Silas discovers cookies

A Good Monday

I actually did have a good Monday. And after some really bad nights around here, some sickness and some general hard parenting times, and that missing my Girl really bad that finally hit me,  that was a welcome thing.

A good friend really let me talk out some problems I've been having in parenting my two little boys, ages 3 and 5. It's so good to have friends who listen, give you lots of grace and unconditional love and great suggestions! So I am reading little people books, snuggling more, communicating better, being calmer and that is really going a long way with disciplining these little guys. Me, the CM nut (children are persons treat them as such) forgets that my little men are people and get gruff and angry and horribly tired and impatient with them. It has been a good reminder.

My two older children, 14 and 12, spontaneously decided they needed to work more independently. WOW This was great as I am feeling stretched very thinly these days, see paragraph above. They have always schooled at level together, but my almost 15yo son is in high school now and has really matured lately. His sister is not so mature in some ways and I am not anxious to rush that. Because then this happens:

Sigh. And then she will grow up too fast and move far away to somewhere cold and crazy like Minneapolis and I will miss all the long talks and coffee runs and new music she was always bringing me and drat if they don't become  your friends and then you are just supposed to live without them?!.


Ahem. Back to my Monday.  They also decided that he should pull ahead. Maybe she is more mature than I realized.

This is great. I could have pushed this sooner but said 12yo daughter can be extremely stubborn (don't know where that came from) and having this be partly her idea was very helpful. We quickly scanned the shelves for her own history and literature books, scaled down a notch, and found the perfect fit in quite a few books. Curtiss quickly pulled ahead and I am offering him a few more books I was holding back so as not to overwhelm Grace. Oh, it's beautiful.

The best son a mom could want. And totally by the grace of God, not by my parenting.

And lastly, my baby turned 4months old today! He is almost a whopping 20lbs and learning to use his little hands so well. His gift to me today? He took my face in his little hands, very systematically. So SWEET!

Wonder where he got those cheeks?

This picture really captures how he looks well!

Little somethings I am making and selling. Exciting!

Some September happenings...

Sweet sweet Silas! 2 1/2 months old

Apple orchard time! Max in the fake pumpkin patch :)

Curtiss did a good job catching everyone here! Mom and Robert were visiting from FL so we were all able to go together.

Silas lovin the sling

Everyone!

Grace's fall project, a wreath for our door. She got the idea from pinterest!

Our Biggest Summer Event

Silas Paul was born at 12:48am on July 5. I labored to fireworks :) After waiting and waiting and waiting some more, he did finally come. I had weeks of irregular contractions and was getting quite frustrated on 4th of July. We went to Mom and Dads for a cookout, contractions started again and were very strong but when Kaley and I went for a walk, they stopped! GRRRR

We came home and I spent 30m doing knee chest. Got up. Nothing. Forget it, I thought. I'm going to sleep! I got maybe 15m of sleep and at 10:15p a strong contraction woke me up. Sigh, here we go again, I thought. One at 10:20, 10:25, hmmm. They had never been 5 min apart like that. I took a shower, got out and woke up Mark. He timed them 2 and a half min apart and lasting over a minute. He wanted to call our midwives, I was hesitant. LOL. He had been telling me for days, when it happened it would be quick. I just couldn't even hope that after a 32hr birth last time. And here I was 17 days overdue again so I was having a lot of anxiety about the size of the baby and how it would feel as I pushed him out!

My first dear friend of a midwife walked in right after my water broke in my birth pool. I insisted she check me, 8cm and baby very high. I didn't know what I wanted or what to do. A contraction started and I jumped in the pool. I had another really strong one that I had a really hard time coping with. I'd been doing very well, praying aloud and feeling each contraction as an immense sense of pressure. My second dear midwife walked in, these ladies are some of my best friends and spent that loooong labor with me last time. I had one more and thought I felt a little pushy but thought that must be wishful thinking. On the next, as it started, I said, I think I feel push- and I started pushing and was a little panicked. But in that one push our little Silas was born into the water and swam up into my arms. And he was screaming. Loud and long.

I was over joyed and shocked. He was born after only 2 1/2 hrs of labor, 15 and 5 minutes after my midwives walked in the door and in only 1 push. He was our smallest baby, we could all tell right away. I had planned to have the two younger girls there but it was too quick and it was just Kaley, Mark and the midwives.

8lbs 4oz   20 1/2in

I just couldn't believe how the birth went. I'm also a little dazed because he cried all the time.

With the sweetest big brother a baby could have.

Sleeping on daddy.

Kaley always has a magic baby touch.

Sweet relief

How October Finds Us

Well, the weather has been lovely. Fallish but not too chilly. We did finally start the wood stove when we had some nights that left us with frost on the ground. I've enjoyed 3, yes 3, drives up to the apple orchard and Lake Lure, getting lots of varieties of apples and some cider that was pressed before our eyes.



We have been plugging away at school, enjoying walking through modern history. I myself have learned a lot about the rise of communism, Castro and the Bay of Pigs, apartheid and segregation, Vietnam, JFK and MLKJ. As much as I have always loved history, I sometimes wonder if I was asleep in class. Or maybe just a product of my educational system of not having history as a story with ideas to hang facts on, rather just dry facts with no life.

We are currently reading out loud: The Hobbit, Miracle of Maple Hill, Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry, The Yearling and just finished Sounder. All lovely books. I have never read Roll of Thunder and after the first page we were all captivated. What an excellent writer! After the first few paragraphs, Benjamin ( who had been most affected by learning about segregation), said, "Hey! I think they are black!" I loved that they discovered this without me telling them all about the book first.

We happened to read about apartheid in South Africa before we read about segregation in the south and when we did read the later he was very upset. When we read about S.Africa it was another country, and perhaps seemed far away. But segregation was going on when his grandparents were his age, in the US which is supposed to ensure freedom to it's people. We had a lot of great discussions. I'm afraid we don't have any close friends who are black. I struggle with that, I feel like we are still segregating ourselves somehow. We would never do that intentionally but we really do not know any black families that well. Well, we did have some very sweet friends who were black that were from Africa. They were and are very dear to our hearts but it got to where I never thought about them being black. They were just who they were, we didn't see our skin colors when we saw each other. How it ought to be. They taught me a lot about Uganda and Africa.

We finish up our first term next week, wrapping up our study of modern history till we cycle around to it again in a few years. We start ancient history the second term and we are all looking forward to that. Curtiss is most excited about Archimedes, a kindred spirit for him.

So, the end of October finds us expecting a new little person at our house! Most exciting to everyone. I am so happy with how all the dates have fallen out, God is so good. For the first time, we will have a baby in the summer, which means daddy will be home for an extended babymoon! This thrills my heart. Even if this baby were as late as Max, Mark would still be home for at least 6 weeks. Oh joy! And no lesson plan worries for either one of us. We are all hoping for a little girl and we may even find out ahead of time. We have never done that!

So in the mean time, in the here and now, we are dealing with morning sickness. Well, I deal with the physical part, the rest of the family deals with the fall out of a sick mom. School we do with me semi prone on the couch, some of school is not getting done, housework is done exclusively by the children and dad and cooking as well. I don't go into the kitchen much. My survival plan is: lots of protein, low carbs (they make my blood sugar take a roller coaster ride), frequent snacks, a walk a day and lots of grace. That last part is hard. I tend to get really frustrated and down on myself for what I can't do. I am doing better this time than ever, just easing into the day and allowing myself to lay low. Part of that is all the lovely help I have now. The kitchen is always clean and I don't have to do it! I tend to perk up in the afternoon, so I walk then and try to enjoy the respite to prepare for the next wave. No fun, but this too will pass. And then it's all much better.