I think over the course of the next sev­eral months, I will prob­a­bly be chang­ing my blog top­ics up a lit­tle. When I was breast­feed­ing K fre­quently or when A was born and I was feed­ing both boys fre­quently, I felt like I had a lot more to say about nurs­ing specif­i­cally. Now that they’re get­ting older, it’s just some­thing that’s an every day part of our lives. It just is. I don’t think or worry about it too much. We’ve got­ten over most of the hur­dles and pit­falls. A is sleep­ing bet­ter, and K has kept up his 2 a day nurs­ing rou­tine for the past few weeks.

Some of the top­ics that I have become more inter­ested in lately are healthy eat­ing, green liv­ing, cook­ing, exer­cise, and expand­ing my read­ing reper­toire. Maybe I’ll fin­ish a book (with­out read­ing the end­ing ahead of time) and do a review of it. Who knows?

A while ago, I wrote about our new com­post bin that Jason and his dad had made. I was a lit­tle skep­ti­cal that we would be able to fill it all up. Who throws that much food? Well, it’s pretty much full. We have some of our lawn clip­pings in there and some food with it, too. Jason goes out once in a while, and he moves it around and turns it. I guess he waters it, too.

When we first started the project, I thought it was just some­thing fun to do. I also thought it would be nice to even­tu­ally have the com­post for our gar­den. I didn’t real­ize until today when I was read­ing on 5 Min­utes for Going Green (a fab­u­lous blog, by the way), that com­post­ing has another ben­e­fit. Food that is thrown away is the largest com­po­nent of land­fill waste. When food is thrown away, it does not become com­post. The con­di­tions in the land­fill are anaer­o­bic (oxygen-free), and instead of becom­ing fab­u­lous fer­til­izer, it breaks down to become methane gas. Methane gas is a green­house gas, and it is three times more potent than car­bon diox­ide. In an era where global warm­ing has become an every­day con­ver­sa­tion, it seems like com­post­ing is one small thing that the aver­age per­son can do with lit­tle extra effort and expense.

Last week, I signed up to join The Lip­stick Chal­lenge on a fel­low NaBloPoMo mommy blogger’s site. I got my sam­ples in the mail today. Thanks, Heather! So, for the next 7 days, I have at least one guar­an­teed post for each day!

I’ll be post­ing a pic­ture a day through the chal­lenge. Come back and check out my lips!

I think it’s been pretty obvi­ous in pre­vi­ous posts that A has not made it a pri­or­ity to spend any great amount of time asleep either at nap­time or at night. In fact, there have been times when I’ve won­dered if even as a teenager he would be wak­ing ever hour or two for some­thing. I know that’s not going to hap­pen, but some­times it’s hard to see fur­ther ahead than the next day or week or month.

So, in a (suc­cess­ful) effort to get more sleep, we decided that we would start sleep­ing with A in our bed. There were def­i­nitely mixed reviews on our deci­sion, although we weren’t really ask­ing for oth­ers’ opin­ions. We heard things like “Oh, do you really want to start that?” “That will be a hard habit to break.” “Oh, you should get so much more sleep that way!” and a few other vari­a­tions of those sen­ti­ments. After about six months, I ended up sleep­ing on the couch for sev­eral days while I suf­fered through some pretty annoy­ing aller­gies. A slept in his bassinet in our room for those nights and seemed to do bet­ter than he had been in our bed, so we went with his cues and kept him in there.

Because we were a sleep shar­ing fam­ily, I have been read­ing other people’s thoughts on co-sleeping and sleep shar­ing with a dif­fer­ent point of view lately. I have been notic­ing that there are usu­ally a few peo­ple in any dis­cus­sion or debate on this topic who offer the “I knew some­one who slept with their chil­dren, and now they are four and seven and still can’t sleep well” point of view. Hop­ing that wouldn’t be me, I got stuck think­ing about it over and over.

One day, I real­ized some­thing. Many par­ents who sleep with their chil­dren, don’t set out to have that hap­pen. I think a lot of par­ents visu­al­ize a child com­ing home from the hos­pi­tal, sleep­ing in the bassinet for a cou­ple weeks or months, and then sleep­ing in their room after that. That’s what I thought would hap­pen. It did not. So, many par­ents who sleep with their chil­dren start out doing so because their chil­dren are not great sleep­ers. They sleep with them because it’s the only way any­one gets any sleep. They have a fam­ily bed for a while, then even­tu­ally, the child goes on to sleep in their own crib or bed. Will this child sud­denly become a great sleeper? Prob­a­bly not. Will they still strug­gle get­ting to sleep or stay­ing to sleep? Maybe. Will they be a “bad” sleeper? Pos­si­bly. Will the fact that they are not a good sleeper or some may even say bad be because they shared a bed with their par­ents for a cou­ple weeks or months? No, not in my opinion.

That was what I was think­ing ear­lier while I was lay­ing down with A to help him fall asleep. Unfor­tu­nately, now I can­not remem­ber just what that great idea was. I’m sure it will come to me as soon as I post this one or even bet­ter, while I’m in the shower. So, be on the look out. I may have a flash of bril­liance com­ing up in one of my future posts!

It’s always nice for us when the 4th of July falls near the begin­ning or end of the week. We don’t have any fam­ily in town, so if it is near a week­end, either we or they can make a 3 day week­end out of it and take a trip. This week­end, Jason’s mom and dad came to visit us.

They drove up yes­ter­day, and brought A a sand­box as a gift for his first birth­day. It is very nice. They even bought sand that feels like beach sand! WOW! I want to go play in there once the kids are in bed. K seems to have made more use of it than A has so far. A sat in it yes­ter­day for a while and then started eat­ing the sand. Once he got tired of that, he was tired of the sand­box. K, how­ever, was happy to play in there all after­noon and again this morn­ing for almost the entire morning.

Part of the rea­son that they stayed overnight is that we are still try­ing to do a few odds and ends jobs around our house, and some­times those jobs are eas­ier with a sec­ond set of hands. This morn­ing, Jason and his dad worked on installing a fan in our main bath­room. This after­noon, they worked on build­ing a com­post bin. Jason found the plans for the bin on Lowe’s web­site, and I have to say it is much big­ger, nicer, and stur­dier than I antic­i­pated. We will have to do some seri­ous com­post­ing though with this thing.

Jason and his dad were only able to fin­ish about half of the com­post bin project. It said that it was a five hour project on the plans, but I think if I were help­ing, I could eas­ily help them turn it into a ten or twenty hour project. Just think of the fam­ily togeth­er­ness that could result from that help! So, now the bin is in our garage with the rest of the lum­ber wait­ing to be fin­ished. In fact, those things are right next to and on the cement pavers that we will be using in our next big project of re-landscaping the front of the house. That project may have to wait for our next long weekend…Labor Day!

Happy 4th of July!

Isn’t that a song? Maybe the song is “you’ve been away for far too long.” Either way…

So, it’s been a long time since I sat down to blog or share pic­tures or just think out loud. Some­times when I let a hobby or activ­ity fall to the way­side, I just for­get about it, and I drift away. This isn’t the case for my blog though. In fact, I think about blog­ging almost every day. In par­tic­u­lar, I think about it when I go to check Jason’s sister’s Project 366 page. When I’m look­ing at her amaz­ing pic­tures, I usu­ally think that if she can take a pic­ture and post it every day while hav­ing 3 kids and work­ing from home, I should be able to blog at least once a week. Guess that wasn’t the case though.

Right now, I have two major goals I am work­ing on. I’m not ready to reveal either one of them though. I know, it’s not fair that I would tell you that much but not say what they are, right? I will say that one of them is pri­mar­ily a mental/intellectual goal. The other is pri­mar­ily a phys­i­cal goal. As I progress and get closer to achiev­ing them, I’m sure I won’t be able to keep either a secret, so be watch­ing.

Jason, the boys, and I spent yes­ter­day and today at his par­ents’ house. We intended on only spend­ing yes­ter­day with them, but it got late, and the weather wasn’t sup­posed to be all that great, so we spent the night. Today, we went to church, ate out, and after­wards, I took a nap (and it was WONDERFULLLLLL!!!) on the couch. We decided about 3:30 to get mov­ing and get home before dark. Gen­er­ally, it’s a pretty quick 60 mile trip on the inter­state. Well, today, things were a bit different.

Before we even got out of town, I found that dri­ving the speed limit on the roads *in town* was too fast. I could feel myself slip­ping on the ice, and I had to slow down on roads that were only 40 mph. Nor­mally, Jason does all the win­ter dri­ving, and I either read or stare down the road and freak out inter­mit­tently as I feel the car slide a bit. Well, he’s had the flu (not the stom­ach flu, the actual influenza flu) since Thurs­day, so I got the oppor­tu­nity to prac­tice my win­ter dri­ving skills. We started out of town, and the first 3 miles were great. I was very relieved until we went around a curve in the road, and all of a sud­den, the road was cov­ered in ice.

The nor­mally 60 mile, hour long drive became a 25–35 mph, 90 minute drive. As bad as it was for us, I was con­cerned about friends of ours who had gone out to west­ern North Dakota for a hockey trip. They had a 5+ hour trip on nor­mal roads. I had Jason call their house while we were dri­ving home and we got no answer. We got home, and I meant to call them again, but I was wor­ried it was too late so I decided to wait until morn­ing. They just returned our call and said that between the turnoff where we live and the one they take, which is about 10 miles, there were 13 cars in the ditch. It was just a quick con­ver­sa­tion so I’m not sure how long their trip lasted, but if it was any­thing like ours and they had to deal with the dark, I wouldn’t be sur­prised if it was 8 or more hours.

About a month ago, Jason, my hus­band started run­ning on our tread­mill every other day. He started off run­ning two miles and is up to three and a half as of Sat­ur­day. Now, I have never had much desire to run. Occa­sion­ally, I lose my mind, and it sounds like some­thing I would enjoy. How­ever, in my saner moments, I know that it is not some­thing I want to do. In fact, I almost shud­der when I think about it. Even though I would find read­ing the dic­tio­nary to be eas­ier and more enjoy­able, I’m really proud of him for mak­ing this com­mit­ment and stick­ing with it. Ever since my par­ents have known Jason, they have said over and over again how he is the most patient per­son they’ve ever met. One con­ver­sa­tion that I recall with my dad hap­pened after a long, hot game of golf. I think that his patience plays a big part in his abil­ity to be ded­i­cated to a goal that he has. Me, not so much patience and not so much ded­i­ca­tion, unfortunately.

Recently, one night when A wasn’t sleep­ing and Jason was get­ting ready to go run, I got grumpy about his run­ning. I stood in the shower and stewed about it. I had myself con­vinced that he was being self­ish and choos­ing his own desires over being with me or the boys. I was pretty mad at him. In fact, by the end of my shower, I was ready to sit him down and let him know that right now we just don’t have the time for him to be run­ning. He needs to spend all of his evening time with me, with A, or doing work. (How ter­ri­ble does that sound?) Sud­denly, I real­ized just what I was going to tell him. I really felt like God was ask­ing me to dig deeper and fig­ure out where my feel­ings were com­ing from. So, I spent some more time think­ing about it.

I came to the real­iza­tion that me being mad about his run­ning had noth­ing to do with him. Not so sur­pris­ingly, it was about me! I was mad that he was able to stay so ded­i­cated and com­mit­ted to run­ning when it’s some­thing that is very hard for me. I start new projects and hob­bies quite fre­quently. I’m cur­rently cro­chet­ing and quilt­ing blan­kets. I also have terra cotta pots and paint in the garage. I have tons and tons of unread books. I have a blog that I don’t update nearly as often as I should. I have also started read­ing my Bible-in-a-year at least 4 dif­fer­ent times, and I could go on and on! Per­sis­tence is not one of my strengths unfortunately.

My first instinct when I fig­ured out why it was both­er­ing me so much was to go out and make some big com­mit­ments to prove to myself that I can in fact stick with what I start. I’m not so sure that’s the wis­est thing to do though. After some more thought, I think what I’ll do is take some time decide where I really do want to spend my time and energy. Then, I’ll com­mit to doing those things instead of jump­ing onto the next fun idea that comes by.

Well, I did the elim­i­na­tion diet for a few days, and I saw no results. I ate only chicken and rice. To be hon­est, I don’t even really like chicken all that well (unless it’s a spicy chicken sand­wich from Wendy’s with mayo on it), and now the thought of that chicken makes me a lit­tle queasy. Yuck.

So, for­tu­nately, it appears that A does not have food aller­gies (other than the pre­vi­ously men­tioned dairy allergy or sen­si­tiv­ity). This means he won’t have to spend his life ana­lyz­ing every bite that enters his mouth and won­der­ing if he is going to have reac­tion or if it will be okay. I won’t have to dress him in a shirt that say, “I have severe food aller­gies. Please ask my mommy before you give me any food” at fam­ily gatherings.

Unfor­tu­nately, we really don’t have any leads on the fussi­ness, rest­less­ness, or lack of sleep. I feel like I’m walk­ing a line. On one hand, if there’s some­thing that is wrong and both­er­ing him, I want to know. On the other hand, if he’s sim­ply not a good sleeper, and he never will be, I hate to drag him from one appoint­ment to another, from one diet to another, and from one tech­nique to another. I guess I have to decide at what point I just need to sit back and be okay with not know­ing why he doesn’t sleep and why he cries. That’s a hard thing for a mom though.