Beat it back!!! Beat it back!!!!!

The laundry monster dropped 2 more loads of clean crap on my couch. Ugh. As if today wasn't fun enough, a SNAFU from our insurance company leaving us driving illegally.....It's being resolved by switching to another company!! This was the last FU!! Along with a few other issues that totally sucked up my morning in to waiting around and driving around, getting VERY little accomplished.

My deadline of 8pm on Saturday to get this stuff all folded and put away is rushing forward like a freight train and some how, my clean kitchen, and dining area is messy again!! So, I NEED to do that (yes, I do) and I NEED to clean the kids bathroom..but oh yeah....I forgot to mention my spray bottle the other day. You see, I prefer to use my own cleaners, especially in my small, difficult to vent bathrooms....And I was mid-bathtub-scrub when my spray bottle decided to shit parts. It was great. I haven't yet been to the store for ANYTHING much less a bottle replacement.

I am trying to eat something before Insurance Man calls me back to give me the quotes and then take my money. I have a strong feeling that when I pull my leftovers out of the toaster oven, my phone will ring. Oh, it went *ding*...yes, my toaster oven goes *ding!*

Make that, my slightly crispy, leftovers....and the phone didn't ring........yet. Of course it's BLAZING hot and a bite or two to calm the noises in my stomach would just lead to a lovely tongue scalding, and a string of explicatives.

So....while I wait on my food to cool to edible temperatures, I will continue to shoot myself in the foot by moving laundry and collecting laundry from around the house. Then HOPEFULLY I'll eat. Do something with the dishes in the dishwasher and the sink. Sweep the floor, send the kids outside with a snack, clean up the table, start dinner, get the kids clean, and ready for bed, find everything for the LAST GAME OF THE SEASON!!!, and then put the kids to bed, sit down with my bottle'o'Stoli and fold laundry. (Don't worry, I'm a light weight, I'll likely mix 2 shots in something fruity or bubbly (soda) and sip it over the course of 3 hours while mindlessly staring at the tube and folding things)

Well, here's to hoping you're all having a lovely Friday, and have a great weekend!!

SEVEN DAYS UNTIL HARRY POTTER AND THE DEATHLY HALLOWS!!! (this and my children are the only things bringing smiles to my face right now)

WHY?!

Sometimes, you have to just wonder "wtf were they thinking"...especially when it comes to previous home owners....You know what I'm talking about.

You move in to a new place and it's great, everything is wonderful because NOTHING has to stay the same. Then life happens, and all those changes you wanted to make are still a list in a drawer. No, I'm not digging out my list and making those home improvements, life is still to busy happening. But what I am doing is cleaning. And this is not a new occurrence, but after 6 years in the same house I find myself wondering again and again "wtf were they thinking?!"

For instance. Why did you tile the bathroom counter tops? I know it's pretty, I KNOW it's hard to stain. Ok, so maybe I understand why you tiled the counter tops. But WHY ARE THEY WHITE?! You had children when you lived here, they were young, much like mine are. Which means...well, those of you with kids know what it means. It means that white grout, is no longer white. Hasn't been in years. And not for lack of trying!! While those pretty white tiles remain stain free, that white grout has taken on many colors. Blue for instance. That tooth paste can sometimes leave quite the stubborn stain. It will take a few sessions of scrubbing to get that out. Orangey brown is another. I have no idea what this came from....soap residue?? Either way, it too stains like the dickens. Maybe it's because I don't use bleach? Maybe I don't let my baking soda paste sit long enough. Maybe I am just *that* bad of a house keeper?

But I noticed this week, while in an attempt to not fold and put away the laundry, as I was cleaning the bathroom, just how much of a bad choice the white on white was. The floor tiles (yep, tile there too!!!) are not white, they're a very, very light grey. The grout.....was white. *sigh* I took out the old tooth brush and set to scrubbing the counters while glancing down at the floor every few minutes. You see I clean the bathroom from the top down...which you'll see was a mistake this week! Anyway, I'm scrubbing the counter tops and finally making a difference on the grout and I am wondering how in the hell I am going to manage enough elbow grease to do this to the floor. You see, I was in my bathroom, which is no where near as stained as the kids. The grout in there is like a battle ground for cleaning products, natural and chemical alike. And no one wins. When I was finished scrubbing the counter and wiped away all the spray (clorox green works...rather diluted) with water and a cleaning rag I looked at my counter and said "WHY, WHY must they be WHITE!!" and then I remembered. Her kids weren't little when they re-did the bathroom counters and floors. Oh no. They were 13 and 8. Yeah. That's why they're white...



SO a plea to all of you childless homeowners. Do yourselves, and future owners with kids a HUGE favor. Do not use your floor or counter tops to "brighten" the bathroom with tile and WHITE grout. Please.....PLEASE.....PLEEEAAAASSE!!!

The Red Tent has gone live :)

I was to excited, and wasn't getting any submissions with out stories already on The Red Tent, so I decided to go live, I added my children's birth stories first, and I have a few set up in the schedule to be posted over the next few days.

I would LOVE more stories, ANY birth story you have, PLEASE share it! And birth art, and book/website recommendations!

http://redtenttopics.blogspot.com/

My apologies...

As the Summer wanes to Fall my attentions turn inward toward the self and home. I am mentally preparing for my next blogging journey and finding it more and more difficult to tend to this one. My mind just isn't here. I am excited to start collecting stories from my friends, and anticipate having much to share regarding my thoughts on pregnancy, birth and mothering. I hope that it will be "easier" to come up with subject matter, and I'm sure I won't be lacking the content to publish something at least every other day.

Soccer is in 'full swing' with practice on Tuesday evening and a game on Saturday afternoon. He is enjoying it, but boy is he the awkward child. He is not as physically capable as many of the other boys on his team. His body does not seem to move his mind thinks it does. Maybe next year we'll try something different? I would like them each to have a physical activity.

Schooling has taken a new turn, we are currently writing the first of 3 papers that need to be turned in to the state to asses how he is doing in school. I hate it. They didn't give us our topic until the 7th of October and it's due on the 15th of October. Now, I love to write, especially if I have a topic given to me. (as long as I know a little about it). His topic is "a wish he would like to have granted" his paper mentions NOTHING of the topic for starters. Most of it is incomplete sentences, sentence fragments, and none of it follows the "thesis statement" or "topic sentence"

My attention has also turned to the house, I spent several hours last Tuesday throwing away 2 bags of trash, and several boxes that had been broken down and saved, cut apart and saved, or given to the children as "toys" and therefore destroyed. All out of my bedroom! I was planning on getting in there and doing it again yesterday but as I said in a facebook status "Tuesday stole Monday's name tag". We couldn't find the girl's leotard before ballet, managed to forget her ballet and tap shoes, AND she peed in her pull up on the way to ballet. Which of course I didn't remember to bring another.

This weekend I will be attending a childbirth educator teacher training, and I am every excited and looking forward to jumping in and trying to absorb everything! I am eager to begin teaching, but first I need to find a place to teach!!! I talked briefly with my chiropractor, and he agreed to sit down and talk with me, and said as long as my classes were during "operating hours" that would be fine. And then, I went outside....into their nightmare of a parking lot. I love our the group, and I love their office, but their parking lot is too small for a class of 3-5 or hopefully as many as 8-10 couples, PLUS their regular Saturday appointments and walk-ins. That's ok though! I had been talking to a friend of mine that works at the library, so I'll just have to go talk to her about it again...and ask my chiropractors to come and talk on the days I cover chiropractic care in pregnancy.

Catch and Release

This morning my husband and I were outside enjoying the breeze (briefly, it's hot out now) when we noticed a brand new butterfly (or moth?) trying to scaled the side of the driveway, it's wings were still visibly wet, so Hubby picked up a dry leaf, and the butterfly eagerly walked on to the leaf, in hopes to find a better place to dry it's wings. I ran in the house and got our butterfly habitat from our Painted Lady hatching. It only took a few seconds after setting the leaf in the habitat and the butterfly had scaled about an inch of the wall and was slowly opening it's wings to dry.

We still aren't sure if it was a moth or a butterfly, as I still have not compared our Painted Lady pictures to this one. But here are the few I snapped with my iPhone..

We all went outside for the release after a few hours, and it happily flew away.... :)

Next Year's Blog

I've already come up with an idea for next years blog. As I have been reading Active Birth for my upcoming childbirth educator training, I am wanting to share all these fantastic things that I'm underlining. I really can't wait to start teaching!

So I decided that I would pick one thing that I underline and share it every other day or maybe just one a week, whatever I don't know yet. But, what I really want to include is birth stories. From anyone and everyone that wants to share. Homebirths, hospital births, normal births, surgical births, high intervention births, medicated and unmedicated. I would also like to include miscarriage and stillbirth because they too deserve to be told too.

I decided to wait until next year to start posting to it because this blog was this years project. I've not done too terribly (for me) and hopefully with a specific theme (that doesn't require me to crochet something every day in order to have some content) I can post more often. So, I hope you come by!

For now I am just taking submissions for guest posts and pictures. Hopefully, I'll get a few :)

Whatcha Say Wednesday...

1.  What physical quality do you look for in a spouse or your spouse has! I love that his smile lights up his whole face. And I have always loved his arms.

2.  What state in the US would you live in if you had to live there for the rest of your life? Oregon

3.  What do you do?  (job title, SAHM, student, spill!) Everything!! SAHM, wife, homeschooler, birth doula, childbirth educator, normal birth advocate, lactivist,

Bonus!  Are eyebrows considered facial hair?  Of course! They're on your face!

And, a picture for this week! The girl's cake from Saturday!

Yep, I'm a Soccer Mom and My 5 Year Old's Birthstory

Yep, now I'm a soccer mom. I've had the mini van for a while, now I just need the soccer ball magnet, or maybe antennae topper......and before anyone sends me one, I'M TOTALLY KIDDING!! I already have a magnet on my van for the NJROTC unit my brother is a part of, that I was a part of...that my husband was a part of. It's a family thing ;)

We had our first practice on Thursday night, this week we begin practices on Tuesday evenings. Ballet at 10 am, and soccer practice at 5:30. Tuesday's are going to be insanity around here until mid-November. It took us until 4 pm last Tuesday to finish school (after getting home from ballet and eating lunch)...we are going to have to improve that quickly if this is going to work out with out having to make Tuesday a  "weekend" and Sunday a "school day"

The ball is actually behind the goal, that's from the team playing behind us. But for the first 10 min of the game, The Boy played Keeper!!

Saturday was Girl's birthday, shes 5 now, and that seems SO BIG!!! I remember walking down the hall with my 7 hour old baby girl like it was yesterday.

On, September 10, 2005 I woke up with a monster headache, had breakfast and told my husband I was going back to bed. At 39 weeks I didn't want to take motrin...I requested an hour, but Hubby said after an hour I looked so peaceful, and no where near ready to wake up. 3 Hours after laying down I woke up again, no headache and feeling MUCH better. I went about my day, eating, cleaning and preparing. I remember moving a few pieces of furniture around in my room (small things) and placing my birth kit items and baby items neatly in my bedroom. That night after putting my 3 yr old to bed, a little teary eyed realizing he wasn't going to be the baby much longer, I headed out to Publix for a few last minute food items around 9 pm. I remember standing against the little table where they bag your groceries because my lower back felt tight. I felt like I needed an adjustment. I went home and ate some more...I remember eating a lot that day too. I had a turkey sandwich before leaving for the store, and had tomato soup after I got home ....the whole can!!  We watched Sgt. York and then went to bed.

On September 11, 2005 I woke up at 2:07, yay for late pregnancy bathroom trips....and then went back to bed. At 2:15 (no lie!) I was up again. A little put out that I was up again, I decided to grab a book and go visit the other bathroom. WIDE awake after that I went to the living room, checked out my online due date clubs and watched a few minutes of The West Wing. At 3:05 I had my first real contraction. I was sitting "criss-cross-applesauce" on the sofa with the keyboard in my lap. I noted the time on both the computer and the TV. At 3:07 I had another contraction. I decided to shut down the computer (why I'll never know) and go lay on the other sofa so I could time the contractions before I woke up my husband or my midwife, or my doula!! I'm sure there was another contraction at 3:09, but I only remember the next one coming at 3:11.

I lay there wondering why there were so intense, and so close together. These were definitely NOT Braxton Hicks contractions, I remembered this intensity from my first (pitocen induced) labor. For a split second I worried about the baby's position. I worried she was posterior, and I would have a dysfunctional labor pattern that started at ctx every 2 minutes and was going to last all day. At 3:15 I felt a pop, then the contraction started and I leaked a little fluid. In very gazelle like movement I jumped from the sofa and sprang into the hall bathroom. Not leaving a drop of fluid behind! lol I stripped off my underwear and it was obvious immediately that my water had indeed released. There was light, but fresh meconium staining, and I immediately dialed my midwife. I told her my ctx were every 2 minutes, and my water broke, but that things had only just started. (I had also called her while at Publix, she asked if I was in labor and I said "nope") I spoke quickly knowing another contraction was coming...and when it did she listened to me, and then asked "was that a contraction" I said yes....and she said "I'm on my way, call my cell if you need me again ok!" I hung up with her and called my doula, I hate waking people up and now I've just woken at least two. The midwife (and maybe her husband) and now my doula (and possibly her husband and one of her kids!!) I told her that the midwife was on her way, and labor was definitely going...had another contraction and made all kinds of noise. I said to her "I hope I didn't just push" and she kinda laughed and said she doubted it. I hung up with her to go wake Hubby. Right after he got out of bed a strong contraction rendered me motionless at the foot of the bed, fluid and meconium dripped from me. Hubby launched onto the floor with a towel and shoved it between my feet. (this makes me laugh now...I hate our carpet and could have cared less)

I went into the bathroom, Hubby asking me questions "Do you want me to fill the pool" not enough time...."Do you want to lay down" No, that hurts I want to be upright. I turned on the water in the tub and hoped it would some how fill quickly. I stripped off my shirt and got in the tub. At least now I didn't need to worry where I dripped. I tried to lay on my side, that lasted not even one whole contraction it was that bad. I moved mid contraction to my knees and sitting up. With the next one I was "thrown" on to my hands, and stuck my bottom in the air. I yelled, and grunted. Hubby was on the phone with the midwife, and I heard him call to me "D wants to know if you're pushing" I replied "A little" and he came rushing into the bathroom. He turned off the water (thank God, it was so loud) and set down the phone. D called out that if she was coming this quickly we were both fine. We had discussed this during my pregnancy, so I wasn't scared, but I really wanted a slower labor. Hubby offered his arm over the tub and I grabbed it for the next whopper. I recall my voice rising in pitch and D calling out to keep my tones low. With the next contraction my entire body pushed. What an amazing feeling! On my hands and knees, my body pushed so hard that my bottom went toward my feet. Suddenly I whipped my hand from Hubby's and placed it over my daughter's head, she had fully crowned in that one gigantic push. "I HAVE HER HEAD!!" Then I felt Hubby's hands over mine "I have her", and then another earth moving push from my body, this time I was behind it mentally. Hubby said "her head is out, along with a lot of cord" .....push again, harder... "more cord"....I just kept pushing, the contraction was nearly over so I pushed harder. I didn't like hearing that so much cord was out. And there she was!!! I bolted up on my knees and looked over my right shoulder just in time to see one of Hubby's hands on her head, the other just above her bottom, and her arms out WIDE in a startle.


She really hasn't slowed down since ;)

She wanted to help me make her cake this year. 1 8" round and 12 cupcakes.

I wish I had some of her newborn pictures on the computer, but that was 3 or 4 computers ago. I have them on disc somewhere.

A little balloon (she loves those) and her first bouquet of flowers from Daddy.

My Window

A friend asked me the other day if I was still working on learning about my spiritual path. I told her that it was on hold for now, I had so  much to do getting ready for school, and with the children's activities. Really all I do now is read anyway. Read blogs, read threads, read books. I can do that any time. But with the crunch in the rest of my time, my online time has been crunched too. My friend also asked me if I was still keeping an altar. I told her I had taken down the one in my bedroom, but that my makeshift Kitchen Altar had actually grown and morphed. In January of last year it was just a 'clean' window. In February I had added my little Goddess statue, and some candles, the plant, and had brought back a few pictures.


So yesterday, I took some pictures of how it looks now!!

The artwork above is from my son's last year in public school. I do miss the art projects. It's difficult for me to want to do them at home. The notes are from my very funny husband, with a few more nature-y gifts from my children and the book that I won from Confessions of a Pagan Soccer Mom!

The Peace Tea can is is there, just because I like the can! My husband loves this tea, and brought one home for me. It was pretty good!! I wanted to review it I even took better pictures of the can. I love my oil diffuser, mostly I take the top off of it and burn a candle. I love the shadows it casts. Most of the dried roses are from own garden. (Some are from bouquets from years ago)

Currently I am working on my path into the birth world again. My training is in October, so I am refocusing my mental energies on to BIRTH once again! It's thrilling really, for me at least! I just received my copy of Active Birth today, and I am dropping my other reading projects for the time being.

I am running out of time here today, my husband should be home shortly and then I get to head out to the grocery store. My little Butterfly Dance Girl is turning 5 tomorrow. Wow, 5 years old!! I can't believe it!!

Lets Try this Again!!!

Thrifty Mama is doing the 30 Day Shred. I dropped out at 10 days last time due to a heel spur. So, better hydration, always wearing shoes, always making sure I eat well, and ONLY skipping Tuesdays if I skip a day (ballet AND soccer practice those day!)

I had wanted to start about a week ago in order to be done by my birthday. Oops.