Priorites

I am in a local doula yahoo group-well, as local as the Dallas area is for me (that's not really that local). Sometime last week a doula sent out an email explaining her "Children Vows".

I wish I could just print the whole thing here, but I won't. Here's the gist: This momma and her baby daddy wrote some vows about how they'd behave as parents. You might think this means they'd try to not yell, or that they'd provide a good education, religious upbringing or some such thing. Well, that's not exactly what you'd find here. It was mostly about self preservation and not letting a new little human in the family rock their boat. This bullet is what I think the bottom line
was for them:

Our priorities are as follows: Career, marriage, child.

She goes on to say, "Each of us promises not to sacrifice his/her career for the child. It may be necessary to cut back on work to raise the child, but our overall career goals should always be kept in mind. Raising the child "perfectly" is not more important than a satisfying career." Note that she didn't have a career while writing the vows.

Later in the email she admits they were utterly clueless (weren't we all!) but only about their focus on travel. Just where you think she's going to turn it around and say she had no idea parenthood could be more fulfilling than a career, she instead vows to frame the document within the week.

As I've mulled this over, I've come to the following possible conclusions:
1. She may still feel very strongly that a career comes first (even though she's now a "professional parent".

2. She may not have realized she's had a values shift in the way she thinks she's living verses the way she is really living. Staying at home and homeschooling is sure a sacrifice to career goals, even for a flexible doula.

3. Many of us probably have one idea of the way we think we live, which is at least in a bit of contrast to how we really live. I am fully guilty here. I believe I am fairly active and eat pretty well, but the truth is my day consists of lots of sitting down (rocking babies, teaching school) and some of the food we eat weekly is quite inferior. And that's just ONE example of many. I assure you.

I believe I'll do a follow up to this post later in the week...until then!

How's life going for you? Yeah, it's been busy for me too.

Actually, my life is always busy because I can't not be busy. It's how I'm wired. I've added a baby (a year ago already!) and am working on starting a new business. I've added students to my little homeschool. I've joined Facebook. Yeah. I know...

So where does that leave my little blog?

I'm not ready to let it go. Not yet. But I can't do it all.

Most of my friends & family are on Facebook. So my socializing & family updating is taken care of over there. I've just about run out of expertise on homeschooling and healthy lifestyles, and I'm not putting all my doula knowledge out here for free! Ha! :)

But like I said, I'm not quite ready to let allgirlville go.

If you all would send my mom & husband emails every day to remind them that my laptop won't connect to the internet, then maybe I could sit back in my recliner (not that I actually own one) and blog...

Yep, that would do it!

Meanwhile, I do hope to drop back in here more often. Give me some feedback-are you still reading?

We've been busy...

I wanted Bella to be the punch line but Blogger won't let me move the picture!
Oh well, you can see by those eyes we've been busy with this new puppy! Anyone know of a good dachshund therapist? She's going to need help learning to walk again-the girls won't put her down!



On Sunday we had a monkey birthday party...my Monkey turned 9!


And it's that time of year-changing of the seasons/changing of the clothes. These are all the girls' shoes! Piled high on my dining room table. Now they're sorted into the TRASH (!), Storage, Garage Sale, and keep.

We have a garage sale on Friday so we're still sorting, pricing, and cleaning....so no promises of great posts--or any posts! I hope to get back to the blogging routine soon so hang with me as we continue to get our groove this fall!

Weigh In

Well, guess what favorite family had the flu? Yes, that would be us. Pretty defeating when we were trying very hard to avoid it. I keep my kids out of Wal-Mart, they don't eat much sugar, I was force feeding them zinc and vitamins...and we all get it anyway. So, between the six of us (it never hit Shane) we've been out of commission for two weeks. Everyone is better now, thankfully!

So, with no exercise and just normal eating, I lost about two pounds this week. Not too bad I guess. I am struggling to get back into the habit of walking several days a week. I'm still playing catch up with my projects and just not in the swing of things again yet-so that's what I'm working on again.

How'd you do? I haven't heard from several of you who are playing along...check in girls!

Monday Weigh In & Update

Well, go figure that with no exercise I lost two pounds! Funny. I was tied to the house all week with a sick girl. All the girls ended up with a cold this last week, but it hit Hope the hardest. I usually go walk while the girls are at Awana or another activity, but Hope was home all week and she's too young to leave at home alone. This week may not be any better regarding exercise since I'm now the sick one. Fun times!

I didn't even pop in here to blog last week because--believe it or not--my family takes priority over blogging. Gasp! I know you're surprised!

Don't watch for me that much this week either...gotta get my family well.

However, I do have a few little things to share:

We have sick kids but are full of blessings-a friend did us a great favor Sunday morning. You know who you are. ;) Thanks! Shane cleaned a chimney of another friend who over paid him and then sent Shane home with lots of meat-organic beef!

Also, I was giddy with excitement when I saw a message from my doula website-someone wants me to be their doula! Her message included her pregnancy info and then concluded with: I'm glad you're Catholic as faith is important to me. Oh, and her location? Cue the Beach Boys music--Californ-i-a. Yes, that leaves me scratching my head. Not sure why she thinks we're Catholic-except that we have a big family, maybe? Leave it to me to get my first inquiry from someone three states away!

In local news, I did put my name in the hat for a woman in Mineral Wells (about an hour and a half away) who wants a doula this month. She'll probably find a doula from Fort Worth to come over, but I offered to consider it if she needs me. Makes my stomach do a flip-flop to think I might get a call!

School last week went really well. Combining Hope & Bethany in history, poetry, Bible, and read-alouds (books I read to them) and have them do their own math, LA, and handwriting worked like a charm. They love it-especially Bethany who loves the idea of doing the same work as her big sister! I love how streamlined it is. Sonlight is so flexible!

Okay, over and out.
Love,
Your Catholic friend who flies all over the country to do births.

Monday Weigh In

Okay friends, how did you do this week?

I got out a box of too small clothes and guess what? I wore some of those clothes Thursday night to a Bible study! Whoo hoo!

I just weighed and again didn't lose a single pound! I don't feel too bad about it though because I met my goal of exercising twice as much-I walked four times and I think I did pilates once. I really wanted to do pilates 3x in the week but it just didn't happen. I was under the weather on Friday and it threw me off a little, but Saturday I got a good walk in before getting ready for for my little brother's wedding.

I worked on portion sizes but I was stressed Sunday and totally soothed my soul via my mouth. It didn't help that Shane made BBQ sandwiches for lunch! Is there anything better than BBQ?

So, jumping into a new week means a clean slate! Set your mini-goals and get to work! Let us know how you did in the comments. And for those of you playing along at home but not commenting, I hope your week goes great, too! Feel free to jump in here anytime. :)

Slow Down

As I'm going about my life these days, I keep running into a new movement. The Slow Movement. I think I like it. Not sure how to grab hold of it, but I want to anyway.

I've specifically read about Slow Food-an opposition to fast food. The general idea is to establish American food traditions that honor where our food comes from (the farmer, not the factory). The image I get is a family around a table taking much pleasure in each other and their day's stories as they enjoy food that's simmered on the stove all day. Doesn't that sound so much better than a harried momma barking an order at MickeyD's drive through? I've done both, and believe me the feelings you get from circling your family around the table with home cooked food are beyond good.

Another slow movement is Slow Birth. There's a lot of pressure to give birth by the due date (even though two weeks after is considered "on time"), and then to get labor moving fast. In most cases, there's not a great reason to be induced, especially before term. Babies need time. I hear mommas all the time hope for an early delivery, but even just a couple of weeks can be too early for some babies and they have trouble breathing. Wait. Wait on the baby to be ready. And birth-why does there have to be set time for a mom to deliver if she's progressing? This is why many women are birthing at home or at least out of the hospital. They just want time. They want their body to do what it was made to do, without pressure of an arbitrary schedule leading to interventions.

So, I know these two things are pretty unrelated, but the topic of slow has me thinking. I want to slow down and savor. Savor my children. My husband in our youth (while it's slipping away!), fully take in the people around me at any given moment. Not thinking of the next thing which often so characterizes my life, but digging in and living today.

Slowly.

Today.

Savoring.

Works for Me!

One of our school books is the original story Cheaper by the Dozen. In the book, the father is an efficiency engineer. As I read about his stop watch and silly antics trying to get everyone dressed or fed or out to the car faster and more efficiently each time, I smile to myself. I love this man!

I do love me some efficiency!

I'm therefore always looking for ways to do school in a "more better" way. Not to rush through it, but to just cover the same ground in a wise way.

One change I've made this year was by giving each "student" a box of their own for their daily work. I have read about this for years, as many homeschoolers do it but I just couldn't figure out why I'd need boxes/crates when I had a school cabinet. It was neater to keep all the books lined up on the shelf, that's true.

However, as I am now doing three cores (Sonlight's word for one year's worth of instruction) plus some Pre K books for Jaika, my beloved school cabinet is overflowing. More space is a plus, but that's not why I started the crate thing. I have been reading about workboxes, but I just can't justify the expense or space needed for this system.

So, my adaptation works like this: I found some $3 tubs at Wal-Mart near the dish drainers. One for each schooling girl and one for me. In the girls' tubs is all they need to complete one school day, and any extras I want them to do. Oh, and sometimes there's a treat like a snack or a game included. I write things like practice piano, jump rope, watch the Schoolhouse Rock DVD etc. on note cards and drop them among their books. Mine contains teacher stuff: manuals, stickers, and my wonderful red pen.

Why is this good?
They can visually see what work is expected each day.
They enjoy the variety of extras we're now getting to.
They like to know what's next-now it's all right in their box.
It's portable, so they can take it to the front porch swing, their bedroom, or even to Grandma's if needed.

All of this adds up to more motivation and school seems to be going smoother and faster. Love it!