Impulse Buy

Greenhouse tomatoes: local, organic, and grown in the ground. In February. How was I supposed to resist?

Anger Management

I hope that everyone had a very wonderful Thanksgiving! We had a very quiet---busy---Thanksgiving. For starts, my children went with their dad on Friday. This has bruised my ego, as this was my year for Thanksgiving, and our divorce agreement says the Thanksgiving custody is Wednesday through Sunday. The agreement he signed. But instead, he just told me he had bought a ticket and would pick the kids up on Friday. I cannot express to you how hard I have worked to keep my pissiness factor under control over this. I believe that throwing a tantrum makes you look like a jerk. And I understand where he was coming from, and I don't want to keep the kids from him. They look forward to Daddy's visits, and I want them to have whatever time with him they can. What irritates me is that if he couldn't get a ticket for the week before (when he originally said he was coming), then I have to give up my holiday time so he could have them. I have to be the one to sacrifice to cover his mistake. Again. Because heaven forbid he should have to suffer any consequences.

See? Pissiness factor is in full swing. Big time.

I think I'm just mad on principle. Sometimes I feel perfectly, well, not satisfied, but okay with how Thanksgiving went down, and even relieved to have a small break, and sometimes anger just washes all over me and I'm red from my painted toe-nails to the roots of my hair. I have to breath deeply and say "don't react! don't react! don't react!" to myself. Because going off on someone and ranting just proves what an asshole you really are. I have so much to be thankful for that it seems silly to get hung up about something that is really insignificant in the grand scheme of things.  In fact, it is silly. And I am not justified in getting angry just because he is out of line. That's the terrible thing about being human: I cannot whitewash my old sin nature. It's always ugly. It's always there. It's always a battle. And sometimes, I lose.

I have changed a lot this year. I would like to think that I'm more relaxed, less self-absorbed, and more gracious than I was at the beginning of the year, but unfortunately that isn't true. However, it happens one decision at a time and every moment is a chance to try again. I know this is a random, rambling post. I have found that if I write things down and send them into the void, I can finally quit thinking about them and really move on. Maybe this is a sign of my immaturity. Perhaps real maturity is being able to deal with things internally, and then let go without spewing like a volcano or being eaten up inside. Unfortunately, I'm not there yet.

Printer Made Out of Legos

 For your Friday enjoyment, a bit of fun! This guy made a real, working printer out of Legos and a felt-tipped pen:

How to Wash Fewer Dishes

My mom was complaining to me about how many dishes we wash. I said, "well that's an easy fix: get rid of half the dishes."

For some reason, she didn't appreciate that.

Random Thoughts

A lot of time I hear of moms who want to keep their kids busy while they "get something done." This isn't my philosophy at all (although some tasks are not safe for a pre-schooler to perform). I want my kids to actually do the tasks with me so that they can learn what it takes to live every day life. They need to know what it takes for the dishes to get washed, the laundry to get folded, the beds to get made, and the toilets to get scrubbed. Because if they don't know how much work it takes, they will never be able to appreciate me, their mother. And if they do not learn to appreciate me, they will never learn to appreciate anyone.

Of course, it takes about a bazillion times longer to do anything when I've got three little ones trailing behind me like ducklings.

On My Bookshelf

As always, I have too many books going at once. Amazon is the only store where I make any regular purchases, except for maybe the grocery store. I wish that I could write a review of each book that I read, but I simply don't have time, so here's a list of books currently laying around my house with creases in the spines:

Homeschool Topics:
A Charlotte Mason Companion
Top 100 Picks for Homeschool Curriculum
The Well-Adjusted Child

Toddler/Prescool Activities:
The Toddler's Busy Book
Look What You Can Make with Paper Plates
The Yoga Zoo Adventure
Before Five in a Row

Food/Nutrition:
Devil in the Milk
Real Food
The Healthiest Kid in the Neighborhood

Breastfeeding:
Mother Food
The Imunobiology of Human Milk
The Ultimate Breastfeeding Book of Answers

Gardening:
Square Foot Gardening

It's ridiculous,  I know. I have a problem. But that's not as ridiculous as the books waiting to be read:

The Baby Bond
Infant Massage
The Winter Harvest Handbook
The New Organic Grower
Four-Season Harvest
Gardening When it Counts
The Organic Gardener's Handbook of Natural Insect and Disease Control
Pottenger's Cats
Wild Fermentation
Preserving Food without Canning of Freezing
Better Late than Early
What's Going On In There?
The River Cottage Family cookbook
Nutrition and Physical Degernation
Home Learning Year-by-Year
Help for the Harried Home Schooler
Bringing Up Boys

As I said: I have a problem.


Can I just say that Amazon Marketplace rocks! It has led me to discover a new love of mine: used books! The more written in and underlined, the better I think! I love the charm and character of a used book. It is like a glimpse into the life an unknown friend, and we're somehow connected by our interest in the same book. The fact that I can usually find used books for pennies is a happy bonus.

Various Parenting Issues

It's been a while since my last post, and that's because 3 kids keep me jumpin'!
First of all, we are having sleep issues. M has entered the terrible twos and is now throwing fits at bedtime, just because. She is also up frequently in the night now, and I'm suspecting nightmares because she will scream violently, but when I go in there she is often not actually awake. I have been told that nightmares are a sign that she has reached a certain level of awareness now, and that it is a sign of maturity. That's great, but couldn't we have a different sign, please? These things are awful. R had them, too.

M doesn't speak well and we are encountering massive frustration (on her part even more than on mine) because she now wants to communicate and doesn't have the vocabulary. She adds new words every day and makes cute little verb-less sentences, but she doesn't use any ending consonants and is difficult to understand. I've pulled out my baby signs book and am hoping to give her some relief by teaching her a few basic signs. I think she's a good candidate for signs because she was never a chatty baby. She never cooed, and never giggled (she could, there was just nothing she felt like giggling about), and never did that baby "babble".  R, on the other hand, started cooing at 5 1/2 weeks old, and has not quit using her voice since. At almost four years old, she speaks like an adult.

E and I are having our own troubles with sleep and feedings. I suspect that the sleep troubles stem from the feeding troubles. E has slept six hours exactly once in his five months of life, occasionally four hours, but he's still waking up about every two hours. I think this is because he has a poor latch when he's nursing. E has been a terrible challenge to breastfeed. For one thing, he is so long and heavy. When I'm trying to feed him in the cradle hold, over half of his torso and all of his legs hang off my lap, and it is difficult for me to keep his head in the right place. For another thing, he is short tempered. If he gets very hungry, he gets so mad that he cannot latch on well. When the milk doesn't come out easily, he gets even angrier. I have a good milk supply and a strong let-down reflex, so he generally gets the fore-milk easily, despite his poor latch. Then when he isn't sucking correctly, he doesn't get a lot out, so he lets go and cries. Then he tries to re-latch and does it incorrectly, doesn't get much, lets go and cries. Then he starts to panic that he's going to starve to death. When he gets this way, I generally have to let him get the foremilk, stop and burp him (he always throws up after this kind of feeding), wait until his is calm (about 30 minutes), then try again. This has worked for us pretty well. I can usually get him to latch well if he is calm, and then he can go about three-four hours between feedings. But at night he hasn't been going that long.

His poor latch may be due to the fact that, in my ignorance, I gave him a pacifier as a newborn. Honestly, until this baby, I never believed that nipple confusion was real, because both of my girls never had any problems with it. They rarely took a pacifier, and both could go from bottle to breast easily. In fact, I gave R formula for the first week of her life because I was taking antibiotics that upset her stomach, so I pumped and dumped (I would have done things differently if faced with the same situation now). And yet when I started nursing, she took right to it without the slightest trouble. Not so with E. Because I don't want any formula going in E's body, I express milk for visitation with their dad, and I've discovered that E is terrible with the bottle. He chokes and spits up and a lot of the milk dribbles out the side of his mouth. He wants the pacifier all the time and is quite dependent on it to sleep. He just needs to suck all the time, more than either of the girls did. I think we would have done better if I had never given him the pacifier, though. Although, I must say that part of the reason he got the pacifier in the first place is the assumption by ever modern US adult that all babies need a paci, and someone was always giving him one without asking me. Then when E took it, I started giving it to him all the time, too. I wonder why people in the US think nothing of giving formula or pacifiers, which are both breast imitations, but get squeamish about the real thing. * Since when is an man-made imitation EVER as good as what God made? But I digress....I guess nipple confusion is not a blanket problem for all: some babies adjust easily, and some do not. Oh, well. I can't go back and change it now. He'll be starting solids soon and then he should start sleeping longer. Of course, solids will start a whole other set of issues!

*This reminds me, I saw a commercial for an infant formula, filled with fanfare that this latest formula contained probiotics, the good bacteria, "like those found in breastmilk". All that I can think of is the millions of babies before the creation of this formula who missed out on these beneficial bacteria, but whose mothers were still told at the time that formula was "just as good" as breastmilk, or that they "contained all the nutrients" of breastmilk. The very addition of these probiotics is itself an admition that every formula previously was inferior to breastmilk and did NOT contain all the nutrients of breastmilk. Hhhhmmm, I have a lot to say on this subject. Look for a post on this soon!

Thought of the Day

I've been observing that most people (including myself!)  have one set of morals for how they treat someone they like, and a completely different set of morals for how they treat someone they don't like, or are mad at. What I find interesting is that several of these people I have observed have taught Sunday school at some point in their lives. Unfortunately (or fortunately?), there is only ever one right way to treat anyone, and one's behavior can never be justified by the actions of another. We are all responsible, not only for our actions, but for every thought that runs in our head. And one day, we will be held accountable.

Thought of the Day

What is it about pillow covers (not pillow cases: pillow covers!) that makes me feel so darn civilized?