Playing in the Dirt

Who else is itching to get out in the garden? We went from days that were freezing to days that were warm enough for shorts and a tshirt within a week, and while I know there's a very real chance that it'll get cold again, I can't help but be excited for spring!

As it turns out, my gardens are definitely getting turned up and ready for planting, but it's not me doing the digging! My sweet little baby has decided that as a 1 year old he's now too big to sit at Mama's feet while his sisters run wild in the yard, and he's decided that the last garden box in the row is his for the playing! As soon as we get to the yard he makes a bee-line for it. Sometimes he pauses near my chair just long enough to sit down and take of his shoes and socks before continuing on his way. It makes me so happy!

He couldn't care less that he'll get dirty, and he certainly doesn't complain about the bath later. (I swear that boy is part fish!) He loves to squish it, loves to dig it, loves to run his hands through it, and of course, loves to hold it over his head...and drop it. He comes in looking like one big ball of dirt, but with the biggest smile. I kid you not, nothing else keeps that boys attention for long, he's always on the go, but he will sit in that garden box for an entire hour with a little shovel and just dig and play!

Despite being the only boy, he's not the first of my kids to love the dirt. The first summer we had a garden I'd often find Lissy and Gwyn sitting at the edge playing in the mud. I remember going out one of the first days after we'd tilled the spot for the garden and Lissy laid herself down in the middle of it and tried to make snow angels in the dirt. 

As much as I'm grateful for technology (and we use it often), I'm also so grateful for these outdoor experiences. The love of nature that these kids have and the imagination that runs wild at the sight of a rock or a stick still amazes me nearly seven years after starting this journey of motherhood. These are the memories I want them to have. These are the moments I hope stick with them and shape them forever. The lesson: simplicity. You don't need a million toys or gadgets to have fun or be entertained. There's magic in nature and the ability to nurture your imagination. Sunshine helps things grow: flowers, food, children, and your appreciation for the little things in life.

Looking to Heaven

Yesterday we had planned on having our first ultrasound. We excited to get to see our newest sweet addition wiggle on the screen. We were excited to hear baby's heartbeat and bring back pictures to show anxious big sisters and baby-obsessed big brother. We were full of joy.

One week earlier we got to see our little one, but in circumstances that left us feeling much different. At 10 weeks along baby only measured 7 weeks. The ultrasound tech was silent the whole time as he measured baby and attempted to over and over to get any sign of a heartbeat. There wasn't one. Our sweet little James was born the next day. 

Yesterday, instead of going to our ultrasound, we drove to the church I grew up in, the church we met and married in. We sat surrounded by our family while the priest reminded us that life begins at conception and that our little one was still a life, if only briefly. That James still had a soul and was now in Heaven. The girls keep saying, "Mama Mary is snuggling our baby now." Yes, my sweet girls, his Mama Mary is holding him until we can in Heaven.

We drove to the cemetery and left him there. My mama had gotten a little solar light to place over him. His sisters left it there are a nightlight for their baby brother.

Grief is hard. Everyone handles it differently, and as the adult trying to help littles navigate their own grief while also dealing with my feelings it's been even more difficult. I'm glad they've found some light. As sad and angry as they were when we first told them, they've found some happiness in knowing that he's in Heaven. They seem to find solace in the image of Mama Mary holding their baby brother. That child-like view is exactly what I want to cling to. This wasn't my plan. I wanted to he the one to hold my baby, to cuddle him and give him kisses. But that wasn't God's plan. So now we move forward, knowing, as St. Zelie Martin said, that "we shall find our little ones again up above."

Back in the Blogging-verse

Well, I've contemplating bringing back my blog several times over the last 3+ years since my last post. Usually I sit here thinking about what to say and end up deciding to post on social media instead because I feel like I don't have enough to say to make a whole post. I love the connections I've made on social media and the fun accounts I stumble across. (Searching for crochet pattern creators and small businesses is my favorite!) BUT, it's all becoming a little too much. Too much negativity. Too much infringement on privacy (which seems silly to say when the point is sharing, but I think you all k ow where I'm getting with that). And too much time spent mindlessly scrolling when I could be doing a million other things.

I still feel like I want a creative outlet and a way to share life with other people, so I find myself back here at my blog, ready to continue sharing our adventures. I'm not completely sure what that will look like yet. Maybe a weekly update, maybe some themed posts, maybe a little of everything. Only time will tell. But in the meantime, click the "follow" button if you want updates and let me know what you want to see/hear/know.

I can't wait to catch up with everyone here and see where this part of our adventure leads us!

Emily

Trust in the Lord

"For thus said the Lord God, the Holy One of Israel: By waiting and by calm you shall be saved, in quiet and in trust your strength lies. But this you did not wish." Isaiah 30:15

I came across a Bible study tonight that began with Isaiah 30:15-26, and while I read the all 12 verses multiple times, this particular verse was what stuck out to me the most.

Waiting. Calm. Quiet. Trust. These are all "buzz words" when it comes to God. He has a plan, and we're told over and over again that if we pray and wait He will reveal it to us in His time. Yet waiting and trusting are two of the hardest things for us to do. Our minds get so anxious and loud that we talk over God. Sometimes I think we even make up "signs" that aren't really there just so we can convince ourselves that we're getting an answer. Having complete trust and quieting our minds to wait for God's direction is a huge hurdle. And, as the verse chapter continues past verse 15, it goes on to show that so often not heeding this warning can lead to harm or heartache. This is not to say that God won't redirect us after we make such choices. He gave us freewill so that we could choose, and He won't abandon us if we get off track; but, surely His original path is for our best interest. Does this mean he would keep us from every experiencing bad things? I don't think so, because from those experiences we learn and grow. Just as we cannot know how best to succeed without first failing, we cannot learn without first experiencing the lesson that leads us toward growth. The hope being, of course, that we use what we learn and the growth we achieve to better serve God and His people.

We are currently in the process of buying our first home. And as we move forward with this process I feel like I need to keep repeating this verse to myself over and over again. I know that I'm guilty of searching for signs that probably aren't there. I'm certainly anxious to keep the process moving as quickly as possible, but I also know that I need to be still and just listen. My husband reminded me of this earlier today when he relayed the story of how just yesterday I said we could "table the discussion until tomorrow" about something with the house hunting process, and then 30 minutes later I was sending him an email as I tried to hash it out yet again. My goal, moving forward, is to keep my mind and heart open to God and His plan. I'm going to try to remind myself that I can't run ahead of Him and myself by trying to create my own plans before it's time. He brought us safely to this step of the process, and now we need to keep moving just one step at a time.

Creating Our Intentional Bookshelf: Part 2

We've done some more work in the processes of creating our own intentional bookshelf. We're following the guide set in the book The Intentional Bookshelf by Samantha Munoz. If you haven't read part 1 yet (which walked us through developing our purpose and categories) you can find that here.

After I wrote part 1 and began the sorting process I realized that there were two important categories I had left out, and as I sorted books I found that there were a few more that (while not as prominent) were a part of the collection that we already had and wanted to keep. The two most important categories that I forgot were wordless picture books and sign language books. I'll explain more later.

The sorting process began a bit rough. As you can imagine, sorting through stacks of books with two toddlers wondering around can be a bit of a challenge. They were constantly pulling out books and running off with them or putting them back into other stacks. Sorting all of our books at once was just a little too much to take on during one nap time or at bedtime (because let's face it, by the time this prego mama gets both girls to sleep there's only another hour or so, if that, before I can't keep my eyes open either). So to make the sorting our books into categories a little easier I did one book type at a time. I started with the board books, and then moved onto pictures books, followed by interactive books. (Note: some of our board books are also "interactive", meaning they have flaps or finger trails or things of that nature, but for the purposes of my sorting I put those books in with the board books and kept "interactive books" as things like sticker books, color books, activity books with experiments, crafts, etc.)

Board Books
Here's what my board book sorting looked like. A bit of a mess. Many of the books could fit into multiple categories, but so if I had an abundance of one and not the other I tried to balance them out a little bit. As you can see above, the sorting was a little messy, but overall I think I got a good idea of what we have and was able to make some notes of categories that we would like to add more of.


Pictures Books

This was by far my biggest category. The picture to the right is how I store our pictures books currently when not in use, which, in all honesty isn't very convenient, but it's the best place I've got for them for now. Ultimately these books became a bit overwhelming to sort through. Not only are there just a lot of books there, but so many of them fit into multiple categories that I had trouble creating my stacks. The other issue with sorting these was that they were going to have to go back into the toy chest for storage, and while I could keep them in some order, they weren't really going to stay organized. What I ended up doing was creating a Google Drive spread sheet, and while it was time consuming I'm so glad that I chose to include this in our organizing for multiple reasons. For each book on the spreadsheet I included the title, author, book type (because I eventually added the board books to it as well), and what categories it fit in. By putting it into the spreadsheet I was able to assign multiple categories to the same book, and later when I'm looking for a particular category all I have to do is type the category name into my search bar and they'll all highlight to make them easy to find! The other thing that is super convenient about having all of our books organized on Google Drive is that I have access to it on my phone. I can't tell you how many times I've looked at a book at the store or the library and then couldn't remember if we already owned it or not. This was I know what we have even when we're out and about!

Interactive Books
This was our smallest category to sort, which was a nice way to end our sorting adventure. Ultimately these books were mostly stored away with our crafting things because they don't usually get left out all the time.

Sorting through all of these books was certainly a learning experience. While I love our home library, there were several books that I came across that I wondered if we really needed to be part of our permanent collection because they aren't really books we ever read (even when they're out on our bookshelf) or we have other books with the same story/message that we enjoy more. I definitely think I'm going to go back through them at some point and pull out some of those books...but if you know me you know how bad I am at getting rid of things, so we'll see how long it takes me. Ha!

I'd love to hear more about your collection! Do you have a large collection or just a small shelf of favorites? Do you keep every book you get or do you go through them every so often and take out books that aren't being used?

Yet Another Attempt at Organizing

I can't tell you how many times I've tried to organize, sort, declutter, and create a cleaning schedule. I generally start with a new plan every January, try two or three other ways throughout the year, before finally admitting defeat around Thanksgiving and deciding to focus on just the main rooms (to make room for the Christmas tree and decorations), vowing that I'll start again the next year. This year has been no exception.

While I didn't start out the year making any "New Year's Resolutions," I did still have some goals in mind. At the top of those goals was decluttering and organizing before Janie's arrival in May. I'm a list person, and I love planners, though I'm not always good at using them. My problem with planners stems from trying to keep too many of them going at once. With my lofty ideas I always have several going at once: one for the bills, one for blogging, one for Usborne, and one with birthdays, anniversaries, playdates, and other plans. While in my mind it seemed more organized (looking to work on something specific, you only need look at that one planner) it ultimately meant that I was using none of them because I forgot to look at them to see what was actually happening.

In the end of November, when the planners and calendars first started appearing in stores, I decided I needed to buy one. Normally I wait until closer to January, but since we had prenatal appointments and other appointments to add to our 2017 calendar already I wanted to get started. I absolutely love the looks of the personalized planners you can buy online, but with my track record of pushing them aside by about April I decided to go cheap but effective. I bought two planners. The first was a bill calendar. While I want things to be condensed, this one makes more sense to have separate because I sit down to pay bills every payday and don't otherwise need to have that info out. Not only that, but having a separate bill planner allows me to leave it with the bill book and lets Hubby know where to find it as well (without having to sift through everything else in my other planner) if he needs to know when something is due or how much it is. I don't need much room in this calendar, so I bought a $1 planner that just has monthly spreads with a little room on the sides for extra notes. Super easy. (I also add birthdays to this planner so that as I'm figuring out bills & budgeting money I can plan for any birthday gifts or other expenses.)

 The second planner I bought was a daily planner, which includes a monthly spread as well as weekly spreads with more space. The monthly spread includes brief notes about events (names for birthdays and anniversaries, or one word notes to say "doctor", "playdate", etc.). This allows me a quick overview if I'm trying to plan an appointment. If something is listed on that day then the details are listed in the weekly spread that tell place, time, etc. I wanted to give my planner a fun look and help separate events happening on the same day, so I used stencils to help keep notes and ideas contained. Other things noted on the weekly spread include blog topics and weekly business goals for my Usborne business.

Once I had some organization to my planning, I wanted to figure out how cleaning and organizing was going to fit into these first few months of the year before Janie's arrival. I love the extra spaces this particular planner (which I found at Dollar General for $3) provides for different things. I used the notes section on the monthly spread to write down monthly cleaning and organization goals as well as a to-do list for the month that wasn't necessarily specific to a particular day or week. I think took those monthly goals and broke them down into something a little more manageable for a week and wrote those into the space at the top of each weekly spread. Other fun features include a notes section at the back of each month which I'm using to keep track of the books I've read that month; a large notes section at the end which I'm using for lists (though so far the only list is "When did I last..." to help me keep track of things like washing betting, changing toothbrushes, and cleaning out the fridge); and a two-page spread of the entire year of 2017 which I'm using to keep track of our toy and book rotation.

Some of the organization things (like the weekly breakdown of the monthly goals and "When did I last..." list are things that I've added within the last week after looking back at January and realizing that I didn't get such a great start to my goals last month. Hopefully as the year progresses having one combined planner and a particular way of keeping track of these goals will help me to better accomplish them.

I'd love to hear about your planner organization or even your general cleaning and organization strategies. There's always room for improvement and new ideas, and I'm far from having it all figured out. I can't wait to see what you've got!

Creating Our Intentional Bookshelf: Part 1

So far 2017 has been about cleaning and decluttering and trying to figure out how we're going to fit one more little body and all of her things (how does one tiny person need so much?!) into our house. So I've started in the middle room, which tends to be a catch-all (closet, pantry, craft storage, general storage) and...well, that's all the farther I've gotten, and if we're being honest I'm not quite done in there either. But I've started, which is the first step, right?

Anyway, part of that process has meant thinking more critically about what items we should keep and what we can do without and looking more closely at what we buy and what we don't really need. As a mama to two toddlers one area I really wanted to look more closely at what our books and toys. It just happened that in January, Melissa at Rolling Prairie Readers was hosting a book club on her facebook page for the book The Intentional Bookshelf by Samantha Munoz. What a great way to get started!

I'll admit that when I first ordered the book I had visions of finishing the book with an organized and complete list of all of the books I would wanted included in our home library, which is silly, because clearly it was going to take a little more work than that, right?

In the book Munoz covers a variety of topics, including why a home library is important, how to go about collecting books for your home library, and how to decide what to include in your collection. I loved that it was broken down to be reader friendly for anyone, even if they weren't already familiar with the different types of children's books available. While I spend a lot of time with books (reading to the girls, selling Usborne Books & More, and previously working at our local library) I liked that the book offered explanations of what each type of book has to offer. Many of the things she addressed were questions that I often have answered as an Usborne consultant and sometimes it takes some thought to really be able to explain the purpose behind different types of books.

For this post I wanted to walk through the first step of creating our families intentional bookshelf, which was using the Master Plan Worksheet (found here). It sets the foundation of your bookshelf by asking you to think about the purpose of your bookshelf as well as your families values, interests, etc.

Purpose

• Our family bookshelf has multiple purposes. I want it to entertain, but I also want it to educate and engage.

Values, Interests, Etc.

• This is where our list becomes a bit extensive. To start with we want to make sure we include key values that we hold as a family:
• honesty
• love
• kindness
• family
• friendship
• empathy
• learning
• religion
• Obviously the list could go on, but for the sake of getting started these were the values I chose to focus on. When it comes to interests I had to think about what each of the girls likes. Right now they are pretty similar, but I'm sure as they get older they'll gain more of their own interests. For the sake of sorting, I used general categories like "princesses" rather than listing out "Sofia, Belle, Arial, etc." Some of their current interests are:
• princesses
• sea creatures
• farm animals
• zoo animals
• dinosaurs
• I also wanted to make sure I covered a wide variety of learning subjects. Some of these books can fit into the categories above as well. Our top learning categories at this time are:
• colors
• numbers
• emotions

While this list was by no means completely comprehensive it gave us a great starting point for sorting the books we already have. Sorting using these categories and keeping our purposes in mind also allowed me to see what types of books we wanted to add more of to our library. My goal in part two is to show you what our sorting process looked like and how we applied the concept on an intentional bookshelf to our book rotation process.

I'd love for you to share your own purposes and categories you focus on in your bookshelves! Is there a specific topic that you see more of in your bookshelves? Does your child's bookshelf reflect your family values and interests?