Now that K is three, I see some big changes com­ing. First, I’ve noticed that he’s becom­ing a preschooler and no longer a tod­dler right before my eyes. He puts his own shoes on when he wants to. He is start­ing to use the potty. He has great con­ver­sa­tional skills. He has a great imag­i­na­tion. He is drop­ping his nap. He is telling us that he wants to start wear­ing under­wear and using the potty. It doesn’t seem real that he could go from such a tiny baby to this lit­tle boy. It is amaz­ing and a lit­tle sad all at the same time.

A is grow­ing up, too. I know it has to hap­pen, but at the same time I’m not quite ready. A is walk­ing. He’s danc­ing. He also pushes cars and makes a car-like noise. He is also slim­ming out. When I look at pic­tures of him from his birth­day in July and now, I can see how he’s grow­ing and look­ing more and more like K and Jason. If it weren’t for his blonde (WHERE DID HE GET THIS???) hair, I think he’d look almost exactly like Jason and K. As it is, I reg­u­larly get com­ments about the resem­blance between the three of them. Luck­ily, I was the con­tainer that car­ried both K and A, so I can get at least that much credit.

I’ve always heard peo­ple say the same sorts of things about lit­tle kids. “Enjoy them when they’re small.” “They grow so fast.” “Before you know it they’ll be… (going off to school, dri­ving, get­ting mar­ried, you name it).” Recently, I’ve been think­ing about another say­ing. “The days may go slow, but the years go fast.”

And, because I’ve been over­load­ing with pic­tures lately, here are a few more.

Baby K

K with his lego tower

Baby A

A eat­ing a caramel apple

Yes, I know that sounds silly. I’m sure a lot of peo­ple I know read my blog. When I started this blog, though, most of the peo­ple who read it were online friends or peo­ple who just hap­pened to stum­ble upon it some­how or were mar­ried to me. Tonight, I was talk­ing to my friend, Erin, and she said that she met some­one at a craft show or fair that had heard of her prod­ucts from my blog! She tried to describe her to me, and I’m won­der­ing if it was Crys­tal, but I don’t know for sure. Was it you, Crystal?

Most of you who know me know that I’m always up for a good par­ent­ing, breast­feed­ing, or most any other topic dis­cus­sion. In fact, last night, a friend told me that she thought I would do a good job work­ing for QVC as a host of one of their shows! She said I could just sit and talk about any­thing!!! I had a good laugh over that one. So, my point is that when I started this blog, it was an out­let for some of those thoughts that other peo­ple get sick of hear­ing. Not every­one in my life wants to talk about breast­feed­ing and blood dona­tion or why I choose to nurse a 3 year old and a 1 year old or the lat­est breast­feed­ing book or blog that I came across. There are lots of thoughts in my head, and some­times the audi­ence for these thoughts just isn’t there, so it’s times like those when I let it out on my blog.

We are! Mem­bers of Min­nesota Pub­lic Radio that is. When our TV took a turn for the worse last month, we found that there was sig­nif­i­cantly more time to lis­ten to the radio. Nei­ther Jason nor I are hooked on one type of music. We both have pretty eclec­tic tastes. Because of that, we find it hard to find a sta­tion that sat­is­fies all of our tastes. We end up using iTunes or our iPods for get­ting our fix of music. When we’re lis­ten­ing to the radio though, we are usu­ally lis­ten­ing to MPR.

Jason started lis­ten­ing to MPR a while back. I resisted, because at the time I was hard-cord Repub­li­can, and I felt like there was too much lefty lib­eral stuff on there. I’m not sure if that was true or if I just heard what I wanted to hear. I’m guess­ing it was more likely the lat­ter. As time went on, I noticed that I was more and more inter­ested in what I heard while he was lis­ten­ing to MPR, and I noticed that less and less of what I heard was polit­i­cal. It was just inter­est­ing stuff.

Off the top of my head, I can think of sev­eral pro­grams that we reg­u­larly lis­ten to. Instead of TiVo’ing the lat­est TV shows, we are often down­load­ing the lat­est pod­casts of our favorite pro­grams. My favorites are Mid­morn­ing with Kerry Miller, Mid­day with Gary Eichten, Speak­ing of Faith with Krista Tip­pett, and the Sun­day Morn­ing Puz­zler. Some of Jason’s favorites are Sci­ence Fri­day and Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me!

One of the things that I like about lis­ten­ing to MPR is how I feel after I’ve lis­tened to it. I feel like I used my time wisely. I feel smarter. I feel more inter­est­ing myself. I like the fact the vari­ety of top­ics and per­spec­tives I get. It took me a while to believe Jason when he told me about it, but now that I’m lis­ten­ing reg­u­larly, I’m hooked! Lots of other kids can sing the lyrics of songs they hear on the radio in the car, what will my kids take away from our time in the car? I can only imag­ine!

Have you ever heard about Com­pas­sion Inter­na­tional? If you have attended many Chris­t­ian music con­certs, there’s a good chance, you have. There’s also a good chance that I’ve talked a lit­tle about Com­pas­sion to you if I talk to you on a reg­u­lar basis.

Our fam­ily spon­sors a child through Com­pas­sion. Her name is Daniela, and she lives in Hon­duras. She is 13, and she and I share the same birth­day. That’s actu­ally how I decided which child to pick at that Bebo Nor­man con­cert in 2004. Choos­ing to spon­sor a child had been some­thing I had been think­ing about doing for a while. In Octo­ber of 2004, Jason and I went to a Bebo Nor­man con­cert as part of my birth­day present. Dur­ing the inter­mis­sion, I decided to go look at the Com­pas­sion table. I told Jason, “How about this? If I see one and one of the kids shares my birth­day, that’s how we’ll decide if we spon­sor some­one or not.” Very nice, huh? So, we walked back to the tables where they dis­play the pro­files of the chil­dren who need spon­sors. I looked down, and what do you think hap­pened? The very first pro­file I looked at was Daniela’s. She and I share a birth­day, too! My deci­sion was pretty easy.

Since then, we’ve been sup­port­ing her with a monthly con­tri­bu­tion. We also try to send a lit­tle some­thing extra for birth­days and Christ­mas. When I can get my act together, I also send her pic­tures. She writes to us. She usu­ally sends a pic­ture that she has drawn or col­ored for the boys (and me, too, I sup­pose). We share prayer requests, and we get to know each other. It’s easy for me to become com­pla­cent about my spon­sor­ship. I just put it on the Amer­i­can Express and let the auto with­drawl take care of itself, right?

That’s sort of how things were going. Then, I started read­ing, yes, you guessed it 5 Min­utes for Mom. One of their edi­tors, Jen­nifer, is on a Com­pas­sion trip right now. She is in the Domini­can Repub­lic, and she has been blog­ging about her expe­ri­ences along with a few other blog­gers. Read­ing her expe­ri­ences and the expe­ri­ences of the other blog­gers has reminded me what a respon­si­bil­ity I have. Yes, my $32/month is good. Yes, it does help Daniela in a way that is so vitally impor­tant, but I need to do more than that. I need to be reg­u­larly pray­ing for her and her fam­ily. I also need to be an active par­tic­i­pant in our cor­re­spon­dence. I’m pretty sure that God didn’t want me to spon­sor Daniela solely for the money. He could have found that money from a few dif­fer­ent places if that had been the goal. I’m more than a lit­tle sure that there’s some­thing to be learned from this expe­ri­ence both for Daniela and myself.

Hav­ing read some of these per­sonal expe­ri­ences this week has brought back to me the bless­ings I have been giv­ing, and it has also pointed out to me the respon­si­bil­ity I have cho­sen to take upon myself. Maybe you are in the same place I was 4 years ago. Have you thought about it but never done it? Lately in the car, I’ve been hear­ing this com­mer­cial on the radio. It says some­thing like, “You saw a home­less fam­ily on the street today. You almost stopped to see if they needed some help. You got a let­ter in the mail today from a local char­ity. You almost sent them a dona­tion…” There’s more, but I can’t remem­ber it. Then, at the end, it says, “Don’t almost give.” That line always gets me. There are so many times when I almost. I almost call some­one when I think they might be down. I almost give the last cash I have when I see some­one who might need it. I almost send a card. I almost say some­thing. I almost do it. Don’t stop there. Do it! Make some­one else’s life a lit­tle better.

I’ve been count­ing down in my head to my 100th post for a while now. Then, I real­ized that I missed it! Whoops. So, for my 101st post on this blog, I decided to do a list of 101 things about me (and my fam­ily). Here it is:

1. My mom and I shared a hos­pi­tal room with my high school best friend and her mom when we were born (2 days apart).
2. We didn’t find out about that until we were 17 years old, because we weren’t from the same town until her fam­ily moved at age 14.
3. When I was younger, I thought I would become a nurse, a teacher, and a pet store employee when I grew up.
4. When I was around 7 or 8 years old, I started putting the same 3 items on my Christ­mas list every year: a phone in my room, a pet, and another brother or sister.
5. I have one sibling.
6. I never got any of those things.
7. Before I could read (well), my par­ents used to give me the mail addressed to “Cur­rent Res­i­dent” and tell me it was for me.
8. They gave me mail­ings from Byron Dor­gan and told me he was send­ing me mail.
9. I believed them until I was far too old to believe that sort of thing.
10. I had a great childhood.
11. I have great parents.
12. Most of my child­hood mem­o­ries revolve around play­ing at the neigh­bor hood park, play­ing with friends in my yard, or being with my extended family.
13. I learned to read before kindergarten.
14. I have loved to read for as long as I can remember.
15. When my brother had bowl­ing league, I spent the time at the library
16. I’m not sure he’d appre­ci­ate me remind­ing peo­ple he was in a bowl­ing league.
17. Fourth grade was my favorite year of ele­men­tary school. Thanks, Mrs. Becker!
18. By 6th grade, I had read nearly all the children/youth books in our library and checked out a Stephen King novel.
19. My sixth grade teacher called my par­ents to see what they thought about me hav­ing that book.
20. I didn’t actu­ally read it. It was a lit­tle too creepy for my age.
21. When I was in sev­enth grade, I had my first sort-of-real boyfriend.
22. We didn’t date or call each other or any­thing, but we were “together.”
23. When I was a junior in high school, I had two teach­ers tell me that he still “had the hots” for me.
24. I doubt the truth of #22.
25. I have been a North Dakota res­i­dent my entire life.
26. I flew on an air­plane for the first time when I was 16. I went to St. Louis, Mis­souri with 3 class­mates and a teacher from my school.
27. FHA (now known as FCCLA) was respon­si­ble for most of my travel prior to turn­ing 18.
28. Because of FCCLA, I was able to go to St. Louis, MO, New Orleans, LA, and Tokyo, Japan.
29. I spent 6 weeks in Japan with a host fam­ily the sum­mer I was 17.
30. I climbed (part of) Mt. Fuji.
31. I lived in cen­tral Tokyo when I was in Japan.
32. My Japan­ese fam­ily drove a Ford minivan.
33. When I was in Tokyo, I felt like I could not breathe because there were so many peo­ple and build­ings all around.
34. When I came home from Japan, I remem­ber what North Dakota air smelled like as I stepped off the airplane.
35. The only rea­son I needed to attend 4 years of high school was for my senior eng­lish and my senior social stud­ies class. I had enough classes/credits to grad­u­ate after 3 years.
36. I wanted to be a marine biol­o­gist when I was in high school.
37. That is not very likely when you live in North Dakota.
38. When I wrote my senior eng­lish paper about my future career, I chose civil engineering.
39. I was an engi­neer­ing major for 3 days in college.
40. I also majored in speech lan­guage pathology.
41. and ath­letic training
42. and ele­men­tary education
43. and mid­dle school education.
44. I stuck with the last two.
45. I have a dual major in ele­men­tary and mid­dle level education.
46. I have a mas­ters in spe­cial education.
47. I met my hus­band, Jason, in my first semes­ter of college.
48. I knew who he was in a class of 150ish people.
49. He didn’t know me, but it all worked out in the end.
50. We offi­cially met at a Cam­pus Cru­sade for Christ Christ­mas Conference.
51. We dated for 10 months
52. and broke up for a year and a half.
53. Then, we dated for 8 months,
54. were engaged for 8 moths,
55. and got mar­ried in June of 2002.
56. Jason says that he knew we would get mar­ried the night we first met.
57. It took me another 3 years to fig­ure that out.
58. I don’t like the ends of chicken strips.
59. I don’t really like most meat at all.
60. If I had my choice, I would be vegetarian.
61. I have two sons.
62. I had two unmed­icated labors.
63. I am breast­feed­ing both my 15 month old and my almost 3 year old (will be 3 on Nov 3).
64. I am mar­ried to an early adopter (some­one who jumps onto new trends early).
65. I am not an early adopter.
66. Jason has intro­duced me to blogging,
67. NPR/MPR,
68. and being polit­i­cally moderate.
69. I’m no good at mod­er­a­tion. I like all or nothing.
70. I used to teach spe­cial edu­ca­tion before I had K.
71. When I tell peo­ple that, they say, “you must be really patient.”
72. I laugh when they say that.
73. I am a very emo­tional person.
74. I am eas­ily moved to cry.
75. There is a CVS com­mer­cial that makes me cry.
76. I like the Pixar movie Cars more than my son, I think.
77. I am plan­ning to run a half marathon in May of 2009.
78. I used to think that I wanted to have six children.
79. Now, I’m not sure how many I want.
80. For the first two years of our mar­riage, I did almost no cooking.
81. We had a rota­tion of about 4 meals that we used to space out meals in restaurants.
82. In the sum­mer of 2004, I decided to start try­ing one new meal a week.
83. Now we usu­ally eat 2–4 new meals a week.
84. I am try­ing to get rid of high fruc­tose corn syrup in our house.
85. I love cin­na­mon rolls.
86. I love caramel rolls.
87. I once found (what I think was) a cock­roach in the base­ment of the apart­ment building/house we were liv­ing it.
88. I put it in a sand­wich bag and left it on the kitchen table to show to Jason when he got home from work.
89. Think­ing about that now still gives me the creeps.
90. I some­times get the urge to move some­where far away from North Dakota.
91. I will prob­a­bly never move all that far from North Dakota…maybe Moor­head or East Grand Forks?
92. I am pas­sion­ate about breast­feed­ing and the ben­e­fits of breast­milk for moms and babies.
93. I am becom­ing more and more inter­ested and pas­sion­ate about con­ser­va­tion, green liv­ing, fair trade, and organic food.
94. I want to learn to knit
95. I have started play­ing the piano again, but our piano badly needs to be tuned.
96. I am pleased with where my life is 10 years after high school graduation.
97. I miss my brother and sister-in-law and wish they lived closer.
98. I love to watch football
99. and hockey.
100. Hav­ing kids has sig­nif­i­cantly reduced my sports watch­ing time.
101. Ide­ally, if I have more chil­dren, I would love to give birth to them at The Farm.

There you have it! Those are my 101 things. If you got all the way to the end, I’m impressed!

A cou­ple months ago, I found Paper Bridges through a car­ni­val from 5 Min­utes for Books. I clicked around her site and found sev­eral inter­est­ing posts. One of them was a book give­away. I entered and won this book. She has another book give­away going now. If you have ever heard of or read For Men Only or For Women Only, you might enjoy hav­ing this book even if it’s not directed at you. If you have (or will soon have) a teenage boy, you def­i­nitely will enjoy this book. Click on over and check it out!

5MinutesForMom is hav­ing a sleep­ing angel con­test. They are giv­ing away a South Shore Children’s Bed­room Set from Home & Bed­room Fur­ni­ture. They are ask­ing peo­ple to post pic­tures of their sleep­ing babies, and the win­ner will have their choice of either the Lily Rose or the Sum­mer Breeze set. I would def­i­nitely choose Sum­mer Breeze if I were to win.

So, here is the pic­ture. It’s adorable, and it’s one of my favorites. We were at Jason’s par­ents’ house one day this sum­mer. I ran a few errands, and when I came back, I walked in the front door and saw this…

My Sleep­ing Angels

Last night, Jason tried to turn the tv on, and noth­ing hap­pened. It died. Unfor­tu­nately, it hap­pened just in time for all the new sea­son pre­miers and right before win­ter (and lots of inside time). It couldn’t have hap­pened dur­ing the sum­mer when there was noth­ing on, huh? K is pretty sure that Grandpa will know how to fix it when he comes for a visit this week­end, but I’m not so sure.

When Jason and I talked about it, we decided that we were going to try to take advan­tage of this time. I want to read more, sew a lit­tle, and orga­nize! I know sev­eral fam­i­lies that either don’t have tvs or watch very lit­tle. I’m excited to see how my qual­ity of life will change with­out the tv as an option.

Well, like I said last month, I don’t have a night­stand. There’s one on Jason’s side of the bed, but we don’t have books on that one either. I just have my books all over the house. There are a cou­ple in our room, a cou­ple on the back of the couch, one behind the couch, one in my purse, one on my end table, and tons down­stairs on our bookshelves.

Last month, I was read­ing The Breast­feed­ing Answer Book, Reclaim­ing Nick, and Hap­pi­ness Sold Sep­a­rately. I have made some good progress in the Breast­feed­ing Answer Book. I read Reclaim­ing Nick and the two other books in the series, Tam­ing Rafe and Find­ing Stephanie. I did not fin­ish Hap­pi­ness Sold Sep­a­rately. It fell behind our couch, and I sort of for­got about it. Whoops. I did start it, though, and it’s pretty good from what I remember.

In the last month, I also dis­cov­ered Paper­Back­Swap and Book­Mooch. I wouldn’t say that I am obsessed with them, but they are so fun! I put 20 of my books on the sites (10 on each) and so far, I’ve received 4 books with a 5th on the way. I also thought I would try a swap with any­one on here who wants a book that I’ve read, but so far no one has taken me up on my offer. Since I wrote the post, I have decided, I will just give those books away, so if you want one, let me know. If you have any you’d like to swap, I’m open to offers, but I guess it’s now a giveaway!

I have a trip com­ing up in about 1 1/2 weeks, so my read­ing list is a bit more ambi­tious this month. I have some high hopes that I will be able to read a lot on my trip. So, here is my list for October:

See­ing and Savor­ing Jesus Christ by John Piper (from Paper­Back­Swap)- I was look­ing through avail­able books on Paper­Back­Swap, and I saw this one. I hadn’t heard any­thing about it, but if it’s John Piper, I fig­ured there’s a pretty good chance it’s got qual­ity content.

Break­ing Free by Beth Moore (from Paper­Back­Swap)- My friend from col­lege pur­chased this study, and she has done it sev­eral times. I love Beth Moore, so I fig­ured if my friend can do the study 5+ times and find it valu­able, I would prob­a­bly enjoy the book.

Mid­wives by Chris Boh­jalian (from Book­Mooch)- This is a book I had heard about, but I’m not quite sure what I will think of it. It’s a sub­ject I have pretty strong feel­ings on (mid­wives and home­births). I sup­pose it could really go either way.

The Mem­ory Keeper’s Daugh­ter by Kim Edwards (from Book­Mooch)- I was in Tar­get wan­der­ing around one night after a stress­ful evening try­ing to put A to sleep. I picked up this book and read the back of it. I had actu­ally for­got­ten about it for quite a while, but when I was trad­ing away my books, I decided to look it up.

Wild Goose Chase by Mark Bat­ter­son (received from Monica’s give­away on her site Paper Bridges)- I actu­ally found this give­away last month when check­ing out oth­ers’ lists.

Water for Ele­phants by Sara Gruen (bor­row­ing it from the library)- After hear­ing about this one for so long, I decided to find out what all the talk is about.

A Tree Grows in Brook­lyn by Betty Smith (don’t have it yet, but will be get­ting it from the library and hope to be a part of Octo­ber Book Club on 5minutesforbooks.com)- I have heard about this book, but I don’t know any­thing about it. Maybe it’s time I start learn­ing what the clas­sics are all about!

The Prob­lem with Breast­feed­ing by James Akre (bor­rowed from a friend)- She said this book is a must read. I guess I’ll find out.

Don’t for­get to check out www.5minutesforbooks.com for a list of peo­ple who have shared what they are read­ing this month!

Wel­come to the Sep­tem­ber Breast­feed­ing Car­ni­val! Thanks for vis­it­ing, and be sure to read all the way to the end of my post so you can visit oth­ers who have shared their thoughts on Learn­ing to Breast­feed.

When I was preg­nant with my first child, I knew I wanted to breast­feed. I did some read­ing. I searched the inter­net for what I felt were infor­ma­tive arti­cles. By the time my breast­feed­ing class at the hos­pi­tal rolled around I felt pretty con­fi­dent. My con­fi­dence increased when I went to the class. She didn’t tell me one thing in an almost two hour class that I didn’t already know! I knew I was going to be able to do it. As a sort of insur­ance, I found a breast­feed­ing forum/message board and asked if there was any­thing else I should do to be pre­pared or informed. The answers were pretty run-of-the-mill. “Just keep on going!” “Don’t let any­one talk you into quit­ting.” “You can do it!” I knew that I was set.

When K was born, I had a bit of a sur­prise. Maybe shock is a bet­ter word. He was born nearly 4 weeks early and he wouldn’t latch. He looked at my breast. He half-heartedly opened his mouth. Then, he fell asleep. What?!? This wasn’t the plan. He was sup­posed to know what to do, because I had done my part to get informed about breast­feed­ing. Well, after three days in the hos­pi­tal, we were dis­charged. I had a nip­ple shield and a baby who ate for 45–60 min­utes every 3 hours. Not exactly fit­ting my plan.

For­tu­nately, my mom had breast­fed both myself (for around 18 months) and my brother (for nearly 3 years). She was an amaz­ing sup­port. She kept telling me, “Trust your­self. You know best. You know what is right for you and your baby.” She got up with me for the mid­dle of the night feed­ings and held K after­wards until he had his burp and could fall back asleep. She vis­ited with me when I thought I was too tired to do another feed­ing. She was won­der­ful, and that was a major com­po­nent for my suc­cess. I am sure of it.

When she left and I was home alone with my baby, I began to doubt myself, so I went back to the mes­sage board where I had asked for help so many weeks prior. I began post­ing ques­tion after ques­tion after ques­tion. I got won­der­ful sup­port, and I got great infor­ma­tion. There was one per­son in par­tic­u­lar on that mes­sage board who I still feel a debt of grat­i­tude toward. Her name was Joan, and she was a mod­er­a­tor of the breast­feed­ing forum. Sure, other peo­ple would answer my ques­tion, but I didn’t feel like I had the real answer until I heard from Joan. Over the weeks and months, I gained con­fi­dence, and I also gained a friend­ship. Joan is still one of my close on-line friends. She and I have kept in touch over the past few years, and when a friend of mine had a baby who had nurs­ing trou­bles (over­sup­ply and over­ac­tive let­down, some­thing I knew very lit­tle about) Joan was avail­able over the phone to help her out, too. I also began read­ing www.kellymom.com dur­ing any spare moment I had. I loved that web­site. It was so easy to nav­i­gate and so easy to read and under­stand. It is where I got the bulk of my early breast­feed­ing knowledge.

Almost two years later, when I had my sec­ond son, I was pretty con­fi­dent again. I had been through so much with K that I thought I should have it under con­trol. But, as almost any­one who has breast­fed knows, every baby is dif­fer­ent. With A, I had dif­fer­ent issues, and again I turned to www.kellymom.com and a sup­port­ive on-line com­mu­nity to help me get through the first weeks that were tough.

Now, I’ve been nurs­ing K for almost 35 months, and I’ve been tan­dem nurs­ing K and A for 14 months. I feel like each day I can learn some­thing about breast­feed­ing whether it be from a book, a web­site, a friend, another nurs­ing momma, or one of my kids. I think it’s one of those things where you can keep learn­ing more and more, but I’m not sure that you can ever say that you have “learned to breast­feed.” To me, it’s a jour­ney more than a destination.

Check out these blogs for more thoughts on Learn­ing to Breast­feed (updated through­out the day):

• BreastfeedingMums.com
• Breastfeeding123.com
• Hobomama.blogspot.com
• Breastfeeding.blog.motherwear.com
• KateWicker.com
• Babyfingers.blogspot.com
• StopDropandBlog.com
• NurturingNotes.blogspot.com