Why I Want To Homeschool

I have had many people in the past (and I'm sure I'll get it in the future!) why I want to homeschool my children. There really is no easy answer as it is a broad question with many elements. I recently stumbled across a blog post that explains exactly why I want to homeschool my kids. I won't even bother rewriting it, the author has said it all already! :)

http://thelorentzens.blogspot.com/2009/11/why-i-homeschool.html

The Last Week

Mommy and Miss Charlotte!

I guess this past week just got away from me. It just flew by and now I notice I haven't blogged any. I'm supposed to be writing down my child's life here! ha.

Well, the past week... Let's see. I had my first OB appointment last Wednesday and I guess that went pretty well, just the usual blood work, "Are you taking your prenatals?", when was your last menstrual period... All that fun stuff. Char came with me since I couldn't find anyone else to watch her and she actually did great! She was quite the ham and everyone commented on how adorable she was. What's new? ;-)

In other prego news, I am still feeling great! Which makes me feel bad. And scared. I get nausea here and there, but it doesn't last. It feels more like heartburn. What if something is wrong? I guess my reasoning that nothing is wrong is that I am having other symptoms, too, like sore "chest area," frequent urination, extreeeeeeme tiredness... Wow, I could sleep 12 hours a day. Crazy! But then I guess I am only nearing 6 weeks so this could take a turn at literally any moment. I'm counting my sick-free days as blessings!

Other than that... I went to work this weekend, and.. Let's just say... Friday night was probably the worst night I have ever had. I won't go into too much because I don't know who reads this blog but it wasn't due to the patients. Ugh! Glad that's over with.

Since I can't think of anything else to write, I'll just leave you with some adorable pictures of The Princess. :-)

In one of her dazes again...

Thinking up her new schemes...

Charlotte and Susan, my best friend and the one who took me to Walmart to get the digital pregnancy test!! Haha!!

Yes, those are pink hearts on her diaper! :-)

Big Announcement!!!

For those who haven't heard, Charlotte is going to be a big sister!!!! :)
I am totally SHOCKED still. I just got my IUD taken out last month! How did it happen so fast, and we really weren't even trying!! I figured it would take a few months at least!! Just call me Fertile Myrtle.. :)

Yes, I am excited (and Thomas is, too!) but I am also terrified. Two children two years apart? What am I thinking? Am I nuts?

I'm terrified that this pregnancy will be like my last one was. It was horrible. I was terribly sick from week 5 until week 24, puked just about every day (several times a day). At some points I had forgotten what it felt like to feel normal! I remember one day throwing up so much that my throat bled and for days it felt like I had a cotton ball stuck in the middle of it. For what it's worth, I feel fine right now, but I'm only about 4 weeks 5 days along. It's like the calm before the storm.... I didn't start feeling sick until 5 weeks with Charlotte. So we'll see. God, please have mercy on me!!!! In any case, I'm going to be calling the doc tomorrow and asking for a Zofran prescription. I've read that being on meds before you get sick actually helps to reduce the amount of sickness. Here's to hoping!!!

My tentative due date is November 24, 2010. I can foresee Holidays becoming very very busy for us!!! Thomas' birthday is Dec 2, Charlotte's birthday is Dec 15, our anniversary is Dec 16, and of course, you have Christmas and New Years. And then this baby's birthday end of November, around Thanksgiving. CRAZY!!

Nonetheless, we thank God for this little blessing. Please pray for him or her to continue to grow and develop properly as God intends. Thank you! :)

Happy 15 Months.

Charlotte,
Today you are 15 months old. That's approximately 555 days. I can hardly believe that you have been with us and I have been your mommy that long. You are growing up so fast, it's like every time I blink something changes: your hair gets longer, your rubberband wrists start to disappear, you add a word (or sign) to your vocabulary, and you look more like a kid and less like a baby. Right now you are doing so many cute things, I can hardly catch up! You love to point at all the new things you discover. Today, it was the window that you look at every time you eat in your highchair. You love to point to the dogs and say "dah," one of your very few words. :) You love to feed Crowder, although sometimes he doesn't realize your love for him and will nip your finger and you'll come running up to me to kiss it to make it feel better. You have been pretty clingy lately, but I hear this is normal for your age, so don't worry, I love it because I know one day you're going to be pushing me away.

You love to give kisses. Yesterday I was laying on the bed and you were playing with the bedroom door (like always, you love to shut every door in the house!) and I said, "Charlotte, come give mama kisses!" and you forgot about your door closing fun and walked over just to give me a big, wet. open-mouthed, slobbery kiss. Those are the best kind. You are just so sweet.

However, you have quite the temper! I wonder where you get that from? :) We've seen a few of your tantrums, but all I have to do is distract you and you go back to playing and forget what you were so mad about. You are a pretty easy baby so far, but I know that can change instantly. I think I'm ready for the challenge. :)

You're favorite song is, "Jesus Loves Me," and we sing and sign it before bed every night, right after we read Goodnight Moon or your Bible Story Book and before we pray to God. You love to point and look at all the colorful pictures and say, "Dis?" I can't tell if you're trying to say, "What's this?" or "I like this! Can I have one, too?" I guess either one will work.

I love you. I love you more than I thought I ever could love a child. I couldn't imagine my life without you and I'm grateful to God that He gave you to me. I pray for your salvation every day and pray that God will raise you up to be a godly woman, eager to serve Him and praise His name. I look forward to that, there is nothing else that would please me more.

I look forward to the future with you. When you start to talk, when you start to ask, "Why?" about everything, when you have those "Aha!" moments about the things of God... I can't wait for any of it. You are the sweetest, cutest, little toddler ever and I love you. :)

Happy 15 Months, Charlotte Rose.

Love,
Mommy

But when the chief priests and the scribes saw the wonderful things that he did, and the children crying out in the temple, “Hosanna to the Son of David!” they were indignant, and they said to him, “Do you hear what these are saying?” And Jesus said to them, “Yes; have you never read, “‘Out of the mouth of infants and nursing babies you have prepared praise’?”
(Matthew 21:15-16)

First Day in Cloth!

To most people (especially if you don't have little ones in the home) this post will be completely boring. So you can click out of this blog now if you want to. :-)

Today was our first day totally in cloth diapers! It took awhile for all the diapers I ordered to come in and then I had to prep them and yada yada yada... So today was the day. Well, ACTUALLY, last night was the first time... Dont ask me why I wanted to risk it but I did, haha. She slept in a Fuzzi Bunz dipe last night. No leaks! And this is from a babe who's morning diaper could knock someone out cold!

The kinds I bought are mostly pocket snap diapers with a few velcro thrown in there. I bought a couple Fuzzi Bunz, a couple used Bumgenius 3.0, a few SmartiPants, but most of my stash is Kawaiis. Yes, they are an eBay diaper, but they got awesome reviews online and at only about $6 a diaper, I couldn't resist!

Attack of the bed head!

I dont know why but she was just actin' all shy when she got up from her nap :)

Chillin' on the couch...

So far, I really like cloth diapers. They're so cute and seem to be just as easy as disposables. We've had no leaks so far in any of the diapers, which is good especially because she has chicken legs and I wasn't sure if some of the dipes were too big or not. :) Plus, we'll be saving money. I figure each disposable diaper is about .20 each so these babies will pay for themselves in just a few months. Yay for saving money! Oh, and I also won a SmartiPants dipe in a blog giveaway this week! Woohoo! :)

To be honest, the one thing I dont like about it (and Im sure most CDers can say the same) is the poop. TMI ALERT -- Char's poop is usually brown and solid. Normal. The past week or so it has been yellow and soft. I'm thinking it's because she's teething (workin' on those molars!) but I dont know. HOPEFULLY this will pass soon because let's just say that dealing with 2 of those kind of diapers today was not fun! I think I'm going to invest in one of those nifty diaper sprayers....

Oh, and Thomas likes it, too! He worked all day today but he changed her into her nighttime diaper. He did a good job! :)

TTFN!

And I'll leave you with a cute video of Charlotte eating applesauce with a spoon :)

Where we are right now...

In a few weeks Thomas and I will be trekking over to Mississippi one more time before the big move. We're going to be scoping out apartments and see if we can find a place to live! I REALLY don't want to move back into an apartment. I mean, I REALLY don't. We don't want to buy because we don't have a down payment and we don't want the upkeep and costs that come with home ownership -- at least not right now, not until we pay off his loans. I guess I'm going to have to swallow my pride and allow God to teach me a few lessons. Sometimes I feel like I "deserve" more (there goes my prideful self, again). I mean, I'm a college graduate for goodness sakes! And my hubs is going to be an engineer! We are above "apartment living." Ha. Such silly logic, but it is how I feel sometimes. LORD, help me tame my prideful spirit.


I would really like to rent a house but I just honestly don't know where to look. I've tried looking online (I consult Dr. Google for everything!) but they just don't list house rentals as much as they do apartments. Any advice for trying to find one? I've thought maybe we could pick up a newspaper while we're over there, but I don't know. Can you tell I'm clueless about this sort of thing?


Otherwise, we are doing... alright. I feel so weak spiritually right now. I just feel so busy all the time and it's hard to keep up. I feel overwhelming guilt ALL the time about working outside the home and being away from Charlotte for 30 hours a week. I know it could be worse, but still... Mommy guilt eats me alive some days. I try to run to the Lord and to the Bible, but honestly, sometimes I just forget. I have it in my head that I'm going to do it, but then I get busy and before I know it 3-4 days have passed. I need to start bringing my Bible to work. Sometimes I read Biblegateway.com but there's just something about reading the printed Word that just... reaches me. I don't know.


Charlotte has been fabulous, as usual. She had a bit of a cold this past week, but you wouldn't be able to even tell she was sick if it wasn't for the green gunk leaking from her nose. She has picked up a few new signs (apple!) and has gotten more and more interactive, just over the past week, than she had been before. It's so amazing to watch this little person walk, talk, interact... The glory of God, I tell ya.


Here is said little person being silly as always.....

Taking a monkey on a piggy back ride...

Yes, my favorite hairstyle to put her hair in is the whale water spout.. hahah

Right now we are just enjoying a beautiful Saturday afternoon here in Alabama. It's a little cool outside, but I can tell spring is just right around the corner... Which, for us, means lots of packing, selling, and looking forward to new things!

Charlotte kisses!

One of the sweetest things in life is to get kisses from your little one! She doesn't quite get the "pucker" part, but she loves to give a wet slobbery kiss. Here she is kissin' her daddy! :)

She's a signing girl!

I have been signing with Charlotte since she was about 7 months old. I had heard about Baby Sign Language before I was ever pregnant and knew it was something I wanted to do, it just seemed to fun and just another learning opportunity for children. I also went to an alternative elementary school so we learned sign language there, too. Im not fluent in ASL by any means, but I could probably get by with spelling everything out with a deaf person if I had to! Charlotte and I watch the "Baby Signing Time" (see above) videos, too, and she loves to watch the little babies sign.

Well, until about a week ago Charlotte had REFUSED to sign. Oh, she'll throw me a teaser of "all done" some times after she's finished eating, but very rarely. And of course, she doesn't speak much so she has basically wanted to communicate by whining. I was really frustrated and didn't know how to get her to sign or speak. So I just stuck with it and BAM...

All of a sudden, over this past weekend she has been signing up a storm! It's like it just clicked in her little brain and she figured out, "Hey, I can get what I want by doing these little hand motions!" :)

She is really good at signs having to do with food (she is a Hill, of course) and loves to sign "eat," "more," and "all done." She will sometimes sign "milk," too. Other non-food signs she will do are "shoes" (although it looks like "more"), "potty," "dog," and... maybe a few others I'm forgetting at the moment.

I will try to catch a video of her signing, it's so cute! So yeah, Im glad I kept with it! Hopefully this will help us communicate better and she'll be able to tell me what she wants instead of throwing the tantrum of the century.

Minnesota Mama Must Haves Birthday Bash!

I normally don't post stuff about other blogs, but I just really wanted to post about this one! Ok, I know I don't live in Minnesota and honestly don't care to ever live in Minnesota... But this blog is amazing! There are always TONS of giveaways going on (p.s. sorry for all the diaper tweets!) and starting April 1st, in celebration of her daughter's birthday, they are going to be giving away a ton of stuff! So be sure to stay tuned and go take a visit to Minnesota Mama Must Haves!! :)

Jumping on the CD bandwagon...

Why would I want to start cloth diapering a 14 month old? Because it seems that LS (Lil Stinker) is nowhere near wanting to potty train. *sigh* Oh well. And that's ok! Plus, I'm lazy and don't feel like propping her on the pot every 30 minutes. Even if she were ready, she probably would still need pull ups or something or other for night time, right? :) Besides, we plan on having more kiddos (hopefully soon?? ;) so I know they won't go to waste. And have you seen the modern cloth diapers? They are way cute and look nothing like those white nappies your Grandma used to use.

So I've decided to start cloth diapering, at least part time at first. I've found a few off brand all-in-one/one size online that have rave reviews so I bought a bunch of those to see if I actually like CDing. And I got a Fuzzy Bunz. And a Smartipants. I also got a diaper pail bag and some detergent. Even got a free cloth changing pad. I'm all set! (I think? Have I forgotten anything?)

We'll see how long this lasts!

Atheism really is laughable

Glad John Piper agrees!