Holiday Cheer

This past week has been a whirlwind of holiday cheer.

We've been pretty busy shopping for gifts, wrapping gifts, and attending family holiday parties. I've been really careful to make sure that the Guppy nurses as much as she normally does. I definitely want to avoid the holiday wean.

Christmas Eve is a big night in my family. We all gathered at my aunts to open our Secret Santa presents, eat a delicious meal, and play Yankee Swap. It was so nice to see everyone in the family, especially my cousin and his wife who live out of state.


Christmas Day was wonderful. The Mermaid woke up incredibly excited to see what Santa brought her. The Guppy woke up a little overwhelmed. Santa spoiled both girls this year, but the big gift for both girls was a toy kitchen, complete with all the accessories. Both the Mermaid and the Guppy have shown a lot of interest in creating things, including dishes to eat, and so far the kitchen has kept them busy for hours.

My big gift this year came from my mother, who gave me a much-needed GPS system for our van. I find that I have a horrible sense of direction, and every time I travel for either my doula work or for my other business, I get lost. I always end up calling the Knight and having him guide me over the phone to my destination. Now, I won't have to do that any longer.

The Knight made out well, too. He got lots of gift cards to his favorite store, Barnes and Noble, and some clothes, movies, and sports stuff too.

All in all, a wonderful Christmas. I hope your holiday was as wonderful as ours.

Holiday Cheer

Birthing Goddess

Tuesday night a dear friend of mine went into labor and I was honored to attend the birth. This was her second baby, and her first homebirth.

I arrived and the midwives greeted me. They were so nice, so wise, and so in their element. My friend was a birthing goddess. She did so incredibly well during the labor and birth. She was not very vocal, instead she was very focused inwards on what her body was telling her.

After a while she labored in the birthing tub and pushed her baby out in the tub as well. What a Goddess she was, unaware of anything else except for what her body was doing to bring her baby into the world! The baby's arrival was met with smiles, joy, and laughter. A beautiful, healthy, baby boy!

I was so honored to be able to participate in this event. The atmosphere was of pure support, encouragement, joy, and calmness. This is the way all births should be, the mother surrounded by women who are calm and supportive. I was awed by the knowledge of the midwives and especially of my friend, who dove deep within herself and birthed her baby with ease.

Unfortunately, it was after the birth of the baby that things went slightly off track. Mom had lost a lot of blood and fainted, despite the shot of pitocin that the midwife gave her and despite the constant massaging of her uterus. The decision was made to transport Mom to the hospital. I stayed behind to watch their two year old son, who had slept through the entire birth.

Mom and baby are now doing great. Mom should be coming home from the hospital today. Dad was amazing, when the decision was made to transport I could tell he was worried and scared for Mom, but not once did he panic. He kept his cool and did what needed to be done to prepare for the ambulance's arrival.

What an amazing family!

Birthing Goddess

Beware of the Holiday Weaning

The holidays are an extremely busy, and at times, stressful time of year. Most people are running around shopping, cooking, baking, partying, and doing other holiday errands that must be done. For a nursing mom, this chaos can wreak havoc on her nursing schedule.

Yup, one minute you are running to the mall, to the bank, to the holiday party, and the next you realize that your little nursling has not nursed all day. Or, at times, you even realize that your little one has weaned.

Now, if you are ready to wean your child, the holiday season might be the best time to start. However, if you and your child are not ready to end the nursing relationship, then this accidental weaning can be heart wrenching.

Nursing moms have to remember to take time to make sure that they are meeting the needs of their nursling. It is so tempting to put it off during this busy time, but don't. "Just let me wrap one more present" or "Just let me go pick up one more gift" often begins the holiday weaning. Stop. Sit down with your nursling and take the time to nurse. Even if your child isn't asking to nurse, offer it anyway. It might be they themselves are feeling overwhelmed and just aren't thinking to ask.

If anything, ensuring that you are stopping to nurse your child during this busy time of year will force you to relax as well, and perhaps enjoy the holiday season a little more.

Check out this great article for more tips for a nursing mom during the busy holiday season.

Beware of the Holiday Weaning

Bisphenol A Found in Formula

First in plastic baby bottles, now in formula. According to an article I read recently, bisphenol A is found in the lining of cans of liquid formula and often leaches into the formula itself. The article states:

New research from a U.S. environmental group reveals the potentially carcinogenic chemical bisphenol A is in the lining of most cans of liquid baby formula and often leaches into the liquid at what they say are dangerous levels for babies.
"Because they eat so much relative to their small size, their
exposure is intense," said Sonya Lunder, lead researcher on bisphenol A for the Environmental Working Group, a research agency based in Washington. "We can't use endocrine-disrupting chemicals in a baby's first food. The formula companies need to take action."

The response of the formula companies, of course, is unsatisfactory. The article recommends that if you do buy formula, to buy it in powder form instead of the liquid form.

Yet another reason to be so glad that I chose to breastfeed.

Bisphenol A Found in Formula

First Week of Homeschooling

Well last week was our first week of officially homeschooling the Mermaid.

By "officially" I mean by actually sitting down and following a curriculum.

The curriculum I am using is one that I found online, and it's one that is low cost, as all the materials I need is found either in the library or in my own home. I searched high and low for a curriculum that I would hope would capture the Mermaid's interest, and after the first week, I can tell that I've made a good choice.

Basically, I started the Mermaid in a preparatory curriculum for children from ages 2 - 4. It's a basic letter of the week curriculum. Each week, you have a theme for the week, a vocabulary word of the week, a shape or color of the week, a letter of the week, a number of the week, and a nursery rhyme of the week. You introduce one for each day. And you incorporate songs, books, and games into the theme of the week. You also have a learning poster that you keep where your child can see that reviews the items that you are studying that week. I would have taken a picture of the Mermaid's poster, but my camera is broken :o(. However, it is basically very similar to this one.

I am also keeping a book in which I will place in all the materials that we make during each week, so that the Mermaid can flip through it and review it any time. I also picked up a small notebook that I write in every day after we do learning time. I find this very useful for myself, because I am suffering from horrible "mommy brain" lately and need reminders of what we did, and it is also very useful for the Knight as well. He is very involved with the girls' schooling and now, when I am at work at nights, all he has to do is glance in the notebook to see what we are working on and he can work on it with the Mermaid more.

The preparatory curriculum basically involves themes that the Mermaid already knows (alphabet, numbers, etc.) but I figured that I would start her off on this one anyway instead of skipping to the preschool one. I figured I would do this because the Mermaid has soooo much energy and not much attention span and I wanted her to get used to a "learning routine" without me having to worry about if she really absorbing anything that we learn for the first couple weeks while she gets used to it. Then, by the time we get to the preschool curriculum, she will be used to a routine that involves actually sitting down for more than two minutes to learn something.

Those were my thoughts when I started. Here is what I learned:

I need not have worried. The Mermaid absolutely loves, loves, loves her learning time. She loves sitting down with me and reviewing her shapes and letters, loves the games we play to enforce them, loves getting personal attention. And believe me, this girl is thriving on all the individual attention that homeschooling is giving her, I honestly had no idea how easy she would be to homeschool. For example, this past week the letter of the week was "A" and the number was "1". Well, not only did she have a blast going through all the activities at home during our learning time, but now whenever we go to the grocery store or other place she loves pointing out all the "A's" that she sees and all the "1's" as well.

And I find that I like our learning time as well. It forces me to forget about the laundry, to forget about the dishes, to forget about everything except this angelic, adorable, three year old sitting in front of me, waiting to learn whatever I have to teach her. It gives me the chance to focus on her, I mean really to just focus on her. It gives me the chance to notice things about her that I've never noticed before, like how she holds her pencil and crayons perfectly with her tiny hands (how she picked that up, I don't know, it was never something I consciously taught her); or how she sticks her tongue out of the corner of her mouth when she is concentrating (I know where she got that from, I do the same thing); or the way her hair falls softly over her face when she leans over the paper to draw; or how her eyes literally do light up when something clicks in her head and she understands what we've been talking about. How in the world did I ever miss these things?

I've also learned that it really isn't as hard as I thought it was going to be. I was worried about how I was going to homeschool and take care of both girls and run my Doula business and run my Direct Marketing business. Plus cooking, laundry, housework, and working at my other job for two nights a week. Oh yeah, and being active in my local babywearing group and LLL. *deep breath*. But, again, I needn't have worried. Every day I go over the item of the day, we draw it or do other artwork to enforce it, then we play games to enforce it. We do the official "learning time" in less than an hour. The rest of the day, I take little opportunities to enforce the lesson outside of "learning time". Last week the theme of the week was Cows and the vocabulary word was "calf", so whenever we read books I would pick books with cows in it. Or when we were driving somewhere, we would sing songs about cows. Little things like that. And that is all she needs. By the end of the day, she fully understands the concept that we had been going over. So it works great for us. In fact, if anything, it's taught me to manage my time better, which I found is not as hard as I thought it was going to be. In fact, I am looking into joining a local Moms Group, mostly to meet new people.

I have also found a curriculum for children the Guppy's age. I think I am going to wait until after the holidays to start her on it, though, since it is a crazy time of year. In the meantime, she loves watching while the Mermaid learns, and I am sure that she is picking up on some of it.

So we have begun our journey. And I am so excited. Life doesn't get any better than this.

First Week of Homeschooling

Oh No, I'm a Mini Van Mom!

A few weeks ago, the day after Thanksgiving to be exact, the Knight and I bought a Mini-Van.

We have been a one car family for a while now. The car we were driving was a 1996 Dodge Intrepid. It ran well for a while, but then things started to go wrong. Like the tires always ran flat. Or the brakes would constantly need to be replaced. The engine light would always be on. And both the air conditioner and the heater were broken, although we could finagle the heater on using a pair of pliers.

The final straw came when the car started to vibrate wildly once we went above 45 m.p.h. At first the vibration was slight and hardly noticeable, but then it became so bad that the Mermaid would hang on for dear life and yell "Whoa! Whoa!" for the entire length of the car ride. We took the car to the mechanic and he informed us that the vibration was the actual engine vibrating against the car itself, because the engine mounts were so rusted through and old that they weren't holding the engine in place correctly any more. In fact, he told us that the engine could fall out of the car any minute.

Nice.

So, the day after Thanksgiving we dropped the girls off with my In Law's and we vowed not to return until we have a safe car to return in. Now, because we are big fans of Dave Ramsey and we are in fact on his Total Money Makeover Plan, we knew that we did not want to finance a car. For one, we can't afford a car payment right now and two, we just worked our butts off to get rid of my old car payment and we didn't want to sign up for another one after all that work. So we made some phone calls. Turns out, my ex-step-uncle (follow that?;o)) is a mechanic. A reliable mechanic. A reliable mechanic who has a mini van for sale.
We went to go see him and the van and ended up buying the van.

It's a 1996 Dodge Caravan. There is a little bit of rust on the bottom of both sliding doors. One sliding door refuses to lock. There's no CD player, only a cassette. When you open the glove compartment, you find out that it is actually not attached to the rest of the dashboard and it falls to the ground. And it has over 130,000 miles on it.

But you know what? It runs like a dream, I kid you not. This is where the whole "buying from a family member who is also a reliable mechanic" plan really pays off. Because not only did he knock down the already low low price for us since we are family, but he also had the inside detailed and put brand new tires on it. Plus, the brakes are new. Plus, he maintained it extremely well.

So, now we have a very safe and reliable van. And I LOVE it. I love the room, I love the comfort, and I love the safety features. And I love the fact that we got what we set out to get, and we still have no car payment.

One step closer to being debt free, baby.

Oh No, I'm a Mini Van Mom!

It's the Little Things...

~ Yesterday we got hit with a snow/mostly ice storm. The price of oil has really hurt our budget, so thank goodness we have a wood stove. And for once, I am thankful that we have such a small living space. Our wood stove is enough to heat almost our entire house, so we are able to turn off the heat during the day while the stove is running and only use the oil heat at night after the fire dies.

~ The Mermaid used the potty twice yesterday and didn't go in her diaper at all. On one hand, I was thrilled, but on the other hand, it made me realize that she only went "pee pee" once in the entire day. I don't think that's normal. Note to self: make sure the Mermaid starts drinking plenty of water!

~ The Guppy's two teeth finally popped through and we've been getting some peace in the house :o). She's now our little happy baby again, and she's even begun to pull herself up to a standing position.

~ A dear friend of mine and I are going to collaborate to help pregnant women in our community. She does Reiki and teaches Yoga and I am a Doula, so we are working on plans to have a monthly gathering of women where they can learn some relaxation techniques through prenatal Yoga and I can show them positions ideal for encouraging a baby to turn or for labor. I'm excited!

~ We haven't started our Christmas shopping yet, or put up any decorations, but since I made a conscious decision to take it slow during December with my businesses, we're going to have plenty of time to do that in the next week. I can't wait!!

It's the Little Things...