Yes, we've had our first frost here in Northern WI already! Last night I was checking the weather and saw the frost advisory listed for our area. I definitely am NOT ready to lose our garden! Our tomatoes are finally starting to ripen after a really cold spring and early summer. Our corn is just starting to be ready to pick. Our beans are just hitting their peak. There are just too many good things that are just ready to start being harvested that I'm not ready for the garden to die! I knew I needed to keep the garden going longer for sure!
I had read in "Farmer Boy" in the Little House on the Prairie series, that Almanzo's family had a frost on the 4th of July and during the night they all got up and started hauling buckets of water to dump on their corn to keep it from freezing. Their father told them that as son as the sun's rays started to touch the plant's leaves, they would be lost so they were rushing to dump water on as many plants as possible before the sun came up.
So last night I went to sleep thinking I may try to get up before the sun is up and water the garden to make sure the garden doesn't freeze. So I went to sleep and during the night dreamed about waking up and seeing my garden all dead and all the plants lying flat on the ground. So I slept a bit restlessly knowing I wanted to make sure to get up before the sun to check to see if it had frosted.
Finally 5:45 rolls around and I could tell it was beginning to get light. I looked out my bedroom window and thought that it looked like there may be frost out there. I decided to get up and put on a warm shirt and go out to check things out. When I got out there, the grass definitely seemed a bit crusty and on feeling plants in the garden, they also seemed to have a bit of a frosty crust on them. So I went for the garden hose. On trying to get started watering, it wouldn't run at first so I found a kink. Then I started watering again and again I had problems with not much water coming out. I decided that there must have been a little ice in the hose and that it was blocking up the spray nozzle. I took it off and let water run out of the hose and shook out the nozzle. Then went to turn off the hose so I could put the nozzle back on and then turned the water back on (all the way from the front of our house where the water comes out) and finally got started watering. The gardens needed a good watering so after spraying down the plants, I gave the garden a good watering.
We have one area where we built some teepees to grow some plants up but since we don't have it fenced, we call it the "deer garden" because they munch on it. I hope it keeps them out of our other gardens! Anyways, since there wasn't much of anything to eat from in that garden, I decided to not water it so I could tell if the garden would have frozen without my watering it. Sure enough, by the afternoon when I checked it, many of the plants had died and the ones that hadn't died, didn't look the best and had some pretty damaged leaves!
So, I avoided a major catastrophe and the loss or damage of many plants by getting up and watering it! Last year at the first frost, I tried covering the garden, but that didn't prevent it from dying unfortunately. We'll see how many times I can save it by watering it before winter really hits and there's no purpose in watering anymore! Hopefully we can prolong the garden as long as possible! So if you have a frost predicted, try watering the garden before the sun comes up to save it.
Yes, I finally proved I have a large family by leaving a child at home. The worst part is who and where I was going. The good part is that no harm was done and now I'll be even more careful.
The who is my baby Lindy, and I was leaving to go to her and my 6-week check-up with the midwife! Here's the whole story.
I was getting ready to leave for the midwife's house which is 1 1/2 hours away. I was bringing 2 kids to Grandma's who lives 20 minutes away and is right on the way. I was bringing 2 more kids to a friend of mine who lives about an hour away and is also right on the way. The baby was coming for her 6-week check-up and the other 2 kids were staying home with dad. Dad was inside starting to do some transcription work as I brought everyone out to leave. The 2 who were staying (my 5yo and almost 2yo) came out with to say good-bye and were then going to play outside together for a little while.
So I get out to the van in our driveway and set the baby in her car seat on the ground next to the van. I hop in the van and need to buckle my 3yo boy in. As I'm getting in I realize that my 1yo girl is probably going to try to get into the van with us and think she's coming too and I don't want to have her get in and then have to get her out and have her cry about it so I shut the van door to keep her out. I buckle my 3yo boy and because the van door is shut, forget that the baby is on the ground outside in her carseat. I then drive off.
It wasn't until almost 20 minutes later as we're coming into town where my mil lives and 2 children are going to get dropped off that my 7yo daughter says, "Where's Lindy?" and I look back to see that she's not there. I was surprised it took her that long to notice she wasn't there as she's usually on top of things like that and sits right next to her, but thankfully I was good about it and didn't make her feel bad about it since it's not her responsibility. So I drive the 4 kids to Grandma's and walk in and ask if she had gotten a phone call from our home which she had. I decided to call home to get my midwife's phone # so I could tell her I'd be late since I now need to drive an extra 40 min. to get home for the baby and back with her.
I was definitely upset - mostly about the extra drive time and being late and the gas $ and all. My dh's story was this. He was working and my 5yo ds walks into his office and says, "Lindy's crying". And he says, "You mean Jemma?" (my 1yo), and he says, "No, Lindy". Thankfully he had been outside and about 10 minutes later heard Lindy crying and dad brought her in and took care of her. It would have been awful had she been out there the whole time crying!
So I went home, picked her up and went back to Grandma's and picked the other 2 kids up and went to my very sweet and understanding midwife who thankfully didn't have an appt scheduled after me.
So that's the story of my forgetting my sweet baby! I couldn't believe I had forgotten her and try to be extra careful now! I do find myself counting kids a lot with 7 of them!
Thank you Lord for keeping my kids safe, despite my failures!
Potty Training isn't my favorite thing in the world! With my first 2 kids, potty training went fairly smoothly. Then I had my twins. They are now 5 and are mostly potty trained (still an occasional accident for one of them) during the day but aren't nighttime trained yet. Then there's my 3yo boy who can and will go when you tell him to but if you don't tell him to, usually won't go and goes through many clothing changes a day. Finally my almost 2yo girl may do better than her next older siblings but at the moment she hasn't gone on the potty yet. She is always saying "poo-poo" like she's always poopy but I think she says that for both being wet or poopy. She sometimes says it when she needs to go and if you don't think she's gone, she'll prove it by putting her hand in her diaper and then showing it to you! But she has yet to be able to go when she sits on the potty.
Recently I was at a friend's house who practices elimination communication (sometimes called infant potty training) with her son who recently turned one. While we were there he was getting fussy and she realized it might be because he needed to go potty. So she took off his undies (he doesn't wear diapers at all) and put him on his potty and he promptly pooped! I was amazed about it and asked her some questions about it. I later was looking at some websites about elimination communication and started to get interested in the topic.
I read about how in our Western society we spend the first year plus training our kids that a diaper is the place to go potty and it's ok to be wet for a while. I admit that I haven't always been as diligent as I should be about changing my kids' diapers as soon as I should. Then after we train our kids to use a diaper for going potty, we change all the rules when they enter the "terrible two's" or threes. They are already going through lots of attitudes and changes and it's often a difficult time for them to make this big change. I also read about how infants truly can control to some degree the muscles that control peeing and pooping and that until about 4 months of age, they're very aware of their peeing and pooping.
The more I watched my youngest children struggling to change their potty habits I had trained into them when they were young, the more interest I had in trying elimination communication with my next baby. I recently requested some books from the library on the topic and 2 nights ago read/skimmed through the 2 books that came. The basic process you go through in training them is to first let your baby go naked or with just a thin cloth diaper on without a cover for a period of time when you can watch them. Then you watch for them to pee or poop and when they do, you make a pssss sound (or whatever sound you decide on). You pay attention to when they tend to go and watch for visual cues that they're about to go (squirming, facial expressions etc...). Babies don't go potty when they're sleeping so key times to watch for them to go are after naptimes and then after nursing sessions.
Once you've discovered when they go and gotten them used to hearing you make the signal sound (psss or whatever), you try to get them to go when you think it's time to go. You decide on a location/receptacle for them to go into and then find a position they're comfortable in and put them over the receptacle and hold them and make the signal sound and see if they'll go. Receptacles could be a sink (infant pee/poop is pretty harmless), a bowl, the potty or whatever you decide. For a good infant position, you hold them with their heads by your body and holding their legs in your hands.
So today I decided to try it out. In the morning I was able to notice a couple of times when Lindy peed and made the signal sound. I had tried making a sound a time or two other days before I read the book but don't know if I had done it at the right time for sure. I was gone in the late morning/early afternoon so didn't do anything then - just had her in diapers. Then in the afternoon I had her diaper off and held her on a cloth diaper to catch anything. She went a couple more times and I made the sound but didn't get her over a receptacle. Then she took a long nap around suppertime. After she got up I knew she might need to go and took her to her "potty" (an ice cream bucket on the counter). I was distracted a second while holder her over the "potty" and when I looked back I noticed she had pooped! A while later after feeding her and all I took her again and she peed! Then a while later before bedtime I took her again and right away when I made the signal she peed and pooped!
I was amazed as I could tell she was relating being there and my signaling to her going potty. I couldn't believe that in one day of trying, she already related the potty position and signaling to her going potty! Today I've had her in cloth diapers most of the time - sometimes with a cover so she won't leak and sometimes without. All in all I'd say she went at least 1/2 of the time in the potty - maybe a bit more. It's a bit amazing to me! So I think I'll keep at it with this infant potty training. It doesn't take much more work than changing diapers, although I take her potty more often than I would change her diaper normally. But I'm saving on diapers and laundering so many cloth diapers! It's just nice to know that she will grow up knowing the proper place for her pee and poop. I know she won't truly be potty trained until she's closer to 2 when she can really be independent with going potty, but she could be out of diapers and dry most of the time much sooner!
So far life is going well with a newborn. We seem to have fallen back into routine fairly well with just the usual glitches here and there. Thankfully Lindy has been a good sleeper so I get good sleep at night and she gets good naps during the daytime. So far at night I put her down in her bassinet once she's asleep for the night. Then once she wakes up, I nurse her in bed with me and fall back asleep with her and keep her in bed with me the rest of the night. Generally with my babies, they gradually start sleeping longer at night and when they're not waking as much, I start waking myself up more fully to feed them and put them back in the bassinet for the rest of the night.
I may end up a bit more tired once I'm getting up to feed the baby at night, but I've found that these times awake can be a blessing if my focus is right. During these awake times I find that it's a great time to spend in prayer for my family or for missionaries who very well might be awake during that time if they're half-way around the world. I will sometimes sing songs quietly and praise the Lord during these times. I find even with my older kids, if they're sick or going through a tough stage, if I can put my focus on using that time productively with the Lord, that it becomes a blessing in my life even if I do get a bit more tired. With my first couple of kids, I would resent that time being awake and think about how tired I would be and it would affect my whole outlook on my day.
When I had my twins, I was awake at night much more than with any of my other kids. I was able to tandem nurse them but I couldn't exactly tandem nurse them in bed and go to sleep like I do right now. So I would get up and go into another room to nurse them. The thing that helped me the most then was to get books on tape or inspirational tapes/CD's to listen to while I nursed my twins. I would be looking forward to that inspiration or the next part of an exciting story and then I didn't mind being awake so much in the middle of the night. It was still tiring, but emotionally I enjoyed that time awake so it was so much easier to handle.
Often by the time I'm getting up more completely at night, it doesn't last too long because my babies are ready to sleep through the night pretty soon and often they just start sleeping through the night on their own. Whatever stage I'm in, it's a blessing. I'm grateful for the good sleep right now but if I am awake more in the future, I know that my awake time will be a blessing as well!
If anyone is like me and has a hard time finding decent modest maternity clothes, hopefully this tip will be a help! I had gotten some maternity clothes in a lot off freecycle this year and got some jeans that I didn't really need so I decided to try to make a skirt out of 2 pairs of jeans and it worked pretty well. Unfortunately I didn't take pics as I went along to give better explanation to doing it. Here's a pic of the finished skirt.
Basically, I just took a pair of maternity jeans with the belly panel in them that were comfortable and fit right, and ripped out the inner seam. Then I took the other pair of jeans (or you could use any other fabric that you think goes well with the jeans) and ripped the inner seam and cut them off from the crotch area so I had another long piece of fabric. This is the fabric that I sewed into the middle on the front and back to fill in between the legs of the other pair of jeans. It was a little tricky to get everything to lie right when I sewed it together so several times I needed to re-pin things and sew a little bit more to get it to look right. I could have gotten it to look a little better in the front if I were a bit more picky, but didn't have the time and energy. Here are a couple more pics.
All in all it went well and was pretty quick to do. I'm not a really great seamstress or anything so I'm sure others could do a better job. It was so nice to get a decent and comfortable maternity skirt without spending any $! Hope the idea helps someone out there!
Just when almost all of our snow was gone and we were thinking gardening thoughts, we got hit with 12" of snow and high winds over the course of 2 days! It was quite the storm! We lost power from around 6:00 A.M. until 11:30 A.M. Thankfully we have a fireplace so we got a fire going and hung out by the fire for the morning and roasted hot dogs and marshmallows to eat. The power came back on just as we were getting mostly through roasting the hot dogs. I kind of enjoy a good storm like that - makes some good memories! So we're back to snow piles, mud puddles, and lots of water as it starts melting. It's supposed to be in the 50's by Tuesday so I'm sure it will be melting fast!
Friday night of the storm (when it wasn't quite done), I brought some snow inside for the kids to play with (and eat). They enjoyed it quite a bit! I used some food coloring and made it different colors and they made things out of it. We also mixed up some milk, sugar and vanilla to eat some "snow cream" which did taste quite a bit like liquidy ice cream that's really cold. You basically use 2 parts milk to 1 part sugar and a little vanilla (I just guessed on the vanilla). It was quite good and the kids enjoyed the treat! Anyways, that's the latest here! I'm really looking forward to real spring!
Here's some pics of our indoors snow party!
Our 3yo's creation
One of our 5yo's is obsessed with fires. The red is his bonfires.
If any of you are like me, you have different aches and pains that crop up. With having 6 kids and especially with having a 1 year-old to hold and carry during my day, I've been finding quite a few aches and pains cropping up in the last year. I now have plantar fascitis (pain on the bottom of my heel). I also have had low back pain off and on, shoulder pain off and on, a hip that sometimes pops out of socket for a second and other assorted odd pains here and there. I also haven't been as good at exercising in the last year+ with the busyness of 6 kids. I've had the thought at times that maybe I should do a better job at exercising to help me out. On the momys e-mail list I'm on, I had seen someone recommend a book called: "The Core Program: 15 Minutes a Day That Can Change Your Life" by Peggy Brill. I put it on my wish list on paperback swap (see my link in the sidebar) and a little bit ago, the book came up as available so I ordered it with my swap points I had.
I just got the book a few days ago and started reading it right away. The basic idea of the book is that in order to have healthy, pain-free bodies we need to keep our body's core muscles (from the top of the backbone down to the bottom of the backbone) etc. strong and with doing this our bodies will stay in proper alignment and we will have less discomforts popping up. The author is a renowned physical therapist who has had pre-med classes and has a practice treating women. The book is written for women addressing their different needs. I have read many testimonials on amazon.com about what her book has done for people with different pain issues.
I really was helped by her test she had where you stand and look at yourself in the mirror to see how you measure up in posture. She had you look to see if your head was straight, shoulders level, distance from your arm to your body the same on both sides, hands with palms facing your body instead of facing back, hips the same height, knees the same direction, feet even etc. When I did this I was amazed to see that my right shoulder (the weaker side that I don't hold the baby on) was definitely lower than my left shoulder showing a muscle imbalance there. There was definitely a difference in the space between my arms and my body. My palms were turned the wrong way. I definitely show an imbalance in my muscle groups and can see how these things could be affecting some of my pain problems.
I've only done one day of the exercises so far but really enjoyed it. It doesn't take just 15 min. at first as you learn the exercises, but I can see that it will go much faster once I'm good at them. They really are different, but really good exercises. They're almost all done lying down. She uses many isometric exercises (where you're pushing or flexing muscles without physically moving a lot) which are very good. Her abdominal exercises are really good as well. She says that doing crunches or exercise like that for abs can be bad in that they can contribute to urinary incontinence. She has better exercises of abs that isolate different abdominal muscles. All in all I think I'm going to get a lot out of this book and hopefully be feeling better soon!
One little note, there are a few references to things you may not want unmarried girls reading - benefits of the program that would be a bit graphic for an unmarried girl to read.
If you need some work on your body, check this out at the library if you can and see if it might help you out!
A little while ago I had my 35th birthday. It was a really special day. I generally don't have great anticipations with my birthdays but the Lord truly blessed me on my birthday this year. These were the special blessings from my birthday:
My parents visiting from Wheaton and my mom offering to make me whatever I wanted for supper for a special birthday meal!
Attending a new Prayer time with some new friends I've recently made since moving to this area. They knew about my birthday from our church bulletin and made me a cake and each had cards for me and one new friend even had a present for me. It was wonderful fellowshipping and praying for each other during this time!
Watching my children watch me in anticipation of my blowing out a bunch of candles. The event itself isn't that exciting as an adult, but seeing all their excited faces for me was so sweet!
Seeing my 4yo son cry because he hadn't gotten me a present! That was the best present he could of given me - caring for me that much!
Seeing a beautiful double rainbow in the sky during cake time! What a neat reminder that God keeps his promises in our lives. I can count on him in the coming year!
Here are some pictures of the beautiful rainbow out our window!
If you're read my recent blogs, you've read about how I've been trying to get more of a biblical focus for our whole day. God shouldn't be put into one part of our day but be present and active in our whole lives. One aspect of this that I've been thinking about more is the role of play and toys in the lives of my children.
If God is the focus of our day, my thought on young kids and play is that play is a way for them to act out living God's way and a way for them to learn about God's world. Their focus when they play shouldn't be just selfish enjoyment of toys, but of playing with toys in a way God would be pleased with and using them as tools to learn about how to live and learn in God's world.
For example, legos and building toys are good for them to learn construction and science skills - they're learning about God's world with them. Little people, Thomas trains, other character toys can be used to show how people should interact with one another. Hitting baloons around is fun and develops muscle coordination and can be beneficial, but if done selfishly it is more of a harm than a benefit.
What makes a toy beneficial or not? In Psalm 119:37 the Bible says: "Turn my eyes from looking at worthless things." What makes it something of worth? I believe it's not in what is being played with but how it's being played with. If a kids is selfish and screaming at others who come near their toy, it's definitely a worthless toy at that point. But if they're talking nicely to those who might be bothering them and playing with the toy in good ways, there is worth in that toy.
My kids and I were discussing different toys and how to use them to not be worthless things. Since we have a boat and like to go waterskiing and tubing and all in the summer, the kids like to pretend play like they're waterskiing. We talked about this and how you could pretend you're teaching someone else to waterski or making someone else happy with your boat. We talked about not waterskiing in a boastful way acting like you're the best at it, but rather in a praising God for the joy of waterskiing. Now can little kids get this attitude? Maybe not right away, but with repetition of these concepts over time, they can learn that serving and loving is the way to play and live.
The other day the kids were driving their trains around on the floor and I was thinking about how I could turn trains into something beneficial to others. I started telling them about Bibles and countries who don't have Bibles. We recently had read a children's fiction book about a boy smuggling a Bible into Russia on a train so they were pretending that their trains were bringing Bibles to people who didn't have them. Then another day the were pretending their trains were carrying corn that had been harvested (we had recently picked corn from our garden) so I encouraged them to pretend that they were bringing the corn to people who don't have much food.
Of course one way the children will do this more naturally is if they see us living some of these things out in real life. If we're praying for the poor and giving things to them, if we're praying for the people with no Bibles, if we're using our possessions to benefit others, these ideas will be caught much easier.
One other main key of doing this is that you need to be involved and around when the kids are playing. If they're just sent off to play all the time without interraction with you as a parent, you'll miss opportunities to encourage them to play in good ways. I do send them off to play at times during school but I try to be around other times when they are playing to encourage good playing. I can't say I see the fruit from a few times of doing this yet, but hopefully over time my children will become less selfish with their toys and begin to see the right focus in play.
Lately I've been struggling with lots of different issues with the kids. I'll spare the details of their negative behaviors and issues but I've been feeling quite down from feeling like their attitudes and behaviors are going downhill. I'm praying that as we get into the school year and into Bible Study consistently that God's Word would bear fruit in their lives. In the meantime, I've been caught (and they've been caught) in a negative downhill spiral.
Just tonight the Lord showed me how my attitude towards them and their behaviors has been hindering their change and improvement. As I've been frustrated with them, I've started using more negative tones with them. I've spoken negatively about them to others. I've said negative statements about the frequency of their bad behaviors. All these things have been counterproductive.
Tonight this came to me as I was trying to get my twin 4yo's to clean up their room. They do this every night after supper and oftentimes it's a big struggle while other times they do it well and are done in a short time. Tonight was one of those nights where they just seemed to stand around and fiddle with this toy or that toy and never really get around to actually putting something where it belonged. I was getting frustrated and was telling them to pick up. I was debating in my mind what to do and had hesitated long enough contemplating my negative mindset towards them when one of the twins put a toy away. I burst out into an enthusiastic cheer which caused his twin brother to pick something up and put it away bringing a cheer for him. Suddenly in about 2 minutes the room was picked up to the sound of my cheers.
After this I thought about how often I get negative when if I could just keep finding the good things they do and keep encouraging them in these things, they might start doing more and more good things and the whole tone in our house would change. We as moms really do set the tone of the house. Satan so wants to speak lies to us about how bad our kids are and how they'll never change and they keep getting worse and not better until we believe it and start treating them in that negative light. God wants us to encourage the good we see, dilligently and cheerfully train and correct the bad, and pray for their weaknesses and trust him to do his work in their lives.
None of this is something I haven't known, but boy I sure needed this reminder tonight! May we lovingly encourage our children in God's ways.
Our 3yo's creation
One of our 5yo's is obsessed with fires. The red is his bonfires.
Our 1yo just loves to eat it!
Double Rainbow - 2nd rainbow to the right!
