My friend Mindy texted me recently, “I’m a little bitter at your podcast because now you never blog anymore!” Ha, I knowwww. But the other night I looked back at old posts and was like, oh, these are nice little snap shots into how life looked at different moments. And I haven’t blogged at all since we moved to Maryland.
So here I am, Mindy, back at it with a quick takes.
- collecting a home birth kit – I am slowly reading through the birth stories in Ina May’s Guide to Childbirth and getting pumped for labor and this home birth. But it took me a couple weeks to wrap my mind around all the stuff I have to collect for it! Luckily a lot of women have had home births in my neighborhood and I’ve been able to get a lot of stuff from them, even a hose and faucet adapter for the birth tub – who knew!
- homeschool – has become cross stitch, art, read-alouds, slowly making a calendar, and I judge the success of the day largely on how much time we spent outside. Evange will be starting first grade at a classical Catholic school, St. Jerome Academy, in the fall, and she is PUMPED. She’s already asked if she can walk to school by herself. Nature Study club, a little homeschool co-op we do every other week, will be starting up again soon and that’ll be fun.
- podcasts – Evange loves listening to podcasts during cozy time (Circle Round and Molly of Denali are current favorites) which is great until she turns the volume up way too loud on the speaker or Zelie decides to stop listening and take a nap and I don’t realize it for 2 hours and then she doesn’t fall asleep until 9pm. I’ve been enjoying my friends’ podcasts, A Growing Home and The Pilgrim Soul Podcast, and also have dabbled into a few Messy Family Project episodes about marriage and discipline. And the My Essential Birth podcast is fun because it’s two doula friends talking about different birth topics – thanks for that rec, Megan! And, of course, Laughs and Littles has been a fun, creative outlet for me! We’re coming up on a year in early May and we’ll be wrapping up Season 2 sometime before this baby comes!
- afternoon outings – It’s become a real struggle to find the motivation to do my pseudo-Peleton work outs at 33 weeks pregnant. I tell myself I walk a lot with the girls most afternoons, which is true.
- Easter and April birthdays – I’m excited for the girls’ Easter baskets! I got them bamboo toothbrushes, summer dresses from the thrift store, a stuffed animal cat sewing kit for Evange, and am making a St. Louis Martin peg doll for Zelie and a Blessed Chiara Badano doll for Chiara. And my MIL kindly contributed sticker books, crafts, and lots of candy. For Zelie’s 4th birthday coming up, I finally got her baby book made! My plan was to make them for each girl for Christmas but I didn’t get to it so now the plan is they’ll be birthday presents this year. Chatbooks was easy to use and it’s so cute!
- postpartum plans – I got my Kindle charged and Overdrive finally connected to our new library system. So I’ll be needing postpartum book and TV show recommendations soon! Hit me up. Previous reads were lots of Reese Witherspoon Book Club books and the Outlander series, and TV shows have been a Turkish soap opera that was on Netflix called Kurt Seyit ve Sura (fabulous) and Poldark and Downton Abbey. (I have access to Hulu, Amazon Prime, and PBS Masterpiece Theater, but not Netflix).
- Chiara’s skin – We went on a journey the last two months trying to get to the bottom of the red/rashy/sensitive skin around Chiara’s mouth and chin that she’s had going on since she was 7 months old. I started to think it was maybe food allergy related and the pediatrician I found here ordered blood drawn to test for that. We found out she is highly allergic to dust/mites and dog dander, and the results showed some abnormalities to peanuts, eggs, dairy, and wheat – but they were way less than the dust and dog. But for 5 weeks I cut those foods out of her diet … and it kind of sucked. I have way more empathy for food allergies now. I got a Roomba and an air purifier to tackle the dust, started washing her bedding weekly on hot with a de-mite additive, dusting/Roomba’ing her room weekly, and took the rugs and stuffed animals out of her room. So, thanks to the Roomba, our house is way cleaner than it’s ever been, and I dust more than I ever have before, but with all those changes, her face didn’t show any significant improvement. We met with an allergist, who confirmed what I suspected – she doesn’t have the food allergies, she was just born with sensitive skin. And it should get better around her face as she gets older, and we’ll just keep it clean, moisturized, finger nails cut short, keep working on the dust, and never get a dog. PHEW! So thankful. I was getting pretty sick of flax eggs in everything we baked. She’s still her happy, delightful self, and getting more and more like a full-blown two year old every day. 🙂
Glimpses of Joy 