providential good fortune

I went to a small Christian school for my high school years.  We had this really neat guy for our bible teacher.  He was very thought provoking, to the point where it was sometimes frustrating. (at the time, though, I always thought he was argumentative.  Now, I see he was trying to get us to explore our own belief system and not the belief system of our parents.)

Anyway, one of his big beefs was with the word "luck" and how often we use it.  He preferred  instead, to use the term "providential good fortune!"  Meaning the care of God in your life, resulting in something good. 

At the time, I sort of thought it was silly.   All caught up in semantics.  If what I intend doesn't change with the words I use, what difference does it make? 

This past week, I some how stumbled upon a website called doula match.  Its a website that matches up local doulas with clients.  Its free, though they ask for donations.  I usually am pretty skeptical of things like that.  But this time I thought "meh.  why not?  I doubt I'll get any calls from this, but I'll put it out there."

I had my information on for all of two days before I got my first response.  An email from some one looking for a doula for her hopeful VBAC in June (um, score!  This is totally one of my passions!) With in a few days, I also received a phone call from another woman interested in my services, who was referred to me by Glenni, who runs A Nurturing Moment (a baby/maternity boutique here in town.) and the blog where I posted on MSPI.   The same day, I was contacted by another woman who found me on Doula Match.

This weekend I met with two of the three women, and I felt like we really hit it off.  I'm hoping they thought so, too, and I can get this doula train a going. ;)

 I can see the hand of God guiding me where he wants me to be.  I don't know if I'll be a doula for years and years, but, right now, I am certain this is what I'm supposed to do now.  Its a pretty freeing feeling.  I'd say I was feeling lucky, but I am really feeling providential good fortune. 

She only likes her hot dogs with bits of plastic

Thursdays are school days for Isaac, which happens to coordinate well with my trip to Aldi every week. (Isaac's not a huge fan of Aldi.  Something about not having cookies.)  Today is one of my bi-weekly trips to get produce, etc.

I have family coming into town this weekend.  There's four of them.   I have to feed them, obviously, and us.  It'll probably be close to double what our family eats considering O and Eliza probably add up to one regular kid.

I'm concentrating hard on how much food I need to buy, etc.  Eliza is in the back of the cart because 1.she climbs out of the buckle and out of the cart if she's in the front and 2. I didn't carry her because I was going for a run after our shopping trip where she needed to be strapped down.  I felt bad having her "confined" for too long.  I'm putting most of my groceries in the back with little Miss.

 I stop and get two different kinds of hot dogs.  One package of turkey dogs for Eliza and I because I prefer them and they're cheaper.  One package of the, more expensive, all beef bun-length hot dogs.   That way everyone else can have the more expensive ones, yadda yadda yadda.

I round the aisle, focusing on the veggie produce area, turn down the fruit aisle (so, half and aisle total) and I glance at Eliza.   There she is, an entire hot dog in hand, chomping down like its a banana or something.

First reaction:  gross.  Cold hot dog.

Second reaction: ugh.  She got hot dog juice all over her outfit.

Third reaction: how did she get that?!?

I finally glanced down in the cart and she had gnawed her way through the plastic packaging, bitten off most of the tips in the process, until she made enough of a hole to slip a hot dog out.

Can you guess which ones she opened?

Yeah.  The beef ones.

The lady at the check out: "Do you know these are open and... eaten??"

Me: "yes."

After my run, I thought I'd go ahead and actually make Eliza that hot dog she desired in the grocery store.  I heated it up and gave it to her.  What did she do?  She turned her nose up at it, said "uh-uh" in her caveman voice, and threw it on the ground.

Clearly, cold hot dogs, wrapped in plastic, are much more appealing to her pallet.

(Also, I'm thinking the "bun length" all beef hot dogs may be a little shorter than bun length.shhhhh)

Please and "daint do"

O's growth hormone medicine came on Thursday night.  In two gigantic boxes.  It freaked O (and, to be honest, myself) out a little to see such big boxes. 

Luckily, this is the actual medicine.  Four tiny boxes, to last us a month.  The rest was refrigerant and supplies (needles, sharps box, alcohol wipes, etc.)  

These four tiny boxes?  They cost $1,500. No. Joke.

The home health nurse is coming after school today to teach O, E, and I how to give the injections.  O will have to learn for things like sleep overs eventually, so we're going to have the nurse teach her how to do it tonight.  

O is nervous.  She keeps saying "I like the size I am.  I don't want to grow. " 

The criminal and police officer, by Austin age 6

Austin brought this gem home yesterday.  It about cracked me up.  (Especially on the second page when the police says "crap" because the guy broke out again.  Stellar parenting on my part, right?)  I know it may not touch your funny bone the same way as it does mine, but I thought I'd share.

 



 

I sit and stare at the blinking black line

Over the course of the last few weeks, I've thought a lot about topics to blog.  I feel like I have a lot going on and a lot of things to say.  However, when I actually sit down to type it all out, some one needs me to pick them up from school, another little person beats my keyboard with her fists while laughing gleefully, or, like today, I just can't come up with a descent topic specific post. 

Don't get me wrong, I don't mind a good update post once in a while.  Emphasis on the once in a while.  But, it seems like my blog has regressed to a blog of updates.  (In a sense, my entire blog is an update of sorts.  But, I'd prefer to keep it to one or two updates per post and not a bullet of them because its been a month since I've hit the orange publish button.)

I have a post in the works.  Two, actually.  Its about my journey with Eliza and MSPI.  But, I'm too chicken to put them on my blog, yet.  I'm too chicken to even have E proof read them.  I was asked by a friend and local baby store owner who has her own blog to guest post.  I guess I'm afraid that people will think I'm stupid?  Or they won't like me? 

Its a fatal flaw I have.  I own it.  I'm not in denial.

Hello, my name is Tracy and I'm a people pleaser.

But, I have to get it out there.  I made a promise.  My other character flaw is that I follow the rules.  With the rule that you do what you said you'd do firmly in place.  So, I will post it.  I will have E read over it. 

I promise.

The Star Wars Quilt

I know I posted a picture last month of A's Star War quilt that I made.  I was desperate for a picture, took a quickie with my phone, and put it on the blog.  I did take some better pictures with my real, non-phone camera.

I knew I wanted to make the boys some  quilts to fold at the end of their beds, but also small enough to use as a lap quilt in the car or watching tv.  I found material at Joanne's, but found it was pretty pricey (which is the story for all licenced fabric, don't you think?)  I started buying the fabric back in August using my 40% or 50% off coupons.  By November, I had found and purchased all of my fabric.

I did a "quilt as you go" type quilt for Eliza's room and O's bed.  However, I found I had a hard time preventing bunching on the backing.  I bucked up and decided to try a "real" quilt. You know.  One with a real quilt top, backing, and those silly "basting" pins you're supposed to use.

After gathering my materials, I quickly realized that a block quilt top was just not going to cut it. Cutting blocks would've cut out many of the characters faces, or the words. So I scoured the interwebs for an easy strip quilt.

I came across this tutorial.  It was perfect.  Strips?  Check.  Using the backing as binding? Check.

I started on my first quilt using her tutorial.  The strips came together nicely for the quilt top.  When it came time to baste, I thought I could skip over taping it to the floor, and just wing it with straight pins.  While I didn't have much bunching when quilting it together, I found that my backing was crooked.  Of course, I didn't find that out until AFTER I had quilted the ENTIRE THING!  So, alas, I had about 4 inches of backing on one side to use as binding, and only .5 inches on the other. Fail.

I had to find something to use as binding then, since I couldn't pull from the back fabric. (see?  This is why I'm a rule follower.  I should have known better.  Follow. The. Directions!)  I asked my friend Raechel, who I remembered, has done a quilt binding by hand.  She sent me in the direction of this tutorial.

I grabbed some extra fabric that I had left over from the boys' curtains, and got to work.  I didn't like it.  I can't blame the tutorial for the fact that it didn't turn out to be my favorite.  It was really my fault, and the fault of the very wiggly fabric.  But, E insisted it looked fine.  After my hours of work, I wasn't super keen on taking it all off anyway.

The next quilt went much smoother.  Especially since I decided to be a good girl and follow the directions.  I taped it all down in my family room, on the hardwoods, and got to pinning.  I sewed it all up, and, what do you know?  There was plenty of fabric on the back left for a binding.  Hurrah! 

 

 

 

The boys opened them up on Christmas morning and were less than impressed.  (of course, it was competing with things like a bb gun and a bike!)  However, since, they have loved having their very own blanket to cuddle up with at night, and they've even taken them on a road trip to visit my Grandpa. 

The funny part, though, is that they fight over the "good" quilt, even with out knowing how I feel about them.  Either they sense my secret loathing over the binding on the one quilt, or they just like the way the black looks versus the red.  In any case, we do not have any pictures of the "sad" quilt on Christmas day.  But, I have an action shot. 

Catching up

New things:

#1: Isaac turned 3. As in three years ago he was a teeny tiny newborn.  Who looked like this:

Now? He's such a ham I can barely get a picture of him.  But, he looks like this for a professional photographer:

 

Cute, no?  Still has those deep, dark, chocolate brown eyes. He's 50% in weight and 15% in height (more on that in the next number.) 

#2. O will be having her MRI done this Sunday afternoon to check her pituitary gland.  From there, we'll come up with a treatment plan for her growth hormone deficiency.  We'll also start keeping an eye on Isaac's height.  Anything under 10% will start getting some attention.  (He's still young, so he can still catch up.)  We've talked with her about how she'll have to sit still for 30 minutes in the loud machine.  I'm hoping they have fancy goggles with a tv in them like they do at our children's hospital in HSV.

#3 We thought we were having a travel free Christmas.  Until we found out my grandpa, who lives in N.C.,  isn't doing so hot.  He's lost a lot of weight and just isn't real thrilled to be living.  The last time we saw him, I was 4 weeks pregnant with A.  So, 7 years ago.  My parents and my uncle and aunt and their two kids will be going as well.  We figured we should go when other people are going.  it isn't very fun there (he's in an assisted living home) and there isn't much to do.  Not time like the present, right?

#4 We're having some behavior problems with one of our kids. We're really struggling with how to discipline.  It feels like nothing is working.  *sigh*  I keep trying to tell E that I think its from a lot of the attention on O's health the last year, since this is when the unwanted behaviors started.  I don't know.  I'm this close [___] to taking the child to the therapist to see if they could get to the bottom of it all.  I don't know how to help and it's really a crappy feeling.

#5  I've had a cough for almost two weeks.  No other real symptoms.  just a stupid, dumb, keeps-me-up-at-night cough.  I hate to call the doctor for just a cough, but yet my cough syrup box says if you have a cough for more than 7 days to call your doctor. 

#6. Eliza- she's a handful.  This is not new news.  But, it pretty much sums her up.