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?).