Checklist

64000$ mortgage : check
14000$ down payment : check (thanks to wonderful people who love us!!!!)
Insurance : working on it
Carpet Cleaners : need to make a call
Turning on power : check
Calling a Lawyer : currently on hold
Rejoicing in all that God has made possible this week: will never end.

Seriously, this has been a roller coaster! So many phone calls, prayers and words of thanks as things have all fallen into place since the first time I saw the house last Friday.

If you're curious, go to http://www.westwoodgardens.info/
We've bought unit 7 and are now only needing to sign the mortgage! We'll get the keys on Saturday and the official closing date is November 9th. If anyone feels like helping us move on the 10th let me know!

Almost a homeowner

We're just waiting for paperwork. The closing date is the 9th. It's a 3 bedroom, 1200 sqft townhouse condo. Needs a few updates here and there, but is essentially move-in ready. Once the mortgage goes through we'll have the keys and I can start cleaning.

This is a wonderful thing, and something that wouldn't have been possible without God, and so we praise Him for all His blessings.

Now, anyone want to suggest paint colours?

No House

Well, the bank came back with a really high counter offer, and there's a lot more than would need to be done to the house right away than we had realized, so we're looking for other options. Hopefully we'll find something else quickly.

House

No, not the tv show...

Ben and I are looking at getting a house, but there's a lot of steps involved. We found a place we like that is reasonably close to Ben's new job, and we have a meeting with a mortgage specialist on Tuesday.

Please pray that things go smoothly in whatever direction is best for them to go.

Thanks!

Which Way?

Click on this

Which way is the girl spinning? Clockwise or counter clockwise?

(Don't worry, it's not one of those things where you look at a picture and something freaky happens, I promise!)

Now, the real question: Can you get her to spin the other way?

I can!

Give

I've decided to make this my browser's homepage.

That way every time I go online I'll be reminded to click and help fund mammograms for women - helping them fight against breast cancer.

I challenge you to do the same. It doesn't even take a minute and it's completely free. No strings attached, just open your browser, click the pink button and then continue on with whatever you were doing. If you're not willing to do it daily, at least do it today. Every click counts.

Hair Days

So I'm trying to grow my hair out long. Like, sit on it long. For fun (because growing your hair is so much fun...that whole half inch a month, good times).

So I joined the Long Hair Community. It's great, lots of good advice, beautiful inspiration, all round good web community.

Someone decided to post a 30 day challenge, to wear your hair up for 30 days. In a row. I rarely wear my hair up 30 minutes in a row, so this should be interesting. I'm trying to learn new ways to put it up, so if I come up with anything interesting I'll let you know. So far I've managed a french braid. Exciting huh?

New Socks!

New socks might not be that exciting for a lot of you, but I learned a new way to make socks and I'm pretty thrilled with it.

I was browsing knitting blogs yesterday (because they're oh so much fun!) and read about the "magic loop method" and so just had to go out and get a long pair of circulars. I had already learned how to do toe-up socks with a short row heel. I love this method because you can really see the size of the sock as you go and make it a perfect fit. Plus the short row heel is so much less complicated than doing a heel flap and picking up stitches and all that headache. Also the figure 8 cast on makes a seamless toe, which is great for people who hate seams at the toe.

So here's a run down of how to make THE BEST socks
I use Bernat Handicrafter Cotton (the little 2$ skins) and size 7 circular needles (29")

Hold the two needles parallel with the points facing the same direction and wind the yar between them making figure eights until you have 10 stitches on each needle (you only need 8, but I always do extra in case I screw up!) The needle with the end of the yarn hanging off it gets slipped out so that those stitches stay on the wire of the circular, but don't pull it all the way through, leave a loop between the two sets of stitches. Knit 8 stitches off the other needle. Adjust so that both sides are on needles again and this time slide the side you just worked off so the other side can be knit (sounds much more complicated than it is!). Again, remember to keep a loop of wire between the two sections of stitches.

That is basically the magic loop method (but check the first few pages in the search linked above for a better explanation and pictures). You'll do that for the whole sock except for the heel. To shape the toe, on the second and second to last stitch every row (for each needle, so increasing on 4 stitches total) knit front and back to increase. I start with 8 stitches and increase until I have 22 on each needle (but I have little feet). If you figure out your gage (eg. 8 sts per inch) and the size of your foot (5 inches) and round up to make it even you can easily figure out how many stitches you need (40). Then you just knit. Knit until you get it long enough it goes to the front of your ankle. For the heel you just work one half of the stitches, leaving one stitch on the needle and turning the work as you do each row (read the short-row links above), then when you get about 6 working stitches you start to increase again, and voila! a heel! A few more rounds (ok, a lot more rounds) with ribbing for the cuff, and you're done!

Mine aren't done yet, still working the foot of my first one, but I just started yesterday. I'll get pics when I'm done!

11 months old

Wow time flies. My baby girl is 11 months old today.

This morning I woke up to her rolling around beside me. Once she realized I was awake she looked at me with a big smile and snuggled against my chest. Bliss.

She wants to walk all the time now, but she can't walk on her own yet. So daily Ben and I take her for walks around the house. Seeing the two of them walking and laughing makes my heart soar.

There's so much learning going on right now. Her newest game is putting and taking. She'll put a toy on the chair and then take it off. She'll put a block on top of another block, clap her ands, and then take it off. It makes me giggle.

She's persistent. When she wants to get somewhere interesting - like under a table or where a kitty is sleeping - she figures out a way to do it, then looks over her shoulder and smiles at me proudly.

Nothing could be better than this.

Life is Good

This has been a wonderful week:

- We found a WONDERFUL church

- Liz came to visit and trusted me to help her pick her hair cut, and she looks hot.

- Hana's x-rays were clear, there's no infection

- I spent all of yesterday with other mom-friends

- I got to talk to Jess Tot Weaver

- I went out last night with other moms and no babies (4th time going out without Hana for more than an hour)

- Hana has slept from 9ish to 6ish the last 3 nights!!!

Life is so good right now!

My baby is sick

She's had a cough for well over a month. At first it was because she had a cold. Then she had a lingering runny nose. Then I couldn't figure out what it was and called the Dr.

I'm a severe asthmatic. I've been hospitalized a lot because of attacks and infections, especially when I was small. I was diagnosed when I was not much older than Hana, and at her age was in the hospital more than I was out of it. I know how serious just a cough can become.

The Dr. prescribed her an inhaler, got chest x-rays and asked if there was a family history of asthma. Be praying that she gets over this cough and that her lungs are whole and healthy.

My baby

Idealism

I consider myself an enlightened idealist. There are certain things that I think/feel/believe and I know the world would be a better place if others agreed, but I also know that's not going to happen. I see the way things could (should) go, but know that they won't always go like that.

Life is hard for idealists. There's a lot of disappointment. There's a lot of frustration. There's a lot of pain. There's a temptation to turn cynical, jaded, to appear uncaring as your sense of justice is trampled on again and again. There's a lot of thought, a lot of passion, a lot of emotion.

It can make it hard to let things to, to not act, to be patient. It makes it easy to care, to move, to do something. Unfortunately there isn't always something to do, and sometimes one must resign to the fact that this is the way the world works.

I enjoy my idealism, my passion, my drive, my emotion. Yes, it leaves me wounded at times, but I'm also stubborn, so I get up and keep on moving. In my mind moving towards a small bit of change is better than not moving at all, so for now I take what I can get.

Sleep

I never get enough sleep. In the past year I can only think of 4 times that I have gotten 6 or more hours of sleep in a row, and one of those I was medicated. This is nothing new though, I've had issues with insomnia since I was in high school. In college it was normal for me to only plan on about 6 hours of sleep a night. When I was pregnant I was getting up 3 or 4 times a night, and was awake about every hour. So having Hana get up two or three times a night really isn't such a big deal.

I know some of you will be shocked that my 10.5 month old still wakes up at night. She doesn't get up to eat, and usually doesn't need a diaper change, she just wakes. About half the time she puts herself back to sleep, sometimes she needs her soother, and sometimes she needs help getting back to sleep and comes into our bed, or I don't feel like getting up at 7 and bring her in bed with me with the hope that she'll go back to sleep until 9 - but those ones don't really count because it's technically morning when she wakes up.

I'm not bothered by Hana waking up at night, because I know I wake up at night, and Ben wakes up at night, and pretty much everyone I know wakes up at some point during the night and then falls back asleep. I don't even mind going in to help soothe her and help her get back to sleep - motherhood is a 24 hour job and I want Hana to know that I'm there for her no matter what time it is.

That's not to say that I don't get frustrated or even angry at times over the whole situation. There have been times when Hana has been in her crib crying with me sitting on the floor, also crying, and holding her hand. There have been times when I've had to wake Ben to help soothe her because I just couldn't take it anymore. There have been times when Hana and I have had to sleep on the couch to keep from waking the rest of the household. Frequently I nap during the day to catch up on sleep I miss at night (although usually missing sleep at night has nothing to do with Hana). It's rough, it's annoying, it stresses me out, and there are nights when all three of us have ended up crying. But Hana is never left to cry alone.

Not that I think crying will necessarily cause any permanent damage (altho if high levels of stress hormones are bad for adults I can't see how they couldn't be bad for babies...). I just know that if someone I love heard me crying and didn't offer comfort I'd feel alone and abandoned, and crying myself to sleep gives me horrible headaches and bad dreams, and I don't want to treat Hana in a way that I would not want to be treated. I know this is temporary. And I know getting her to sleep through the night is no guarantee that I'll get any more sleep than I usually do anyway.

(as a side note, STTN is usually defined as sleeping from midnight to 5 am without waking. I don't understand why people get in such a row over infants of x age needing to be able to STTN - at the age of 24 I still rarely fit that definition, and I was sleep trained...)

With moving and teething and transitioning to one nap things have been a little rougher than usual with sleep. She went from waking once a night (around 5) to waking twice a night, and then on bad teething nights sometimes 3 times (when the advil wears off). She's been doing well lately, going down MUCH easier since we dropped the morning nap and settling herself the first time she wakes at night.

Anyway. I was thinking early this morning (3:23 to be exact...) as I tried to comfort my crying daughter by leaning over her crib and rubbing her head - why is baby's sleep such a hot topic?

If you look at humanity though the eyes of anthropology, babies waking in the night and needing comfort is completely normal and to be expected. No matter how you believe humanity came into existence, you can't deny the fact that for a good chunk of our history we were tribal, nomadic, and lived communally - babies had to be kept close for their own safety - the threat of animals, cold, and other dangers was a real one. Globally most babies sleep with their mothers, not in a crib down the hall. Sharing sleep regulates temperature, digestion, and breathing. Sleep cycles become synchronized. Most of all, the baby knows they are safe and secure. A baby can not survive on their own, and they know that. I think waking at night for comfort is just their way of making sure we remember that they are completely dependent on us, no matter how independent and self sufficient we trick ourselves into believing they are.

(and as that thought was running through my mind I picked Hana up and brought her in bed with me, she settled and we got to stay in bed until 9, with one short waking around 5:30)

Not that I'm against cribs - Hana is peacefully sleeping in hers right now. But I can't deny that she (and possibly Ben and I) would probably get more sleep if she was in bed with us. Maybe all these "sleep issues" we think babies have are actually ones we bring on ourselves.

In other news...

My baby has a tooth. FINALLY!

Hana started teeething at 9 weeks. Yup. Chewing on hands, drooling, cranky, liked it when I rubbed her gums, swolen gums, everything. SHe would have at least a couple days every week where she was out of sorts and chewing on everything, but most days were ok. THe last month has been a little rough.

So she's pretty cranky, and another tooth is about ready to come through, and her top gums are swollen. It's going to be fun here for a while.

Media Awareness

Sometimes the propaganda floating around out there just makes me sick. This is just a friendly little reminder to take everything you see with a grain of salt - it seems no one is telling the full story

Guilty

I have issues.

Ok, so that much goes without saying. More specifically, I have guilt issues. THey come from a few different sources, here's some of the major ones:

- Close relationships with passive-agressive/manipulative people. THese people have the unique ability to bend reality to suit their needs, making others responsible for their feelings, actions, disappointments etc. It's hard enough bearing the weight of one's own live, let alone that of others.

- Work situations that caused me to bear the consequences of the decisions of others. This is why I'm always nice to people who work at call centers. It's not their fault; they're just doing their job.

- The inability to meet unspoken expectations. I will do all I can do to meet a reasonable expectation, but if all I feel is the negativity from not meeting some obscure hidden standard, I'm left feeling defeated.

So I have this issues, and I'm aware of it, but that doesn't make it go away. For example, a few weeks back I told Tyler and Denise I'd help chaperone a trip to the zoo for their summer program. THe day before the trip the breaks started acting up in the car and I didn't feel save having Hana in it (and Ben didn't like having me in it...). Unfortunately, because of circumstances beyond my control, me not going would me the trip couldn't happen. THankfully something worked out, but I still felt guilty all day for causing the complication.

I'm realizing my guilt issues affect my life. If Hana can't sleep I feel it's because I'm a bad mother. THe rational part of me knows it's because she's overtired/going through a pahse/whatever.

It doesn't matter, I still feel responsible, and I still feel guilty.

I have sleep issues. Sometimes they interrupt the daily flow of our family because I need to nap. Usually, instead of sleeping, I toss and turn because I feel guilty for needing the sleep.

I let myself get into situations that I know are unhealthy for me because protecting myself would put someone else out.

I'm pretty much always feeling guilty.

I really don't know what to do. I feel so responsible for the happiness/fulfillment/dreams/expectations of those around me that at times I just feel helpless. And then I feel like it's all my fault and feel guilty for having any frustration, let alone expressing it.

So here's my idea. I'm not trying to be selfish, I'm just setting some ground rules to try and make things a little easier.

- If lack of sleep is preventing me from being effective in what I am trying to do and the opportunity to sleep arises, I will take it.

- If my family does not regularly enjoy a specific food or drink it should not be expected that we regularly have it available, no matter how much our guests may enjoy it, so long as we have a suitable substitute.

- being a good wife and mother means regularly taking time for myself and my passions. I will fell free to do so as long as my immediate responsibilities to my husband and child are taken care of.

- I have a right to my opinions and am entitled to express them respectfully.

- I am not responsible for the happiness of others so long as I am treating them with dignity and respect.

- I can not be held accountable for the decisions, attitudes or actions of those around me.

- The house needs to be cleaned once a week; it doesn't even all have to be on the same day. When other things are more important, housework will wait.

Now maybe if I can remember those things I'll be able to ease up on myself a bit.

Fun and Games

Hana and I have a new game.

I lay her down on the floor at one end of the room, then go to my computer at the other end and see how much I can get done before she rolls over and pulls on the coards.

It's fun, and she's getting quick!

Confessions of a reluctant co-sleeper

When I was pregnant with Hana I had so many ideas and thoughts about how I would parent. Within about a month they pretty much all went out the window.

The hardest one for me to get over was my disinterest in co-sleeping. Ok, disinterest is too mild of a word. I hated the idea. Ben and I had decided that Hana would be in our room for the first month or two in a pack-n-play bassinet, and then she would sleep in her own bed. That lasted about half a night.

When I was struggling with nursing, I would bring Hana in bed with me because side-lying was pretty much the only osition that worked for us. However the fear of rolling on her and the attitude that I would never be able to get her out of our bed made that short lived, and back to the pack-n-play she went once I stopped nursing.

That was when I realized she was a very noisy sleeper, and we all decided (as in I decided) that we'd sleep better if she was in her crib. I'd rock her and settle her and then I was free for the night.

Or at least free until the early morning hours when she thought it was morning and I still wanted more sleep.

And so the routine began. I lay down with Hana to help her go to sleep, then move her into her bed, and then sometime between midnight and 7 am she comes back in with us.

My reasons are selfish though. It's easier to pop her soother in her mouth when it's inches away from me instead of accross the hall. And she sleeps longer in our bed, which means I sleep longer, and that's always a good thing.

But we still don't co-sleep all the time. Not because of the insane idea she'll be sleeping with us until she's a teen. I mean come on people, if sleep associations from infancy were that far ingraned then most of us would still be in cribs wailing before we fell asleep. No, it's because I can't get over my need for my own space. I can't let go of the idea that it's my only baby free time (even if it does only come in two hour incriments).

 x  n n nm mn n n ç gb vbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbbb xc zx n hn xcv  ˜¨hjjx∆˙vz (Hana's contribution to the subject....).

So for now, Hana is welcome in our bed at any point in the night, so long as when I go to bed I can convince myself she's spending the night in her own room.

the joys of life

I'm going to bed