Baby Update...29 weeks

We had an ultrasound and appointment this morning. Baby is doing great. A whopping 2 lbs. 12 oz currently. haha. He seems to be doing very well, though he's making life quite uncomfortable for mommy. The placenta has not moved at all, which means he can't lay up and down and won't be able to turn into that position later like most babies do. Instead he's laying across my belly.

All in all, not much has changed. Everything still looks ok, but it's nearly impossible that it could move now, since it hadn't moved at all. The ultrasound tech spent quite a bit of time looking around my previous c-section scar and didn't say much, but didn't seem too happy with what she saw. I go back in three weeks for an appointment and then have another ultrasound on my birthday, August 3rd. They'll do an MRI within a week or so after that ultrasound. The doctor said she would "tentatively" schedule my c-section for September 7th, but did not seem optimistic that we would make it that far. The plan is still to try to get to that point, but it's really unlikely that I won't have a bleed in the next month or two. If I do, they'll deliver him as soon as they think it's safe, which they'll determine by amniocentesis.

We're thankful for now that he is healthy and growing, we haven't had any bleeds thus far and that we get to go on vacation this week! Some time on the beach can fix nearly anything, I think. :) Thanks for all of your prayers that have gotten us this far.

Producing Good "Fruit"

Mommyhood is not for the faint of heart. Sometimes we get so caught up in the day to day that we forget just how important our job really is. We are responsible for raising the next generation. And as dangerous as it is for us to forget that fact, I think sometimes we are most overwhelmed when we remember it.

As we are surveying the seeming chaos around us, the state of the world we live in, and often the state of our immediate surroundings, we suddenly realize the magnitude of our calling and inadequacy sets in. It cripples us. We see the obstacles and think "I can't even get the kids to sit still and eat their dinner, I don't stand a chance in getting them to be productive citizens."

It makes it even worse when we see mothers around us struggling with issues with their children. Our hearts break as a rebellious teenager tramples the heart of a mother that we have admired. We think, "She's a wonderful mother! Far better than me! If her kids went astray, what chance do mine have?" And we worry and we stew and we want to bury our heads in the sand or throw our hands up and surrender the fight for our childrens' hearts because it is too hard and there is too great a chance for hurt.

Lately I have been blessed to have been given a different perspective on these things, and I'd like to share them with you. I recently purchased a book called "Loving the Little Years: Motherhood in the Trenches." I've added it to my blog store if you'd like to purchase it. It only cost me $6 for the Kindle edition. It's not a very big book. It has very short chapters, easy to read when you just catch a couple of minutes in your day, and the encouragement is wonderful. I highly recommend it! The author of this book brought something to my attention that I had never before considered.

As mothers, and really as believers in general, we are called to bear good "fruit." When we think of the word fruit in Scripture we think of the fruits of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control. Our "fruit" is our offering to God. Our work that we do, day in and day out, completely committed to God. It's doing the very best that we can with what we've been given.

Often, our greatest problem with producing good fruit is that we become obsessed with what happens to that fruit. In "Loving the Little Years," the author explains that fruit trees produce fruit whether or not that fruit ever gets used for anything. It produces the fruit regardless of whether it will all fall to the ground, unappreciated, or if someone lovingly collects it and makes wonderful goodies from it. It's' job is to produce the fruit. Period. She states,

"It's kind of funny to think about, but God does not tell us to necessarily be strategic with our fruit. Will someone check on it every day? Harvest the best to make a pie? Or will there be a junior high kid sweating around among the yellow jackets trying to pick it all up- wishing we were not quite so bountiful? What happens to all of our fruit is not our problem. That doesn't mean we are not to care about the fruit. While it is on our branches, it is our life work. It is an offering to God, and we ought to care intensely about the quality of our fruit. But the branches are our responsiblity; the ground is not."

How freeing is that? God determines what happens to the fruit once it leaves our branches. We are simply to produce the best fruit possible. A fruit tree is judged by the fruit it produces. The fact that the fruit is left on the ground, or made into a cider instead of a pie has no bearing on whether or not the tree is a good tree. If you attempt a new homemaking or business venture and it doesn't go the way you think it should, that doesn't mean you failed. If you offered your best to God, you succeeded. What He, the owner of the tree, decides to do with that fruit is completely up to him. It was only our job to produce it.

In the same way, the things we watch our children struggle with, the horrible choices we see them make, are not our responsiblity. Our children are their own vine, their own tree. They are responsible for the fruit that they produce just as we are. And their fruit production has no bearing on the quality of our tree. We are simply required to faithfully commit to raise them the very best that we can, in a way that is God honoring...to train up a child in the way he should go. We are wrong to consider ourselves failures due to the shortcomings of others...even if those "others" are our children.

But even if some of our fruit isn't being used the way we had hoped, here's a little encouragement from the author of the book.

"But the chances are good that the more fruit you make the more fruit gets used. The more you throw yourself into heavy branches, the more inviting the fruit, and the more inviting the fruit, the more people it is likely to feed.

Some of those apples will fall to the ground and rot. But God uses rotten apples- to fertilize the ground, to start more apple trees after little animals plant them, and just to make the air smell sticky sweet. You cannot know the depth of His plan for your fruit. So throw it out there on the ground when you have no plan for its future. Waste it. Waste homemade pasta and the mess it makes on your family. Don't save cloth napkins for company only- sew a dress your daughter doesn't really need. Be bountiful with your fruit, and free with it. The only thing you can know for certain is that God will use it."

Now, this little life lesson was made even sweeter for me by our Sunday School class this week. Pastor John talked about how in the Psalms we are refered to as trees, planted by the streams, fed by the Law of the Lord. Only good trees produce good fruit. A withering tree produces nothing of value. So bury yourself in the Word, momma. It's your life-source and the only way you have any chance of producing the quality fruit that will feed the masses and be used by the Master. Take in the breath of God, and use it to create the most wonderful, bountiful fruit you can...then let go...and let God decide how he will use your fruit.

The Great Family Closet Makeover

One of my very least favorite things to do around the house is laundry. I don't so much mind the process of doing the laundry, but the whole folding-and-putting-away thing always seems like just entirely too much work...especially when you have so many little "helpers."


This weekend, I decided to re-think our current way of storing clothes and I am totally thrilled with the results. I had to create this post and include pictures because my mother said she would never believe it if she didn't see it. ;) haha. Love you, Mom.


In order to explain why I took this approach, you have to know what my struggles were with the current system. In our old system, each child had their clothes in their closet and had their own laundry hamper in their room. This worked out well in theory. Their clothes were easy for them to get to, easy to keep separate, and their laundry didn't get intermingled. I would just go get their hamper, take it downstairs, do the laundry, bring it back up, fold it and put it away. Sounds simple, right? Yes. In theory. But theory and actual life with little ones are often two very different things.


Here were a few of my problems:


I had to dress each child in their own room. Doesn't sound like a big deal, but when you're crunched for time and trying to get everyone ready, it's just far easier to have everyone in one room and get them all ready at once. I'm sure that sounds crazy to those without a bunch of little ones, but those of you who have them know what I mean.


I was having to try to put both boys in one room and the storage space was at a premium. It was virtually impossible to get all of their clothes in their tiny closets along with all of their toys, books, blankets, etc.


My darling daughter had a not-so-darling habit of putting things where they didn't belong. I would find clean clothes taken out of her drawers and put in her trash can, or shoes in the laundry hamper. Trying to find things in her room was a constant challenge.


Because my oldest can dress himself and my daughter can do some of it herself, they often dress whereever I am in case they need help...but that means they also undress whereever I am. Which means their clothes very seldom come off in their rooms near their laundry basket. So they end up getting mixed together anyway. Then, when I have to do laundry and put things away, I would have to try to sort everything out to put in each kid's room. If you have kids that are old enough to reliably do this themselves, I think this might work. But as for me, I would have plenty of "helpers" to take things to the bedrooms, but would then find the clothes in random locations between where I folded them and the bedrooms. Or Kaytie would occassionally take her clean clothes directly to her dirty clothes basket to "put them away."


Which brings me to my other major problem with having everything in their rooms. They sleep in their rooms. And the easiest time for me to fold laundry (once...as opposed to half a dozen times thanks to my "helpers") and put it away, is often when they're sleeping. But if they were sleeping, I couldn't go in and put it away. So I would have to put it elsewhere and half the time it would never get to their rooms.


This was the same problem with packing for trips. Impossible to do while they're awake. But I needed to be in their rooms to pack. This made packing a pretty difficult task.


Now, I had heard of families with several children having a community closet. I always kind of snickered at the idea. First of all, because I don't see us as having a very large family. We have three (ok, four) children. That's no big deal. I certainly didn't see a need to devote a whole room to our laundry. Secondly, we don't have a room we could logically devote to clothing. The only good sized closet was our walk-in in our master bedroom, and that was packed with just Ward and my things. But finally after attempting to pack for our last trip home, I decided it was time to try something new.


So we moved an old dresser out of our basement into our closet and I bought some drawers and bins for storage. I will state again, for the record, that when I started, our closet was already a disaster. It was packed full and had very little in the way of organization. Now, we have a brand new family closet and I am still in shock.

The dresser has the kids' clothes in it. Each kid has two drawers. The ones on the left are for tops, the right for bottoms. Ward and my hanging clothes are above the dresser. Yes, both...on the same side. I'll tell you how I managed that here in a minute.

This is the right side of the closet. We have so much space left over on that side that we're moving a cabinet in to the right of the shoes and I'm still going to have tons of space to spare. Ward made the shelf that our shoes are on awhile back for me. He's going to make one more shelf there. I had put a dowel rod through the top so I could put all the kids' hanging clothes there. Kaytie is super excited that her hangers and pink and the boys' are blue. :)

This is perhaps one of my favorite parts of the closet makeover. Because all of the clothes are in one spot, I can easily get to them all at once. Which means each night I can grab clothing for all the kids and put them in one of these bins. Everything down to the shoes. Then I can just grab the bin in the morning and take it to whereever the first child decided to take off their pjs. :)

The plastic drawers have Ward's clothes in them and each kid has a shoe bin. The space above these things is completely empty, so I have tons more room to store things.

I am totally blown away, first of all that I could even get all of our clothes in one closet, and even more so that I would have so much extra room. It's amazing what a little organization will do. One problem I had with hanging clothes is that I change sizes so frequently. I literally haven't worn the same size for more than four months since 2005. Seriously. I'm either newly pregnant, fairly pregnant, extremely pregnant, nursing, not pregnant but not quite down to prepregnancy size, and back to half-way decent shape just in time to start the cycle again. So although many items in my closet didn't fit currently, it was just too much trouble to pack them all away in totes that I would have to drag back out within a couple of months. So I got one of those cloth "wardrobes" that zips up and put it downstairs. Now I can easily see and get to all my hanging clothes and grab which ones fit way easier! So I only have things in my closet that actually fit me right now. Amazing.

A few of my favorite things about the new system:

I can fold all our clothes and put them all away without ever leaving my room.

I can easily see what everyone has and what they need without having the dig through their rooms.

I can actually find TWO Kaytie shoes that match at any given time.

When it comes time to pack, I can just throw a suitcase on the bed and grab everything I need right there.

My closet is now a place I don't mind being, and I can find everything in it.

I got extra space for storing things that didn't used to have a home.

I can put the kids' clothes in bins at night and it even if Ward or one of their grandparents, etc. is getting them dressed in the morning, everything they need is right there and they don't have to try to figure out where things are.

The kids have EMPTY dressers and closets which can now be used to house their toys and books and other goodies, which makes their rooms more clean and organized.

The list goes on and on...

And so, my journey into the land of the "community closet" is a startling success! And now that I know I can fit so much into such a small space with a little thought and organization, heck...what's a few more kids? ;-) hehe.