaken. It happened just like the birth of my friends’ son (that I had the privilege to witness) and the baby just slid right out into the water and into his father’s loving hands with ease. I stood up and turned as he passed our baby to me. The cord was looped around his neck so we got it unlooped. Adam went to call the midwife to tell her that the baby was here.

I waited for the infamous first cry. It didn’t come.

He was breathing. His heart was beating. He was just so still. Once again, God said: trust Me. I tried to work up a panic and go through all the proper motions to get him to make a noise or move or something. I wasn’t panicked though. I just knew he was still. Same as he had always been in utero. Then I panicked about the fact that I wasn’t panicking and shouldn’t I be feeling something bad right now? Adam had his hand on the baby’s heart and it kept on beating. Baby started turning pink.

It felt like an eternity (though it was probably only about 10 minutes) before he finally let out a little yelp. We cheered.

That was when we heard little footsteps on the floorboards upstairs. C had woken up (who knows how long he lay awake listening to the commotion at the foot of the stairs!) and was on his way down. He said that my noises woke him up. I asked if I scared him and he said, “No, you were just having a baby. Is that our new baby?” It was perfect timing to introduce him to his newest little brother. He said, “Aw, he’s so cute and tiny! I always wanted another little brother.” He’s my sweet and sensitive little man.

I moved to the couch and snuggled with our littlest one while C watched and took it all in. Adam went downstairs to fix the furnace that had, indeed, had a pile of water leak into it and quit working. It was about -35 Celcius outside (-31 F) so I planned how, after the placenta was birthed, we would bundle up and walk over to my mom’s across the yard.

Lynn walked in the door almost an hour after the birth. She had gotten caught up in some thick fog on the way. She quickly took in the scene and helped me birth the placenta and get to the bathroom to pee. I already felt amazing. Other than feeling a little worn, I barely noticed my body had just been through a birth. At about 6:30am, Biscuit came downstairs and surveyed the situation. Lynn said to him, “Look, your mom has your new baby!” He looked at me, looked at the baby in my arms, and said, “And I have Jingle,” as he help up his stuffed dog. That little Biscuit is always good for a laugh!

Both my bigger boys came to snuggle with me and the baby and Adam got the furnace going and Lynn made me toast and tea. We went over the placenta and she noted how short the cord was, which could lead to a lack of movement in the womb. We discussed names and couldn’t agree so we put it on the back burner for a while.

In the meantime, I tried to nurse the baby. He still hadn’t eaten more than a drop or two that I had expressed into his mouth. I feel so blessed that Lynn and I agreed fully on the true journey of natural birth. We both knew he would eat when he was ready. We tried when he was about 3.5 hours old and he cried at the efforts. After being so quiet for so long, it was strange to hear him cry.

He finally started opening his eyes and rooting around 9am. He latched on and nursed for a full ten minutes. It was incredible! Lynn noted that he was exhibiting all the behaviors of a baby who had just been born. Our conclusion: he was born asleep. Literally. The labor and birth were so peaceful that it didn’t even wake him up.

First call to the midwife was at 3:35am. The second call to tell her the baby was born was at 4:43am. The labour and birth took just over an hour.

I’ve since written about being infatuated with my newborn and breastfeeding as a third time mom. I spend most of my days holding a baby who sleeps like neither of my other boys did. I couldn’t imagine a more perfect addition to our family and he is truly God’s gift to us.

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Linked up at: Growing Home, Babies and Beyond, Time-Warp Wife, Cornerstone Confessions

T is for Trust: Our Spiritual Home Birth Journey (Part 1)

by Tessa | Motherhood

It has taken me a while to write out my latest birth story because I feel like none of the words I choose will do it justice. It wasn’t just a “push the baby out and celebrate” kind of birth. I have been thinking about what to write over the last few months about a truly spiritual home birth and I finally feel like I’m ready to process the journey on paper…

When I first saw the positive test, I wondered if I should prepare for a miscarriage. I had miscarried before each of my other sons and figured that pattern might continue. I stood in the bathroom, excited and nervous, and God said: Trust Me. I had the reassurance from day one that my pregnancy was in His hands.

I live in an area with below average care for pregnant women. The local c-section rate is atrocious and the hospital doesn’t even accept VBAC (vaginal birth after cesarean) patients. (I will be considered a VBAC for the rest of my life, in spite of the fact that my second son was my official VBAC.) There are no midwives for more than 2 hours and, even if I was willing to drive to them for care, they would not accept me because of the distance. I would have had to drive over an hour to see a Dr, who I would likely have to battle with every step of the way to get the low intervention prenatal care and birth that I wanted. So we chose not to have conventional prenatal care. It wasn’t a decision made lightly and we didn’t get any support from loved ones (other than a few close friends) but, once again, God said: Trust Me. And we did.

The first trimester brought a lot of fatigue. I dozed on an off nearly all day. My boys spent a lot of time playing outside in the dirt or accompanying their dad or my dad with various farm chores. I felt the baby move, every so slightly, at about 9 weeks (around the same time I felt my first son move). It brought tears to my eyes. I still wasn’t ready to share the news with anyone other than my husband and one close friend.

The second trimester brought strange bouts of nausea (the first time I woke up at 2am, I thought I had food poisoning) and the start of braxton hicks contractions. I also started to gain weight to the point that it was becoming more difficult to hide the pregnancy (I gain a lot of weight during pregnancy. A lot.) so we told our families at around 12-13 weeks. I still didn’t want to tell anyone but duty called. Everyone was thrilled and nearly all were convinced that, after two boys, this one would be the girl they have all been waiting for.

There were a number of instances when I would put my hand on my belly just waiting for the baby to move. He didn’t move often. Sometimes he would only kick once or twice all day. The day of my sister-in-law’s wedding was one of those days. The baby didn’t move at all. Not even a niggle. I drank a coffee and an iced cappuccino on the 3.5 hour drive home and, still, no movement. I woke up several times through the night and still, no movement. God kept saying “trust me.” That was probably the hardest day to trust. I decided that if the baby didn’t move the next day that we would pray seriously about going in. He moved at about 8am. Just a couple little kicks to let me know he was still there, he was just tired from the busy days we had.

The weight and relaxin got tough on my body and started to cause a fair amount of pain. I was so relieved when a friend came to work on the farm with my husband so I no longer had to do the chores that felt like they were pulling my body apart. I essentially put myself on bedrest for the last couple of months. I would get up to do housework in spurts but, mostly, I sat on the couch and read.

I was due in the middle of November but I just had a gut feeling that the baby would come early. My other two were born at 40 weeks and 2 days so I told people that this one would probably be the same. But I knew, in my heart, that he wouldn’t be able to wait that long to meet us. Not having to worry about appointments and weight checks and belly measurements meant that I got a lot more connected to my baby during the pregnancy. I bonded so much with this baby in utero. I felt like I truly knew him and he resided in my heart just as completely as he resided in my body.

Braxton hicks contractions had been my constant companion since about 12 weeks and I could literally feel them start pushing the baby down starting around 36 weeks. Practice contractions. Practice for my body and practice for my mind. I would stop, breath, pray, and love the little baby growing in me. They started become more intense on a Thursday, at about 38.5 weeks. I sat on the ball and swayed. I prayed and sang hymns and listened to the laughter of my boys playing outside and felt closer to God than I had in a very long time. I contracted all night but woke up to calm.

Friday afternoon brought more contractions. About 5-7 minutes apart and definitely more intense. My body was working. I walked a lot that afternoon and prayed and breathed and, once again, placed the birth in God’s capable hands. I joked with a friend that I would probably have the baby on Monday. I contracted all day Saturday. My sister-in-law, who lives about 5 hours away, was visiting her husband who works nearby (oil rig life!) so she came to visit us and cleaned my house and played with the kids all day. I sat still enjoying the contractions that rushed over me. My body was calm again on Sunday morning. She came over again for a bit and we enjoyed the extra day of visiting (because Monday was a holiday) before she headed back to work.

Sunday evening brought contractions anywhere from 2-7 minutes apart and I was nearly in tears telling my husband that I just wanted to meet this little one and be done with all this waiting and the emotional roller coaster that goes along with it. But, alas, the contractions stopped. I went to bed early and woke up a few times through the night to help Biscuit fall asleep again. Each time I awoke, I waited for the contractions. Nothing.

Until about 3:30am, when I woke up to pee. By the time I went downstairs to the bathroom and back up, I had about 3 contractions.

I knew it was time.

~~I’m putting the finishing touches on part two so check back tomorrow to read the rest.~~ In the meantime, read my guest post on the True Journey of Natural Birth.

UPDATE: Part 2 has been published! I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed experiencing it.

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(Mostly) Free and Simple Ways to Show Love All Year Round

by Tessa | Faith, Motherhood

If you haven’t heard of The 5 Love Languages, I highly recommend getting the book and reading it. Understanding that different people communicate love in different ways can be a real revelation. It can often feel like your efforts are going unnoticed because you are comminucating in your own love language instead of in his love language. This means that you could be bending over backward to show someone you love them but they are still feeling empty because you are on different pages with what you need. Knowing what your husband needs can also help you figure out some free and simple ways to show love to him, not just on Valentine’s Day, but all year round.

My love language is quality time. This means that I see and noticed when my husband helps around the house, and I appreciate his help, but it doesn’t necessarily fill up my “love tank.” He could tell me all day how much he loves me and sweep me into his wonderfully secure bear hugs, but that’s not what fills my tank. In order for me to feel loved, I need him to sit and talk with me. I want to do something face-to-face. One of my favorite things to do is go for a drive with him and just talk. It’s great for both of us to know this about me so we can plan for regular chats. (I do know that sitting in the car isn’t actually face-to-face but a drive usually results in quality conversation, even though we’re sitting side-by-side).

My husband is a little more complicated. He’s taken the quizzes and I have read chunks of the book to him but we’re still unsure of his primary love language. We know which language doesn’t communicate as well to him (gifts is lowest on both of our scales) but the other 4 are pretty even across the board for him. This used to bother me because my life would be so much easier if I had this information. Until I devised a plan to show him love in the way that he needed, no matter what. So here’s my simple plan: show him love in each language. I’ve mentioned before that I’m a bit of a planner and I love my schedule. Here’s my weekly layout with some simple ways to show love in 5 love languages:

Monday: Act of service. Keeping it simple, this means that I will make his iced tea or coffee for him, dust his computer desk, or put away his laundry. All things that he normally does so it’s a nice little surprise for him when he comes in and it’s already done.

Tuesday: Physical touch. I make an extra effort to hug him, rub his back, or pat his butt when I walk past him.

Wednesday: Words of Encouragement. Leave a sticky note on his computer with some encouragement or I’ll simply tell (or text) him during the day to let him know of something specific that I appreciate about him or am proud of him for. For example: You are an amazing father and I love how you play with the boys before bed. Thank you for working hard in the cold to provide for our family. You give the best hugs and they make me feel so warm and secure.

Thursday: Gift. I don’t buy him a gift every Thursday but, every once in a while, I’ll pull out a special bag of chips or ice cream or sesame snaps that I bought on Tuesday during my grocery trip. Lip balm and hot chocolate in the winter or iced cappuccino in the summer. Sometimes the boys and I will make him a craft or paint a picture for him. Every once in a while I get to surprise him with a bigger ticket item (like a new headset for his phone), though I don’t usually wait until Thursday to give bigger items to him. Putting “gifts” on Thursday is often more of a reminder to me that this is one way to communicate love to him and allows me to plan for the future.

Friday: Quality time. We often open with me catching up on what his week has been like but his quality time looks different than mine. Because I’m a woman, I like face-to-face quality time and he, as a man, like side-by-side time. So we will watch a movie or play a video game together.

It is so rewarding to do something extra each day to show my husband I love him. I follow this rather loosely and hopefully it’s obvious to you that I show him love throughout the week (and weekend) in various ways. But this little schedule is a helpful reminder that love is communicated in more than one way and it is my job to make sure that I’m communicating in a language that he understands.

Is there a specific way that you communicate love to your husband? Is it in your love language or in his?

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S is for Sparrows: The Unschooling Process

by Tessa | Motherhood

The unschooling process starts whenever there is an observation.

We have a lilac bush right in front of our back deck. I can’t see anything on the other side of it and I plan to chop it down and trim it or move it this spring. But, for now it sits there, as pretty much the only thing we can see out of our deck door.

The sparrows love our bush. And C loves the sparrows. We hung up a simple bird feeder the other day and have been watching the birds extra closely to see if they eat it. I asked him to grab his bird book so he could identify them. He instantly found that they looked like the birds in the sparrow section. It was tough to see the details to be able to identify the type of sparrow more specifically so I grabbed my camera and took a few photos.

We noticed that there are different kind of sparrows in the bush. So we looked through the book and then grabbed a computer and Googled “types of sparrows.” We looked through a ton of photos online and compared with the ones that I had taken. We talked about the beak colors, crown, eyes, chest and tail. It was great to go through the details and show my boys how many different types of sparrows there are and how they are all different.

Then I got the song “His Eye is on the Sparrow” stuck in my head so I sang it to the boys. It gave me the opportunity to talk to them about Matthew 10:29-31 that talks about how God notices a sparrow fall from the tree, how much more does he know and notice you. So many sparrows just in our bush, yet God knows each and every one of them. I played the song through on the piano a couple times, which made C want to play for a bit. I have a couple lessons books that he likes to try, with some assistance. So he played on and practiced the piano for a while before he came back to the sparrows. By that point, I had printed off some coloring pages, a few of which had some key words (such as Nest, Egg, Sparrow, Seed) for C to learn.

Subjects covered: Science (animal anatomy, diet, and habitat), research skills, music, Bible, reading, coloring and photography. (Did I miss any?)

The unschooling process doesn’t have to be complicated. In fact, it’s a lot simpler than people think. Even families who don’t unschool follow the unschooling process in their day-to-day lives. It starts with an observation, which leads to a question, which opens the door to exploring for answers.

What questions have you answered lately for your child that led you down a wonderful path of exploration?

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