Weird Pregnancy Fantasies!

Do you ever dream about some aspect of pregnancy or childbirth? Some people fantasize about a painless birth experience or dream about a homebirth after a hospital birth or wish for a faster birth.

Me? I fantasize about a pregnancy and birth like this one (which happened a few minutes away from us) - a pregnancy in which I felt so normal and non-pregnant that I wouldn't even know I was pregnant.

"A Gilbert woman, who thought she was having severe menstrual cramps, ended up delivering a baby Wednesday morning in the emergency room of Banner Gateway Medical Center.

“I left home at 9:15 and she was born at 9:59,” said Janae Colvard.

Colvard talked exclusively with ABC15 from her hospital bed on Thursday night and insisted she had no idea she was pregnant.

“I gained some weight, but not to where I thought I was pregnant,” she said. “I didn’t feel [the baby] move. I had my normal cycle.”

Colvard said her friend drove her to the hospital after the abdominal pain became too intense.

“I kept feeling like I needed to use the restroom, on top of this pressure and I happen to reach down all of a sudden … and there was a head,” she said."

Can you imagine?

Similarly - a woman in one of my Facebook groups recently posted, "I think I'm pregnant, because I have a linea nigra and I feel the baby move."

Oh, goodness - that sounds wonderful.

Not that I want to miss out on pregnancy - I love being pregnant and savor every moment of it - but I would love to feel that well during pregnancy. Not the debilitating nausea around the clock. Not the high dosages of Zofran and Unisom to keep even basic functionality. Not the throwing up before I can even get a positive pregnancy test. Not the postpartum residual nausea that lasts 1-2 years.

But I can dream!

What are your pregnancy and birth dreams?

However they get here, they're CUTE! 

You Need This Recipe! - Make-Ahead Coffee Cake

I received this wonderful recipe six years ago from an amazing woman and Christian sister, Kay. Her coffee cake is easy to make, delicious, and works beautifully for busy mornings. For the past three or four years, we have served it annually on Christmas morning, and we plan to continue the tradition. Everyone loves it! I have also made a gluten-free version with Pamela's Bread and Baking mix which always turns out splendidly.

Kay's husband is now, after her death, remarried to a delightful woman who is also one of my favorite people (he has the best choice in wives!), and we think of their wonderful family every time we make this recipe. Enjoy!

~ Kay's Make-Ahead Christmas Coffee Cake ~ 2 c. flour 1 c. sugar 1/2 c. brown sugar 1 tsp. baking soda 1 tsp. baking powder 1/2 tsp. salt 1 c, buttermilk 2/3 c. vegetable oil 2 eggs, beaten Topping: 1/3 - 1/2 cup sugar 1/2 cup chopped pecans (opt.) 1 tsp. cinnamon 1/2 tsp. nutmeg Mix all coffee cake ingredients together and put in greased 9x13 baking pan**. Sprinkle with topping and refrigerate overnight. Bake at 350 degrees for 30-40 minutes (more like an hour). After baking, drizzle with a frosting glaze made by mixing powdered sugar, milk, butter, and vanilla together to taste.

Upcoming Hyperemesis Event!

Attention, local HG mamas! An acquaintance of mine is putting together a hyperemesis gravidarum survivors' picnic and potluck event - please feel free to join us! Here is the link to the Facebook invitation, and here is the information

Sunday, February 24th, 2013
3:00 p.m.
Tumbleweed Park in Chandler

Bring a potluck dish to share, and come hang out and meet local HG mothers!

Homemade Tomato Sauce With No Peeling or Seeding!

Lately, I have been blessed with many, many tomatoes - far more than we could eat fresh. But throw them away? NEVER!  However, I do not have the time or mental stamina to sit around peeling and seeding tomatoes for hours upon end in order to make traditional recipes of tomato sauce.

The solution? Skip the peeling and seeding, of course! I found this great recipe and followed it - that plus another one that I can no longer find. Check out the above link for the awesome pictures and more detailed directions. My one change was to cook down the sauce so that it more closely resembled storebought canned sauce.

The result? Wonderful, super-easy sauce that has no unknown ingredients and no BPA from can linings!

This sauce was made with plum tomatoes, and we used it last night on Eggplant Parmesan. Yum! 

Easy, No-Peel, No-Seed Tomato Sauce

Ingredients:

Tomatoes! Lots of them!

Optional ingredients: Olive oil, salt, onion.

Directions:

Wash tomatoes well, core. Halve or quarter if you want to. Dump in a pot with some water and salt (opt.), and cook on low to medium for as long as you want, until your desired level of thickness is reached - once they are cooked, crack or remove the lid to let the sauce reduce. I cook mine for 24-36 hours. (Make sure to put on low for overnight!) Blend with a blender or immersion blender, and watch those skins disappear! Woo hoo! Cool and freeze.

* If desired, add olive oil and onion at the beginning. You can also saute the onion in the olive oil before adding the tomatoes in the beginning stages. Spices such as basil are also an option.

* You can also do this in a crockpot - turn the lid sideways (on an oval crockpot) when the time comes to reduce.

Enjoy!

Five Ways to Make Christmas Awesome!

Are you surprised by the title? Yes, Christmas is over a month past... but here at our place, the tree and all the decorations are still up, I'm still playing Lawrence Welk CDs, and Christmas is still very much an ongoing reality! Not that that's anything new... our family once left our tree up till April. We don't plan to surpass that record this year. But having all the decorations still up has led me to ponder this past Christmas season to see what I can learn from it.

Cinnamon Ornaments! 

We really had an awesome Christmas season. It looked bad from the outside, because we spent all of November and December dealing with rolling illnesses - one or more of us would still be sick from the last illness when the next one moved in. We had to miss church for almost two months straight, and we had to cancel almost all of our Christmas season engagements (parties, concerts, etc.).

But despite all of that, we had a blast!

Our Advent Wreath!

 Because I had purposed to use Christmas as an educational tool, I did a TON of planning for crafts and activities, and we had a wonderful time with all of that. We decorated the house, played music continually, and did lots of crafts.

Elf on the Shelf, with a new book each day! 

We were able to be together (all the more so during this period of unemployment for DH), and we were able to learn so many wonderful things and build so many family memories.

Lepkuchen Day 2012!

It was only a few years ago that the extent of my Christmas season observations consisted of, "Come on, hon! We're late for Christmas Eve service and we forgot to get out our tree! Hurry!" True story. Having children and homeschooling them has been such a wonderful way for God to work in my life - Christmas decorating included!

Snow ice cream! 

We had a wonderful time, and I've learned so much that I hope to carry into next year.

Christmas Tree decorations, courtesy of The Happy Home Fairy. 

 Looking back on this Christmas season, here are a few things that I have learned about how I can work to make Christmas even better:

Crafts and Activities Need to be Planned for Early in the Month! 

Crafts and activities in early December = fun! Crafts and activities in late December, with family visiting and the schedule ramped up with cooking, cleaning, and gifty-stuff = a nightmare. This is one of the reasons that my idea of doing a "birthday cake for baby Jesus" has never worked out - I always plan it for too late in the month. I read of moms who make this a Christmas morning activity - frankly, either they are insane or have achieved parenting perfection, because the one time I tried that it was an utter disaster. "Stop looking at your presents and come over here RIGHT NOW to make this birthday cake! And you'd better have FUN doing it, buddy!" Nope. Never again. Sometime around December 1st would be ideal.

Shredded Wheat Christmas ornaments - these things are awesome! 

I Need to Let Go of Non-Essentials....

This year, I had a very short time slot to wrap presents (especially considering that I was wrapping presents for the entire family). When it came around, I grabbed my supplies and the wee Chublet, and dove into the bathroom for a frenzied hour and a half of gift-wrapping.

And what did I find myself stressing over? Ribbon! I did not have time to do "proper" ribbon around each and every (or any) package, but I was beating myself up about it - real presents have real ribbon on them or they don't count!

Thankfully, I came to my senses. The ultimate truth = Ribbon does not matter. No one will notice, and trying to keep up with my childhood standards will only stress me out for no good purpose. So I started slapping on ready-made bows with vigor, and released that self-imposed expectation to the winds. Ribbon may never again appear at our house.

When it's unnecessary expectations vs. our family happiness or personal peace, the former has to go to the wall. And quickly, lest we get caught up in the dreaded Merry Christmas Madness.

... But Keep Up With the Important Things!

While letting go of non-essentials is important, I find that there are some traditions that I (or our children) especially cherish, and those are worth fighting for! 

For our eldest, those things are our advent calendar, our Elf on the Shelf, driving to see lights, and similar things. 

For myself, the especially-treasured things include mailing Christmas cards, celebrating Lepkuchen Day and making decorated sugar cookies, having traditional Christmas foods (or at least cooking them!), Christmas Eve service, and going out to look at Christmas lights. 

I also especially love involving our neighbors in our celebrations. My dream is to have neighbors who have the same amount of intimacy and friendship that I experienced in my childhood neighborhood. Though I am too miserably introverted to do this well or quickly, I work toward that goal steadily, which includes our annual open house for our neighbors (and friends!), and handing out Christmas cookies and cards (this year we gave cards and cookies to our entire neighborhood, rather than just our adjoining neighbors). 

Those things are worth the work! 

Santa Lucia Bread! 

Gift Stuff Needs to Happen Early

I'm about to disclose a dirty little secret - are you ready? Here it is: We don't usually buy our children Christmas gifts. (*Gasp!*) Or rather, not many gifts. They may get one present from us on Christmas, but that's about it. The reason? Simply that because our children are the only grandchildren (and nephews) on both sides of the family, they are absolutely inundated with gifts on Christmas and birthdays. Add to that the fact that we are usually strapped for cash and that I do not enjoy shopping, it has never made sense to spend money that we don't have doing something we don't enjoy to add gifts to the pile that the kids don't need.

(*Feel free to send venomous emails about how we are ruthless child-abusers.*)

This year, however, multiple life circumstances brought around a curious set of circumstances - every set of extended family gave us money instead of gifts, and said, "Because of such-and-such, we can't do the shopping this year - would you do it for us?"

And so, behold! - My first experience with major Christmas shopping.

May I say that I hope it goes back to normal  next year? My goodness! Keeping track of orders, making orders, trying to avoid imbalances in gift-buying - it was exhausting! And because I waited far too late to do it all, it was crazy. (Though I must credit The Vision Forum with coming to our rescue, as almost all of our gifts came from there - highly recommended!)

The next time I have to do major gift-buying, I really need to do it earlier - and even more so with wrapping (though one presupposes the other!).

Our family's first snowman, all four inches of him! 

The More Children, the Fewer Plans

I need to be realistic and realize that the more children we have, the fewer things that I can plan (at least until the children get older). Several times this season I looked around and saw catastrophic messes, piles of dishes, three cranky and needing-to-eat children, and thought... "And I'm supposed to be making Christmas cookies? You've got to be kidding!" And frankly, that's just the truth. Life needs to slow down. We can't attend every function, do every craft, and make every cookie. I want to do Christmas well, but that means paring down activities to what we can do while maintaining family unity and cheerfulness. Anything more is too much for this season of life.

I am very much looking forward to next year's Christmas season, though this year's will be hard to beat. And I might even take down the tree before it's time to put it up again! (No promises.)

I'd love to hear about your lessons that you've learned for doing Christmas with kidlets!

Why Unemployment Seriously Rocks!

As I write this, DH has been without a job for three and a half months - far longer than we anticipated (especially considering that this layoff truly took us by surprise). It's been a long three months!

In many ways, it's been a rocky road. Firstly, the beginning of the job hunt was confused by the "should we look for a job, or strike out something on our own?" question - each side hijacking the other as DH considered possibilities. Secondly, there was the business that "hired" him - gave him the verbal promise of a job and said that they "just needed a week or two to work out salary and start date" - and then quietly faded into the distance (we haven't heard from them in two months). We finally realized the truth, but not before a good long stretch of time had been wasted. Then there's been the realization that our savings is quickly dwindling while possibility after possibility is exhausted.

But in many ways, unemployment has been wonderful. We haven't gone through a period of unemployment for more than five years, back when we only had one baby, so this was a completely different experience, and we actually had a ton of fun. Here are some of the ways in which unemployment has rocked for our family!

Keeping the Family Together

Let's face it - having fathers gone for a majority of the day is NOT the ideal situation for human families and human children. It's not natural or healthy for children to miss out on their daddies for so much of their lives. Unfortunately, that's just the way our society is currently oriented, and almost all of us live in this way - even those of us who make the commitment to have mommy at home. So this dedicated time of having the family together 24/7 for a quarter-year has been absolutely wonderful. The boys have thrived with having more daddy-time, and I love having our family completely together, rather than mom+kids and daddy-at-work.

Not to say that it hasn't had its challenges! We've had to adjust to a whole new way of living (and will have to adjust back), and it's taken some getting used to - especially with the need to fit lessons into the schedule. But it's been worth the work.

Although DH is most likely soon to be heading back into the corporate world, this time of being together has given us a vision for what we'd like our family to look like eventually (i.e. having dad at home more often), and I hope that that vision will transfer into future realities.

TIME

The past six months has been an absolutely amazing time for our family. Starting last July, God began doing some serious housecleaning in our family life. Some of the changes are things that I have been praying for for years; some took me completely off-guard (in a good way!). Our family has completely changed in so many ways, practically and spiritually. While this has been really good for us, it's also been a bit unsettling as we adjust to so many new changes in our family. Unemployment has blessed our family greatly in giving DH so much more time to be together to discuss things and hash through topics conversationally, and time to be together to adjust to new directions for our family. Awesome stuff.

Money-Money-Money

Thankfully, our savings has tided us over this time (for which we praise the Lord!), but this period of not having an income has blessed us greatly in helping us to tighten up loose areas in our finances. Though neither of us is wild with money, having a steady income for the past five years has allowed both of us to slip into habits of purchasing unnecessary indulgences (cooking ingredients, books, fast food, etc.). Having a sense of "we only have THIS amount of money before it is GONE" has been really good for us. We've nixed book buying and fast food purchases, have cut all unnecessary spending, and made some cuts that were good for us both financially and spiritually (goodbye, DirecTV!!).

For me, it has also given me a wonderful impetus to do all those grocery-bill cuts that I've been meaning to get around to for years. I've started visiting our local discount store for some groceries, started getting into Azure Standard, and have begun using our local throw-away produce market - all things that I've needed to do for years but have procrastinated on because the matter wasn't urgent. Now that the urgency of the situation has forced those reforms, I'm happy to be in new habits which will hopefully persist past the period of unemployment!

As I write, DH is beginning the process of signing papers for a job which will begin this Wednesday. It will definitely be nice to have a source of income again, and not to have to worry about the upcoming deadline of "What do we do when we have no more money?"

And yet... it is with definite sadness that I see this period of our lives come to a close. Despite the worry, it has been an unforgettably wonderful time, and I will miss it. Hopefully the good effects will last, and the vision for the future will bear fruit over coming years.

Unemployment has been a wonderful time!

How about you, dear readers? Any fond memories of times out-of-work?

Blurry, but cute - the littlest one with his daddy! 

Roe v. Wade: Observing the 40-Year Anniversary

Fifty-five million.

That's a lot, isn't it? It's more than the human mind can fathom. But it's the number of babies who have died in American abortion clinics since Roe v. Wade declared open season on our precious and innocent wee ones.

Observing the 40-year anniversary of Roe v. Wade is, for me, a day of mourning. Mourning for the babes whose lives have ended in fear and pain, in a manner that is truly unspeakable in nature and whose precious bodies have ended in the shameful grave of medical waste buckets.

"And the Lord said, “What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood is crying to me from the ground." (Gen.4)

Currently, we sacrifice an average of 22% of our babies to our convenience. Babies who would inconvenience us. Babies who are not "perfect." Babies who do not fit our lifestyle.

"Rescue those who are being taken away to death; hold back those who are stumbling to the slaughter. If you say, “Behold, we did not know this,” does not he who weighs the heart perceive it? Does not he who keeps watch over your soul know it, and will he not repay man according to his work?" (Prov. 24)

Abortion is truly the tragedy of our age, and I mourn greatly for all of the babies whose sweet lives have been cut short.

"For you formed my inward parts; you knitted me together in my mother's womb. I praise you, for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.... My frame was not hidden from you, when I was being made in secret, intricately woven in the depths of the earth. Your eyes saw my unformed substance; in your book were written, every one of them, the days that were formed for me, when as yet there was none of them." (Ps. 139)

All of us bear responsibility for this travesty of human rights and human dignity. And we within the Christian church bear a great responsibility as well. We have often acted with passivity, not devoting the time and resources necessary to combat this evil. And even worse, we often harbor attitudes and ethical philosophies which, though not actively supporting abortion, have led to society's abortion mindset.

"As the church, we can examine our own posture toward children. So often we condemn women for aborting their babies when we hold the exact same posture toward children that leads to abortion. Our excuse is that, “We would never do that!” But if we are looking at children as a burden rather than a blessing maybe we are part of the problem." ("Bloody Hands" by Heather at "A Mother's Calling")

For those of you ladies out there who consider abortion a fundamental human right, please consider whether or not you want the slaughter of our most innocent and defenseless to be something you set your heart on.

"Keep your heart with all vigilance, for from it flow the springs of life." (Prov. 4)

Dear friends, our sweet babies deserve better than this.  

(*While I welcome calm discussion and honest questions, I immediately delete all combative or hurtful comments. Please keep the conversation polite and based in the desire for loving communication, not the desire to hurt others or start a fight.)