Little Sinners

Works for Me Wednesday: Microfiber Cloths!

2010-09-07T22:46:00.000-04:00

I know I’m way late to the gate on this one, but… I’d never really tried microfiber cloths before. I was very confused about the whole safe-to-use-with-cleaning-fluids issue, and I don’t like the feel of them on my hand—they’re just so sticky and they get caught and pulled in microscopic fingernail tears I didn’t even know I had—and they remind me of nothing so much as pantyhose. Just, ewwwww.

But I kept reading about how they were literally the best thing to happen to housekeeping since sliced bread, and with the whole cloth diaper thing, it just seemed to make a whole lot of sense to try to reduce our astounding trash pile of paper towels. So I ordered a great big pile of microfiber cloths and chomped at the bit until they finally came in and I could see for myself if all the hype was true.

It is. The most amazing thing about microfiber cloths is to clean off semi-solid messes, like tomato sauce or peanut butter from R’s highchair; there is no comparison between these cloths and anything else I’ve ever tried. They’re really good about not just pushing messes around, but actually picking them up. They’re also more than competent at cleaning up liquid spills: one cloth, wrung out once, cleaned up about 10oz of spilt milk, which means they’re as efficient as most sponges and less work—and less leave-behind smearing. They’re obviously good at dusting and picking up very small particles (like crumbs), but they’ve surprised me with their grippiness and ability to de-stickyfy surfaces as well. Honey, for instance, is no match for the microfiber.

I’ve also been surprised by how often it’s efficient for me to simply rinse them, wring them, and keep using them. I bought 36, and expected to have to buy more (or do laundry all the time) because we easily were going through that many paper towels in a day just cleaning the counters, the floors, and various other kid-dirtied surfaces. And it is nice to have enough of them so that if one gets too grody, I can toss it in the laundry without worrying about whether or not it’ll make me run out too soon, but I definitely don’t anticipate buying any more. I keep one on our paper towel rack for drying hands, one on the counter for cleaning counters, and one on another towel rack in the kitchen for getting little drips off the floor as they happen. The floor and counter ones end up getting replaced at least a couple of times each day, but they still last a lot longer than paper towels did.

The only thing I really regret is that I didn’t know about microfiber cloths sooner!

School – some reflections.

2010-09-06T07:33:00.000-04:00

“Doing school” has changed our little lives.

I’m not being very rigid about it—E is usually very eager (more than I am) for “dool time!” and so I haven’t really needed to push her at all. Focus, yes, but not push. Which I guess is a good thing.

I’m very surprised, though, by how much more attuned I am to what she does and doesn’t know, and how rapidly she is picking things up. Intentional instruction is definitely making a big difference! She’s really latched on to the alphabet and goes around pointing out letters even when we’re not in “school” and asks, quite often, what various words / letters / numbers are that she sees. She also must have picked up a lot more from Blue’s Clues or Dora than I ever would have thought that she would… she knows a good number of letters that I haven’t taught her yet. Conversely, there are some concepts in the “same/different” category of learning that it just blows my mind that she doesn’t understand—but she doesn’t. I guess this is something we haven’t really run across in our daily lives, that S and I haven’t been pointing out to her. But, see, formal school means I know this giant gap exists now, and we’ve been working on it together… and she’s starting to understand more!

It is more work than just playing was. We spend maybe an hour and half or so per day—although a very big part of me likes the “four day schoolweek” and so Fridays occasionally fall by the wayside—usually our time is consecutive, but sometimes it gets split in two pieces. I’ve started making use of the time after breakfast to get E started on various tasks that work well at our dining room table by herself: tracing, coloring, and critical thinking exercises. She works on those while I do my morning chores, which works surprisingly well. So I guess in one way, it’s less work because it definitely adds a lot of structure to our morning, which everyone seems to like. But it’s a lot more work because I’m having to do a lot of planning and assembling activities that I wasn’t doing before.

I finally got some giant folders this past week which I divvied out the activities and worksheets into, and another multi-pocket folder which I’m going to use to divide up the activities on the weekend for the upcoming week—based loosely on this modified workbox system. One folder per day, with maybe some sticky notes for things that don’t fit in the folders. I did finally get my act together last week enough to sit down and figure out what my formal subjects actually are, what activities fall in the purview of which subjects, and what days I want to focus on each subject.

It’ll all work out eventually. I’m definitely becoming a big proponent of this kind of early schooling, though: it’s beginning to seem like quite a waste of everyone’s mental resources to just coast around PLAYING.

preparing our children for marriage

2010-09-03T10:45:00.002-04:00

It occurred to me that since my last entry was more or less from the perspective of "my" generation, that it might come across as critical of my parents' generation, which wasn't what I meant at all. This cultural shift away from "responsible twentysomethings" and early marriage doesn't seem to me like it's going anywhere anytime soon, and it's been in the works since the 1970s or so, based on what I've read. I've actually been thinking about it as a parent more than I have as a participant, and it might be more balanced if I talked about it from that direction, huh?

In short, as it's becoming ever more clear that society is arrayed against young marriage, what can we do as parents to help our kids bridge the gap?

The biggest thing, I think, is to raise them to be married. Not, in other words, to raise our daughters to be career people, or to raise our sons to be single wandering types who can barely provide for themselves, much less a family.

The American "track" for kids and teenagers goes something like this: do well in high school, participate in sports and extracurriculars; get scholarships to college, do the whole college scene with at least a year on-campus to get the "experience"; graduate after four or five or six years (or maybe go to graduate school); get a job, settle down, maybe marry that boyfriend you've been toting around since senior year; after five years of marriage (and entering one's thirties), have kids. And woe to those who get off the track—how many high school drop-outs end up at law firms?

But we want our kids to glorify God. Full stop. That's what we want, and all we want, right? How much of this American "ideal" do we really need?

Not excepting the possibility that a child may be called to celibacy—and not underemphasizing that parents need to be aware and discerning of that possibility—the general expectation is that our girls will want to get married and be moms some day. So what is the very best preparation and support that we can give them to serve and glorify God in that role?

I find myself planning their academics and asking myself what will be most useful to them as a wife and mother rather than what will help them succeed in a career—or even in college, although I definitely think that a good homeschool education should be more than sufficient to prepare them for college in a coincidental sense. It is more important that they be able to run households well more than that they can discuss the leaders of the French Revolution. This is one type of preparation: basic life skills to live without Mommy and Daddy.

There's also emotional preparation: to be the type of mature twenty-year-olds who have the discernment and knowledge to choose good mates, and be able to take the challenges and blessings of marriage in stride. A wedding changes your life, no mistake about it, and teenagers aren't quite "done baking" yet on the maturity front—but when society expected them to get married and stay married, they managed—with minuscule divorce rates. I want our kids to have that kind of maturity and understanding of things larger than themselves (i.e. the sanctity of marriage!) so that they don't want to "sow wild oats" before they feel ready for marriage. Somehow we've got to help kids have some confidence in their ability (by God's grace) to make marriage work, even when the world is telling them they're way too young to pull it off. We can help them have reasonable expectations (and aspirations) and to build relationship skills to help it all come together.

And then there's financial. I don't see a practical way, honestly, to have a large number of children and still support them with great scads of literal money after they're grown up... but there are many young people whose parents are giving them the advice and friendly urging that they need in order to find a little business niche of their own, even in young teenagerdom, in the grand tradition of the Proverbs 31 woman. Parents can help their kids discover their marketable talents and give them the sound business advice to actually get a small work-at-home operation off the ground and running with some degree of reliability before the child ever marries and leaves for their own house. It's also gigantic if parents can help their kids stay debt-free before marriage—I haven't seen diligent, frugal couples very often who can't make it work financially... unless they're struggling under a mountain of debt, which sometimes is their fault through poor judgment and sometimes isn't their fault at all. But I don't think anything keeps you debt-free as much as good advice. Lastly, parents should teach and model frugality. It really is an acquired skill! Not only because we grow accustomed to certain spending habits and then have massive culture shock when we have those habits without our parents' pocketbooks attached—but because living frugally is largely a matter of simply knowing how to do it! Knowing which corners to cut, how to stay entertained and have fun without expending large amounts of money in the process, which items to invest in and which not to buy at all, knowing how to cook on a budget without resorting to pre-processed foods (which are sadly cheaper than fresh ones) or an unbalanced diet: these are all valuable pieces of knowledge, skills, and discernment that we can teach our children! We can also teach them as many money-saving talents as we can, and encourage them to pursue them on their own--things like knowing how to fix things around the house yourself, or your car; how to sew, and so on.

This is by no means exhaustive. We've only had girls so far, and so I've thought about it almost entirely in the context of daughters. I'm only now really beginning to wonder how to help our soon-to-arrive (Lord willing) son learn to provide for his family, and I imagine that is going to look very different in significant ways from teaching daughters how to care for their families. And I'm still learning so much of this myself. I am sure, though, that I want our kids to achieve success in God's eyes—and I'm unconcerned about how that looks compared to success in the world's eyes.

Seasons in life.

2010-09-01T20:10:00.004-04:00

I am learning—very slowly—that life comes in seasons. My life of late revolves very clearly around pregnancy: first there is the sick time, in which housework is breezy but eating and cooking are real challenges; then there is the happy middle time that I never take advantage of as much as I should; then there’s the bone-deep tiredness and ambivalent happiness and vague excitement that makes up the last four months or so of pregnancy. I never remember how tiring that stage is, either (she says from the depths of it). Then there’s new baby time, with a sudden rush of energy amidst sleepless nights and wondering how it’s possible that I have more energy than in pregnancy even though I’m getting much more disturbed sleep. And lastly, there’s the early-nursing stage, with all its physical challenges and recuperating from labor.

Then, if you’re me the past two times, the cycle repeats itself instantly.

I’m finally beginning to understand that I need to plan for the changes and live each of these little “seasons” to the fullest. Of course, there are bigger seasons, too; I’m beginning to be old enough to grasp the idea that there was a person I was ten years ago who is not at all the same person I am today, and that ten years from now, I will undoubtedly again be a very different person. Or dead, let’s not forget that possibility. I remember my fifth grade Sunday school teacher saying that none of us students could possibly understand the concept of a decade, and I’m beginning to see the truth in that—and I’m beginning to understand what a decade means, as I come ever nearer to my third.

I’ve also been noticing that suddenly there are stores at which I should not shop, because I’m too old, and that a freaky day of purple hair now would be just silliness. I have a little family. I’ve spent more time in the past ten years married than I have single. I look at our wedding pictures and am struck by how very, very young I look. I didn’t realize I’d acquired that many wrinkles in the years since, but I have. I’m aging, and sometime close to this age is when things officially stop going uphill and start the long, long trek downwards until one day you’re so old and falling apart that you really can’t wait to go home. I’m finally seeing myself on that journey and not just at the beginning of it.

All this to say, there are little seasons and there are big seasons. There’s morning sickness and there’s mid-life crises. I’m beginning to see that there is real value in seeing those seasons with accuracy and forethought (maybe especially the little seasons—planning for morning sickness is always a good thing) and drinking them all to the last drop. These are the different places and different times in which I am, by the grace of God, and I should be honest with myself—and aware—and do the best with each season’s imperfections and beauties. Every one of these moments is laced through with sin and fallenness and the longsuffering glory of my Savior: the fallenness and decay drive us towards home, and the glory provides the scenery along the way.

I don’t want to miss any of it.

Money for (Young) Marriage

2010-08-30T15:51:00.016-04:00

The New York Times Magazine article "What Is It About 20-Somethings?" has been popping up all over the place since it was published, and I’ve been thinking very deeply about the points it makes in reference to another widely-quoted article that was published in Christianity Today a full year prior—"The Case for Early Marriage." Both are very important articles about a single particular cultural shift, and despite their length, both are worth the time to read and ponder.

There are many, many good points in the CT article, but there was one that is particularly justified in light of this recent research. Author Mark Regnerus writes:

[T]he economic domain remains an area in which many parents are often able, but frequently unwilling, to assist their children. Many well-meaning parents use their resources as a threat, implying that if their children marry before the age at which their parents socially approve, they are on their own. No more car insurance. No help with tuition. No more rent.

This doesn't sound very compassionate toward marriage—or toward family members. This is, however, a two-way street: many young adults consider it immature or humiliating to rely on others for financial or even social support. They would rather deal with sexual guilt—if they sense any at all—than consider marrying before they think they are ready. This cultural predilection toward punishing rather than blessing marriage must go, and congregations and churchgoers can help by dropping their own punitive positions toward family members, as well as by identifying deserving young couples who could use a little extra help once in a while. Christians are great about supporting their missionaries, but in this matter, we can be missionaries to the marriages in our midst.

In the newer, secular NYT article, the stark financial reality of my generation is more detailed: twice as many of all twenty-somethings (totaling two-thirds) have received financial aid or literal task assistance from their parents in a given month. Richer parents give their children more money, but poor parents give their kids money too; whether rich or poor, the total is equivalent to roughly 10% of the parents' income during the beginning of twenty-somethings. Countless news articles attest to the astounding unemployment/underemployment rate of this age segment, and it seems to be a growing certainty that, for whatever reason, the average twenty-something can't quite manage to support themselves financially.

Enter the question of marriage into this scenario. Your peers are busy doing internships, "finding" themselves, or trying and failing to find a bread-winning job in a struggling economy. Two-thirds of them cohabit but don't actually marry; very, very few have children. (And if we exclude the lowest social classes, the number of us with children will drop even more.) Yet we read articles and books that sound like they're based on very biblical teachings, telling us that with marriage should come children, that women are to be keepers at home—and even in more secular churches, there is still often the idea that we should keep our children away from the (free) public schools, or that daycare is evil... in other words, the Christian idea of marriage is even more expensive than the secular idea of marriage, so should it really be a surprise that Christian young people are joining the world in delaying marriage? Marriage is expensive. And we live in a very non-community-centered culture where young people usually are financially expected to be very much on their own—if they're married.

I understand where the idea comes from; it's the whole "leave father and mother and cleave to spouse" thing; married people are supposed to be a good deal independent of their parents.

At the same time, though, I've seen so many young couples genuinely struggle to make ends meet (if they even get married in the first place), and so often their biggest problems are ones that would be reasonably trivial to fix. It's a gap between the maturity, resources, and wisdom that they possess, and the maturity, resources, and wisdom that they need to make their home look like the ones we read about in Christian marriage/family how-to books. How many couples could figure out how to let the wife stay at home with their children if they only had someone giving them accurate piercing financial advice, or even a garage or basement or guest room to stay in for a few months so they can pay down their school debt and start putting what income they do have towards actual maintenance of their family? How many young couples without any credit on the books could buy a house if another family (their parents, mayhaps) who knew them to be responsible, genuine, hardworking people would give them a loan towards a down payment, or a second mortgage so they wouldn't have to throw away money on PMI every month? How many hard-working husbands could learn and do excellent work in a new field—if a Christian small bushiness owner would trouble to give them the job in the first place, or if their parents' network of friends could find a job within their ranks and connections?

It all sounds very obvious. This is a tremendous and important ministry opportunity. In all seriousness, however, I don't see it happening very much. I see a lot of young couples who just struggle. Too many send their children to daycare because the paltry couple hundred dollars that's left over from her income after paying for the daycare is still a couple hundred dollars that they can't make up any other way. And I can't begin to tell you how many people tell me they "can't afford" to have children, even though they're working their tails off. School debt is a real killer, but there's also plenty of instances where the couple just needs some really sound (and occasionally brutal) advice. But it doesn't seem like anybody's handing advice out to young couples these days.

I'm very passionate about people getting married. I think it's silly and perverse that churches promote "purity pledges" and "True Love Waits" faux-wedding rings instead of urging marriage. At the same time, though, I understand why so many of my generation are holding off: society as a whole seems dead set against helping us figure out how to make marriage financially feasible—especially if we care to follow the biblical command to have children along with that marriage—and too many other Christians, even parents, don't seem to regard it as a very high priority, either.

Things I’ve learned about housework.

2010-08-27T19:57:00.001-04:00

So, our house has been reasonably clean for... three weeks now, I think? It's a little surreal, frankly; it's almost like something finally went "click" in my head and housework started to make more sense. At any rate, there are some major things that have become very clear to me—at least in our house, with our tiny kids, and our relative amount of space.

Don't HAVE clutter.

This has been a growing conviction over the past two years or so: I can't tell you how much stuff I throw away simply because it isn’t worth the effort to find a place for it. The only way to keep everything straight is for everything to have a good, convenient, permanent home, and unless one's house is infinitely full of perfectly-sized cubbies and closets, that really limits the amount of stuff you can have. So I've learned to throw it away. If it's something I never use and would be easy/cheap to replace if I ever did need it, it's an easy toss. If it's something I rarely use and can use something else instead (small appliances often fall in this category), it's a pretty easy toss, too. If it's something unusable, it usually gets tossed too. In short, I'm learning to only accumulate things that fit ALL these criteria: it's something 1) we need; 2) as close to an ideal solution for that need as possible; 3) I have a plan for where to put it in our house. Also: before finding a place for something / organizing a group of somethings, I ask myself if it would really go better in the trash can.

The clutter we do keep needs a perfect home.

Lots of people say "everything needs a home," and that's very true. But what's been harder for me to learn is that everything needs a perfect home. If something is too hard to get to—too far away from where it's used, behind too many other things, under other things—then it won't stay where it belongs. I can make my purse's "home" the coat closet until the cows come home, and it's still going to end up in a pile in our living room. (One "hack" for this is to make the item's home fun and gimmicky... when I switched my purse for a tiny keychain wallet and got a pretty little set of hooks to install in our basement stairwell, suddenly my purse leapt from the living room and now stays cozied in the basement stairwell, even though that's further away than the coat closet was. There's just something vaguely satisfying about hanging keychains on little hooks, and so I do it, even though it's more work.) But generally: it's well worth the trouble to find everything a home that is convenient, accessible, and otherwise... perfect.

Organization takes money. Or lots of space.

For ages, we'd go for different organization schemes based on what we found at a local store and a strong look at the price tag. In the past few months, I've started buying organizational things (containers, etc.) that are exactly what we need, or as close to it as I can find. I discovered the Container Store, and went there armed with measurements. I expect to do something like that (or order online) in the future, too. It's better to have a box / divider / folder that does exactly what I need it to do and takes up exactly the amount of space I actually have, even if I end up paying four times what I'd pay for the cheapest little cheap container at Walmart. This is a little bit counter-intuitive, but it really has helped create order out of chaos better than mismatched piles of plastic boxes with lots of empty space in between. Also: if containers are too small, then they’ll either stay empty or take too much time filing items away in a microscopic fashion; if containers are too big, then they become miniature organizational disasters all by themselves.

Clutter is magnetic.

This one's simple: if there's a pile of stuff on the dining room table, it's no big to add another little thing on rather than traipse it up the stairs. If the table's clear, I'll make the extra effort to keep it that way. Moral of the story: to keep a clean house, create lots of completely clean/clear spaces, and defend them vigilantly. Don't tarry, or it will stack up and beat you!

Know which areas of the house turn into cleaning monsters, and which ones simply stagnate.

This is essential for sanity. In our house, the kitchen is the worst cleaning monster—if I leave it alone too long, it can be a gigantic, time-consuming pile of work to get back in order. Conversely, I could "sic" the kids on the nursery for hours and still clean everything back up in ten minutes. Two implications: 1) if I only have time/energy to clean one room, it had better be the kitchen; 2) if I have a choice about which room gets messy, it's going to be the nursery. Also, there are some “small” chores that are easy to just plain ignore—dusting baseboards, cleaning shower door tracks, scrubbing down cabinet faces—but if they don’t ever get done, they’re very complicated or even outright impossible to restore to their prior glory. Another lesson learned the hard way!

The whole "keep your sink shiny" thing is true.

This is a trick from FlyLady: if your sink is shiny and empty (a relatively easy task), the rest of the kitchen will follow. It's totally psychological: there's such a feeling of accomplishment that comes from looking at the dish-free, shiny, pretty sink, it makes you want to go out and make other things clutterless, shiny, and pretty. So I've been working hard to keep our sink shiny and clean pretty much all day long, and I try to identify other "sinks" in the house that are similarly motivating. Another important sidenote of this is the "pretty" aspect... I've found that if I put some effort into making the things in our house a little bit pretty, and not just functional and neat, it really inspires me to keep them clean as well. So far, this is just the bathrooms and a vague attempt to make the soap dispensers, toothbrush holders, and towels all match the paint/walls in the bathroom.

It's an unending battle.

And here we come to the point I haven't really learned how to deal with yet: if you're going to keep your house super-clean, then pretty much every hour of the day is going to find you picking up something. Whether it's going through the new stack of mail, washing up the dinner dishes, or vacuuming for the tenth time that day, it keeps you on your toes. Even though I know I don't spend as much time cleaning now that it's mostly maintenance, and even though it's much less stressful than trying to attack a really messy house, this whole never-a-moment-to-rest thing is definitely an adjustment. Sometimes I feel like cleaning is all I do! It's much better all-around, and I do feel better about it all, but every once in a while I find myself wishing that there was no one in the house making messes, so that I could just STOP with the maintenance for an hour or two! Again, though, I know there's no competition between the before and after versions of housekeeping for which one actually takes more cumulative time... I have a lot more time now to devote to other things. I just sometimes miss the feeling of letting things go and not doing housework outside of my temporal housework zones.

Pre-K2 printables

2010-08-25T19:28:00.001-04:00

I just realized that I haven't explained my new schedule on the blog, so here 'tis: since things seemed to be veering into triteness, so I decided to post Monday-Wednesday-Friday instead, which will give me a small break on the weekends, and at least two days to muse over each post instead of necessarily writing it start-to-finish all in one day. Hopefully this leads to improvements. (Not being pregnant also usually leads to improvement, but I can't do much about that one!)

School is... continuing. E has some difficulty figuring out how to tell letters apart, which is more frustrating to me than I would like. I'm trying to teach her what kinds of things to look for to distinguish between them--and oddly, once she knows a letter, she knows it well--but telling things apart and seeing similarities and differences is a skill, I suppose, and I didn't realize it. I guess I thought it was like seeing: you just do it!

We read my favoritest of all favorite childhood books yesterday: The Spider and the Fly, which is a lavishly illustrated version of this poem (the right one). Part of the way through, E started acting quite scared of the spider and was even saying things like "don't eat fly! don't eat fly!" I was afraid that she might be thus traumatized by the ending--the spider does indeed eat the fly--but she didn't seem to mind. I think the fly ghost might have confused her a little bit, since she probably doesn't know what the giant stark tombstone the fly ghosts are huddled around even is! Anyway, it's a great, great story, and I can't wait until the kids are old enough to really thoroughly understand it.

I’m making a new section on the blog (at the top): printables. I haven’t had as much time to put into these as I’d like—mainly because I’m generally putting them together hurriedly at night after E goes to bed to use them the next day—but I’m hoping as the school year wears on, they’ll get more focused and diverse. In the meantime, here are two new alphabet sets to trace. The idea isn’t to learn how to print, but rather to encourage deeper studying of the actual letter formations themselves to enhance recognition. (I.e., it’s more of a print-based font than a handwriting font.)

I turned E loose on them today (just the letters she already knows somewhat) with a bright marker and she had a blast! And it seemed to help her learn to recognize the letters better. The important thing is that two-year olds are GREAT at destroying things like formal workbooks, so I’m finding printables indispensible. Each one covers the whole alphabet, and then we can toss ‘em when we’re done.

To-dos; homeschool day 1

2010-08-23T19:15:00.001-04:00

So, here is the revised version of The To-Do List:

The other one was technically working fine, but as it grew easier to stay in routine (both from building habits and from decreased mess to work with), I decided that it would be wise to try to work in all the little recurring tasks that still need done every once in a while, but which would be overwhelming to try to check every day. So now the list has two parts: a daily routine, which is repeated all the days of the week and is the main thing that keeps our house in order, a weekly routine, which is more the tasks that only need to be considered once a week and are tackled Monday-Thursday, and a monthly routine, one part of which is tackled every Friday.

I'm hoping that the extra routines gradually eliminate any of the mess areas in the house that had heretofore been mostly ignored—like dusting the baseboards. I also formally added mopping to the routine, which wasn't exactly neglected before, but does require a lot of planning (because it works vastly better without children scampering about). I still use the principles of different types of cleaning, but I didn't delineate them in the list because I've found myself doing a lot more cleaning-when-the-mess-is-made (which are very short but frequent and unplannable) and a lot less cleaning bigger messes all at once (there aren't any to clean).

Pre-K2

Here's a little printable: flash cards for the alphabet, with lowercase and uppercase letters separate, and no "hint" pictures. So simple, I know, but I haven't actually found any in store-bought packs without pictures, which is dumb, imho, because my two-year-old gets totally distracted by... distractions.

We officially started Pre-K2 today. I wasn’t feeling well, and neither was E, so it was definitely a light day. We started with some letter flashcards (this was before I made these) and learned our uppercase and lowercase A, then read some books and found the A’s in them.

Our formal reading book of the day was The Little Engine that Could, which is probably my favorite children’s book now that I also had in my own childhood. I’ve seen it redone a number of times, but I like the original one best. It’s kind of a two-pronged message, both a Good Samaritan tale and an exhortation to do your best. Anyway, I really like it, and since we have it, it was an easy addition to our Pre-K2 reading list. E seemed to like it as well; there were a lot of characters (Humpty Dumpty, dolls, oranges) that she recognized, and she loves trains, so even though it was a pretty long book, she stayed focused the whole time.

We played lots of “find the letter” games throughout the day, mostly initiated by E. Somehow she already knows quite a few letters—I’m not sure how! Once we get more into the swing of things, I want to get her to work on drawing the letters as well… her hand coordination is sadly lacking (compared to an adult’s, anyway!), but I think that it will help her learn the shapes of the letters better, if nothing else.

I’m also going to start doing sight words with her, but I thought it would be good for her to know a few letters first, so she has something to latch onto in the words to learn to distinguish them. We hadn’t had much luck with sight words so far.

Pre-K 2

2010-08-19T20:00:00.001-04:00

(Yet another short post at the end of a long, yet fun, day that sucks the brains right out of you.)

One thing I’ve been thinking about pretty seriously is trying to put together a somewhat formalized “curriculum” to use with E this year. I think it will really help me to have the structure and goals actually sketched out, and it will definitely help next year when it’s R I’m trying to do at this level and E has moved along to more normal school. (I.e., Pre-K 3 curricula actually exist, meaning you don’t have to come up with your own ideas, and it’s a more important to actually hit on all the usual subjects, but I’ve never seen a Pre-K 2 curriculum, and there doesn’t seem to be a common set of expectations to meet or fail.)

The main thing is that this is making me wish (just a teeny bit) that I’d been an early-childhood ed major. Or at least an elementary ed major. My adolescent psych classes aren’t doing me any good with a toddler! I’m halfway thinking about finding a good early childhood education book to read, and halfway thinking that common sense and knowledge of my own child will go the distance.

The main thing I want to accomplish is being purposeful. Instead of picking random books off the shelf to read during “school time,” I want to spend a little bit of time thinking about it (and possibly even doing a little bit of research ) and choose books that are in line with certain goals and provide a deliberate variety. And I want to make sure that I’m not concentrating overmuch on “English” to the neglect of math, logic, or even science. (I’m sure I’ll neglect science, because it is my least favorite of all the subjects, except for physics, which is really math and therefore doesn’t count!)

Using Evernote for Homemaking

2010-08-18T21:00:00.001-04:00

Evernote is, I admit, relatively new to me. I’d read about it quite a bit, but didn’t quite realize that it was free or so completely cloud-based (i.e., everything syncs to online).

Using multiple computers scattered around the house is definitely an essential part of the way I do home organization. Part of this is because our house is two-storey, and part of it is because I don’t have a good laptop to drag around (and my arms are usually full anyway). I find it indispensible to have a computer in the kitchen, and so there lives a very old rickety crash-prone laptop that literally dies if you move it too much. That’s the main one I use, and that’s enough about my computer habits for this post! On to Evernote.

Because of the fact that I use a number of different computers, it’s more or less useless to me to use local file storage—everything I can possibly throw in the cloud, I do, with the added benefit of then being able to access my whole life in digital from other peoples’ houses and public spaces. (And if I could justify a smartphone, grocery stores would be a very important addition to that list.) Evernote, although new to me, is very clearly the cloud-based brain that I’ve been looking for. It lets me do everything I’ve already been doing, but in a newly unified, extremely-rapid way.

I’m convinced that the key to loving Evernote is to devote some serious time to thinking about specific ways it can work for you, and reading articles and blog posts discussing such specific ways. Evernote is extremely blank when you first begin, and the hardest part is definitely figuring out frameworks to create and use—how to meld it to your own brain, in other words. So, without further ado, here are some “frameworks” that have already been saving me immense amounts of time while helping me get even more things done and organized, in the realm of homemaking.

Recipes

I’ve talked before about how I create my meal plan, and Evernote really enhances the results and speed of that process. I use the web-clipping tool to clip the entire recipe, photo, and prep instructions, put it in a notebook called “recipes,” and tag it with a few of the significant ingredients (in our house, usually that means the meat). If the recipe is bad and we won’t try it again, I delete it. If I want to add my own notes to the page, or literally rewrite part of the recipe, I can do that to my clipped version—which of course I couldn’t do to the original website.

I am thus creating a sort of digital cookbook, personalized for our family. The important thing to remember here is that recalling something from Evernote is much faster than pulling up a webpage would be, yet adding a webpage to Evernote takes only seconds. It also eliminates distractions from the page, is easy to email to someone else (or myself), and easy to print; again, all my personalized version of the recipe instead of having to work with the default.

The biggest downside to this is that automatic shopping list generation (as per the sites I mentioned earlier) no longer exists. But this isn’t all a bad thing…

Shopping Lists

It has been a source of endless difficulty for us that there are maybe five stores that we shop at semi-regularly and need specific lists for (ShopRite, BJs, Walmart, Target, Trader Joe’s), yet refrigerator lists don’t work very well for us and five is an unmanageable number of literal paper lists at any rate—especially because some items are truly store-specific (can only be bought at that store) and many items are generic (just most likely to be bought at that store) and so we end up with items crossed-off, duplicated, forgotten… it turns into a mess.

There are two different ways I can think of to manage lists online: to make a separate, simple list for every store (in Evernote, a separate “note” for each list), and use some common sense and multi-tasking abilities to think of picking up one’s ShopRite list while at Target; or to have a separate item (a separate “note”) for every single item and tag it with all the store names where it is sold, so that calling up all items listed with “BJs” would yield a complete, current BJs list. The latter option is infinitely more organized, but it’s also a pretty big trade-off in terms of work… I prefer five lists and managing cross-overs in my head instead of on the computer. Either way, a digital list is much neater, and can be added/removed from wherever you are, or wherever one’s husband is! And even with the auto-generated lists, I still ended up usually manually reordering it, because going to the store with two tiny children is far, far easier if the items are on your list in exactly the order they are in the store.

Bills

This one is really a no-brainer: I have an Evernote notebook and I put all our outstanding bills in it. If we had more bills, it would be helpful to tag them by month due, but we don’t have enough (that aren’t on auto-pay, that is!) to make even that tiny effort justifiable. I’ve set up most of our bills to have email notifications (Mint can often do this even if your bill company doesn’t) and I’ve set up my email client to automatically file the bills into Evernote. So the bills don’t clutter up my emailbox or my calendar, and I can just flip into Evernote and remember at a glance which bills I still need to take care of. The very, very few bills that don’t have e-notifications can be easily scanned, as can other mail that you “need to keep” but don’t really want to find a physical home for. Remember, too, that Evernote finds the text in images and makes it searchable.

On a sidenote, here’s the search string, found here, that you need to add to Google Chrome or Firefox to make it easy to search your Evernotes:

https://www.evernote.com/Home.action#v=t&b=0&z=d&x=%s

Research

This is one area where Evernote really shines. Know you’re going to need to buy a crib soon? Want to comparison shop? Just do your regular browsing on the web, and if you think something is worth coming back to look at again, “clip” the relevant info (pic, price, dimensions, features) to Evernote, add a note of your own if you want, and either tag it with “crib” or put it in a “crib” notebook—depending on the size of your research. At the end of the day, instead of a hard-to-sort-through list of links with meaningless titles and no other useful information (not to mention you’re dependent on the various server speeds and page-renderings to even get back to the information you already saw), you’ll have a neat little collection, almost like 3x5 cards, all assembled in one neat little place and ready to flip though at a moment’s notice. Need to send one to husband to review? Click, done. Send him the whole set? Click, done. It’s not just faster, it actually makes it easier to get an overall picture and make clearer decisions.

Information Collecting

I’m all the time running across information on homeschooling that I think would be really useful… later. And sometimes I can’t find it later (lost in the sea of bookmarks), or I can find it but it’s gone, taken off the web. Evernote is a way of taking those miscellaneous little tidbits of information and articles and bringing them all together in a coherent, organized, searchable, and tagged way: a way of creating your own sort of sub-internet. As with recipes, it also lets you get rid of all the extraneous distracting information that you don’t need, so when you go back to read that brilliant article from six months ago, that’s exactly what you find—and all you find.

Our munchkins are obviously not old enough to be using the ‘net yet, but I foresee some real uses of Evernote in terms of assembling digital items for their review, as well. If I find some great diagrams, essays, and a fiction story on ancient Egypt that I want them to read while we’re studying Pharaohs, I can clip them all into Evernote and send them the collection—void of distracting links to follow, questionable advertisements, site downtimes—instead of giving them a list of links to check out on their own.

It’s important to note, too, that with a premium account, Evernote lets you put all kinds of files into it, which really lets mixed-media collecting take off.

Home Improvement Ideas / Inspiration

I honestly don’t spend much time reading home decorating magazines (or doing home decorating, for that matter—I think we have literally two pictures hung in our entire house after four years of living here), but occasionally I’ll run across a picture or an idea or a product that really strikes a chord with me, and if I don’t do something about it right then, then of course it continues on its merry way of falling back out of my brain again. Evernote lets me grab on to those rare (for me) moments and file them away until I do have the time or resources to deal with it more thoroughly. Right now I’m just throwing them all in a great big “household” notebook and trying to tag them relevantly—if I had more inspiration moments, I’d probably need to come up with a more detailed organizational scheme.

I’m sure there are many more ways to use Evernote with homemaking, and I hope to discover them as I use it more and more. It definitely “works for me”!

Things I am thankful for: cleaning supplies

2010-08-17T19:34:00.001-04:00

This would be better titled, “Things I can’t live without,” except, well, in God’s sovereignty we can pretty much live without… anything!

Kitchen

I love those little Dobie scrubbies. Seriously, I just ordered a case of ‘em off Amazon. The secret? Stop thinking of them as dishrags. They work amazingly, fantastically, and cleaning-fluid-free-ly on countertops. And walls. And refrigerators. And cabinets. And… just about every other surface you can think of. At less than a dollar a pop, they’re easy to throw in the trash when they get grody, too… although I rather think they’d more-than-survive a trip through the washer. Like sandpaper, except scratch-proof.

Steel wool soap pads are another thing I use “off-label”—they’re literally the best thing I’ve ever found for washing our steel sink. They take a fairly heavy-duty chore and make it practically effortless. That’s about the only thing I use them for, since our pots are all anodized, but they’re one of my favorite household cleaners just because of how well they clean our sink.

No-Scratch Scotch Brite pads are excellent for cleaning dishes—and everything else in the kitchen! They’re a little more heavy-duty than the Dobie pads, kind of a nice half-way point between the Dobie and the steel wool, but they don’t really seem reusable to me—they kind of collect nastiness and then I throw them away. So I don’t use them as much, but when I need the extra heft, I’m always glad to have them in the cupboard.

Vinegar is a great all-purpose cleaning fluid when there are toddlers around. It’s edible. I keep some in a little spray bottle and use it 90% of the time instead of more caustic chemicals, which I only dig out when the vinegar isn’t cutting it.

Bleach has occasionally amazed me at its abilities to clean… dishes! Dishes aren’t terribly prone to staining, but if they are stained, bleach seems to beat most of the stains right out, often without any scrubbing. Bonus points for that lovely bleachy aroma, and germ-killing abilities.

Laundry

I hung my first indoor laundry line this past week, and I can’t believe I never did it before. I probably wouldn’t do this if I didn’t have a somewhat reclusive space that the laundry calls home—laundry lines going through the kitchen might not be the most attractive thing—but since I do, it was a no-brainer. I just bought some cheap clothesline and some of those sticky-but-easily-removed wall hooks (brought to you by the same geniuses who invented Dobie pads and Scotch Brite) and strung it all up. I ended up running it through two of the wire shelf units I have in my laundry room, plus one hook, to make a giant triangle. My diapers dry within a couple of hours, even indoors with no breeze or sunlight, and they’re so easy to string (no wind…. no clothespins). I hadn’t realized how much easier a line would be than a drying rack, which I’ve used a-plenty over the years, but with a rack there’s quite a bit of “arranging” involved to get everything to fit without overhanging, and things take longer to dry. (Also, laundry racks are within reach of kiddos, unless you have the wall-mounted kind.)

Floors

I cannot say enough about the value of a good cordless stick-vacuum. (The problem is finding a good vacuum that is also both cordless and stick, but more on that in a minute.) I love my canister vacuum, but cords and babies in the same room is a disaster. And frankly, digging out a full-size vacuum three times a day (about how often I have to vacuum in our house) is a disaster too. The Swiffer SweeperVac is what first put me onto the idea, and I used it happily for many months before trying to upgrade to a “real” vacuum. (The Swiffer won’t work on carpet, obviously, and occasionally created muddiness when colliding with spilt milk/juice/water that I didn’t see.) After reading many reviews and trying one model that didn’t work out very well, I ended up with a Hoover LINX, which has a very depressing price tag, but I bought mine at Costco (they no longer carry it, as far as I know) with Costco’s forever guarantee, so I figured it was a win-win scenario. I’ve had it for perhaps six months or so, and I’m really pleased with it. I don’t think a stick vac can ever work as well as a canister vac—mainly because it can’t get into the nooks and crannies quite as well—and I’m not sure a battery-powered device can work as well as a corded one, but… the LINX is really quite an amazing achiever on both counts. It picks up cereal with ease, unlike a lot of stick vacs, and the battery lasts well and stays strong until it dies abruptly (it does have an indicator, so it’s not an unexpected death, just a sudden one). It has a carpet-beater, which does work well on carpets, but I also use it on the hard floor because it seems to help push debris up and into the vacuum more quickly. I do think the SweeperVac was a good deal for the money, but it didn’t really do the job once we had toddlers making sticky messes everywhere. The LINX does.

Dish soap is a marvelous floor cleaner. And since I use it to wash things we later eat off of (dishes), I feel pretty good about using it around the kiddos, too. I put it in my mop vac instead of the manufacturer-provided cleaning fluid, which costs megabucks.

Bathroom

Clorox Toilet Bowl Cleaner w/Bleach tablets are really neat. You have to have a clean toilet to begin with, and they’re definitely not cheap (I buy them at BJs, can’t find them on Amazon), but they really put an end to toilet cleaning. Drop in the tab, and presto, squeaky clean for months until the tablet disappears. This is the only kind I’ve tried, and I think I might do more research and see if there’s a more cost-effective solution, but I’ve been very happy with these specifically. I like that they’re clear, not blue.

I’m still mystified by how to clean acrylic showers. I can’t find something that’s safe to use on them that also works. Any thoughts? Soft Scrub works great, but apparently causes microscopic little scratches.

When Mommy’s sick.

2010-08-16T19:27:00.001-04:00

So, our nice little routine hit a big hurdle this weekend: I got really sick. Some kind of weird, short-lived, severe stomach bug, but suffice it to say, I wasn’t getting anything done at all. I ventured out of bed just once to try to make myself a cup of tea and promptly threw up before I made it back upstairs. I started feeling somewhat ill on Saturday afternoon—enough so that I actually didn’t clean up from dinner, for once (at that point I thought “oh, I’ll get it tomorrow when I feel better”) and then I stayed really sick all the way through until after I went to sleep on Sunday night. This morning I woke up and quickly discovered that I wasn’t quite better still, and called my mom in somewhat of a panic because I was definitely headed toward another day of throwing up and/or passing out.

She came, of course, and I very quickly went back to bed, and after that, I did wake up somewhat recovered. I can tell my body is still much the worse for the wear, especially my stomach muscles, but I can at least take care of myself and the girls. Still didn’t feel up to cooking (or eating) dinner tonight, but that’s not terribly unusual just from being pregnant!

Anyway, though, the thing that was really bothersome was that my nice little housekeeping routine DIED. I can’t emphasize enough how much it died. It started its demise on Saturday with the aforementioned dinner mess going uncleaned, but then yesterday while I was ensconced in my room, it fell all to pieces. I woke up this morning to disaster, without having remotely the energy or wellness to fix it.

So, of course, the question is—how on earth does one plan for sickness? I was very thankful that things were organized enough that I could direct Seth where to find their clothes without getting out of bed myself, and that things were neat enough to begin with that the mess wasn’t truly insurmountable this morning (if I had felt like my normal self, it would have just been a more-difficult-than-usual day, but nothing untamable). But still, I didn’t feel well enough to even load the dishwasher (and I made myself sick trying to load the washer), and looking around the house was soooo discouraging and made me wonder what we could have done to prevent it. It wasn’t Seth’s fault—he’d been up all night with me needing help, then up with the girls from 5:30 onward, up through their nap (which I usually sleep though), and then not home until late (they all went to my parents’ so I could rest). And when he was home, he spent a lot of time playing fetch for me!

Very thankfully, my mom could come over and she actually pretty much cleaned everything back up this morning! While watching the girls, to boot. It was a definite “fix” to my problem! Probably the most logical fix—if she couldn’t have come, and if I’d been well enough to be on my own (I really wasn’t; I think I would have had to call Seth back home or something), then I think what we could perhaps have done is make a concerted effort after Seth did get home where one of us watched the kids and the other one tried to straighten the house back up…. the important part being creating a purposeful, highly-focused, highly-energized time to try to whip things back in line.

But looking back, I think it would have been better if we could have had a plan for the house to get less messed up to begin with. For one, although I had no idea how sick I was going to be on Sunday, if I hadn’t put off cleaning up the dinner dishes on Saturday, we would have been in much better shape, because dishes and pots and pans snowball. (Clutter begets clutter.) So onward, if I’m well enough to possibly complete a task, I hope I learned my lesson and will actually do it. You never know when the next day is going to be ten times worse! I legitimately didn’t feel like it, but afterwards I really regretted leaving it undone. If I felt that crappy, I could have asked Seth to do it then, before it got all piled up. Secondly, I could have given Seth lots of suggestions for how to prevent clutter in the first place. I really didn’t care, on Sunday; I was too sick to care! But there are so many ways that I know, because I’m here and deal with the two munchkins all day, to keep the clutter down. There are rooms that they can play in for a really long time without ever making an unmanageable mess, even if totally unsupervised, and then there are toys that turn any room into a disaster area within moments of being gotten out. I could have said a really simple sentence, like “to try and not have a big mess for us to clean up when we actually feel capable of cleaning, why don’t you keep them in the nursery all morning and play with the Fisher-Price toys?” That’s like five or six sets of toys that they could get out all at once and still be able to clean up in less than ten minutes. Our biggest problem might simply have been that I wasn’t thinking about the mess that was happening, or the difficulty I’d have in reining it all back in. And there were some points even on Sunday when I could have handled the kids for the five minutes or so it would have taken Seth to keep the kitchen manageable. It’s all about small chunks, especially when you’re sick.

All-in-all, it has been an interesting and insightful experience. It was definitely less disastrous than it could have been, because the house wasn’t particularly out of order before the weekend happened. I did need to do laundry, especially diaper laundry, today, but there wasn’t much and it definitely wasn’t a build-up. If I’d been sick another day or even two, it still would have been okay. So, in short, it was nice to see some of the real effects of the routine-keeping. On the other hand, it also really pointed out a need for focus, even in sickness, because I hate that things still got so disorderly after only two days, especially since our weekends had been going “cleaner” in general.

Live and learn! :)

Sisters & Socialization

2010-08-14T20:54:00.001-04:00

I know I’ve mentioned this before, but… I really love watching our girls together. Today they fell asleep at naptime with their arms literally wrapped around each other, and I just kept thinking about how if anyone else was “in” their personal space that way, they’d never be able to go to sleep. And how amazing it is that a ten-month-old can cuddle with a two-year-old and actually find it calming rather than distracting (E is apparently even more calming than Mommy), and that a two-year-old can contain herself to gentle pats and head rubs and no sudden movements that jolt her sister back awake. Sometimes they end up such a tangle of limbs (and so similarly-sized, at that!) that you can hardly tell where one begins and the other one ends.

We were at the mall yesterday, and E was getting tired, so I helped her into the umbrella stroller behind R. They’re getting a little bit too big to ride side-by-side anymore, but with the back tilted, I think they’ll fit this way until they’re really both too big for a stroller anyway. I wasn’t sure how it would work, but they both thought it was just the neatest thing ever, and cooed and talked and giggled at each other until we were back at the car. R kept leaning back and turning half-around against E in very cuddly fashion, which E of course thought was very sweet.

Yesterday morning, they were both walking around the house with toy phones, chattering away.

It is so incredibly neat to me that even though they’re seventeen months apart, they still manage to really connect and actually play together. They have quite a few “games”—maybe five—that they like to play, but they also play with toys together and E really tries to teach R how to do things, and R clearly tries to imitate her. E will put a baby down in a cradle; R will come along behind her and dump more babies in. They’re definitely on different levels, but they find so many common points to share.

I really didn’t expect this to happen until they were at least two and three, maybe even older.

Beginning Homeschooling?

2010-08-13T15:51:00.005-04:00

So I know learning is a life-long process, and good mommies teach their children 24/7, right? But I had been kind of tentatively planning to do “formal school” when E is three, which is still a day very, very far away.

I’ve been rethinking, partly because I’ve been reading a great deal about homeschooling in a large family (i.e. teaching in a one-room schoolhouse!) and have coincidentally stumbled onto various suggestions for “what do I do with my toddler while the big kids are schooling?” And also because I am precisely NOT the sort of person who gets specific things done unless I actually plan to accomplish specific things: I need to be reminded.

I think it would be good, for me, for E, for our little family unit, to begin some sort of formal school now. I’m thinking I’ll try to fit it in before our naptime—I’ve been finishing the day’s chores early lately, and also been more fatigued and wanting to sit down, so it will be a good, calm time for us—and drag the kids up to the nursery, which has lots of books and not too many other distractions, and… probably mostly read books, since E isn’t even two-and-a-half yet. But I’ll try to get her to sit still and listen and look along, and begin to gently teach R to sit still. I want both of them to become accustomed to the idea of a structured, disciplined time where they do activities Mommy chooses instead of whatever their little hearts please. Once we get the hang of it, these are the activities I have planned:

books—read-aloud picture books, but also working in some longer/fewer-picture “listen” books
alphabet books—a little Baby Einstein set of 26 books, one per letter; I’m going to try to do one of these every day
word flashcards, homemade (for variety and personalization, but also because I can’t find any in stores without pictures!)
premade flashcards: Same/Different; Shapes & Colors; Alphabet; Numbers
a Pre-K3 Reading workbook
a Pre-K3 Math workbook
focused drawing
counting—I have little rubber blocks, but I’m also thinking other things would work quite well
some activities from The Toddlers Busy Book, which is the best toddler-oriented game/learning book I've come upon yet

I am presently thinking to do one reading book, one alphabet book, and one of the other activities every day. It’s kind of hard to think of activities that a toddler can do that are more “learning” than “play.” I’m not sure how long it will take her to learn the alphabet—she already knows quite a few by sight, and can say most of them in a row—but once she gets that, we’ll move on to phonics. I’ve noticed that a lot of “Pre-K” books require more hand coordination (drawing, tracing, circling, coloring) than E has yet, so once she grows in that area, that will be an easy route to continue down as well, because already she could grasp many of the activities, if she had the manual dexterity. I’m hoping the Pre-K3 workbooks help her move in that direction!

Early Marriage and Maturity

2010-08-12T19:49:00.003-04:00

Something that has been much on my mind lately—and much on the blogosphere for the past year or so—is early marriage.

Seth and I got married when I was twenty. Most of the rest of the kids I went to church with that were my age got married years after I did. At the time I thought it was more or less luck (aka the sovereignty of God) that I met someone that early, but lately I’m wondering if our wedding came so early because that was really what I was looking for. I wasn’t interested in dating, I was interested in getting married!

And never for a moment have either of us regretted getting married when we did. In fact, I’ve often been very thankful indeed for the various life circumstances that transpired so that we could get married without forfeiting anything we, or my parents, thought was important. We would like to be able to present our children “ready for marriage” at a similar age.

It isn’t really socially acceptable, however. I’ve had plenty of people tell me I was too young, or bemoan all the lovely opportunities I’ll never have because of settling down so early. But by far one of the biggest objections I hear is: “well, that may have worked for you, but most twenty-year-olds don’t have any idea who they are yet or what they need in a spouse or will want in a marriage when they’re forty.” Usually followed by the person telling me that their child, for instance, of my age or even older, is certainly not ready to make such a big decision.

I’ve read a lot of really good responses to that concern, many of which center around the necessity of parental involvement, discernment, and community participation in the young person’s dating decisions. And while I don’t disagree with that, I think there’s a much more important point to be made: we don’t marry someone to satisfy ourselves, we marry someone to glorify God.

Our youth pastor when I was in high school used to say that he wanted to marry somebody who was so focused on serving God that their trajectories were so similar that they couldn’t help but being drawn together—because they were both being drawn toward Him. I don’t think that ideal is what’s on people’s (parents’!) minds when they think about their children being unable to figure out what makes a good mate when they’re twenty! Personalities change. Hobbies change. Passions change. But God doesn’t change. If He is our all, our only obsession, our only desire and our only focus, then in a very real sense, we will always have everything in common—because He is our everything.

Seth and I are very much an illustration of this, at least as much as that we are very different people from very different cultural backgrounds with very few interests in common, at least at the beginning. Over the years it’s been quite remarkable how much we’ve both adapted bits of pieces of the other into ourselves—and I don’t think either of us could deny that our differences have definitely made marriage harder at times—but we’ve also never regretted making a shared (and similar) passion for Christ our “only thing.”

In short, I’m very happy to have married someone who was obsessed about following the same One I follow, rather than someone who I knew, after living a few more years, would have “suited” my personality and interests and the “direction” I was going with my life. And while I can certainly agree that I am far from being the same person I was six years ago—enough different, in fact, that our marriage might indeed be rocky if those transient things were what it had been based on—I don’t think my powers of discernment as far as recognizing a brother in Christ have really increased that much. I’ve never been disappointed in what my twenty-year-old self made of Seth, and I don’t think many twenty-year-olds are too dumb to have discerned the same thing.

Twenty-year-olds might not know who exactly they are yet, but they can surely know who He is, what He says about marriage, and what He thinks makes a worthy spouse, and not hesitate to jump when they meet someone who fits the bill.

The final plunge (back) into cloth…

2010-08-11T19:55:00.002-04:00

I keep intending to write a serious entry, but then finding myself worn to the point of total exhaustion out by the end of the day when I finally sit down to write. And so I occupy myself with more triteness, because I‘m determined at this point to discipline myself into writing at least once a day, until it’s a kind of habit.

So, here’s the “big” news of today: I’ve just ordered the diapers I’ll need to cloth-diaper E and R at the same time. I’m hoping E will be potty-trained soon (c/d’ing should help that along too), but then L should use more diapers than E would ever go through, so it’s not like they’ll go to waste. At any rate, I’m committed to sticking with cloth for both girls now. (Previously I had ordered not-quite-enough diapers for R, which when I tried to use the stash for both R and E left me doing laundry much faster than I wanted.)

I wasn’t really planning to put E back in cloth. It’s not really cost-effective at this point (except that L will use the same diapers) because disposables don’t really cost much for a toddler. But when I started using them with R—and I just feel all the money it’s saving us stacking up and up—I realized that it really is quite a small pain to do one child in cloth and one in disposables. You have to have two diaper pails to empty, an issue of both space and time; two things of wipes/wipe solution, both in easy reach of the changing table; and the worst thing—a ten-month old in cloth diapers doesn’t go through them quite fast enough to create a full load before they get stinky/yucky enough to wash, which meant I was doing a half-load at a time, and still worrying about the time they were spending in the pail and whether the stains were permanently setting in.

I did settle on microfleece liners, in lieu of no liner or flushable liners. I was never very happy with the flushables—they’re so thin they really only keep the really solid solids away from the diaper, and don’t do much to help reduce potential staining, not to mention the fact they cost 1/3 or so what an entire disposable diaper would cost. And while no liner is fine for breastfed poop, I found it kind of gross and difficult to deal with on an older baby. At any rate, I bought some microfleece blankets and cut them up, which was both easier and cheaper than finding it at a fabric store or ordering it online.

I also ordered snaps on the latest pocket diapers. I love the hook-and-loop fasteners, but everyone from the manufacturer to friends to complete strangers are telling me that they won’t last more than a few months. I’m hopeful that my washing routine (I don’t dry them) will hold that off longer—the velcro on my old covers never showed any sign of wear—but there seems to be absolutely no doubt that the snaps will last longer.

I have still not found satisfactory wipes. I like terry, but I haven’t found the “perfect” source for those yet. I like my old wipes, but I can’t find them still for sale anywhere. This is a small wrinkle in the plan, however.

Much more significantly, I seem to have misplaced my “alternate” wetbag! I’m sure it’s down in the basement somewhere, but I think when I packed it away, I hadn’t really planned on ever getting it back out again. So, knowing me, I probably put it in an unlabeled opaque container tucked into a corner somewhere. I apparently put my wedding dress in one such, and it was MIA for six years before showing up a month or so ago!

One day I shall learn to be organized. Hopefully that day will come before heaven (not that I’d put off heaven to learn organization first)!

Pregnancy meanderings.

2010-08-10T18:49:00.001-04:00

As much as it amazes me how different our two children are, this pregnancy is really shocking me a lot more! The first two were night-and-day in the sense that with E, I had hyperemesis gravidarum and threw up all the way through to and in labor, whereas with R, I literally didn’t throw up a single time. But otherwise, the two pregnancies were pretty similar—similar aches and pains (and lack thereof), similar cravings (and lack thereof). I felt like I was on familiar terrain the second time around, and was just immensely thankful not to be puking. So I thought #3 would be similar.

And it really hasn’t been, at all. I’ve actually felt a lot better all around—I did have pretty bad morning sickness (although nothing approaching the way it was the first time), but, well, here’s a good illustration: with #1, I was absolutely miserable trying to sleep, until I finally got a pregnancy support pillow for Christmas at about five months. I still tossed and turned and was really sore, though. With #2, I still had the pregnancy pillow and unhesitatingly pulled it out of the basement at about two months! This time ‘round, however… I still haven’t gotten it out. I’m really amazed at how non-pregnancy-y I feel as far as being sore and uncomfortable. It’s really nice! I’ve really only been noticing the past few days that my back is starting to get a bit achey by the end of the day—another symptom that’s hit a lot earlier before. And the best thing of all… no restless leg syndrome so far this time! Sometimes I think that’s worse than morning sickness.

Really the only thing I’m struggling with this pregnancy is that my metabolism seems to be through the roof, and I’m having so much trouble with eating enough that it has, in some ways, been more serious / harder to deal with than the hyperemesis was. A lot pleasanter, for which I’m thankful, but also scarier because I have moments when I’m quite sure I’m going to pass out. (Although now that I think about it—I actually did pass out when I was pregnant with E, so maybe my memory is just flawed on that point, and it’s only scarier ‘cause I have two munchkins running around who would be very much unsupervised if I did pass out, haha.) I think I’m also dealing with some aftereffects from the diastasis incurred last time ‘round… which is really minor as a complaint (I just keep pulling my abdominal muscles, which rather hurts but not for long), but I think I need to mention it at my next appointment. I don’t think it had had time to heal between R’s birth and now, and I’m a little worried about the future implications of that. (Recommendation of pregnancy support belts welcome…)

One fantastically good thing: I don’t think I’ve been nearly as tired this time! And I think it’s easier, honestly, to take care of a two-year-old (E) and a five-thru-fifteen-month old (R) than it was to take care of a single seven-through-seventeen-month old (E, when pregnant with R). E’s very existence really helps with R, because she’s good at fetching and picking things up off the floor—not to mention entertaining her little sister! Toddlers are pretty nice things to have around if you’re pregnant, apparently!

Reflections on being a stay-at-home wife.

2010-08-09T18:28:00.002-04:00

Recently I read some discussions on the idea of being a stay-at-home wife—not a stay-at-home mom, but being just a married, childless woman who stays at home all day while her husband goes to work. It’s an idea that gets pretty highly criticized, often for good reasons.
It’s also something I was for the two years between our move northward (when S graduated and got a “real” job) and the birth of E.
I don’t regret that time. I think it’s good when women can throw themselves—their entire selves—into the work of their home and of supporting their husbands. This article describes it well. In my own case, I was recovering from cancer treatment and then dealing with a pretty throw-uppy pregnancy at the same time that I was a SAHW, but there are some things I still wish I’d had more determination and wisdom to accomplish. Reading the articles made me think about those things pretty consciously, especially since I’m trying so hard right now to get my house under better control!
1) Made my own cookbook binder.
More specifically, I wish I’d accumulated a good thirty or so recipes that we liked, that were kid-friendly, and that were easy to prepare with toddlers and their unpredictable schedules. Then I wish I’d arranged those recipes into “weeks” with matching grocery lists categorized by area of the store. I’ve been trying to do something like this ever since, but I don’t seem to have quite the coherence of thought to pull it off—at least not yet!
2) Created some income-generating WAHM-type ventures.
Specifically, some things that would require little or no continued intervention from me—something that a mother of very young children could continue to maintain without it infringing on her household duties. A blog, perhaps, as I’m trying to do now, or what I think would have been really ideal is if I’d written down some of the patterns for the various knitting projects I was inventing at the time, formalized, sized, and sold them. An ongoing source of revenue with a pretty big time commitment to initialize (time I genuinely don’t have now) but then little or no further attention needed. Or, more pleasantly, I could have polished up and prepared for publication some of my short stories or essays—not that they would have gotten published, but at least I could have tried!
3) Engrained some really good housekeeping habits.
This is one that really makes me kick myself, because I really should have had a handle on the housework before kids came along. No reason at all not to. I should have had routines, skills, and HABITS.
4) Made good, close friends with women with very young children.
We were planning on having kids as soon as we were “allowed” to, but for some reason I didn’t realize at all how hard it would be to make good friendships with a toddler around. I wish I’d planned ahead by trying to forge some friendships back then that would have carried over well to this stage of our life. I did try to get very involved with church and Bible studies and so on, until I got too sick to go out, but I didn’t aim my energy very well or pursue things nearly as hard as I could have.
5) Sorted through my old stuff and downsized.
We pretty much filled up the house with just the two of us and our stuff, but now we’re going on five with the same amount of space. Needless to say, there’s been a lot of downsizing and our priorities about what to keep and what to get rid of have changed drastically. (It used to be, “is it possible we’ll ever in a million years need this, want this, or know someone who does?” Now it’s more like, “do we really actually use this very much, like once a month, or is it really expensive to replace?”) So I’m not sure that if I’d gone through things back then that I would have had adequate perspective to achieve quite the state of stufflessness that I’m wishing for now—but if I could have, man do I wish I’d tackled some of the many boxes in the basement, and had the nerve to throw away some of my moldy old toys. I have the vague idea that now, since they’re tucked away nearly invisibly in the basement, we won’t tackle them for eons, if ever. And have you tried going through anything with toddlers around? Everything is an exciting new toy, and they pull everything back out of the trash.
If you were ever a SAHW, what do you wish you’d done better with your time? Or if you never had the opportunity, what would you have liked to have accomplished?

What we teach.

2010-08-08T16:37:00.002-04:00

And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise.
[Deuteronomy 6:6-7, ESV]

What’s really important? What do we really want our children to know, to understand?

I don’t think most of us would hesitate to spew out the correct answer—the things of God, the fear of God, the worship of God; to know God.

I’ve been extremely bothered lately by the realization, however, that when it comes to academics and education, most of us are right there with the rest of the world in holding forth the “Three R’s” as our goal. But the most valuable thing the world has to offer is infinitely less than the smallest morsel of the knowledge of God. It is better that they grasp an ounce—a very grain!—of His truth than that they be the most accomplished in all their field of academia.

I tweeted earlier that there’s something wrong with our priorities if our children can discuss Hamlet better than Zephaniah, if the words “to be or not to be” come more readily to their lips than “The Lord has taken away the judgments against you; he has cleared away your enemies. The King of Israel, the Lord, is in your midst; you shall never again fear evil” (Zeph. 3:15) or any of the rest of that amazing passage, or any passage at all that has fallen from the pen of the Almighty God.

Shakespeare was a linguistic genius in whom we can see how much greater must be the genius of the One who created him, and yes, there are moments of truth to be found in the bard’s many lines. And Shakespeare is just one poignant example. But do we really want to say that a good understanding of Shakespeare makes our children more “well-equipped” than the armor of God (Eph. 6:14-18) does?

I am struck by the detail and intensity of the passage in Deuteronomy. I realize that the context is different from ours (in the sense that it’s talking about the law, and talking to a theocratic nation), but here we have a tiny, graphic picture of how God thinks people should be teaching children about Him: first by ourselves loving God with all our heart, all our soul, all our might, by writing His words on our hearts… then by talking about His words when we sit, when we walk, when we lie down, when we rise; by carrying them with us always and holding them before us always.

That when-you-sit-walk-sleep-wake-up part really gets me. Be talking and thinking and meditating on God all the time! And in case we start to think that “all the time” just means some vague incomprehensible thing like we chalk up “pray without ceasing” to be—He spells it out. Talk about God with your kids when you sit down, when you walk, when you go to bed, when you rise in the morning.

I don’t think it’s wrong to teach Shakespeare and Hamlet. I pick on Hamlet, in fact, precisely because British literature was always “my” subject—I even did my undergraduate senior seminar on Shakespeare. But I’m really concerned with the division of time that we plan to use with our kids. I’m perplexed at the idea of spending hours a day in pursuit of things the world deems educationally important (reading, writing, arithmetic) and not spending those hours in equally formal, dedicated, focused pursuit of God and His words. I look at passages like the one in Deuteronomy and I fall so short. I am so completely saturated by worldly ideas about what things to teach our children, even toddlers. Have I tried harder to teach E the alphabet and numbers and shapes than I have tried to teach her Christ? Would that our catechism was offered with half the enthusiasm and desperation with which we present grammar and addition!

We think that our children need a good education, to be well-rounded and intelligent individuals who are well-prepared for anything the world might throw at them, including college.

They need Jesus infinitely more, and I don’t mean just a “saving knowledge.” He’s our bread and water and life-giving sustenance: we need every morsel. And that’s no small amount of learning—no small amount of training—no small time investment.

It’s a lot more than Shakespeare.

A peek inside the routine.

2010-08-07T19:46:00.001-04:00

Today has been a definite "off" day—the kids were fussy, I woke up exhausted, naps went poorly, and my mom couldn't come over for very long (during the summer she has been coming over a lot!). So, I thought it'd be a good opportunity to explain how my routine actually works out... on a bad day.

Before breakfast, I set out the meat for dinner. Item one checked off the list.

After breakfast, without the routine, I probably would have thought to myself, I'm exhausted, the house isn't a wreck, I'm just going to do laundry and then chill with the kids a bit. But the routine beckoned. I'll admit I didn't do as much as I would on a "normal" day, but by naptime I'd restored the rooms to "normal," done two loads of laundry, stuffed/folded the rest of the cloth diapers, gathered up the bath toys and dumped them in the kitchen sink with some bleach to soak for a few hours, and started in on clearing off the top of the refrigerator (one of my projects I'd determined to accomplish today). On a more normal day, I would likely have finished the laundry and the fridge, done some actual cleaning in the bathrooms instead of just decluttering, and probably attacked a few piles of clutter in the areas I "normal-ized" so that tomorrow would be even neater than today.

Anyway, I decided to save the vacuuming (small task with a good cordless stick vac—I can't recommend them enough, mommas!), the rest of the top of the fridge, and the laundry-folding for this afternoon, along with cooking and giving the kids a bath. I also was able to declutter some outstanding “hotspots” upstairs, research some issues I ran into with cloth diapers, and spent a good amount of time chilling with the munchkins this afternoon, all even before my mom showed up!

One thing that is really working with this new routine is that it has an enormous amount of flexibility and daily autonomy. So on days like this past Monday, when I have energy and drive paired with a complete lack of children, the routine motivates me to really get a lot done. And on days like today, which is easily my worst day so far this week, the routine makes sure I don't fall behind and end up in an even sorrier state of housework tomorrow. I think this is the single biggest key to finding a routine that I can continue to follow from day to day and week to week. It's also kind of funny the way that it's teaching me some basic principles instead of just being a list of items to check off. It also makes me think consciously about what things I need to do today, tomorrow, and for the rest of the week, and make a real implementable plan for when to get them done. The whole "nighttime routine" idea—just thinking about the next day and making sure I have the answers to some basic questions—has deeply changed the way my day goes. I wake up knowing some of the big things I need to get accomplished, knowing whether or not laundry is one of them, and knowing what I'll cook for dinner. Small things, granted, but making these decisions on a different day than I actually have to fulfill them helps me to be more honest and ambitious in my plans.

I've also noticed that knowing I'll have to do things the next day makes me infinitely more likely to take care of them the night before. I'm strongly motivated to clean up the kitchen after dinner, because otherwise I know it's one of the first things waiting for me in the morning. If I see a pile of things waiting to go up or down the stairs, I'll probably grab it the very first time my hands are empty—and put it away properly—because I'm going to have to do it in a moment anyway, may as well do it when my hands are empty! Dirty clothes on the floor? I'm obsessed now with picking them up right away so that I don't have to go around the house in search of them. At the same time, though, the fact that these things aren’t actually on the schedule until “later” helps me not get stressed out and feel overloaded by them.

“Clutter begets clutter” is such a true statement! And for me, at least, having a lack of clutter to begin with—and obsessing about maintaining that lack—is an essential motivating tool. I’m terrified of it getting out of order!

(Written earlier this week.)

First love, then marriage, then…?

2010-08-07T09:11:00.013-04:00

I have been reading a so-far delightful book, entitled Start Your Family: Inspiration for Having Babies, by Steve and Candice Watters of Boundless fame.

And yes, I know, we don’t need inspiration. I’m reading it more for philosophical reasons—and, honestly, ‘cause it’s such a bargain at Amazon, and I had the notion that it might be a useful book to recommend to people.

I’ve made it through the first few chapters, and I’m really growing in my conviction (initiated by Al Mohler’s many thoughts on the subject; particularly this article) that questions like “should we have children? are we ready to have children? can we afford children?” are tremendously the wrong questions to ask.

The Watterses begin their book by talking about the “American dream,” more or less, as it’s viewed by youngish couples. There are so many things we can do before we have children, so many life experiences that seem worth putting off parenthood to achieve. And we’re never financially stable enough to afford children—I can attest myself to having been bombarded with the “children cost $250,000 by age 18” statistic while still a teenager myself. Those kind of numbers, coupled with the general social expectations of what a young couple is supposed to do and see before embarking on pregnancy, make it a fearful decision indeed to declare oneself “ready” to inflict these small stinky, sticky mess-makers onto the entire rest of one’s life.

I’d never stopped to think about it, but I think they’re dead on. The world is all about telling us how much responsibility children are, how much work, how much cost, how we need to have the perfect relationship with our spouse (being married at least four years) before introducing hellions into the mix, how children cause divorce, how parents bid good-bye to free time, how friendships with couples who don’t yet have children will change forever and probably dissolve… the Watterses are so right. I grew up in an environment that was certainly not hostile to children, and yet somehow even I managed to internalize many of these ideas. It’s like a little checklist you have to complete before it’s socially acceptable to have a baby—otherwise people shake their heads and talk about how unwise you are, and wonder if the pregnancy was a mistake! I’ve even heard people refer to someone’s miscarriage as “a good thing, because they really weren’t ready for a baby.”

This is the legacy of the Pill. We can control fertility, and so suddenly it becomes a decision to be made, to be weighed—and for other people to peer down their noses in disdain at the results. Suddenly it’s a little embarrassing to admit that, yes, I have a one-year-old, and a five-month-old, and, um, yeah, we’re expecting again. Suddenly it’s perfectly acceptable for everyone from dear friends to complete strangers to tell me how crazy we are, how I’ll soon learn the error of my ways, and ask, both in seriousness and in sarcasm, whether or not I know how “that” happens.

First comes marriage, then comes the baby carriage. That’s all Scripture has to say on the subject, that’s all history has generally said on the subject, and I’m beginning to think that’s all we should say on the subject. Society—church included—imposes unbelievable pressures on couples to delay childbearing, and then to limit and carefully mete it out when it does come. Don’t have children too soon, too fast, or too many: pray hard about it first.

But the question itself is a new one: people used to have children because… well, children happen! And in those olden (Bible!) days, they were viewed as a blessing—and the more the more blessed! Look at what Scripture says of the torment and lamentations of the women who had no children, and compare to the distinct aura of fullness that surrounds the descriptions of those who had many. Yet so many well-meaning Christians would have us believe that it’s a perfectly acceptable lifestyle choice to forego children completely, and a wiser decision to limit them to some small, manageable number… preferably two. Now that we can control it, “of course” we should. God gives us science, and all that; birth control is chemo for the cancer that is children.

I don’t think I’m buying it anymore.

Cloth, after disposables…

2010-08-06T20:22:00.002-04:00

So, to my great surprise, after two years or so of disposable-diapering, I find myself regarding cloth diapers very differently than I did way back in 2008.

First—I'm surprised to discover that they really are more work. I know this is probably like "no duh" to 99% of the world, but when I started out, I'd never in my life used a disposable and was determined that no artificial, bleached, chemical diaper would ever touch my wee babe's butt. I never knew anything else, and I figured the whole prefold+cover thing was, at worst, like putting on two disposables at once. And I was very confused by how disposables work—operating those semi-velcro tabs is like learning how to drive a car... easy, obvious, and second-nature—unless you've never done it before. I was convinced the Snappi was superior.

Now, of course, I know better. Those precious minutes spent stuffing all those diapers yesterday? Minutes I wouldn't have had to spend if I'd stuck with disposables.

Second—I'm amazed, and thoroughly appreciate, how much less trash we're generating. Not even in a save-the-environment sense, but in a wow-the-trash-doesn't-need-to-go-out-yet sense. Huzzah. I am seriously contemplating buying even more diapers and putting my oldest back in cloth (and then using those when the new baby arrives and I'm still cloth-diapering two little ones), just to get rid of the diaper pail. I seriously think cloth diapers, jammed into a trash can with no deodorizer, vinegar, or tea tree oil, still smell less than the disposables jammed into a real live diaper pail. I'm sure it helps that they get washed more often than the trash goes out. And I’ve never minded diaper laundry, so no big on that score.

Third—I can’t believe how much they can hold. I think this is probably an advantage of pocket/AIO diapers over prefolds, because if the front part of a prefold gets completely saturated, it inevitably finds its way through the legholes to seep out onto clothing. Definitely not the case with pocket diapers; between the PUL on the outside and the quick-wicking fleece on the inside, there really isn’t any perpetually wet fabric anywhere near clothing—the wet is all hidden away inside, so the diaper doesn’t seem to leak, unless maybe it’s completely full. I haven’t managed to get a completely full diaper, which I think is probably a good thing! What I haven’t figured out yet is how often baby needs changed in cloth, but just the fact that the diaper clearly holds more liquid than a disposable without leaking blows me away.

Lastly, one major advantage of prefolds over pockets is cleaning. This, to me, is the biggest trade-off; I think the convenience of not assembling the prefold+cover is amply balanced by the inconvenience of having the part of the diaper with poop permanently sewn to the part of the diaper everyone sees. I never really worried about stains before, because they’d always be on the prefold and I’d just fold the poopy prefold up inside itself and wash it separately from the cover, if need be. No can do, with pockets. This is pushing me strongly in the direction of using liners, although I haven’t settled on a good solution yet. (Disposable liners are too expensive; cotton liners stay too wet and irritate the skin. Presently I’m trying fleece liners—to move to microfleece liners if I’m happy with the general way it goes—but I haven’t finished my little experiment yet. I will say, since fleece doesn’t ravel, it’s crazy how much companies get away with charging for microfleece liners. Buy some fleece and cut it up.)

That said, I do think I’ll stick with pocket diapers, and I really am seriously contemplating ordering enough to use with E, too (or R and L simultaneously). They definitely fit better and more reliably than prefolds, and clearly leak a lot less, even than disposables. I’ve been really trying to put them though the paces the past two days, and I’m pleased with the results. There’s been at least one poopy diaper that I know would have been an explosive disaster with prefolds/covers, and the pocket contained it most admirably. I also really like that they are fleece inside—you can really tell the difference in baby’s level of skin irritation after being in a pretty wet diaper. We never got rashes while using prefolds, but you could tell if the diaper had been wet because the skin got all red and blotchy. That’s not happening with the pockets.

So far, pretty happy. I think I’ll continue being pretty happy, as long as they hold up well in washing over the months and I figure out a solution to the liner issue.

And, oh yes, I found myself desperately short of cloth wipes and hurriedly ordered some from Etsy. I used them before, but apparently newborns require many fewer wipes than a ten-month-old, because my stash is clearly not up to the task!

The Adventures of R and E

2010-08-05T20:21:00.001-04:00

Today was one of the (many) days when the awesomeness of being a mommy to two little girls is nothing short of overwhelming. The girls played so very, very many games today that I lost count.

There was “boo,” which they played over and over again, switching the instigator; then they had a couple games that involved screaming similar sounds back and forth at each other (“aaaaaaaaah!!!!” “eehhhhh!” “bababababa!!!”); they rode the rocking giraffe together; they played with Matchboxes and made vrooom-vrooom noises together; and at one amazingly precious moment this morning, E was laying on the kitchen floor and R came over and climbed on top of her (like she would to S or me) and laid her head down on E’s chest and sucked her thumb contentedly while E patted her gently on the back. When R was getting sleepy and going down for a nap, E rubbed her leg and sang “La Lechuza”… and R fell asleep. E made R pretend “tea,” and R brought E some sunglasses and tried to put them on E’s face for her.

It’s astounding how different a child can be at ten months just because she has an older sister. I don’t remember E playing games this way—I mean, I know she did, I remember her playing “boo” and the like—but sometimes R seems like a miniature, much less coordinated version of E. Well, except completely different, personality-wise, but I mean as far as what she does and tries to do. Already, if E does something, R will probably try to do it. She tries to brush her own hair, and put barrettes in; she tries to sweep the floor and wipe down random surfaces… she even “helped” me unload the dishwasher very much like E does.

I’m also really surprised by how many games a two-year-old and a ten-month-old can invent to play together. I thought they’d be playing “beside” each other (instead of “with” each other) for a couple of years yet, but they really interact quite a bit. E definitely pushes it; she’ll get a toy and sit down right in front of R, or grab R by the hand and lead her around the house or in a rendition of “Ring Around the Rosie.” But R is totally along for the ride, and sometimes she’ll eagerly grab for E’s hand to get her to play again. (And sometimes she screams her head off because she doesn’t want to play right now, thank you very much. And the two of them wanting the same toy is not a pretty sight, either, because neither of them quite grasps the idea that the other is going to be very upset if you just grab a toy out of their hand. They both seem quite willing to share once the idea enters their heads, but sometimes they just blaze on with whatever they want without even considering the other.)

Having two girls has definitely opened up a whole new level of wonder—watching them together is so many times sweeter than just watching one of them!

First kicks.

2010-08-04T21:09:00.000-04:00

I felt E move at about 22 weeks—hideously late. And I felt her move on the outside before I could feel her inside. R was a totally different story; I felt her at 12 weeks and it seems like we could feel her outside around 18 or so. So I thought, oh, first baby, feel late, how normal.

Then I didn’t feel L until this week. Again, outside first. It was so late! (About 18 weeks, 20 by the earlier due date.) Which was a little worrisome, because I kept wondering if he was moving or not!

Finally I felt these little blips, those tiny pokings that make me feel like Kane on Alien. And a small sigh of relief: now I can know he’s all right. And a feeling of responsibility: now I have to pay attention to make sure he’s still all right, tomorrow, next week, next month. And now we’re connected: biding our time with the most rudimentary communication of bumps and punches until, Lord willing, they’re replaced by cries and gurgles and lullabies.

It’s so very odd to have a little human inside.

The Revenge of the Cloth Diapers

2010-08-04T14:50:00.005-04:00

We used cloth diapers with E until she was getting pretty mobile and I felt bad for the poor child who seemed to have her mobility severely hindered by the bulky prefolds and covers. So I missed out, the first time 'round, on the astounding expense of diapering a newborn. When R was born, I was subsequently ignorant and thought diapering a newborn would cost about what diapering my toddler cost—maybe $30 a month. Maybe less. Not a small amount, admittedly, but… have you seen newborn poop? As in, the sheer quantity thereof? Anyway, you can imagine my shock when I found myself shelling out $40-$50 every week. 8-o

Now, a smart momma would have gone down in her basement, dug out ye olde prefolds, and continued diapering for free before finishing off the very first package. But in a massive lack of logic, I simply thought, okay, not going to do this again, clearly a mistake, but I’m not mentally prepared for cloth.

Yeah. I don’t know what kind of “mental preparation” cloth diapering requires—despite my abandoning the practice, I’ve still cheerfully advocated it to others—but this was my excuse.

Fast-forward to pregnancy #3. I’m determined to cloth-diaper this time around, but didn’t really fathom doing anything besides digging out the old reliable diapers I used with #1. Then a dear friend shows up at my house with these astoundingly cheap pocket diapers, and… well, let’s just say my pile of prefolds is looking pretty unattractive. It’s not too difficult a purchase to justify—any cloth diapers will pretty much pay for themselves in the first few months of a baby’s life, and pocket diapers hold the promise of continued mobility, instead of prefold-induced waddling, which means I’m much more likely to use them for a longer period of time.

The only catch is, if I order them now, then I want to use them now, with R. No good reason not to, and I want to give them a good working-out before L actually arrives, and before the guarantee expires. So, after much trepidation and thought, I ordered them. And they arrived two days later! Today! My laundry room is strewn with damp pocket covers, and the inserts are happily warming themselves in the dryer.

Tomorrow: goodbye disposables! At least, I hope so.