The Nursery is Ready

So, baby, any time now . . .

Here are the "before" pictures.

40 Weeks

"Was that a contraction?" That's what I've been asking myself for the past day or two. Hmm.

Boiling Water for Fruit Stains

One of the many exciting things about this Thanksgiving was finally using my wedding linens. :-) Providentially, I'd received two white linen tablecloths with a lace crocheted edge as well as matching napkins, and they looked so pretty when the table was all set! We should have taken a picture.

Of course, Thanksgiving means cranberry sauce, and in our home this year it also meant blueberry pie. Stains are inevitable.

My Grandma Smith knows how to get just about any kind of stain out of anything. Growing up, if Mom, Heidi and I were befuddled over some particular stain, I remember Mom suggesting that we call Grandma. Her advice for fruit stains was "boiling water."

It works! That funny-looking picture above is of my kettle pouring boiling water onto our linens in the kitchen sink. It works so well that I thought I'd share.

I still don't know how to keep my favorite white flour-sack dish towels white. I'd hoped that soaking them in bleach would help, but some have rust stains now that just don't seem to come out. Any suggestions? Or perhaps I should call Grandma Smith and see how much she remembers. :-)

39 Weeks

39 weeks

Today, Monday, we're 39 weeks and four days! Today is also what the office thinks my due date is, according to the pregnancy wheel (ha). Though, I wouldn't mind if baby came today and "proved them right." Oh, no, I wouldn't mind at all . . .

As of Tuesday last week, little girl still had not dropped. That was a disappointment! Since then, however, I've felt more pressure, especially after exercising. I'm also finding it harder and sometimes impossible not to waddle. Sooo, perhaps she is making some progress! We will find out again tomorrow, Lord willing!

Our First Thanksgiving (sort of)

Since baby's due date is so close, we've known for a while that we'd be spending Thanksgiving at home on Cottage Lane. The exciting thing is that my brother and sister are coming hundreds of miles a piece to be with us! So, with some other friends from church, we expect to have 10 at the table. 10 born people, anyway. :-)

John realized that it's the first time in his life ever that he hasn't been at his parents' table for this holiday. Several people have asked me if it's the first time I've cooked the turkey. I started to say "yes," but then I remembered a Thanksgiving three years ago . . .

It was right before God brought John clearly into my life, and I was having quite a mix of good days and bad days. Mom had had serious shoulder surgery about a month before and she wasn't allowed to lift more than a pencil with that hand. (This was not put-you-in-a-sling-and-come-back-for-pt-in-2-weeks surgery. My mother's case makes me annoyed at people who complain over nothing and lead doctors to treat everyone super-conservatively. When she actually admits she's in pain, it usually means her condition is almost past the fixable point. End of rant . . . )

Grandpa Smith had died earlier in the year, leaving the rest of the family to wonder how long we would have with Grandma, and to realize how important it was for us to treasure our time together. So, that side of the family all decided to get together at Grandma's house, but to bring the food to her.

The day before Thanksgiving, Heidi and I made our traditional excessive number of pies and then headed over to Grandma's house for the night. I have sweet, sweet memories of that evening. We rolled up dozens of potato-dough crescent rolls while watching Harvey with Grandma on my laptop, and set out the chairs at the huge tables and decked the doorways with bittersweet. Heidi and I slept in the guest room bed together just like we had when we were little, and in the morning I dressed in brown pants and a cream sweater and put a ribbon in my hair. Then it was time for us to rub that big turkey in olive oil and slide bay leaves under its skin, fussing over it with as much excited pride as a couple of aunts might have fussed over a chubby baby. (I hope it's not disturbing to anyone that I just compared a turkey to a baby . . . )

The rest of the family came later with the mashed potatoes and green bean casserole and the rest of the indispensable Thanksgiving fare, but that was my first turkey. And I am so thankful for those memories. :-)

A November Rose

"We are all immortal till our work is done."

J.C. Ryle, Expository thoughts on John (7:30)

38 Weeks!

We're at 38 weeks . . . which means only 4 more weeks max. Wowee.

Liking STWTF!

After a healthy critiquing of Janet Tamaro's So that's what they're for!, I thought I should share some things I really LIKE about her book so far! It is very informative, easy-to-read and she explains things in a way which make them make sense. Back when I was in chapter 8, though, I noted some quotations which I really liked. Chapter 8 is called "Getting Some Sleep (Some What?)." :-)

p. 145-146 "Dr. Jay Gordon puts it a bit more succinctly: 'If your goal in life is to get your sleep, you made a mistake about nine months ago.' . . . Infants don't sleep the way we do, and we shouldn't expect them to, any more than we should expect them to walk and talk when they're born."

p. 146 "At 6 months, babies are physiologically able to sleep through the night without food--that doesn't mean they will. . . . "

p. 147 "They are waking you up not to bug you, but because they are hungry and need to be fed."

I suppose it's easy for me to take these thoughts in stride since I haven't lived the months of sleep-deprivation yet. Still, the prospect makes me think of some of the things Jesus said, like in Matthew 10:42

"And whoever in the name of a disciple gives to one of these little ones even a cup of cold water to drink, truly I say to you, he shall not lose his reward."

And John 15:13
"Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends."

Surely, laying aside our sleep for the sake of a helpless little one is a huge way we can demonstrate this kind of Christ-like love. And if we ever lose sight of why we're doing it in the first place, we can try to remember this final thing which Tamaro said:

p. 148 "Some of the most 'difficult' babies grow up to be some of the brightest, most creative people."

:-)

Making Thank You's

What's the news in baby-land? Not too much, but our church did have a shower for us this past Saturday! Everyone was so generous and kind, and now we have more material blessings and more thank you notes to write.

My goal is to write 5 thank you's each day. It seems to work best for me that way, because it helps me make significant progress without getting overwhelmed or thoroughly neglecting everything else. The only problem is that I ran out of thank you cards yesterday after writing only 4. So, this afternoon, I could have run to the store and picked some more up. The store is close by, but it was raining, and I'd already been gone all morning . . .

So baby and I stayed in and made some. :-)

No, little girl isn't born yet, and those aren't her real foot prints. Did you know that you can use the side of a curled-up fist to make an impression like a baby foot print? Sometimes Mom would have us stamp brown paper in such a way as kids to make wrapping paper for a shower. They come out looking realistically wrinkled because they're stamped by real skin, and then you add little toes with your pinkie finger.

Back when we ordered our multi-page wedding invitations, each one came with an extra blank 6"x6" piece of cardstock with a hole in the corner. Those extra cards got set aside as we assembled the invitations themselves, and now we're finally using some of them! Somehow, over 100 extra envelopes were also ordered, so each of these little cards is all set. After stamping each one, I threaded some re-used pink ribbon through each hole, because they looked a little funny by themselves. And then I traced a light black square around each set of footprints so they wouldn't look so bare.

Of course it took considerably longer to make these than to run to the store, but it was definitely more fun! And it feels nice to use up some of those extra cards and envelopes!

Being Domestic Lately

To be frank, I've taken a lot of household shortcuts during this pregnancy. For example, I've been buying jarred spaghetti sauce instead of making my own (but Target's Market Pantry brand does taste good, and has no preservatives!) and buying our bread. But recently I made our bread again, possibly for the first time this entire pregnancy!

And I made some yummy granola, using this recipe . . . .


And on Saturday, I baked that beautiful Cinderella pumpkin. It produced over 17 cups of wonderful pulp! So much more than the pumpkin I baked last year, though it also took much longer since it wouldn't all fit in the oven at once! Still, it was a good way to warm up the house since we hadn't turned our heat on yet. And I made one delicious pie with the fresh pumpkin pulp before freezing the rest.

*sigh*

36 Weeks

The shirt says, "Clearly not a secret" :-)

We're now past the 36 week point! It's exciting, but if I'm honest I must admit that I've already had moments where I can't wait for this baby to be born, so the pregnancy will be over. (And then I remember that I'm probably going to be way more tired than I am now for a long time!)

It helped so much being at church on Wednesday night and singing together "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms." I don't have to do this all myself. I can lean on Jesus. Such a comfort.

We're halfway through our childbirth classes! We've also picked a name, but it's a secret!

And here's another pic from earlier this week:

Nursery Wall, Painted

No, I didn't quite get it done last week, but I finished up yesterday (all except for one cloud which needs some touching up! Can you spot it?).

35 Weeks!

Some of these pictures don't come out too well. Hmm. But, thankfully, all still seems well with baby and me!

That's All They're For?

This post should perhaps be rated PG. Just thought you might like to know ahead of time. :-)

Yesterday, I received So that's what they're for! by Janet Tamaro in the mail, thanks to paperbackswap! It's supposed to be a humorous and helpful book on breastfeeding, and I've heard it highly recommended. As cute as the title is, however, John and I both bristled a little at it. Breastfeeding may be the long-underrated best way to give a baby complete nutrition and then some, but surely that's not the exclusive, or perhaps even the primary, purpose of breasts, right?

Last night after reading the prefacing remarks and getting almost through chapter 1, some of our early suspicions were confimed. Tamaro discusses how breastfeeding fell out of fashion in the middle of the last century when formula companies convinced America that their product was superior to God's product (hee hee). But she goes on to say that "they [breasts] were no longer needed to feed babies, so they went out and got jobs in commercials and Playboy. Now, we're so used to seeing breasts tap-dancing and lounging around, we have a hard time remembering what they were for in the first place! But the way we feel about breasts is simply our perception of their function" (p. 6).

Really? Were breasts really over-sexualized simply as a result of women no longer breastfeeding? Tamaro tries to support this assertion by recounting an incident where Muslim women covered up their heads but not their breasts in the presence of men. What she's assuming is that all cultures are equal, and I will venture to say, controversially perhaps, that this is simply not true.

As a side note, my mom traveled to Asia as a single young woman and learned a lot about breastfeeding there just by being around women who were doing it. She married my dad in the early 80's before all the research on the excellence of breastfeeding had taken place, but because of her visual experience in Asia (and because they had no other real financial choice!), she successfully gave my siblings and me that wonderful gift of mother's milk. I'm thankful for the role that the Asian women played in her life!

Still, I was reading a discussion board lately where one girl pointed out what the Bible has to say about breasts. Yes, there are beautiful references to mothers nursing their little ones, but there are also passages like Proverbs 5 and the entire Song of Solomon.

"Let your fountain be blessed, And rejoice in the wife of your youth. As a loving hind and a graceful doe, Let her breasts satisfy you at all times; Be exhilarated always with her love." (Proverbs 5:18-19)

There's no way that breasts were merely over-sexualized in recent times by a culture which forgot what they were for. Breasts are inherently sexual. The Bible says so! And that's why I believe, as the same girl pointed out, that we ought to be concerned about modesty during breastfeeding. (I look forward to breastfeeding in public with the beautiful cover which my friend Debbie made me!) To be abundantly clear, I don't believe that women should concern themselves with modesty in breastfeeding simply because that's the way our culture has become, and we ought to be sensitive to others. I believe that all cultures at all times should practice this kind of modesty because of what the Bible clearly teaches.

Guys I've talked to would agree. One claimed that he had figured out that breasts were awesome on his own by about fourth grade. :-) I don't have too much more to say about cultures not being inherently equal, but let me just ask one question: would Tamaro wish for American women to be treated by men as strictly as Muslim women are treated by men in their countries? We have the freedom to vote, travel freely, speak our opinions in mixed company, and to show our faces, to name only a few. Undoubtedly Tamaro was not arguing that Americans should adopt Muslim culture, save in respect to its openness toward breastfeeding. But do we really want to be taking our cultural cues from a society where women are not allowed to show their faces? No, I believe that years of sin and false religion darken more than hearts; they can darken entire cultures.

Still, I am looking forward to finishing So that's what they're for! and expecting it to be truly helpful in practical ways. I'm thankful that the research on breastfeeding has been done, that our culture is growing more supportive of it, and I'm excited about learning how to bless our little girl with perfect nourishment just as my mother blessed me!

Making "Old" Things New

Looking back at this old post, from before we started our office-to-nursery transformation was quite encouraging to me! We're making definite progress!

Today, I finished re-covering the red lamp shade (in this picture) in a pink toile printed with nursery rhyme scenes. It took some alternate trimming and hot glue-ing and not very much time, and if you don't look at the inside, it looks great!

And last week, I made a simple curtain from eyelet to cover the lower shelves of the green shelf in the same picture. We managed to find space for all the books and items on the top two shelves in the sunroom downstairs, so they can be decorated for baby and the rest can be hidden away.


It was just barely too short! And it sticks out kind of funny on one side because the photo albums behind it are so big. Still, I'm happy with how things are coming, and liking these girly touches to our otherwise neutral nursery quite a lot.

34 Weeks (and a half, by now!)

34 Weeks

How has it been over a week since the last post? I'm not quite sure, but time is going quickly.

In nursery news, the most exciting developments have been the acquisition of a rocking chair, changing table and baby swing, all from Craigslist. I guess once I got over the hump of having never used it before, I just took off! And now I'm going to have to refrain from even looking at anything for a while. But we did get some good deals!

The rocking chair we bought more for its beauty than its price (but it's something I'll love having in our home for years to come!)


This we bought more for its price than its beauty. I'm not crazy about the particle-board shelves, and I'm thinking of painting the whole thing white to give it a clean, fresh look and maybe seal in some of that particle board. John thinks we should leave it, since the color of the wood does basically match everything else in the room. We'll see who "wins" . . . :-)


This little swing made me happy by both its price and its beauty! Its neutral colors will look nice in our house, plus they'll work if we ever have a boy someday. And it even folds up a little bit.

The goal for the week is to finish the painting on the wall! I haven't done any more of that since the last update, but I have washed and sorted all the new baby things we were given at our showers and written all my thank you notes! Can you tell I like affirmation? :-)

33 Weeks!

Baby girl is head-down!

On Trials

A few years ago, my pastor's wife led me and two other young women in a study of Nancy Lee DeMoss's excellent book, Lies Women Believe. The heart-searching that ensued changed my life and ultimately opened my heart in preparation to marry John! Some time later, I started writing down another "lie" from my own perspective . . .

Lie: "God won't give me more than I can handle."

Before you bristle or despair at reading this, hear me out. I have heard well-meaning Christians tell this to other Christians who were going through hard times more than once. They mean to comfort them, but I believe that they are deceiving them and in so doing depriving them of real comfort which comes from a truth far better than this.

See, there are a few implications which come with this lie, and all of them are wrong.

1. God allows trials to come into my life and then leaves me to handle them. This kind of assertion leads one to think that God may push me right up to the edge but won't push me off. Now I'm here dealing with this by myself, and even though I'm staring down into a pit of misery, death, or the unknown, I'm somehow supposed to be comforted because God didn't let me fall in.

2. If I can handle them, then the trials really won't be that bad. They won't overwhelm me. It is rarely a comfort to someone to downplay their trials, because often we do feel overwhelmed. We do think that we can't get through something on our own. Telling me that I can is the same as telling me that I've got to academically change my feeling of being overwhelmed. I have to somehow psyche myself into thinking that I can, you know, the power of positive thinking? This is not what it means to exercise faith because it's all about ourselves. And, believe me, when I'm really down, mustering up the energy to say "I think I can" is at best a meager and short-lived kind of comfort.

3. Whoever says "God won't give you more than you can handle" is going to be tempted not to pray for me because, after all, they're thinking that it will all work out find for me.

This lie is a spin-off of something true. In the Bible tells us that "God will not allow you to be tempted beyond what you are able . . . " (1 Corinthians 10:13). This verse has to do with the temptation to sin, not with the experience of trials. It means that God never forces us into sin; even though the world is evil, there is always a way out of sinning when tempted. This is a comfort, but it is also a reminder that we are responsible to watch and pray. There is no blaming God for our circumstances if we succumb to temptation and fall into sin.

The Bible is full of far more relevant verses for God's people who are simply going through a hard time. God does not leave us at the edge alone, only promising not to push us off, for it says in Isaiah 43:2-4:

"When you pass through the waters, I will be with you;

And through the rivers, they will not overflow you.

When you walk through the fire, you will not be scorched,

Nor will the flame burn you.

For I am the LORD your God,

The Holy One of Israel, your Savior;

I have given Egypt as your ransom,

Cush and Seba in your place.

Since you are precious in My sight,

Since you are honored and I love you,

I will give other men in your place and other peoples in exchange for your life.

The comforts go on and on. I encourage you to read the whole chapter, but verse two is a pretty good summary--"Do not fear, for I have redeemed you; I have called you by name; you are Mine." He is with me. He loves me, in fact. He has given up other nations just to have me. This is your real comfort, O trembling child of the new Israel. Say it to yourself over and over when you feel alone, and remember also this second comfort:

"My grace is sufficient for you, for My power is made perfect in weakness" (2 Corinthians 12:9).

This is what Paul learned when he was going through a trial which God would not take away. The truth is that trials are hard and we often can't handle them on our own, but sometimes the whole point of the trial is to teach us that very fact. We're supposed to look outside ourselves for the abundant grace which Jesus has to offer us and with which He fills up our weaknesses. Paul goes on to say,

"Therefore I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses, so that Christ's power may rest on me. That is why, for Christ's sake, I delight in weaknesses, in insults, in hardships, in persecutions, in difficulties. For when I am weak, then I am strong" (:10).

Notice also that in verse 7, we learn that Paul's trial was from Satan. Let's not allow ourselves to think consciously or subconsciously that God comes up with these trials for us. They're hard, sometimes they're awful, and they're the kind of things that Satan loves, not God. But we know that God is much more powerful than Satan and allows him to work--for a little while, not forever--all the while turning them into good.

Fajitas for Supper?

I was thinking of posting about our two beautiful baby showers from this past weekend! But facebook, whence I was hoping to get some pictures, is acting funny for me, so perhaps that post will be coming soon. Instead, here's a post which I've meant to share for a while.

Fajitas! They're soo yummy and healthy, and although they may be ideal for summer-time because the insides get grilled, it's still quite warm here on Cottage Lane.

First of all, I make my flour tortillas, although this can be done in advance. Tortillas aren't very expensive to buy, but every package I've checked so far has listed some form of hydrogenated fat among the ingredients--one good thing to avoid. I basically follow a recipe from the More with Less Cookbook, and here it is:

Combine in mixing bowl
2 cups unsifted flour (I've been using half unbleached and half whole-wheat, and they come out great!) 1 tsp. salt

Cut in with pastry blender (I usually just zap it all in a food processor, and it's very fast and easy!)
1/4 c. lard or shortening (I use butter)

When particles are fine, add gradually:
1/2 cup lukewarm water

Toss with fork to make a stiff dough. Form into a ball and knead thoroughly on lightly floured board until smooth and flecked with air bubbles. (I toss it into my Kitchenaid and let it knead for 5 minutes!) To make dough easier to handle, grease surface, cover tightly, and refrigerate 4-24 hours before using. (Sometimes I just stick it in the freezer for one hour!) Let dough return to room temperature before rolling out. (I don't!)

Here I'm going to stop using their directions because I just do it the way I do it . . . :-) I now preheat my largest frying pan (since I don't have a griddle) to medium heat, though the recipe calls for "very hot." Next, I roll the dough into a log with my hands and slice into the recommended 11 disks.


And roll one out on a floured surface until it is very thin.



Then I drop it onto the ungreased pan and let it cook until it starts to bubble up!


This one is ready to flip! While it is cooking, I start rolling the next. As each one finishes, I set it in a towel to keep warm. The whole cooking process takes a little while, but the results are not only healthier but much more tender and delicious than store-bought tortillas!

For fajitas, I marinate some chicken breast in lime juice and cilantro at least a few hours before supper, and chop up some colored bell-peppers. (You're supposed to include sweet onions, but onions have sounded terrible to me for most of my pregnancy!) While the chicken breast cooks slowly over low heat on the grill, the veggies get wrapped in foil and steam until tender on the grill's upper rack. They're usually done when the chicken is done.

At some point, I mash up an avocado with lime juice, chopped cilantro, some salsa or preferably diced tomato, and a little salt and pepper. My brother learned how to make awesome guacamole when he was in Costa Rica, but as long as it has lime juice in it, my mouth is happy. :-)

It all gets served with salsa and shredded cheese (and sour cream, if you like), and, boy, do they hit the spot!

Happy Birthday, dear niece

The latest knitting project is done!

I used a pattern from ravelry (http://www.ravelry.com/patterns/library/hetty-2) and Patons Organic Cotton, and I think it's quite darling. :-)

Some Nursery Progress

The hand-painting I've been planning is started, though I'm not sure if it needs more sheep or not. (For those of you who know BLBC, yes, I was inspired by the beautiful job Rachel did on the nursery there!) The curtains have also been bought!

31 Weeks

At our latest appointment, the midwife was able to determine that our little girl is head-down! It's possible she may still flip around, but encouraging to think that she's already found her way to the right place. And now I know that the hard little lumps which I feel squirming most often are baby feet!

Apple Oven Pancake

By request.  :-)  This is the recipe from Williams-Sonoma's Essentials of Baking.  (Hopefully that's not a violation of copyright or anything.)  I left out the weight measurements for the ingredients and some other parenthetical remarks (e.g. metric measurements), because I'm not that fancy of a baker. 

4 tablespoons unsalted butter
4 cups diced peeled tart apples, such as Granny Smith (3 medium)
2 tablespoons firmly packed golden brown sugar
Juice of 1/2 lemon, strained
1/2 teaspoon ground cinnamon
4 large eggs, lightly beaten
1 cup whole milk
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/8 teaspoon salt
Confectioners' sugar for dusting

Position a rack in the lower third of the oven, and preheat to 425F.  

In a large frying pan over medium-high heat, melt 2 tablespoons of the butter.  Add the apples and saute, turning as needed, just until tender, 5-7 minutes.  Sprinkle with the brown sugar, lemon juice and cinnamon and stir to combine.  Remove from the heat.

Place a baking dish 12 inches in diameter or 9 by 13 inches in the oven to heat for 5 minutes.  Remove the baking dish from the oven, add the remaining 2 tablespoons butter to it, and tilt the dish to coat the bottom and sides with the butter.  Spoon the sauteed apples over the bottom of the dish to make an even layer.  

by hand:  In a bowl, whisk together the eggs, milk, flour, vanilla and salt, just until blended
by food processor:  Combine the eggs, milk, flour, vanilla and salt.  Pulse 2 or 3 times, just until blended.

Carefully pour the batter over the hot fruit.  Bake until puffed and golden brown, 20-25 minutes.  Remove from the oven and, using a fine-mesh sieve, dust the top with confectioners' sugar.  Serve immediately.   

There you go.  :-)  My comments:  I never bake anything at 425 . . . maybe I should, but 375 worked just fine, too.  I'm pretty sure my mother never used lemon juice, and I didn't have any on hand the other day, either.  She used to do the sauteeing and baking all in her lovely large cast-iron pan, but I used a frying pan and baking dish like the recipe called for since I don't own the cast-iron.  The apples get all syrupy in the butter and brown sugar, and then the egg-mixture puffs up beautifully high . . . ahh.  Since our pancake is long-gone (2 breakfasts and 1 lunch for me, though it says it serves 6!), I don't have a picture of my own, so I'll share a picture of the pumpkin I bought the other day.

It's a Cinderella pumpkin from Trader Joe's, and isn't it beautiful?  :-)  There should be many pumpkin pies when I decide it's finished decorating the kitchen!

Welcome, Autumn

Now that it's starting to get cool here, it actually feels like autumn, which is wonderful.  I love when the seasons change. 

This morning, I made an oven apple pancake for my breakfast.  John had waffles from yesterday's leftover batter, because he's my waffle-man.  And, as I suspected, he eyed the apple pancake with strong suspicion bordering on contempt.  ;-)  My family grew up with giant/oven/German/Dutch apple pancake being a big treat.  Sometimes Mom even made it for dinner!  So, the question is . . . am I the only one?  Or does anyone else share my love of the stuff? 

Baby Steps

 After my whirl of energy a few weeks ago, I was starting to feel discouraged on baby's room because it seemed like I wasn't getting much done.  But now that the base color is painted, it's starting to show some progress!  To make myself feel a little bit better, I'm making a list of the baby steps we've taken to transform this room from office to nursery!

- Desk and computer moved to guest room
- Baby clothes and diapers washed and stored
- Futon moved to sunroom
- Curtains picked out online
- Curtain rods found in "attic"
- Holes/dents in walls filled with putty
- Paint color chosen and purchased
- Edges taped
- Room painted!!

Though the dresser and bookshelf will stay, we still have some end tables and lamps to move out, hopefully to other people's houses, by way of Good Will or not.  :-)

30 Weeks!

 

...and starting to feel tired again.

A New Inspiring Blog to Read

I don't know if anyone else looks at my blog roll; it's for me, really, because it helps me keep track of who has new entries for me to read! 

Most of the blogs I read are by my actual personal friends or family members, with exceptions being Young Ladies' Christian Fellowship (which I've followed since college!), and recently Young House Love.  Young House Love was about to get cut; they have some good ideas, but I decorate in a different style and don't really want to be falling in love with a house I'm only supposed to be a pilgrim in.  (I've been reading Randy Alcorn's Heaven lately . . . can you tell?)  Anywho, they just recently featured a really helpful baby post, so I'm hooked for a little longer.  :-) 

I've just added a blog to my list!  It's "the path less traveled market".  I don't know the author personally, but I've popped into her personal and family blogs randomly over the past, oh, while.  She's a Christian, she's always encouraging to read, and I love everything about her taste!!  My recent first visit to her "market" blog is what convinced me to add to my list.  A visit to her "ideas file" was completely inspiring!  And she sells some neat things on etsy, so I'm sure she won't mind the recommendation I can offer to my little circle of readers. 

On Knitting Smarter

With a little one on the way, I realized that if I'd like to plan at all on making some of our Christmas presents, this is the year to do it.  And since she's due at the beginning of December, this, now, is the time to do it!  As a result, I've been knitting a lot more than usual in the past month, and getting more and more addicted.  (Addicted --> increasing love and frequency!)

One of the neat things about my mother-in-law is her love for learning.  She's been an outstanding craftswoman since John was little, if not before, but never stops taking classes, reading books and watching videos on youtube to help better herself.  I've found myself inspired by her and other friends like Amy not to get stuck in a rut myself.  And I've learned a lot about knitting in a smarter way than before!

All my recent projects, including my current one in the picture above, have been "in the round" patterns.  Happily, they've all also required size 7 needles, so the same two pairs of circulars have been doing marvelously lately!  I love knitting in the round, and I love doing it with two pairs of circulars instead of with double-points.  Here are some of the reasons why.  

• Knitting in the round is faster and cleaner.  There are minimal (if any) seams to sew up at the end, and fewer yarn tails to hide away.
• Seamless projects also come out beautifully, with no bumpy seams!
• The two-pairs-of-circulars method is flexible enough to work for very large circles or very small ones, like thumbs!
• I find that I lose stitches more readily with double-points.  There are more points and places for stitches to fall off, and with circulars the stitches all push handily onto the middle parts of the needles for storage.  
• There are also fewer needle-changes with two pairs of circulars than with double-points, making it faster still. 

Yay for knitting, and yay for natural fibers like wool and organic cotton!

29 Weeks

I'm starting to wonder how it's possible that I haven't blogged in nearly a week.  There's lots I feel I need to do, and my second-trimester energy is starting to wane.  I'm getting very excited to meet our little girl, but I'm also a little wistful to think that she must have already changed so much from the ultrasound pictures we have from ten weeks ago!  Is it way too early to say "They grow up so fast . . . "?

I remember, at that ultrasound, when they first told us that she is a girl, smiling at John and saying, "You're going to have a wedding to pay for!"  But as some of you may have noticed on facebook a few weeks ago (I forget exactly when), apart from my hopes and prayers for our little girl's salvation, one of my other most basic hopes as a mother is that she may turn out "normal."  John's response was, "Chances of that are slim to none.  You're slim and I'm none!"  And he made me laugh.  [My husband has a wonderful penchant for easing tensions by making others laugh with his apple-of-gold-like words.]  But whether our daughter is hopelessly nerdy because of her parents wasn't really what was on my mind.

On one of our recent Saturday bike-rides to the pizza place at the end of the bike trail, I noticed a family in the restaurant with a baby in a helmet.  She was big enough to be in a high chair, but the helmet didn't look like it was there because they wanted it to be there.  It looked like it was there for medical reasons. After seeing that baby, my mind ran to friends whose only son has spina bifida, and to other friends who lost their youngest to cancer at the age of 30.   I hope that we'll have a wedding to pay for someday, and that our daughter will lead a full and joyful life.  Mostly I hope that she won't suffer because of choices I've made or chances I've taken.  But we are guaranteed nothing, and every day is a gift.

One Classy Wedding

 Leah and I met eight years ago when she, Erika and I were assigned to room together freshman year at Grove City College.  We felt very, very different from each other, and I'm sure we all bugged each other at times, but we got along without any major hitches and all chose different roommates the next year. 

As time went on, however, friendship between Leah and me matured as we matured.  We had lots of heart-deep conversations about God and boys, and I love her lots!  We found even after graduating and going our separate ways that we could always pick right up where we left off.  On my wedding day last summer, it was Leah who calmed my nerves and fixed my hair when I came back from the hair-dresser in tears.  And last weekend it was her turn to be the bride for her beloved Nathaniel.

Among the many loves they share, these two share a love for dancing and are both very skilled!  I meant to post a video here, but it was upside down.  :-/ It was a beautiful weekend all around.  I finally got to show John around campus and kiss him on Rainbow Bridge.  We spent a couple of hours catching up with some of my former students who are now freshmen at my Alma Mater!  And we got to meet the fiance of another dear former roommate.  Next summer, Lord willing, it will be Sarah and Logan's turn!

28 Weeks!

Already?!  

Blogging has been low on the to-do list for several reasons lately.  Partly, we've been away (more on Leah's wedding tomorrow, perhaps!), and partly electronic things around here have changed lately.  After doing some research, John decided to sell his Tivo, give away his old DVD player and buy a different one off e-bay which can connect to the internet.  We canceled the cable and have subscribed to Hulu Plus (as well as a month-long trial of Netflix).  Added to that, we canceled Road Runner and have subscribed to Clear Wire.  

With the hardware shifting alone, I think we've come out on top financially, but our monthly internet and TV bills will now also be mere fractions of what they were before.  Mere small fractions.  

As a girl who didn't even know what a Tivo was until I started dating John, this is all great with me.  We haven't watched much TV lately, anyway.  And the new internet system seems to be working just fine for John.  Somehow, though, the upstairs internet is still sporadically insanely slow, as in, it can take me half an hour or more to load a page.  I'm sure we'll get it worked out eventually.  Until then, I'm spending a bit less time on it and doing more reading from my iphone . . . yet another thing I'd never heard of before I started dating John.  :-)

For the Love of Wool

When I was first getting into knitting soakers, I found a pattern online for a soaker sack!  It's just darling, and was fun and easy to knit-in-the-round.  (I used Patons wool in the creamy natural you can see above!)  It would be paired more appropriately with a side-snap shirt, I think, but I don't have any of those yet and I do have onesies, so I stuck one in for the photo.

John can probably testify to how many times I exclaimed that our little one would look like such a sweet glow-worm in her sheepy sleeper soaker sack.  I was thinking of the toys that were popular when I was little.  You squeeze their bellies and they glow.  Anyone?  (Picture on Wikipedia.)  All she needed was a hat to match.  Then I realized that I could probably make one of those, too.  :-)

I found this pattern and got to learn how to make i-cord!  I just used one i-cord strand, though the pattern gives you a few different options.  That part was fun, although the initial increases after the i-cord were kind of hard for me . . . took me about three tries, in fact.  But it was exactly what I had in mind, and came out just darling, I think!  Better yet, I ran out of the Patons skein I'd used for the sack when I was about half-way through the hat, and my Mom-in-law just happened to have a matching end from one of her projects hanging around the house.  :-)

Our High Chair

I bought this high chair back in October before I was even pregnant.  :-)  I'd always thought it would be nice to have a wooden one instead of a big plastic one, and when I spotted this at a little shop in Schuylerville, I loved it.  (It's the same shop where I later bought the fabric for our dining room chairs!)  A hand-made tag hanging from the chair suggested that the buyer "Paint me orange and put me in your garden!"  Hee hee.  Thankfully, when John heard that it was being offered for such a reasonable price, he had no problem with me going back for it. 

The question is . . . to paint, otherwise refinish, or leave it in its current beautiful state?  I think that actual stripping and restaining would probably be more work than I'm willing to put into it, considering all the spindle and my due date.  I kind of hate to paint it, too, because I think the wood is pretty.  But I'm not sure.

Then there's another question . . . should I sew some kind of cushion for it?  If I don't, I'll probably just tie my little one into it with an apron, as I've seen Mom do in high chairs without safety belts.  But a cloth lining with built-in ties might be nice to prevent her getting her arms stuck through the back and could only increase its comfort.

If you are a very observant reader, you may have noticed that I finally changed my little "pick-a-room transformation" button from "dining room" to "nursery."  I left it on "dining room" for so long because the dining room technically still isn't done.  I still would like to replace the maroon TV cabinet which isn't large enough for our special dishes with a cabinet and hutch.  I've seen ones I liked on craigslist, and I would paint it white, maybe age the edges a bit with some sandpaper, and replace any knobs with glass ones from Hobby Lobby.  But then I was blessed enough to become pregnant again, and became quite worn out, and started tutoring, and it got put on the back burner.  (To be honest, I've never bought anything off craigslist before, so intimidation may have something to do with it, too!)  But, anyway, the high chair did replace the spindly fake bush which was in that corner of the house when we moved in.  Maybe there will eventually be a final dining room tour post.  :-)

26 Weeks

26 Weeks!

And feeling fine.

25 Weeks

23 Weeks