No church

And not from a lack of desire. As I was getting ready to leave, I had a helping phone call. The newborn was having nipple confusion due to the hospital giving the baby a pacifier. Mom was an emotional mess and the baby had bad latch issues. After several hours of patient work and encouragement, the issue has been resolved and the mom and baby were nursing beautifully when I left.

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I get really frustrated when I hear about nursing moms being undermined like this mom was. But, that type of thing is why I am here and is a part of the work I am doing to get rid of formula and pacifiers from being distributed in hospitals.

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Tomorrow is my first weather class that I will be teaching. I am very nervous and feel highly unprepared. I hope it goes well and I am able to teach across the ages while keeping it fun and entertaining. I have the book How the Weather Works that I will be working from. It has a lot of experiments in it that I would like to do with the class. Tomorrow, I am going to do a basic and then look for input on weather phenomena that they would like to see covered.

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My new job is going very well. I worked yesterday morning and had a wonderful time with Miss L. I will be working Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays with Saturday being a fill in as needed. I did make them aware of the 17th being a La Leche League meeting and needing to leave early for that and they are ok with that.

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Well, time to gather materials for tomorrow.

Long while here

It's been a long while since my last entry. I have been posting on the homeschool blog our daily work, but have done nothing here. I started a new job today helping to take care of a sweet, sweet lady. I really like it and like the family I am working with.

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Charlie is doing very well with his school work. Last night, I set out his school work that I wanted him to do today and he was done by noon. I am pleased with the progress he has made. He's getting more focused and showing more interest in wanting to know more about certain things. I am going to take that and run with it.

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The other day, I realized how much I miss baking when I made a loaf of cranberry bread and a carrot cake. Both were completely gone in a matter of a couple of hours. I definitely want to get back into baking.

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There is more I want to share about what is going on in our life, but I can't yet. When the time comes, I will let it all out. But right now, I am remaining silent. Which is probably why I have not been blogging. I have stuff I need to work out mentally, but can't at this point. At least not on here and this is my outlet.

I'm running away

Or rather I wish I could run away sometimes. The children were in rare form today. They just had so much energy and being unable to focus myself, I could not focus them very well. I left to pay the mortgage and the vehicle payments and went to visit my best friend and hung out there for a couple of hours. I had to get away from the chaos that was my children.

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Tonight was a coalition meeting and my voice recorder worked very well. I had Bethany with me and I ended up looking at her at one point and saying "Is your hair on fire!?" She kept getting in my face to talk to me as I was trying to talk. It was annoying. That was one small thing out of what was basically a "how cute" little girl who was going around to the different ladies saying "I love you" to them and giving them hugs and kisses.

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I have to write something for the January newsletter breastfeeding related and I am going to do something on nursing while pregnant and tandem nursing. I am organizing my thoughts already. I am going to go over some old blog posts and read a bit of what my brain was like then. Exhaustion comes to mind.

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I am also going to work with Crisis Pregnancy to do breastfeeding classes once a month or so. Someone from there will contact me in the next week or two.

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The coalition is going to do something to recognize business that go out of their way to accommodate nursing moms in the work place. We are going to have a ceremony and invite the mayor. We will have it in August to coincide with world breastfeeding week/month.

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Basically, I see me being busy in the near future.

Long Day

We did quite a bit today. More than I like to do on a Sunday, but it was stuff that needed doing. I picked up a new digital voice recorder for the Breastfeeding Coalition of the Wabash Valley meetings so I can accurately take notes. I also picked up some thing for tomorrow's homeschool co-op class. Tomorrow, I will start my weather class. Hopefully, I don't completely blow it.

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In running errands, I took Hannah with me and decided to make it a special treat with her. We went out and had dessert for dinner. She felt like the biggest little princess. We went to Applebee's and I spoke with a manager about Dining for Donations and I will talk with the Coalition tomorrow night about that.

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Tomorrow is going to be a long, but hopefully productive day. While it would have been nice to enjoy that extra hour of sleep most people got with daylight savings, unfortunately my children do not understand the concept of the extra hour and so they were up at their normal time. Bah, humbug!

Productive Day

Well, productive in terms of a meeting I went to today. There was a parenting seminar today where I met some wonderful people. One was the breastfeeding coordinator for the state. I am hoping to be able to do more outreach and education with breastfeeding and hopefully help raise the breastfeeding rates not just in my little area, but eventually across the state. I was looking at the rates on the Indiana Perinatal Network site and it was rather depressing. Being classified as a rural area, I am sure this area is even worse if we were to break it down by county. I did hear some hopeful news when it comes to WIC and I do try to work with WIC as much as I can. WIC has certain guidelines they have to follow and they have their own handouts that they have to go by so there are some restrictions there. Being on the Breastfeeding Coalition of the Wabash Valley will hopefully help as well.

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Charlie helped to sell popcorn today for cub scouts. I wanted to be there, but since I had the meeting, I couldn't go with him. He didn't care though. Husband went with him and he had fun. It's a guy thing and I have a feeling that when it comes to boy scouts, I am going to be pushed to the side since I'm a "girl-yuck." There's a scout meeting Monday night and I won't be at that either since I will be at the Coalition meeting. Once again, Charlie doesn't care. I'm "Mommy" like it is some sort of gross thing. The joys of seven year old boys.

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The girls are a bit jealous of Charlie being in scouts. I told them that they can be in girl scouts in a couple of years. My babies are getting big.

Pizza Night?

That appears to be the trend. I have no clue why, but the children enjoy it so I go with it. It is also nice to not have to wonder what to make for dinner. Which also points out to me that I need to start menu planning again. It is hard to menu plan when I don't even know where we will be in the near future. Here? Home? I don't know.

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I brought more groceries from home and also did grocery shopping. I spent quite a bit at Farmer's Market on produce. I miss the DTFM. The year round FM is not even local produce. It's shipped in half frozen. But the prices are reasonable so I buy. Besides, it is locally owned business. The rest of the stuff we picked up at Aldi's. I picked up several bags of frozen fruit. Mix that with the bananas from FM and you have a wonderful snack.

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Tomorrow is a seminar and the focus is infant/toddler parenting. It is a four part seminar and there are two parts that interest me. One is on breastfeeding and the other is SIDS. I am interested in hearing what is said about breastfeeding beyond feeding a baby. I am also interested in hearing what is said about SIDS, breastfeeding, and co-sleeping. So, that is where I will be tomorrow.

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While I am there, Husband will be taking Charlie to meet with his pack to sell popcorn. While I would love to be there, I know I can't be in two places at the same time and I know Charlie will have fun with his father and his new friends. My baby boy is getting big.

I decided to treat the children today during piano lessons. I did this once before and since they enjoyed it, I decided to do it again. I took the ones not in lesson to a restaurant up the road and when it came time for their lesson, I left, dropped the one off, picked the other up, and repeated that for the third. The waitress leaves the table alone and when she sees me coming in with a different child, she refills my cup and brings the dessert menu. Bethany and Hannah each had chocolate cake and Charlie had a strawberry milkshake. While we can't do this every time, being able to do it once in a while is nice. I enjoy it and so do they.

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Hannah is still not too keen on piano lessons. I am going to do one more month and see how she does. I don't want to force her, but I don't want to drop her without giving her a chance. We'll see how it goes.

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I still need to pick up some supplies for my weather class that will be starting on Monday. I have lots of half formed ideas. We will see where they lead.

Bill Paying Day

Today, we paid bills and I started my period. Ick to both. We also picked up a buck that is in his first rut cycle so hopefully we can get some of the lady goats pregnant. He has the markings of a boer but the ears and legs of a la manche. He was spraying himself so that is a good sign. When we put him in with the rest of the goats, all the ladies were presenting themselves to him. Poor thing was running from them all and they were all going after him.

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We went to Spendal's to pick up our butchered goats and we have four more that need butchering, but they are not going to do anymore until after the first of the year due to deer hunting. So, we will do them ourselves and see how we do. Speaking of butchering, on Friday, we will be butchering several roosters.

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When going to the house today, we noticed the dumpster gone. The contractors are done except for the gutter going back up. Now is clean-up. I did three loads of laundry today, vacuumed and scrubbed our bedroom and bathroom, moved the cabinet back in the closet in our bedroom, and have been sorting through stuff cleaning as I go along. This is going to be a process, but I am thankful that we are getting back into our home soon. I have decided that our SIL has to move in with us. She has made this whole situation that was nightmarish for us and helped us see the blessing in it. I am so thankful for her. I don't know if she realizes how much or if I can ever tell her how much. I just know that I am.

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I am going to go lay down now because my stomach is upset and I have been sneezing, dealing with a sore throat and feeling very exhausted. But, I am NOT getting sick. I don't have time.

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Charlie just showed me his other hole in his mouth. He now has two teeth gone.

Boy Scouts

Charlie had his first scout meeting today.  There is a pack that meets a mile from our house.  It is a new pack and Charlie had a really wonderful time.  I am glad I found this pack and got Charlie involved.  We will be picking up the book and a shirt this week.  I see a long line of patch sewing in my future.  That does remind me.  Does anyone want some popcorn?  

Charlie also joined the homeschoolers today and learned a bit about ancient Japan.  Next week will be India and I will be doing some kind of activity related to the climate in India.  So our Mondays will be from 9:00 to 2:00 at the library going from weather to book club to ancient history to art.  Book club, ancient history, and art are all related to the same topic each week.  (This week was Japan and next week will be India.)  The only "off subject" will be weather but for the art section as everyone breaks into smaller groups, I can have a map of India (or whatever country) and have them color a climate map for that country.  (Tropic, subtropic, arctic, etc.)  Then we will be coming home where he will do the rest of his school work, then dinner, then scouts, then home, shower, and stay up for an hour after the girls go to bed.  All in all, while a busy day, not too bad and it is only once a week.  Plus, scouts is only three weeks per month.  Not every single week.

Charlie also picked out a whole bunch of books from the library and he is looking forward to reading them.  I need to make sure he does his school work before he gets lost in the books.  He is like me in that he will read to the exclusion of everything else.  I need to watch for that.  While on the one hand I am glad that he has a love of reading, I get concerned that he will ignore everything else.

Update of sorts

It looks like the leak has been fixed. We'll know for sure the next time it rains for several days. The carpet in the bedroom is done and it looks wonderful! It is the same color as the stains on the living room carpet.
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Charlie shared his journal with our pastor and is very happy with having one. He also lost a tooth this evening. Unfortunately, it is not the tooth hanging by a tiny piece of skin. But rather a different tooth that was loose. He still won't let me take it out. We don't do the tooth fairy here. Along with finding the whole concept creepy (some stranger comes into your room in the middle of the night while you are sleeping and messes around with your bed while you are in it) it falls under the category of lying to children.

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I have all the homeschool stuff organized and each child has a three ring binder with their stuff in it. SIL cleaned out a bunch of stuff to make more room for our stuff. So I no longer have the stuff crammed into a bag. I have it in a file cabinet drawer and even have my own three ring binder to help me stay organized.

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Tomorrow, we are supposed to pick up a male goat who actually knows how to breed. We are going to borrow him for a week or so then bring him back. The guy doesn't want cash (which is good) and we are giving him a saddle as collateral. We bring the buck back, we get the saddle back.

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The bruise on my tush has gotten considerably bigger, but it no longer hurts to sit. I still have a few sore muscles, but I am feeling better. I took a nap today which helped. I think my body is trying to come down with something, but I am trying to fight it. Hopefully the nap helped. I am going to take some garlic to boost my system.