Life!

So much for me posting more often :) Life gets busy and training even one little girl is a great task and responsibility from our Heavenly Father. So the blog can wait...even the dishes can wait if need be, except for the fact that they are part of the training. :) Grace now can stand on a chair beside me and "help" do the dishes, cook, bake, clean. Whatever I am doing I try to include her. It is not always easy and I am by no means doing so all the time or even as much as I would like to, but it really amazes me how much the Lord keeps reminding me..."why are you doing this by yourself?" It also is a great encouragement to see how happy she is when working along side me, she is just bubbling with excitement over being included in real life! Oh how we pray for her that she will come to love and serve our Lord Jesus Christ at an early age, that He would save her and bring much glory to His worthy name through her life! We also pray this for our dear little one who is now due in less than a week!

I have been "nesting" for several weeks now, changing things around in our home with my husbands help....I should rephrase that... Patrick changes things around while I point where I would like them to go. :) He is so wonderful and uncomplaining about my sudden ideas, and usually refines them to a better way of managing our space, or comes up with his own. I am truly blessed to be married to such a great man! We are so excited as we wait to meet our little boy or girl, though I am somewhat nervous about the labor since Grace's was so long. Yet I know the Lord will give me the strength for whatever He allows, I just cannot dwell on it too much, just trust in Him who does all things well.

Grace loves babies! Every morning she has to greet her three baby dolls with squeals of delight and exclamations of "baby! baby!" She cares for them so lovingly, rocking, singing and changing them. We really look forward to how she will be with her little brother or sister, it will be such fun to watch! I have to run, but here are a few random pictures.....

Preparing for Home Birth

There is less than three weeks to my due date and I am excited, yet sober about the changes that are soon to take place in our lives. Sober because it is an incredible thing to be given a child to raise by the Lord. This little one knows neither right nor wrong and we as his or her parents will be the ones to lay the foundation for life. How can we raise children that will love and serve the Lord Jesus with all of their hearts? It seems to be a mammoth and impossible task. It IS impossible. For us humans. Yet who is this God that we serve? Is He not the God of the impossible?  Remember when Jesus told His disciples that it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than a rich man to  be saved? “And they were astonished out of measure, saying among themselves, Who then can be saved? And Jesus looking upon them saith, With men it is impossible, but not with God: for with God all things are possible.”(Mar 10:26-27)

We serve the Almighty God, He who creates our children and chooses to give them to us. He is not up there wondering what will happen if He gives this type of personality to these parents and this to those… He Knows. That is why He does what He does, nothing escapes Him. That is why we can rest in perfect peace knowing that He has designed our children for US to raise, He is very specific. The other day I was reading in Isaiah and thinking about our child when I came across this passage that brought great comfort to me: “And all thy children shall be taught of the LORD; and great shall be the peace of thy children.”(Isa 54:13) “Taught of the Lord”!!! Wow, that brought things into prospective for me. Yes, we do have a great responsibility before the Lord to raise our children in His fear and admonition and we must stay close to the Lord to do that, but ultimately it is the Lord shaping the lives of our Little Ones. I don’t want this to sound like I am saying we don’t work hard at raising them for Him, because we ought to. (If we do not, then that shows that we do not have the fear of the Lord.) Only that it is comforting to know that the Lord IS in control and He can raise up a Godly generation of warriors in spite of our failures as parents.

The “nesting instinct” has hit me in earnest and I can hardly believe the amount of dust and dirt I see everywhere now. I have been busy scrubbing walls, floors, and everything else that I can lay hands on, stopping now and then as a Braxton Hicks comes and then goes. My dear husband is very patient with me as I ask him to pull apart the bed, move the couch and a number of other things that I cannot do myself. He says that he has been through this before with his mother when she was pregnant with his four siblings that came after him. :) I find it hard to be away from home for very long, I just begin to get very tired and “spacey” but the funny thing is that when I get home, I am fine, have energy and am ready to keep going.

Our midwife is coming up for our next appointment and is bringing a birthing pool and birthing kit. Two weeks ago she started me on an herbal supplement called “Blessed Beginnings” which is supposed to help prepare the uterus for labor. She tells us that mothers who have been on it do not have problems with bleeding after the birth and it also seems to cut down on the amount of time spent in labor. I’m certainly all for that! If you would like to know what the ingredients are, just ask, I would be happy to post them if anyone is interested.

Patrick and I are reading the book “Natural Childbirth: The Bradley Way” together and trying to implement the exercises and relaxation techniques it teaches. I have to read it to him because of the incredibly indiscreet pictures, but other than that and the fact that they do not give glory to the Lord, we are enjoying the thoroughness of the book. Has anyone reading this given birth using the Bradley Method? I am very interested to hear your story and what you thought of it. In fact, any mothers with birth stories, tips, things that helped you etc. that you would like to share with me, I would love to hear and learn from you!

It is March...

...and I am very happy and ready for spring! Even though our weather does not seem to know the difference, as the temperature continues to hover around zero...oh well I guess I will have to keep waiting, but it is coming, soon... I hope, ...it should be soon, ...but we are up north and we have had blizzards in March...ah, be quiet mind, don't think about that, spring is on the way!

We had my four nieces and nephews over this weekend. Since a cold is going around it was more of a "quiet" time, (that is in comparison with other times :-). We played games, read stories, cooked and crocheted. They really enjoyed it when I read "Old Yeller" to them and would beg for more. Yesterday morning when I woke up, the first thing Ashley asked was, "When can you read 'Old Yeller?"

Brittany had brought some yarn and a crochet hook with her and asked if I could help her make a purse. I showed her how, then gave it back to her to do. Soon, she began complaining that it was "too hard" and asked if I could 'help' her. I explained that doing it for her was not helping her and if she did it herself she would learn patience, it would build character. She then settled down to work at it and proceeded to persevere at it for hours on Saturday and most of the day Sunday! She finished it and I was able to help her sew the ends together, it turned out beautiful! I asked her if she remembered what I told her, she did. Then I asked if it had built character, she said "yes".

Not yet finished but looking good

For the past few weeks that the children have been here, Devin has spent hours outside, standing still as he holds bird food in his outstretched hand. He has chickadees come to eat food out of his hand, this is so much fun for him and my Mom finally got a picture! And this is a child which has been "diagnosed" with "ADHD"?!

Matthew enjoyed playing scrabble with Michael and I. He was hit the hardest with the cold, but we had some good games with him, despite his condition.

On Saturday I did some more sewing, the jumper is coming along nicely.

And finally, here are the four of us "girls" wearing the aprons that a kind friend sent. Thank you Brenda!

I hope you all had a wonderful weekend as well. Remember to keep praising our dear Lord Jesus in and for all things!