This is not me telling you to stop living. This is me telling you to START.

I have always been the type of person that is completely content in the station of life that I am in. I abhor the feeling of wanting to get something over with, and I am mostly a "live in the moment" sort of person, so I like to get the most out of what I'm actually doing at any given time. I never wanted to be a different age than I was, growing up, either. I was happy to be a kid when I was young. I was happy to be a teenager when I was 16. I was happy to be in college when I was doing that. I did grow a little impatient to get finished with college, but I believe that was because I transferred colleges, switched majors twice, and got married and had a kid in the middle, so it took me a LONG time to get my degree. Not to mention, it was a really long degree. But I enjoyed my student teaching experience when I got there, and I was really excited most of the time to be doing whatever it was I was doing.

The same thing with my first pregnancy. I was really uncomfortable at the end, but I was still happy to be pregnant until the week that I ended up being told I was going to be induced anyway. That week, I had pitting edemas (I was so swollen that when you pressed on my skin, it sank in and did not bounce back out, making "pits"), my face and nose were so swollen that you could hardly recognize me (I thought), I could barely walk because I couldn't flex my ankles, and I was a little bit scared as my daughter and stomach had stopped growing. Luckily, my obstetrician shared my worries and gave me a few more days before inducing.

This time, I am really healthy. I haven't gained much weight, mostly because I didn't lose any of the 70 pounds I gained with Jocelyn, so I was technically "obese" when I got pregnant, but also because I had some NASTY morning sickness in the first half. I will never forget asking my mom to make her famous boef bourguignon for my birthday this year, and then her half-laughing at my disgusted face as I tried to choke down as much as possible of it. It tasted so good, but I could barely keep anything down! Back to the point, I haven't gained much weight this pregnancy, just over 10 pounds (3 of which were this week, oops). I'm healthy and I've been eating a lot better than I was able to with my first pregnancy. I'm also happier. My husband and I had literally JUST gotten married when we became pregnant with our first child. I came home from our honeymoon, expecting to start my "cycle" within two days, and I never did. So, not only did we have to get used to being married, but I was a hormonal wreck and my husband didn't know what he had gotten himself into. Then, we had to make room in our already cramped and new life for another person. We were less than prepared, and our marriage suffered for it at first. It's hard enough to get married and learn to live with that person without adding another crazy life changing element! My husband and I, when we got pregnant this time, were still not expecting the pregnancy, but we were happier about it and better prepared in the foundation of our marriage to handle another little person being entrusted to our care. Besides, my husband realizes now that sometimes, I'm just not very nice (and especially when I'm pregnant), and it really has absolutely nothing to do with him personally! Ha!

However, in spite of all of these things, I am extremely impatient to get this baby out and get back to being able to move around. I found out I was pregnant with my daughter at 9 weeks, and I was induced at 38 weeks to the day. This time, I knew I was pregnant within less than 3 weeks, and I'm 38 weeks and 4 days as of tonight. So, it's been a "longer" pregnancy, in a way. Also, I am not as anxious/scared for how it will go in the hospital, so I'm prepared to get there and push the baby out. One thing that I am anxious about that makes me want to go into labor faster? I have no idea what it's like to just go into labor spontaneously, or to have my water break. I don't know what to expect. With Jocelyn, I had a scheduled time to go to the hospital, get into a gown, and get hooked up to an IV to get started. After a while, my water was broken for me, so when I got up to go to the bathroom, I wasn't surprised to find myself leaking, and I had a little blood to go with it since it was broken unnaturally, so I knew exactly what was going on. Plus, there were nurses around all the time to coach me and tell me what was going on. It took almost an entire day in the hospital before I was able to hold the baby in my arms, but it was all so predictable. This time, I keep feeling like it's going to happen, like I'll go into labor... and then for a day, I feel fine (if tired), great in fact, and have few contractions. I don't know what it feels like to have a "real" contraction. I don't really know what menstrual cramps feel like, so comparing it to those doesn't help. I didn't feel the contractions in the hospital until they were bad enough to make me want to have an epidural, until the pain was at about a 7 or 8 on the scale. I keep getting pains that aren't really anything like a cramp, and I'm not sure what those are. So... I have no idea if I'll be in the 25% that have their waters break before they go into hard labor, and I have no idea if I'll know that I'm in labor until it's really close to time to push. This, for me, makes me want to get to that stage so I know what's going to happen.

I also want to meet the baby. I'm ready to know what she will be like, if she will have black hair like her sister did, or be toe-headed like I was. What we will choose to name her for certain. Will she cry, or just look at me with baby blues like her sister, taking in the scenery? What will her sister think of her, for real? Will she understand as well as she seems to now? How will it feel to love two children? I love my daughter so much, more than you can imagine before you have kids. It's so different, the love of a mother for her daughter. But, she's so special. How will I love the next one? Will it be the same? Will it be different? Will it be... both the same and different? Will I feel so strongly for this one, or will it be more casual because I've done it all before? I want Jocelyn to feel all the same things I feel, because she's my daughter and I love her and... that's the way our relationship works. What if she resents this baby? How will that change how I feel? I can't know these things until the baby comes. So I am EXTREMELY impatient to find out.

Strange thing happened, though, yesterday and this morning. I decided to pray about it, to give this up because I can't decide when this baby is coming. She's got to come on God's time. "Baby's have no concept of the clock," many wise moms have said, "they come when they're ready." But I was SO impatient, and I abhor that feeling of waiting for something to happen for my life to be content. So, I prayed, and said to God, "I know that you know better than I do what will be the perfect time for this baby to arrive. You have knowledge of things that are beyond my reach. So, I pray she comes when she's supposed to come, and when it works out the best for all involved, and I pray that I have peace until that time." Or, something to that effect.

I talked to my mom this morning. She's kind of my go-to person to help me with Jocelyn and be here for me when the baby comes. I've kind of wondered if I should ask her to come sooner, because I feel really alone and like I can't get anything done on my own anymore, and I just want my mommy. But then when I talked to her, I found out she's super sick with a sinus infection that is also wreaking havoc on her digestive tract, and she can't come right now anyway. She wasn't going to say that, I don't think, but I told her not to be worried and just relax and get better, because I felt today as if the baby had a while longer (I had been feeling like it was any time now, but I think maybe that was wishful thinking giving me psychosomatic labor symptoms). Then she said "that's great, because I don't think I could make it there right now."

God's timing. Baby's not ready. Gram's not ready.

Jocelyn is ready, though. I didn't tell her Gram was coming when the baby came, or that she got to go home with Gram for a while after the baby came, but today: "When is Gram coming? Is she going to take me to her house soon?" "Where's my Gram? I want Gram." And "I want Gram, and I want Papa too. He can come if Gram still is taking me to Gram's house." That's one smart kiddo. Must have heard me talking about it.

So, if you're the type of person that is always wanting something to change, always thinking "if only ___, then I'd be happy"... listen up. You'll always want more that way. Be happy with what you've got, or change it now! Then be happy with that. Don't continue to want more, or different, or whatever. Just be happy. Be happy that you're in the transition. Be happy that you're searching for something new to make you happy. Be happy you're doing the work you need to be doing right now. Work hard so that you can play hard. Because I can't imagine living life like that. Why bother living if you're never going to be happy, always looking for something more? This is not me telling you to stop living. This is me telling you to START. I can't hardly stand it, and I'm glad I got rid of the feeling and I am slowly reminding myself that, hey, you're pregnant, and you may never be pregnant again, so you might as well enjoy the perks, even if they are few and far between. I am reminding myself not to worry about labor, my family, if my baby will be anywhere near as sweet and well-behaved as my daughter... because I can't do much about it, nothing at the moment, anyway.

Take it from me, it's so much better to "begin everyday as if it were on purpose."

A quote that I'd love to further expand on in the near future

"It has never been and never will be easy work! But the road that is built in hope is more pleasant to the traveler than the road built in despair, even though they both lead in the same direction.
- Marion Zimmer Bradley.

I used this quote in a previous post, but I would really like to focus more on it, and wanted to remind myself. That is all!

If you follow my blog, but have not become a "follower", I urge you to do so. Notice the link on the right. Thanks!!

The Ants

One of the posts that I saved from my blog journal was about our ant problem. There are SO MANY creepy crawly bugs in our yard/house. It really became a problem last summer, when we discovered a line of ants from the side door, which goes out of our kitchen in between the house and garage in a breezeway that leads to the backyard, all the way through our daughter's room (connected to the kitchen by a pocket door) down the hall a couple of feet and to the bathroom. Needless to say, I did NOT want ants trailing through half of our house, especially the half that my daughter lives and sleeps in. I don't remember exactly what we did, other than vacuum up the ants, last year, but this summer, they came back in FULL FORCE.

One thing that kills ant colonies is boric acid. This is found in green (Granny Smith) apples, mostly. Also in the ant poison, Borax, but that is quite concentrated and poisonous, so we opted to try the apples first. The method is simple: you cut little pieces of Granny Smith apple and spread it around where the ants are coming into the house. They take the apple pieces back to the colony. They eat the apple. They all die. At least, that's the thought. What's great is that they never wise up to this approach, so you can keep doing it until they stop coming back for the apple, meaning they either all died or moved their colony.

This kind of worked. Stopped them coming all the way into the kitchen, but I think that was because the apple was in between the storm door and main door, so they just stuck to there. I think the colony is... well, huge. So, didn't quite kill it.

We then got those little ant "house" things that you put around... I think they basically do the same thing as the boric acid/apple, but are more poisonous and work a little bit more succinctly. Either way, that seemed to stop them coming into the side door. We also put some around the toilet in the bathroom. That took a lot longer to get rid of... we have no idea where they were coming from, but apparently not just from the kitchen side door.

The big problem came later, when we were eating breakfast in our living room, if you can call it that. Basically it's the room you walk into when you come into our house, and it's probably 12x12 or so... quite small. Our carpet is Berber style, and has cream, tan, brown and grey in it... My daughter mentioned that there was an ant. When we looked, we saw 30 or 40 ants running in the opposite direction of our inquiries, toward the corner of the room. They were coming in under the carpet, somewhere where the foundation of the house meets the wood of the house. Lovely. I had to vacuum for what seemed like an hour to get them all up. When I vacuumed the corner, I could see there were ants being pulled into the vacuum that hadn't quite made it into the room yet.

EEW.

So, we had to do something a little different. My husband bought a product called diatomaceous earth. Diatomaceous earth (pronounced /ˌdaɪ.ətɵˌmeɪʃəs ˈɜrθ/) also known as diatomite or kieselgur, is a naturally occurring, soft, siliceous sedimentary rock that is easily crumbled into a fine white to off-white powder. It works by sucking the moisture from the waxy outer layer of insects' exoskeletons, dehydrating them and killing them. It is not very harmful to humans, but you don't want to breath it in or get it in your eyes when you are handling it, as it can be extremely irritating and dehydrate certain organs in our bodies as well. There are other uses for this "diatomite" stuff, too, I guess, but I don't know that much about it. Basically, you sprinkle this stuff around where there's a problem: we put it into that crack on the outside corner of our house. Haven't had any ants come in since.

We also used the diatomite on a huge ant hill we found outside, not too far away from our side kitchen door. The ants simply picked up and moved... but at least they are now 20 or 30 feet farther away from our door and much less likely to come back that way.

We haven't had any any problems recently, thank goodness. I hate ants in the house! Eeew!

But, we have had DRAIN FLIES.

If anyone has any really good way to avoid or get rid of drain flies, let me know. Right now, we're just keeping the drains plugged and full of about an inch of water, so they can't get down there to reproduce, and we are even more diligent about cleaning our dishes and messes up immediately so they have nothing to eat. Seems we get those every year, no matter what we do. Tips appreciated.

As for the wolf spiders and orb weavers, the little beetles and waterbugs, silverfish, house centipedes, regular centipedes, and the CRAZY amount of gold, blue, and green house flies we have... well, I guess those are things we'll just have to live with. And kill along the way, in the case of the houseflies, centipedes and silverfish. Something I hate about as much as ants? Flies...

my blog "journal" eulogy

I lost my blog journal. This is where I store ideas and thoughts that I wish to use or to turn into blog posts. I did not lose it in the way that I misplaced it, or do not know where it is by any means. It's right here. My three-year-old more "commandeered" it. Yeah.

It was a pretty notebook, probably a little larger than 5x7 inches, and had a pretty green, brick red, and brown pattern on it, flowers but not too "floral" if that makes any sense. It had three sections, marked off just by having the middle 75 pages edged in brown ink, the others merely with brown ink lines to keep my writing straight.

I really liked this notebook. Can you tell? I'm super picky about notebooks, especially for jotting down ideas versus taking notes for a class. This one was kinda perfect for both, though, actually. I used the first section for a class on Bible prophecy that I went to, and then I was using it for sermon notes and other Biblically-based thoughts. Then the second section, I had used for little notes to myself, so I started using this section also for notes for the blog, since this paralleled nicely. And then...

My daughter decided one day to "take notes" on a sermon we were watching online. It was SO CUTE that I let her use a few pages. Bad idea. Never let the three-year-old do something ONCE and act like it's so cool/cute unless you want it to continue exactly the same way. EXACTLY THE SAME WAY. So, she has been taking my pens and "writing" in this notebook. I can still use it for little blog ideas, but since it really was my parenting fault that led to her use of the notebook on a constant basis, I really felt like I should just give it up and go buy myself a new one.

You have to pick your battles.

I have been failing constantly at this recently, so I decided to let this one go.

However, I have been able to salvage some of the post ideas, and I will be using them again soon. I am very regretful that I have been posting so seldom! Sorry, readers and fellow bloggers. I do feel it is important to keep putting stuff out there and keep blogging often, and I will try this again... I'm setting a day of the week, and if I haven't blogged by that day, I will post something before I go to bed that night. So, readers, be ready! I will have more posts, as interesting as possible, for your reading pleasure!

Oh, and I did find another notebook. I'm trying to keep it hidden from Dear Daughter. It is brown and teal with a floral/paisley pattern. And clean of ANY SCRIBBLES so far. (Cross your fingers, or pray for my slightly OCD way of emotionally handling notebooks...)

Toddler and Pre-school "Discipline"

I have so many books about teaching a discipline in early childhood. I suppose it is partly because I am an "input junky." According to Gallup StrengthsFinder, one of my top strengths is "input." I like to input and collect information, in my case, as does my husband! Interesting combination of strengths, we have. I think also I collect this information because I never had much contact with kids under the age of five, and my degree and certification was in K-12 education... which leaves the under five group still somewhat mysterious. Sure, we learn about milestones and development in early childhood, but not teaching methods and discipline methods. In fact, we actually had NO CLASSES at University of Nebraska at Omaha about classroom management or discipline. I realize that might be an upper-level course, or hard to teach, and that you have to learn it through experience, but I still think a course or two to get you started might be helpful. Especially when there is so much literature out there! How do you know what to trust? Even moreso when it comes to early childhood.

Cry-it-out. Ferber. The Baby Whisperer. Scheduled naps and feeding. Let the baby set the schedule. Breastfeed. Bottle feed. Reverse psychology. Direct commands. Turn it into a game. Time outs. No time outs. Ignore bad behavior. Make it a competition. Remove privileges. There is a plethora of ways and methods to discipline your child, from birth until they leave the house, and beyond.

I have read parts of many books, and a few entire books. Typically, I don't completely agree with any one method. Many sites that I follow say the way to sort through the books and methods is to find one that you mostly agree with, and then follow it to a "t". I disagree. Learn many methods, keep learning, keep asking other moms you trust, keep reading, and keep adjusting as you see fit. And listen to your gut instincts. If you trust these, I truly believe they are what will lead you in the direction you will feel is correct in the long run. However, here are some of the books that I have read on early childhood child-rearing.

Playful Parenting by Lawrence J. Cohen, PH.D: This is a great book. I mean, it really is. And I actually know of a parent from my daughter's preschool, who is also an elementary teacher, who thinks so as well.


The Five Love Languages for Children by Chapman & Campbell: actually best for kids OVER the age of five, but something great to be aware of and to help your thought processes about people as a whole, if you haven't taken a look into it's predecessor, The Five Love Languages.

The Happiest Toddler on the Block: The New Way to Stop the Daily Battle of Wills and Raise a Secure and Well-Behaved One-to-Four Year-Old by Harvey Karp, M.D. (WOW, that's a long title! But definitely makes you want to take a look, doesn't it?) There is also "The Happiest Baby on the Block"

Child Sense (subtitled: From Birth to Age 5, How to Use the 5 Senses to Make Sleeping, Eating, Dressing, and Other Everyday Activities Easier While Strengthening Your Bond With Your Child)by Priscilla J. Dunstan. WHEW! Even longer title. But it kinda sums it all up, doesn't it?

Kidwrangling by Kaz Cooke: I just like this author... kind of too thick to actually read through, you utilize this as a reference guide. She's this chic Australian chick who wrote another book about marriage that I like,

Babywise by Ezzo and Bucknam (multiple books in this "series" so to speak)

I'd also like to include How Full is Your Bucket? Positive Strategies for Work and Life by Tom Rath and Donald O. Clifton, as well as the children's book version, How Full Is Your Bucket? For Kids There is also a book that I own called Have You Filled a Bucket Today? A Guide to Daily Happiness for Kids by Carol McCloud. I'm not actually even sure these were supposed to be supplementary or even complimentary to each other, but I own both, and I'm surprised that neither mentions the other... so I'll look into that in a further post.

I think I will review one of these from time-to-time as I go through them, sometimes for a second or third time. That way, there will be a general synapsis and opinionated review of each separately, but also I don't have to do it all in one post! Which I like, and your eyes probably will appreciate, too.