New Posts Soon!...And an Update.

Hello! I've been AWOL for quite some time. It seems having five children isn't conducive to blogging. Well, for me, anyway! I plan to start blogging a lot more. I have some interesting stuff I'm planning to do, and I thought I should share.

What's in the works? This spring I plan to start my very first garden. I will be picking out heirloom organic seeds and learning a lot. In preparation for that, and to off-set the high price of organic winter vegetable cost, I may be trying my hand at indoor veggie growing. Just a few plants to get some practice in.

Also, I am ramping up our preparedness supplies. This economy is very troubling, and I'm not the only one out there freaking out about the "what ifs", should a serious recession or depression come about. So I will be re-stocking our pantry. I'll also be re-organizing our new home, and redecorating on a budget. Nothing fancy, but repainting, and repurposing "junk" furniture into something beautiful. Our goal is to become more self-sufficient.

In order to achieve that goal, we will be adding animals to our mini-homestead. We plan to add chickens soon. I'm trying to talk my husband into a goat or mini-cow, but he wants nothing to do with it right now. (He knows he'll be doing the milking, lol.) Right now we're buying raw milk (soooo good, and good for you), but I'd like a better source...preferably me! I plan on starting to make homemade raw yogurt, buttermilk, piima, creme fraiche, cheese, etc. I need a milk with higher cream content to do that. We'll see what happens.

I'd like to add some meat animals to our homestead, but I think we'll have to make do with chickens. We're just going to buy a few fully grown laying hens for now, and probably get a mix of meat and layer chicks in the spring.

Now for the updates: so far, my aorta is still in one piece! My symptoms are getting a little worse, but the cardiologist isn't sure exactly what is causing them, as neither the aneurysm nor my bicuspid valve should be bad enough to cause these symptoms. But he's modest enough to admit that we are still learning new stuff every year about these conditions, so there's no way to be sure. His plan is for me to have the surgery right after my c-section. The surgeon he sent me to disagrees, and wants to wait three months. I'm going to another hospital to see a doctor who specializes in pregnant patients with heart problems, so we are waiting until after that consultation to make any plans.

My pregnancy is going fine. Except that I am HORRENDOUSLY congested, especially at night. Since I use a CPAP machine for my sleep apnea, I have to breathe through my nose, which doesn't help....since I can't breathe! I'm almost wondering if I've developed allergies. We got cats two months ago, and it seems that shortly after that is when I developed some symptoms. I've never had allergies before, but developing allergies as an adult can happen.

At right: "Prayer of the Expectant Mother"

Oh, and I'm hovering near the dreaded 300-pound mark. I can't seem to stay raw this time around. So I'm focusing on trying to do a Nourishing Traditions style diet, and at least do raw green smoothies every day. But it seems inevitable that I will hit the 300 mark, which I swore I'd never do. It's really depressing.

Well, folks (if I have any readers left, lol...I never stick around when someone stops posting) tune in soon, I should have something interesting to read

One more update....it's a girl! She is due mid-February.

Overdue Post, and Various Thoughts...

Guess I've been pretty busy since I had the baby. You can check out my other blogs for updates on the birth and after. I'm to tired to write all that out. LOL.

I went on and off raw. I'm definitely healthier and happier on raw. Right now I've decided to to 100% raw, and I'm loving it. It's not always easy, but I know for me, it is necessary. I have lost 20 pounds so far. I want to break the "26 pound barrier"...that is, I want to lose more than the 26 pounds I lost only one time, on Atkins. Most dieters can say they've lost and gained the same 50-100 pounds. I can't even say that! But I want to stick with raw, and release it all. That's right, release it...because I don't want to "lose" those pounds, only to "find" them again!

Things are great. We bought a house on five acres. I'm thrilled with the house we got. It's exactly what we needed. To rent a house like this, in this area, we would have had to pay probably $1800 a month, maybe more. Our paments are only a little higher than what we would pay for a house farther out, on no acreage. It has five bedrooms, with room to make more in the basement. We got it for a steal, because it was a foreclosure. God was really smiling on us, even the realtors were shocked we got such a good deal. When the market rebounds, we expect to see a huge gain in equity, too.

I am still struggling with trying to be a better homemaker. I'm seriously thinking of going to someone to be hypnotized, to try to make myself less lazy, and more industrious! I know, it sounds crazy. But if you can go to a hypnotist to lose weight or stop smoking, why not to stop being lazy? I wish I'd been born the type of person who is most happy when puttering around the house. Doing anything around the house is sheer effort on my part. I think partly I was just born this way (in my family, half of us kids are naturally lazy, the other half are type-A people) and partly I never was taught how to work. I was never expected to do any chores or help around the house, or taught how to clean, cook or sew.

Now this isn't to say I have no responsibility for my own actions. Of course I do. I often make a conscious choice to do something (like write this post, lol) instead of doing what I should be doing (like getting some sleep or mopping the kitchen floor). I'm just saying that the combination of natural laziness + lack of training = a constant struggle to get stuff done. What I'm saying is, I wishing it was much less of a struggle for me. So who knows, maybe a hypnotist would help. Hey, I've got to do something about all the years of society's brainwashing that I should get a job and let someone else clean my house and raise my kids. Anything is worth a try. I'd do anything to be a better wife and mother for my family.

If it doesn't work, I'll just have to keep plugging away, and trying to form better habits on my own. But that way would be so much more boring! ;-)

New Blog!

I know I haven't posted in a while. I'll try to soon. In the meanwhile, I have been posting about my new raw food way of eating. If you're curious, most raw food posts will be made there. I'm doing great, come on, check it out!

The Raw Revealing of the New Me

I'm Back!

Sorry for the lack of posting. I've turned into one of THOSE bloggers...the kind who rarely every posts, so I get bored checking in with them and take them off my boomarks list. LOL. At least Blogger finally let me sign in. Sheesh!

We've decided to wait until summer to buy a house. In the meantime, we found a five bedroom home to rent. It was really cheap, and now we know why. We knew the original builder had gone bankrupt, and this house and a couple of others were sold to an investor. Now the investor is ready to be foreclosed on, because he can't sell it either. We were told the price was too high. Oh, my friends, that's not the REAL reason. The real reason is that the contractor who built this was either a moron or a crook who used sub-standard crews. The drywall looks like it was done by ten year olds. I am NOT kidding! Places where they messed up are covered over with a splotch of joint compound, not leveled or sanded, then painted over. And they messed up a LOT. Some things, like the appliances, aren't bad. Others, like the doors, look fine, but are actually made very cheaply. The bannister for the stairs shakes. The phone outlets were connected to each other, but not the outgoing phone line (requiring the phone company to spend 6 1/2 hours here to fix it), and the carpet is so cheap that my daughter's hair looks like a dirty lint mop from all the carpet fibers she has picked up! No wonder the house hasn't sold!

The good news is, it isn't likely to sell anytime soon, and we have a six month lease anyway. And we got a good rate on the rent. And there is a SuperWalmart only three minutes away. YAY!

We should be ready to buy this summer (God willing) and finally have a home of our own. I can't wait to paint a wall!!!

There has been a complication in my pregnancy. Everything is okay so far. But that's a whole other post.

My "baby" is now one year old. She's so big! And finally she's at a good weight...for some reason my girls are so petite, it's hard to get them to gain. Which makes it hard when there are so many fat babies out there. Funny how doctors want fat babies, but once they're two or three years old, if they're too big, they want them to be skinny.

I just ordered "Created to be His Helpmeet" last night. Can't wait to get it. I've heard good things, but was never interested, based on exerpts I had read. My husband was definitely not a "Mr. Visionary" as the book describes, and that's what I've heard the most about. But last night I read an exerpt that talked about "Mr. Steady"...wow, that is my husband! Not 100%...I would never call him wishy-washy or too slow to make a decision, or one who wouldn't take a stand on a church issue, etc. But he is very stable, and definitely goes above and beyond helping me. Debi Pearl says many wives of a Mr. Steady end up with hormonal imbalances or health problems. There wasn't enough detail to know exactly why, but she seemed to be saying that strong women married to a Mr. Steady had a tendency to lose respect for him and take over as spiritual head of the family, etc. Perhaps she meant that because of this, many women end up stressed out or emotionally wrecked, I don't know....we'll see when I get the book.

I definitely don't lose respect for my husband when he works hard to take over many of my duties and give me time to myself...actually, I lose respect for myself. I feel like a failure, and end up hating myself for it. It's not his fault, it's mine. I've known for a while that I'm letting him help me too much. But I'm so overwhelmed with...life...that I'm afraid to tell him that, for fear he won't help enough, and I'll feel worse. I really hope the book helps me, because I think she's really on to something.

I know I need to let go more, and not try to control so much. After reading "Fascinating Womanhood", I gave up control of the money (well, mostly) which helped a lot. I need to give up more control, and try not to manipulate him so much. He's a good husband, and I worry that he is losing respect for me.

In the meantime, while I wait for the book (I got it on MP3 so I can listen to it, otherwise I'll never finish it) I will be reviewing Fascinating Womanhood and trying again to implement her suggested changes. Last night I fixed myself up for my husband before he got home and I cleaned up the house, even though my day had been awful. He really liked it. And I felt better about myself, too.

No, the Ticker Isn't Going Backwards....

...it just looks that way. If any of you have visited my (non-updated) blog recently, you may have noticed that it had been showing a gestational date of 16 weeks, but is now showing 12 weeks. Why the change? Well, my due date had been a loose estimate, based on my second-to-last period (I forgot to write down the date of the last one.) So I came up with a due date based on that.

However, after an ultrasound two weeks ago to determine if I was carrying twins (why am I always more sure with each pregnancy that I'm having twins when I'm not?!) I found out that based on the ultrasound, I was only nine weeks along. Grrrr!

So not only did I apparently skip a period somewhere along the line BEFORE I got pregnant, but I am also feeling even more farther along than I thought I was. Hence, the twin scare. Don't get me wrong, I am happy for any blessings God gives me. But I might be momentarily chagrined at God's sense of humor if He gave me twins now, when I already have four children under the age of five, rather than giving them to me with the first pregnancy, when I wanted twins. I was relieved it was just one baby, although I admit there was some slight disappointment too. ;-)

It's strange to me that not only is each pregnancy different, but I seem to be experiencing more severe symptoms each time. I can only be thankful that God was so merciful in letting my first pregnancy be so easy. I can't imagine being one of those poor women who have very rough pregnancies, especially if each one was worse than the last. Yikes! I'm pretty wimpy.

With other pregnancies, I've had occasional, very slight nausea a couple of times. This usually was when I hadn't had enough to eat, particularly when I was pregnant and still breastfeeding a previous baby, such as in my second and third pregnancies. Usually a bit of food made it vanish. This time, I was having frequent nausea, though still mild. It came at weird times though, like sometimes very soon after eating. I would be sure that I didn't need food, and food sounded so unappealing anyway. So I would let it go for a half hour to an hour, as it grew worse and worse, until finally I'd just go ahead and make myself eat, and usually it went away. Why I would get morning sickness and need to eat after JUST EATING is beyond me. Pregnancy is so weird.

Anyway, I seem to be past that, and feeling better. I know that my pregnancies are still a lot easier than a lot of people's, so I'm very grateful for that. But I do worry what my tenth pregnancy will be like, at this rate! lol