This Is Me

I’m stealing a couple questions from the lovely Diane Comer at He Speaks In The Silence (one of my favorite blogs) because I thought they were good ones. She inspires me SO much and doesn’t even know I exist. I know there are many other ladies and mommas who feel the exact same way.

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Where I would live if I could live anywhere in the world: Portland, Oregon

What I’m reading right now: The Historian. Yes, still

What I’m dreaming of doing someday: Starting a business, self publishing my book, being a CrossFit coach. It TOTALLY depends on the day!

What I’m learning:  How to not beat myself up.. I don’t get up at a certain time, my son my or may not be dressed by noon. I check Instagram way too often. And sometimes – like today – I have ZERO motivation to do anything on my to-do list until 6 pm. Ugh.

What haunts me: the amount of time I am capable of wasting on a daily basis.

What I’m enjoying: being a mom of a singleton. However, my son is SO social. There is nothing he likes more than being with other people, babies specifically. I feel like he might need more interaction than I am giving him!

Photo by Leslie Fairman Photography

How We Do It: Family Worship

DON’T LOSE FOR WINNING

It may strike some of you as comical that I even attempt to make family worship a habit in our home. (“Didn’t she just curse in her last blog post?!”) But, believe it or not, I do! I’ve been tossing the idea around for a while now and we have finally settled on a basic set up, at least for now.

If you’ve known me for any length of time, or followed my blog, you probably know that flexibility is a strength of mine and consistency is most certainly not. I think that even attempting to have a regular (or irregular) time for family worship glorifies God, so even if we only average one or two days a week until Dillinger graduates, that’s still over 1,300 occasions!

So my goal is to hit four days a week. I feel like that is plenty and was encouraged when Andy Stanley said that’s about how often they have prayer together at night as a family. There is nothing I want to avoid more than family worship being a miserable, mandatory religious event! Because of this, I prioritize being flexible. Days, times, content – all of it is up for debate.

This article by our pastor is my absolute favorite blog post on the topic of family worship. It’s where I have taken a lot of my queues as I have been trying to get this thing off the ground and make it a normal, if not regular, occurrence! I think the first point he makes is really important. KEEP IT SHORT! Again, creating a miserable, mandatory religious event is the quickest way to turn family worship into family warfare. There are times where as a parent, you lose even if you win. My advice would be to walk this line very carefully. I think that unless conversation goes long organically, even 30 minutes is really pushing it, even for high schoolers.

READY SET GO

After much internal arguing, I get up and make breakfast for Dillinger and myself and sometimes my husband. (Oops. Maybe I should work on husband’s breakfast as an act of service and worship?) Immediately after eating we start by learning the kids New City Catechism. This is incredibly important to me. So many children grow up attending church and memorizing verses but don’t know anything about Biblical doctrine. Dillinger is too young to repeat it, but I ask the question twice and then give the kids’ answer. The colored text is the portion selected for younger children.

After that, I dust the eggs off of Dillinger into the trash and we read a chapter of the Jesus Storybook Bible. The majority of children’s Bibles are essentially tales in moralism (“Be brave like Daniel”, “Work hard like Joseph”, “Follow God like Abraham”) but our performance is not the heart of the Gospel. So I was pretty darn picky about the Bible we were going to be reading for the next few years!

Finally we pray for sanctification and that the Lord would use the day to make us more like Jesus. Then I turn on some hymns and we rock out while Dillinger tears the house apart and I do the dishes and attempt to overtake him in his mess making.

Then Dillinger has “quiet time” in his room while mom takes a shower and then we are officially ready to start our day!

Toddler Tantrums

I’m so thankful that the Lord gave us a fairly calm and easy going little boy. Recently I came to realize that I had no clue what I was doing when Dillinger would get frustrated and throw a fit. Stefan Molyneux described what I was experiencing as showing up in a suit of armor to run the New York City Marathon and asking “Ok, where’s the finish line?” Uh, definitely a little late to win but you can still get there if you make some adjustments.

I thought this article offered a lot of good insight toddler tantrums. In my tiny amount of experience, reading your child’s signs (“I’m tired”, “I’m hungry”, “I’m overwhelmed”) really help in redirecting tantrums and even avoiding them all together. Lately Dillinger has been getting upset because his tower of blocks won’t go as high as he would like or falls over. It’s pretty cute actually, minus the screaming. I know he doesn’t understand but I still try to communicate to him that I know he is upset and offer solutions like, “Try this block instead?” It seems to be working so far.

Best of luck to all my fellow parents and caregivers out there. We truly have the most important job in the world! :)

Short List of Pacific Northwest-Inspired Baby Names

We wanted to go for an Americana theme with our children’s names. Originally we wanted to go the Latin route but our last name ends with S and Lucius Glass is a little over the top. ;) Americana names are a little rough because we have so much history readily available and associations are still pretty strong. But history, though ugly, is the father of us all. I’m a strong believer that names can and should be redeemed.

Here are few names I found in a short search that have easy PWN ties.

-Astoria

-Aberdeen

-Asa

-West (duh!)

-Gray

-Lovejoy

-Rose

-Emerald

-Juniper

-Tabor

-Forest

-Fremont

-Lewis

-Clark (again, duh!)

-Reed

-Cascade

-Pacifica

-Ashland

-Meriwether

A few others that go on the Americana list though not necessarily limited to PNW include

-Holliday

-Oakley

-Fairhaven

-Sequoia

-Sierra

-Wilder

-Wyoming

Picture found here.

This Isn’t A War

I guess I have to go there.

I think the term “mommy wars” is completely absurd. I understand why people use it. Some moms talk like they would die for their causes.  But I hope I’m not the only mother or person else finds it slightly ridiculous and more than a bit insulting. I have opinions. Strong opinions that are rooted in my value system. I am not dropping bombs (figurative or literal) on moms who disagree with me and leaving their children orphans. I will suffer a fair amount of pain for some issues. (Hello, drug free child birth!) But not from you! Other issues I won’t suffer a paper cut for.

Yes, I feel that unless you are physically unable, you should breastfeed. I also think babies should be respected despite the fact that they aren’t born yet. They have shouldn’t be subjected to unnecessary drugs so that I can avoid a few hours of pain. There are exceptions to all these things. I don’t feel strongly one way or the other about vaccinations or the GMO/organic debate, issues for which some moms might take a bullet. Other moms refuse to post pictures of their kids online. Ok, great. That’s awesome that you respect your child so much! For us, that’s just not reality.

The point is, ALL of these things are opinions. You don’t like what I think? Who cares? I’ve done my research. You’ve done yours. Why do we have to start taking everyone else’s decisions to do things differently like it’s a personal attack? Why do we have to attack people who choose do things differently?

Here’s the deal. I’m not going to start a war. I’m not participating in war. I often make a racket; it’s just my personality to want to make a lot of noise. I want you to hear me. Just like you want me to hear you. I won’t necessarily respect your opinions – I’m just gonna be honest about that. But unless it’s my personal facebook page or blog, I’m not running around telling you how to give birth, what to feed your kid or when they can get shots.

My opinion is just that – mine. It should not make you insecure.

You should feel just as strongly that your planned induction and formula are the right choice for your baby as I feel that my intervention-free birth and breastmilk are for mine. Don’t make choices that you can’t support. If my options were formula or my son wasting away, I’d choose formula too!

Disagree with me? Cool. We can still be friends! I’m not sending anyone home in a casket. So don’t act like I’m a part of your downfall or a part of your war. Don’t imply that because I believe differently that I’m intentionally attacking your choices. There are no uniforms or tanks at my house. There shouldn’t be any at yours. Moms who drink soy milk and babies who were born via c-section are welcome at our house every day of the week!

(Picture found here.)

Back To Work

N is back to work and it’s kind of annoying!! :) I loved having the last 4 weeks to just hang out with him and Dillinger. No jobs to set alarms for every morning, no real agenda during the day. Someone to play with D while I shower! (BEST.)

But praise The Lord for gainful employment. Did you know the Bible is the only holy book that speaks highly of hard work? I think that is amazing. I’m thankful for a husband who wants to work and provides for his family.

Dillinger and I walked to the park, and he got to swing for the first time! He seemed like he enjoyed it, too. He KO’d on the walk back, which was nice too. He’s been taking long naps lately which led me to realize – mom fail – that he’s probably spent a ton of his life this far being cranky because he needed more sleep. Oops. Sorry, Bug! I’ll try to get your naps in from now on :) We also practiced sitting!

Health Insurance Questions

It looks like it will be around August before we have health insurance coverage through work again, and then only for 4 months until the new healthcare mandates kick in, when we might be on our own yet again. I’ve had coverage through work and then through N’s employer when I left the labor force. So I figured I should look into it now and get pricing.

Does anyone know anything about buying family health insurance out of pocket? I don’t know the first thing about it! Was hoping someone might be able to share their experience in purchasing out of pocket for themselves or their families before I dive in! :)

Thanks in advance. Hope everyone is having a great Tuesday!

Status Update

We are back in Portland for the time being. Happy news of the moment – we sort of have more work than we know what to do with! No longer unemployed which is a huge (HUGE) blessing!

New York is up in the air for the time being. It’s solid but we aren’t sure when the position is actually going to have a set start date. So for the meantime, we hustle. Kinda. Having a six month old is basically the same as hustling, right?!

Anyway, things are looking up for us. I am grateful. We are excited to be in Portland to spend time with family and friends, to save money and work and be in community. God is good.

Little Things

I haven’t discussed this much around here but Dillinger is not the best sleeper. Or eater. To say the least.

Originally, I thought I was going to use some form of cry it out/Baby Wise but after a friend persuaded me to do some research, I realized the negatives outweighed the positives for me. So I bought a little sleeper/bassinet and prepared to have Dillinger sleep right next to our bed. Biggest waste of $30 EVER, kid was in it for maybe an hour total over the first three weeks and I gave up.

Cosleeping was the only way I got any sleep without leaving Dillinger to work himself into hysteria. Any time he slept elsewhere, I was up 30 times a night (not exaggerating) trying to get him to go back to sleep. I realize that not every sleeping situation works for every family but I’m convinced whoever invented nurseries was just playing a cruel joke. At least with Dillinger in bed with me, I only had to wake up once every hour or two, I could feed him on the spot and we could both drift off to sleep again.

I actually got to the point where I enjoyed feeding Dillinger but he continued to eat every other hour or more through four months. I essentially wrote off anyone who said their baby slept most of the night or ate every four hours as a liar. The day he hit four months, I started giving him bites of sweet potato. The every-two-hours feedings were just too much! In retrospect I would have just toughed it out but after four straight months of feedings every two hours, I was a bit overwhelmed.

Anyway, he seemed to make this week. He’s only waking up once at night to eat and sometimes once early in the morning. Such an improvement from just a week ago. I don’t even expect it to last but four nights of good sleep after six months feels pretty great. I will take what I can get!

Hot Sisters

Two of my sisters and one of my extra-familial faves gave me a few hours today. Dillinger had fun because he had someone to give him their undivided attention and or iphone. Thanks for the fun times! Other sister needs to get in on this next time!

I still have NO CLUE how to edit. As you can seen. :)

Caught Dillinger and Anna in the background.

Yeah, it was really windy on the river.

Faces. :)