Little Mama

T3 is only 18 months old but she is a good Mama. She has her Baby Jesus, whom she simply calls "BeeBee".

When I get her up in the morning the first thing she says is "BeeBee?" then she turns around and scoops him up in her arms. Okay...sometimes he is upside down but she's got him and that is the most important thing.

She tries to put her diapers on him.

She rocks him.

She reads to him.

She sings to him.

She nurses him.

She kisses him.

She hugs him.

She holds him out for me to kiss and hug. It's so sweet. Just when it's getting so adorable I can hardly stand it, she hurls him across the room and turns her attention elsewhere. Like I said, she's 18 months.

Her journey to motherhood is a process, but she's on the road. I almost hope she doesn't get anymore dolls for awhile.

She already has her baby.

More time in a day

I found this article on the Ladies Against Feminism page by By Mrs. Wayne Hunter. I found this article to have great ideas which I need to put into practice.

Below are some tips on how to make more out of the time that you have.

Pray. Before you begin your day, please take the time to pray to God. Don’t be selfish. Your family deserves your very best as well as a clean home and wholesome meals. They deserve a mother who gives of herself to make sure that her family is completely taken care of. You are your husband’s wife and your children’s mother; they need you.

Declutter, thoroughly clean and organize your home. Do this one room at a time. An excellent way to get started is to remember these two things:

If it’s not useful or beautiful, THROW IT OUT! Have a garbage can and several garbage bags for the garbage, have a box or so for charity, and a box for collectibles, such as heirlooms, that can’t be thrown away but need to be stored. Go through everything, including drawers, closets, bookshelves, corners, cabinets and whatever else is in the room.

Next comes the thorough cleaning. Wipe off, dust, polish, wash, scrub; do whatever it takes to get the room thoroughly clean. Don’t forget walls, ceilings and baseboards.

You will most likely find after the decluttering that you have a lot more room to put things, therefore, the organization of your items comes next. Find a space to neatly place everything. Don’t forget: one room at a time is the way to go with this. Trying to declutter, thoroughly clean and organize more than one room at a time can leave you frustrated, take a lot longer, and may be less thoroughly done than going one room at a time. Also, going one room at a time, you can see your results more quickly, thus leading to more motivation to go on to the next room. This is initially time-consuming, good old-fashioned hard work, but the benefits are great. You have a beautiful home, you save a lot of time by maintaining a clean home rather than shuffling a mess and clutter around, and it’s so much easier to maintain a home that is organized and clutter-free. Declutter, thoroughly clean and organize your home at least twice a year. A suggestion on when to do this would be once in the summer and once in the winter.

Get up earlier and stay up later. This is the golden key to success for the round-the-clock homemaker! The famous Proverbs 31 wife and mother rose while it was yet night and let not her candle go out by night - meaning that she got up early and stayed up late. Don’t deprive yourself of a good night's sleep, but there is much to be accomplished in these hours. If you have small children or even older ones, set a bedtime for them, and you go to bed a few hours later. While the children are in bed, you can get a whole lot of housework done. You might well be amazed at how much quicker you can get household tasks done when you are on your own time. (This is an especially good time to do tasks that cannot yet be handled by little hands. Your children should obviously be trained to do household chores as they are able during the day, which will eventually free up more of your time.)

Getting up earlier has the same benefits. Both getting up earlier and staying up later also provide the benefit of you having time for yourself. You can do a great deal of reflecting and thinking. You could use some of the time to study. One great way to study while working is to purchase the Scourby Bible tapes. These are audio tapes of the King James Version of the Bible that are outstanding. The reader has such a pleasant voice and reads straight from the Bible; no commentary, nothing but the pure Word of God; they are so touching. They are a great way to study and an absolutely uplifting way to enjoy your time. The Scourby readings of the Bible are available on audio tapes and CDs. For more information on them, you can visit their website at this link or call 1-800-237-0785.

By getting up earlier and staying up later, you can enjoy more time with your husband and children, as you won’t be hustling to get the housework done when they need your time and attention. You can tend to their needs instead of being overwhelmed by the amount of work that needs to be done. You will have to figure out what gets done and what doesn’t at these opportune times, but one thing’s for sure: you’ll enjoy the fruits of your labors!

Make most of the food for the day in the early morning. This ensures that you will have healthy food for each meal. An example would be to make three loaves of bread in the early morning while everyone else is sleeping (one loaf per meal), put on a big pot of beans so that they’ll be ready by lunch, and you will have plenty left for supper that you can make chili with in a jiffy. Make homemade pudding so that it can set up well in the refrigerator for lunch and supper. You could also slice and cut fresh fruits and vegetables and put them on trays for the lunch and or supper, make a nice salad, etc. Stews, roasts, soups, and baked items are all good foods to make once for the whole day.

Make a menu. Each week plan a nutritious menu, then plan once-a-week grocery shopping by it. Having a menu can save you lots of money, as you will have a guide and the groceries on hand to make the meals you have planned, rather than shopping nightly (which can lead to picking up a lot of unnecessary and costly items) or picking up fast foods because you haven’t planned. Also, by planning a menu, you can see in writing your family’s eating habits and correct areas of concern by planning good, wholesome, nutritious, and well-balanced foods for your family.

Observe the Sabbath Day and keep it Holy. “Remember the sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labor and do all thy work: But the seventh day is the sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: For in six days the LORD made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the sabbath day, and hallowed it” (Exodus 20:8-11). This is the fourth of the Ten Commandments. Work the first six days of the week to prepare for the seventh, then you can rest and enjoy a day off. Sabbath is a beautiful, beautiful day. By keeping His commandments, you are showing Him that He is most important to you. God says in Isaiah 58:13-14, “If thou turn away thy foot from the sabbath, from doing thy pleasure on My holy day; and call the sabbath a delight, the holy of the Lord, honourable; and shalt honour Him, not doing thine own ways, nor finding thine own pleasure, nor speaking thine own words: Then shalt thou delight thyself in the LORD; and I will cause thee to ride upon the high places of the earth, and feed thee with the heritage of Jacob thy father; for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken it.”

Eat not the bread of idleness. Don’t be lazy. Get your work done before you take time for pleasure. Wiling away hours in front of the t.v., gossiping on the phone or in person, spending countless time in front of the computer for entertainment purposes, sitting around reading novels, and such all take a lot bigger chunk out of your time than you might imagine. There is a time for taking the time to entertain yourself, but if your husband, children, or yourself are being neglected in some way, your laundry is out of control, dishes are piled up in the kitchen, or the house is a mess, etc. then get busy! Proverbs 24:33 says, “Yet a little sleep, a little slumber, a little folding of the hands to sleep: So shall thy poverty come as one that travelleth; And thy want as an armed man.” Idleness will get you nowhere fast. By working hard, you save time and money--not to mention that you feel much better about your family and yourself. Make yourself keep that laundry taken care of and the house clean. It may not be easy at first, but once you get into the swing of it and receive the abundant blessings, it may easily become your way of life.

Give your children age appropriate chores and make sure that they do them. Even a toddler can pick up his own toys and put them in the toy box. There are “chore charts” available, and if you don’t know where to start, maybe you could check into them. You can’t expect a two-year-old to use an adult mop and broom, but he can fold washcloths for you or pick up around the house. There are several things that children can do to help out around the house. The child is shown that he is an important part of a functioning family, and you have a little extra help. Make sure that your children are shown exactly how to keep their rooms clean, and then make sure that they do it by having nightly checks about an hour before bed. If the room isn’t to specifications, have them get it to specification while you’re in the room. But please do heed this warning about giving your children chores, and this is to not overburden them with adult-sized tasks. Since children are smaller physically and haven’t the amount of years of doing the housework as you, they most often just can’t get the job done as quickly or efficiently as an adult. Give them a chore or two, enough time to do them well, teach them to appreciate the beauty of their work, and then give them plenty of time for play and education. This is especially true of an older girl child. It is very easy to overburden our preteen or teenage daughters when they get old enough to take over a lot of household chores and baby tending. They need to see that Momma works, too--not that she is a harsh taskmaster who wants others to do everything while she relaxes. Work together, and work will become more meaningful and beautiful.

For the rest of the article, click the link below:
http://www.ladiesagainstfeminism.com/artman/publish/article_2496.shtml

Signing the Register

Signing the Register by Edmund Leighton

Blessing or burden?

Children are a gift from the Lord;
they are a reward from him.
Children born to a young man
are like arrows in a warrior’s hands.
How joyful is the man whose quiver is full of them!
He will not be put to shame when he confronts his accusers at the city gates.
Psalm 127:3-5


Do most Christians in our modern America agree with God's view of children? The author of life, the Creator of the universe clearly says in His word that children are His gift to us, that they are a blessing. Who are we to disagree with Him. Think about it.

Know your knots?

My son can often be seen carrying a rope around and practicing tying knots. That is, ever since he received the book, The Handbook of Knots by Des Pawson. Both my boys have had their own jump rope for years that they treasure. They have been trusty friends, using them to tie people up, drag things around with or loop over a tree limb to use as a hoist. A rope is a good non-plastic, non-battery, all boy toy.

The next time you need to buy a birthday gift for a boy between the ages of 6-10, try a rope and this knot book. A winning combination.

Winding the Skein

Winding the Skein by Lord Frederick Leighton

My cheeks are fluffy

Well, that's what my brothers keep telling me anyway. The other day my oldest brother murmured lovingly, "Fluffy cheeks" as he caressed my face. He was reminiscing back to when I was just a newborn. T2 first coined the infamous 'fluffy' phrase, which must have been good in some way because everyone laughs or gets a very thoughtful smile on their face whenever it is uttered.

Back to the other day...after T1 made the before mentioned comment, T2 wistfully said, "Just like a pillow."

Yeah...they love me.

DCDA OEEQTOKEM FWG LWNA HQWTVGGPVJ Q UGXGP!

Trebuchet

Here is T2 and his trebuchet he built the other day. He was launching rocks with it. The bucket is full of large rocks to act as a counter weight. I took a video of it in action, but don't know how to put it on my blog. Too bad. It's cute. Maybe someday.

What is a trebuchet? A trebuchet is a medieval siege engine, a weapon used to batter or throw projectiles over walls. The trebuchet is thought to have been invented in China between the5th and 3rd centuries BC. It could fling three hundred pound projectiles at incredible speeds into an enemy fortification, quickly obliterating walls and defenses. Occasionally it was used to throw the bodies of people who had died from various diseases including the black plague over castle walls, in an attempt to infect the people under siege.

If you have an adventurous lad who is interested in making a trebuchet of his own, check out The Art of the Catapult by William Gurstelle. With some scrap wood, rope, hammer, and nails and this book, build simple yet sophisticated hurling machines that rely on the fundamentals of math and physics using levers, force, torsion, tension, and traction.

And in case any early Christmas shoppers were wondering, T2 doesn't have this book yet.

Raw milk

Here is our morning fruit drink with goat milk kefir. You can see the kefir grain in the mason jar. I have just strained it out of the kefir and will now pour fresh milk onto it and begin the process of making kefir for tomorrow's fruit drink. Here I used pasteurized goat milk bought at the store, but usually get fresh raw goat's milk from a trusted source.

If you are interested in the story of raw milk, you will enjoy this article from The Washington Post. This author goes underground in search of the contraband milk. Or check out Organic Pastures website, they legally sell raw milk products and are based out of California.

Brothers

The Land of Counterpane

When I was sick and lay-a-bed,
I had two pillows at my head,
And all my toys beside me lay
To keep me happy all the day.

And sometimes for an hour or so
I watched my leaden soldiers go,
With different uniforms and drills,
Among the bedclothes, through the hills;

And sometimes sent my ships in fleets
All up and down among the sheets;
Or brought my trees and houses out,
And planted cities all about.

I was the giant great and still
That sits upon the pillow-hill,
And sees before him, dale and plain,
The pleasant land of counterpane.

Robert Louis Stevenson

Country frog

We found this little guy on a grape leaf sunning himself. He looked so cute tucked up there. I wanted to find a nice poem about a frog such as he but I couldn't find one to my liking. Instead this poem kept popping into my mind, and although it's not about a frog, I like it so much I will share it anyway.


The Caterpillar

Brown and furry
Caterpillar in a hurry;
Take your walk
To the shady leaf or stalk.

May no toad spy you,
May the little birds pass by you;
Spin and die,
To live again a butterfly.

Christina Rossetti

Salvete!

I came out of my room to find this Roman gentleman standing in my house. He refused to smile stating "Romans don't smile". Apparently, Jonathan was overcome with the urge to make himself a toga while doing his morning chore of folding clothes. I think he did a great job don't you? He was inspired by the fact that we have just begun our new latin course called Prima Latina. I say we because I want to learn too. It's fun! Here are our vocabulary words for the week.

toga = toga
Deus = God
via = road
ambulo = I walk
luna = moon
salve = hello (to one person)
salvete = hello (to more than one person)


What?

Why study latin? Well, at least 60% of words in the English language are derived from Latin which helps tremendously with vocabulary and grammar. Studies conducted by the Educational Testing Service show that Latin students consistently outperform all other students on the verbal portion of the Scholastic Assessment Test (SAT).

And also... my friend Khonda is doing it.

Jack today at 5 months old

Canning isn't for wimps

No one ever accused me of lacking passion. We're up past 30 quarts of grape juice now and out of canning jars!