Beauty From Chaos

I was in a hospital holding my new baby girl. I know every mother says this at every child’s birthday but I cannot believe she’s two already!

Happy Birthday Caylee Bean!!!

She has gotten quite the vocabulary and speaks in sentences lately. We’ve seen a huge improvement in her since we started only letting her have her pacifier at nights, having her mouth free has given her the ability to make conversation, especially as she’s listening to a 10 year old, a 4 year old and her 2.5 year old cousin. We’ve even managed to cut down on the amount of her screaming to get her way, we just tell her to use her words and she’ll normally ask for whatever she wants. it’s great.

She’s still a climber, and is into EVERYTHING. Some days are worse than others, on those days I can’t turn my back for a minute unless I want to turn back around to clean up a mess or pull her off of something.

Tonight we are having a little party with Eugene’s two sisters, then tomorrow morning we leave bright and early for camping at the beach (doesn’t everyone go camping during a hurricane?) Hopefully we can get everything done today that needs done.

I really want to pick some brains.

How do you prepare for teaching? Do you look over everything at night for the next days work, or do you spend a few hours on a weekend preparing for the whole week?

And how do you go about teaching multiple grades? I’m teaching kindergarten and 5th grade, with 5th I can get her started in a subject and come back, but the kindergarten requires me to be teaching/helping the entire time (which of course is only an hour and a halfish, broken into 3 sections). I just want to know how other seasoned homeschoolers of multiple kids/grades handle all this.
Or maybe I am just scared because I’ve never done this and don’t know that it will just get easier after the first few weeks.

Lexi turned four on Monday. I can’t believe I have a 4 year old!  Her party was wonderful, except for the 7 or more hours I spent making her cake (not baking time, just working time).

She planned this whole royal party, she told us she wanted princesses, princes, kings and queens and she wanted a castle and a castle cake and dancing. Oh and ice cream.   It was kinda fun to see her use her imagination and just come up with something totally on her own, so we went with it! This was the first birthday she totally picked everything (even the cake some what) Last year she picked the theme, but that was all she cared about. This year she had her ideas and wanted them. Even the ponies and unicorns, which luckily my sister in law found some stick ponies and unicorns for the kids. lol!

Here are some pictures.

Tomorrow makes 20 weeks in the pregnancy, that’s half way to full term for most people. If this pregnancy’s length is like my other two, then it’s over half way since I delivered Lexi at 34.5 weeks and Caylee at just under 37 weeks. if there is a pattern of adding 2.5 weeks then I should have this one at 39.5 weeks.

However, this one is a boy and who knows what will happen. He’s already given me more trouble than the girls.  The morning sickness was comparable, but at least with the girls I found something that helped make it go away. The acne is about the same, but he’s been giving me cramps, and there was the whole bleeding thing last month. And the low placenta they will be checking on in 10 more weeks.  Oh and don’t forget the fact that I already feel like my stomach is out as far as it should go… and yes, I’m only at 20 weeks, I have a feeling I better start bathing in lotion or something.

For the longest time I didn’t feel anxious for this pregnancy to be over, I wasn’t spending all day looking at baby stuff, or getting really excited. I figured it was because I had two other kids of my own, plus two of my sister in law’s kids here keeping me busy. But once we found out this was a boy I went crazy. I have been spending so much time on oldnavy.com and childrensplace.com and anywhere else.com that sells baby clothes. I cannot wait to dress this boy.

Monday I go in for my glucose screening, we shall see if losing 35lbs was enough to keep me away from having to check my blood sugar and watch my diet. I was off of soda and junk for so long, then shortly after I found out I was pregnant I got hooked again, even on caffeine!  The past week I’ve been trying to detox myself from the soda and caffeine, maybe next week I’ll work on the junk food.  I really don’t want to gain a million pounds, or even 40, so I know I need to start controlling my sweet tooth!!

It’s getting kinda late for this pregnant woman, especially since we have to get up early tomorrow and we have a busy day… so to bed I go!

We’ve lived here for 5 months now and still haven’t found a church, in fact, most Sunday’s we’ve been driving over an hour one way to get to a church that’s actually preaching the truth.  Every once and awhile we decide to try out a local church instead of making the long drive. Today was one of those days.

We did something I’ve never done before in my life. We got up, got the kids out of their children’s church/nursery and left before the pastor even got on the stage.

Why? Because they were tickling the ears of everyone in there and we couldn’t stand it. The man on stage was talking about a series the pastor is doing on Wednesday nights about being blessed and how God wants to bless you. Ok, Yes, God does want His children blessed. But he went on about how God wants His children to have things in this world and have money and have this and have that.

Right about there is where my husband and I looked at each other with that look. You know, the one that says “if this goes on, we’ll have to leave…” unfortunately it went on and on and on.  He even went as far as to say that if you rejoice when someone around you is blessed you put yourself one step closer to being blessed yourself. He was talking all about financial blessings mind you, not just the blessings of being alive, or having joy or having Christ as your savior.

We left somewhere in there. And this is why….

Jesus himself had no place to call home, no pillow to lay His head on. All of his disciples were told to leave their families and posessions and follow him. Jesus said it is easier for a camel to be put through the eye of a needle than a rich man to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.  When people asked Jesus what they must do to enter He told them sell all you own and follow me.

So tell me, If Jesus and his disciples lived like that, why would He want us to just have stuff we don’t deserve?

There are very few things on our list of stuff for this baby. The majority of the things we need are boy stuff- clothes, blankets, burp clothes. stuff like that.

The only two big things we needed/wanted was a certain swing and a certain bathing seat. I planned on looking used, the seat I couldn’t find used anywhere, but it is only $15 new so that didn’t bother me. The swing was about $75 used.

I mentioned this to my friend as we were talking about consignment sale shopping. She mentioned that the people who sold her their new house left a swing in the basement that she’d be happy to give us. Imagine my surprise when I go down there and it’s the EXACT one I wanted!!

Then today while looking at craigslist, I found the bath seat for $5!! God is so awesome. We’ve also been given some boy clothes from a few different people.  I’m hoping to find the last few non diaper things I need at a consignment sale coming up in a few weeks. I wouldn’t be surprised if God just happens to put the cloth diaper stuff I need there too!!

It didn’t really take me all day to do these few small areas. I was done by 1, and included in the time between posting the before pictures and being done was lunch for me and 4 kids, 3 diaper changes, 3 loads of laundry being handled (some put in the dryer, some folded some put in the washer) and the usual stuff. I also managed to sweep, mop and vacuum all floors and clear off clutter from two other areas that I didn’t post pictures of (the top of the microwave and part of the counter.)

Anyway, here’s my proof that i did the work…. The only thing I didn’t get done was my husband’s desk, he was working the whole time and told me not to touch his stuff. lol. I cleared off the clutter that was on the very top, it was mostly stuff that didn’t belong in the office anyway.  I still have a small stack of papers on my desk,  they are the ultra sound pictures from yesterday and a list of stuff we need to get next time we go to the store.  Also, i had to put the time out stool on the top of the fridge because the kids keep dragging it places and getting into stuff they’re not allowed to.

So Kacie suggested I take pictures of areas in my house I wanted to clean/organize so that I’d be more motivated to actually take care of those problem spots instead of ignoring them day after day.

So here ya go world. The messiest spots in my house (right now)

• the top of the fridge- it has become the catch all for anything we don’t want the kids to get into or things that have been taken away from them.
• My desk- another catch all. For any bills, coupons, and just about anything else.
• The top of our rolling cart- Here’s where anything that is supposed to be IN the cart gets piled for some reason it’s just too hard to open a drawer and put the stuff away.
• My husband’s desk- again, another place for just about EVERYTHING.  Pretty much the entire office in general is a problem area. It will be fixed.

Time to get busy.

We had the Ultra sound today to tell us the gender of the baby. I wont keep you guessing because most of you already saw my post on facebook and know that well, it’s a boy!  He would no cooperate with the ultra sound tech though, every time they tried to see his face he’d turn or stretch way out and look way back. We saw him very clearly jumping just like in the last ultra sound. We got three clear pictures of his boy parts, so we are certain he’s a boy. His hands were up by his face the whole time and he kept opening and closing his mouth,  they were calling him a chatter box.  The only other good shot we got was this:

They did have a little concern that the placenta is lower than it should be, so I go back around 30 weeks for another ultrasound to make sure it goes up.

I am very excited to have a boy to shop for! I’m sick of girl clothes and sick of the same girl clothes. There is a consignment sale at the beginning of next month where I am putting 95% of my girl clothes. I’m keeping a few sentimental outfits and their blankets of course. Other than that- bye bye pink!!!

You may think that’s unwise of us since more than likely we’ll have more kids, but our issue is with storage. We have no storage space here. The girls room and the office have very small closets, their closet is full of a dresser and their clothes as well as some other baby items, the office closet is where we’ve kept the clothes not in use. We have 6 totes of them. 2 of them we can get rid of now that we are having a boy which allows for enough space above the other 4 totes to actually hang baby clothes. 1 tote has the few girl items I’m keeping as well as some gender neutral clothes and burp cloths and blankets, 1 tote is 3T clothes waiting for Caylee to grow into, 1 tote is 4T fall stuff, and the other tote is 2T fall stuff. As Caylee outgrows her clothes we will more than likely get ride of all of them, maybe keeping one or two outfit here or there.

The storage issue is the main reason we are choosing to get rid of all the girl stuff. Yes, being sick of looking at them helps. When we made a list of the pros and cons of keeping them vs getting rid of them, getting rid of them won. After all, it would be about 3 more years before we’d need them again, and by then I’m sure we can save up $50 to get some new clothes.

Now comes the hard part- choosing a name!

I read a great post this morning about striving to be a perfect mom and it really hit home. Not too long ago that was me losing control, screaming, longing to just be alone for a few days. no kids. I couldn’t handle them, they were too much. They didn’t listen, in fact they did the opposite of what I said. Lexi screamed at me, threw temper tantrums if she didn’t get her way. My life was miserable because I couldn’t make my kids obey. we went on vacation and I was embarrassed at my children’s behavior, so embarrassed I cried when I left my friend’s house because I felt like I had completely failed as a mom.

It wasn’t until two weeks ago that it honestly hit me… I CAN’T DO IT. That’s what God wanted me to realize. Just like my friend Beth says in her post, we can’t be a perfect mother by our own power, even if we somehow could achieve this, how would it glorify Him?

Although I didn’t stop reading my Bible I wasn’t applying anything. Like someone wanting to lose weight can read all the success stories they want but until they diet and exercise nothing is going to change! As Christians we do the same thing, we read a chapter of our Bible a day and walk away thinking that we’re going to become great Christians, perfect parents, spouses and friends all because we read a verse. It’s not going to happen that way. You have to actually choose to starve the flesh and feed the spirit, you have to choose to put on the armor of Christ, you have to choose to show the fruit of the spirit not the vices of the world. I was choosing the opposite of what I was reading.

What will you choose today? Today is a lot to think about, so maybe we should break it down a bit. What will you choose when your child disobeys?  What will you choose when the kids are fighting? What will it be, the fruit of the spirit or the fruit of the flesh?