April in Photos

Flora is one year old, and finally starting to pull up to standing.  The other kids are engrossed in the Elmo's Potty Time video their Grammy sent, the latest in a string of unsuccessful ploys to convince Linus to potty train...

Flora in my favorite old-fashioned type of little girl dress

my sweet girls :-)

Just an unecessary photo of my kitchen, because I'm so happy with how bright and cheery it is

Stella's art is just too cute for words

The kids have been bringing me and our Mary statues bunches of spring flowers every day

We identified these ones growing in our yard as periwinkles, and grape hyacinths

Sly had to spend an afternoon in the hospital, after whacking his face on a chair and cutting open his eyelid.  His vision is fine, but he needed four stitches - which required him to be fully sedated.

After years of working on Tom to allow us to get a pet for the kids, he agreed to let the kids pool their money for a pair of hmasters + cage that someone was selling for a really good price on Craigslist.  They are over the moon, and just loving their new pets.  Here, Sly is holding "Mr. Woodchip" (the kids picked the names)

Linus holding "Mr. Fluff"

Flora pulling up once again.  At the midwife's office....where we have been going for prenatal appointments.  We are expecting another baby in September! :-D

December Photo Dump

Happy St. Nicholas Day!

I took a photo  of Stella with a fluffy little toy alpaca she found in her shoe this morning, and realized that I have a bunch of photos in my phone that I needed to transfer over to the computer.  Here are just a few, to give a glimpse of what we've been up to recently.

The weekend before Thanksgiving, we had dinner with three other families we are friends with, all of whom live in Maryland.  Two of us are homeschooling the kids, and two of us send the kids to a Catholic classical school.  Needless to say, our children have all been made to memorize poetry.  So it was the most heartwarming and encouraging moment for me when, after we had finished eating, the children voluntarily took turns going up to recite poems for the whole group!  At one point, there was even a little scuffle as several of them began shoving each other, wanting to have the stage.  With the exception of that little episode, though, the whole experience so completely fit my ideal of the type of education I'm trying to give my kids.  A wonderful time.

Sweet sleeping baby shot.

While driving from Maryland to the Philly area to stay with the in-laws, we stopped at a tiny middle-of-nowhere diner that was a total throwback to the 50s.  They still had a functioning jukebox that played 45rpm records for a nickel a song!  The kids were fascinated by it, and loved watching the automatic arm put down the record and start to play.

My brother-in-law and my husband dressed super fashionably (they were in vacation mode, I guess) a couple days before Thanksgiving.  And yes, they did go out in public like this!

My quilting group meets on Monday nights, which is trash night around here.  Several times on my way home, I have pulled over to save some treasure from someone's trash.  One of my recent finds was this cute little children's rocking chair.  The wood wasn't in the best shape, so I didn't want to spend time refinishing it with stain.  Here it is primed and ready for painting.  Stay tuned for a future post to see what color it became!

The big kids put some reindeer antlers on Flora.  She is not crawling yet, but seems so so close.

Babies with anything on their heads are just the cutest.  Maybe I'll have her wear these when we visit "Santa" this year.

Someone posted this on Facebook, and I liked it.  I feel like I should have this posted up somewhere in the house, as a reminder to myself.

I'm very slowly starting the decorating process around here, trying to keep the spirit of Advent, and not go "full Christmas" too soon.  I pulled out some of my special paper snowflakes I made in college, and hung them up around the bottom floor.  The kids thought they were so neat, and wanted to make some of their own. It turns out that Sly is currently the only one with enough hand strength and control to cut through all the layers of paper....which means the younger two were alternately crying in frustration/whining at me for help, and....it just wasn't that fun for anyone.  Maybe in a few years we will try again!

Linus fell asleep for a late afternoon nap, and our cat was willing to go the closest she's ever gone to him!

{p,h,f,r} Homeschool Method Research and Other Stuff

{pretty}

No commentary needed :-)

{happy}

Tom recently wired up some extra speakers in our house.  Now we basically have surround-sound on the whole bottom floor!  There are wall-mounted speakers in the corners of the living room, dining room, and kitchen - and Tom fished the wires through the walls so everything's nice and tidy.  They all hook up to our stereo, so I can play listen to anything I like, and actually hear it as I travel through the house cleaning up during the kids' naptime.  It truly does "spark joy" for me, to use a term from the Kon Mari method (which I've been loosely following for the past year to tidy my house).

Recently, I've been listening to this podcast about the Charlotte Mason approach to homeschooling: A Delectable Education.

There are a lot of great ideas here, and now I plan to take a Charlotte Mason inspired approach to homeschooling next year.  Sly will be in "first grade," so it's starting to get real!

{funny}

We're big thrift shoppers, and one of our favorite things to do when we just need to get out of the house is to check out a thrift store.  The other day, before going to Goodwill, we allowed the kids to open their piggy banks to get out a few dollars - in case they wanted to buy something for themselves (but only if Tom and I approved it first!).

Linus found his item right away:

haha!  We ended up telling him he wasn't allowed to buy it, though.

But then when we were up at the register paying for things, Linus reached into the pocket of his little 2T shorts, and whipped out a crisp $100 bill!!  Everyone of us - including the cashier and the people in line - gasped.  It was so incongruous to see a toddler holding that much money, as if it were nothing.  Sly explained that he had helped Linus pick out his money, and thought he'd given him a $1 bill!

{real}

Some days, mom just doesn't feel like being a short-order cook for lunchtime.  So I put together what the kids excitedly call "making a platter."  Basically, a hodge-podge of whatever's in the fridge and pantry.  The kids love it, and actually....I'm starting to think I should just do this every day!  SO much easier on me.

And lastly, If you have any stained wood in your house, and don't already use stain markers, you have to get some!  I use these everywhere - on our trim, floors, and  furniture.  As long as you use a stain color that's pretty close, they work wonders at hiding scratches.

Check out this before-and-after I took the other day

Amazing!

{p,h,f,r,} Flora in Eastertide

I'm not sure if I've ever participated in this time-honored series that's hosted at Like Mother Like Daughter, but I do always enjoy seeing others' posts of this sort, so I'll throw in my own little contribution this time and see how it goes.


~Pretty~

A plate of Easter eggs that I keep on the dinner table.  The fully painted ones are wooden eggs that I've collected from here and there.  The white ones are real blown eggs I made and decorated with colored wax.

~Happy~

Lots of happy things these past couple weeks.

We had our traditional wedding anniversary dinner late at night after the kids went to bed.  It's the one time a year we splurge on the really good steaks from the butcher's case.

Flora got baptized, and our good friends from college came into town to be her godparents.

 And....a baby in a lamb hat.  If that doesn't make you happy, nothing will :-)

Simba!

~Funny~

Flora conked out on Tom's lap while he drinks a beer.

~Real~

When a baby falls asleep on a Boppy pillow on your lap, but you have things to do....you gotta do what you gotta do!  We've gotten pretty good at finding objects to slip in and substitute for our own bodies/arms/warmth, effectively tricking our babies into staying asleep when we need to put them down.

Flora's Birth Story

My labor with Flora was pretty different from those of my previous babies, whose labors had all pretty much followed the same pattern.

The reason for this is that she was in the posterior, or sunny-side-up position.  Linus had been facing this way as well, which had been very concerning to me as my pregnancy with him progressed.  During that last month of pregnancy, I tried all sorts of positions and tricks to help him to turn.  A week before he was born, much to my relief, he did turn, and I was able to have a very straight-forward labor.

This time around.....all I can say is, I got lazy.  I didn't feel like contorting myself into all the awkward positions each night after the kids were in bed, in hopes of turning the baby.  The midwives assured me that as long as a baby was head-down, a natural labor was totally possible....just that a sunny-side-up baby may take "more work." I guess I just decided I was willing to find out what "more work" meant...

On a Thursday morning, six days before my due date, I began having some light contractions.  I sent Tom and my doula texts to put them "on alert," and excitedly waited for them to pick up.  But they never did.  They just fizzled out.  Over the next four days, the same thing frustratingly kept happening.  I'd start having contractions, they'd build for a while, and then gradually peter our.  Night-times were the worst, for some reason, with a lot of extra strong contractions that kept waking me up every half hour.  On Sunday night,they got so bad that I couldn't stay lying down at all.  I attempted to take a bath, but my stomach was so large, it mostly stuck out of the water, and didn't benefit from the soothing warmth of the water at all.  I ended up "sleeping" (but not really) in a rocking chair in our bedroom, cushioned with every pillow I could gather from around the house,

That morning (Monday), Tom opened his eyes a little before his alarm rang, and I said, "I'm done!  This cannot continue another night.  I need to have this baby today!"  He suggested I try [TMI WARNING!] nipple stimulation to get the contractions to pick up.  I figured it was now or never, because I didn't want him to leave for work only to have me call him back home later.  Well, it was immediately effective.  Contractions quickly picked up to every six minutes - the closest and most regular they had been yet - and were getting stronger.  We started making the phone calls - to the midwives, my doula, and someone - anyone - who could come take all our kids at 7 in the morning.

Due to some miscommunication, my mother - who was the one supposed to be "on call" at that time - couldn't end up taking our kids.  We had to call my dad, who was already at work.  The midwife wanted me to come in right away, since I was GBS-positive this pregnancy, so there was no time to wait for my dad get to our house.  We had to take all the kids with us to the hospital where he would meet us to get the kids as soon as possible....even though this meant making him drive into the city during rush hour.

Tom and the kids brought me to the delivery room, then went out to walk the halls and wait for my dad (Tom didn't want to kids around to watch me in labor, since it would have been concerning to them and/or distracting to me).  My doula still hadn't arrived either.

I was getting a little concerned because - once again! - my contractions were starting to peter out.  I worried that the midwife would tell me I had come in too early, and we needed to go back home, and had just wasted everyone's time. But when she checked my dilation,   I was already 8 cm!  I guess the four days-worth of contractions really paid off!  She told me, "your bag of waters is right here.  I could break it now, and you'd have this baby."  I explained to her that I definitely did want her to break it soon (my water has never broken on its own, and I've always asked the midwives to do it when I'm close to the end and things are starting to stall out), but that I absolutely wanted to wait until my husband and my doula were there first!

Well, my doula arrived in pretty short order.  My husband was another story.  It ended up taking my dad an hour and a half to get to the hospital!  During that time, I was pretty much just chilling on a birth ball, having occasional - but not intense - contractions, and chatting with my doula and the friendly but socially-awkward nurse.

When Tom finally walked in, we were all very ready to get started.  "Alright, let's have this baby!" said my midwife.  She had me get back on the bed so she could break my water.  But - and I'm not entirely clear on the details here - the baby had changed position such that there wasn't much she could do.  The midwife could only access a little piece of the amniotic sac, and so hardly any fluid came out, and it didn't release much pressure.

My midwife said we needed to get contractions to pick up again.  She said I could try nipple stimulation again, or we could use Pitocin.  Well, Pitocin is basically my worst fear when it comes to birth (aside from a c-section), so I  agreed to try things the old-fashioned way.  Once again, it was immediately effective, and I began having strong contractions again.

After several contractions hadn't brought any progress, it was clear that the baby just didn't want to move down.  I was almost fully dilated, but the baby's head was still not fully engaged in my pelvis.  Because she was facing the wrong way, it was hard for her to move down - the geometry just didn't work out very well.

My midwife told me I'd have to push the baby down.  "Oh, but I don't feel like I have to push yet," I naively replied.  Yes, she told me, but I would have to push anyways. And while I did that, she would manually push back that last lip of cervix to try to get it over the baby's head.  Sounds fun, right?

I won't say it's the most painful labor I've experienced, but there was something quite unpleasant about those next five or six contractions.  I was asked to bring on each one myself, using nipple stimulation.  It was like I was willingly and knowingly subjecting myself to misery.....a feeling that's distinctly different from having to deal with a contraction that comes upon you on its own, a suffering that you just have to bear with.  My midwife would nod to tell me it was time to make another one happen. I would frown and whine, then just go ahead with it.  A contraction would start immediately, and then I'd have to push, even though my body didn't "want" to push.  It was strange and unpleasant.

As the nurse was setting up the room for the delivery, I asked her to bring over the mirror on a pole for me again.  I love that thing.  I've given birth to all my babies while semi-reclined on my back - which is actually a great position for me.  With the mirror at the foot of the bed, I can watch all the action as the baby is coming out, and I find it incredibly motivating.  After one of my pushes finally brought the baby down, and I finally saw her little head in the mirror, I was ready.  One big push, and she was out!

Tom may be a little embarrassed about me sharing this detail on the internet, but, well, he burst into tears as soon as he saw her...the way he's done at the birth of all our kids.  I think it's very sweet.  Meanwhile, I always just kind of lay there for a few moments in stunned silence, not sure if I can believe that it's finally over.

Flora was the most vernix-y baby I've ever seen.  Vernix is the naturally waxy/lotiony substance that protects the baby's skin in the whom.  But usually, most of it has been absorbed by the time they are full term.  She came out loaded with the stuff.  Several people in the room used, at various points, the very descriptive term "cheesy" to describe how she looked.  haha...eww.

"cheesy" baby

I will admit, I was a bit grossed out by it as I was holding her on my chest right after she was born.  At one point, I wiped my lips with my hand without thinking about it, and accidentally got a mouthful of vernix.  After that, I told the nurses I was good with them taking the baby to weigh her and clean her up!

The consensus of my midwives and my doula is that had Flora been facing the right way, I probably would have gone into labor on Thursday, when my contractions first started.  My body was trying to go into labor that whole time, but the baby just wasn't able to get low enough to help build the contractions.  It's funny, because I was thinking about it, and I'm pretty sure that all my labors have started on Thursdays.  I really think there must be an unconscious psychological reason for it....like, my body waits until the end of the week when things are lowest stress, and when it will be most convenient for Tom to miss a few days of work.

Tom showing off the baby footprints the nurse put on his arm

It amazes me how much humans depend on other humans sometimes to help them in labor.  I mean, this labor was "natural" in every way....I had no drugs or interventions.  And yet I relied so much on the knowledge and assistance of other people to help it happen.  Without my doula helping me stay relaxed and bringing me cold towels for my forehead....or without a midwife being a bit of a drill sergeant and insisting that I bring on contractions or push a baby down into the birth canal when I really didn't want to...or without her physically helping to break my water or open my cervix....what would have happened??

*****

Flora has been a very avid nurser as well as a frequent sleeper.  She's two weeks old now, but still sleeping a ton.  On the other hand, when she's awake, she's been pretty fussy.  She isn't as easy to calm down as my other babies were.  Primarily, because she really doesn't care for the pacifier.  I no longer doubt other parents who say that one of their kids doesn't take them!  I keep trying, but she's just not interested.  We're slowly figuring out what little "tricks" settle her down, but most of our tried-and-true methods from the other kids just don't work with her.  I guess she's just my little wild card.

Now that I have four kids' names to keep track of, I find myself mixing them up all the time.  I'm already acting like the stereotypical mom-with-a-big-family, calling my kids by at least two wrong names before I finally hit on the right one!

One Week In

Today is my first solo day with four kids.

I keep remembering that I have four kids now, and feeling blown away by the fact of it.  How did this happen?  It really sneaked up on me.  It seems like just yesterday that I came home from the hospital with baby Sly.  And my kids have all been born just about two years apart, which doesn't seem like a crazy pace (unlike my grandmother's, who had her eight kids in ten years!), but somehow, we've already hit four.

When we're out of the house, older parents often look at our children wistfully and tell us "it goes by so fast."  For a while, I think I was too caught up in the thick of things to really be aware of the truth of that statement, but suddenly, it's really starting to hit me.  It's all going by so fast!

Tom amazingly managed to pull off a week of paternity leave from work, and my mother-in-law was also visiting until yesterday.  So the transition to becoming a family of six was definitely smoothed out a bit.

But as for today, and having to deal with the daily tedium of caring for so many young children, I'm managing so far,

I was worried the older kids would have an especially rough day today since they're coming off a  full week of exciting visits from friends and family, and a very jumbled schedule.

Stella fell asleep at the dinner table last night.  That's what a new baby in the family + daylight savings time can do to you, I guess

This was Sly at lunch today, upset because he didn't want to eat the tuna noodle casserole that he wouldn't finish at breakfast.....that he wouldn't finish at dinner the night before.  Yes, we're those parents.

But we're making it through.  It helped that we didn't have to go anywhere this morning, and I could just jump back into our former routines.  I've been working really hard to keep my attitude in check today.  Because I know myself well enough to realize that once I let myself lose my patience with the kids once, it becomes that much easier to lose it again and again.

We "did school" today for the second time all month.  I'm not going to waste time feeling guilty about it, because, hey - I was nine months pregnant/newly postpartum for that whole time!  And what's homeschooling all about, if not the ability to be flexible and adjust things to your own family life?

Ever-pleasant Linus, peeling his clementine into the trash

A number of friends and people from church have offered to bring us meals over these next few weeks, which will be so helpful for me.  Obviously, providing meals to a new mother is useful in a material sense (i.e. there is a meal already sitting in my fridge for me, mostly prepared and ready to go), but I'm especially appreciating what it does for me mentally (i.e. the sheer freedom of not having to worry about what I'll make for dinner or whether I'll have to drag four kids out to the supermarket for something relieves so much potential stress).  Seriously - if you know anyone expecting a new baby, try to bring them a meal!

My Flora - what a doll baby!

I think I may consider easing back into more regular blogging.....I have a birth story that I owe it to Flora to write down, at any rate.  And the photos on my header and side bar are in sore need of an update!

A New Baby

I interrupt my otherwise undefined "blogging break" to bring some happy tidings!

On Monday, a new little girl joined our family - Flora Therese.  Everyone is healthy and well.  She was in the posterior position ("sunny side up"), meaning it took me some extra work to get her out.  But as always, it was worth it.

We're all in love with our sweet new baby.

The kids had been well-prepared with lots of books and discussions about how babies grow and what they are like.  They have all been so anxious to meet her.  Sly should be genuinely helpful. Stella is quite willing, but I expect she will prove to be "too" helpful.  Linus is going to have some trouble learning to share his favorite spot - Mommy's lap.

The proud big brother