She made my day!

So after my last post, I was walking throught the mall with my best friend feeding Smiley. A lady who was working in a jewelry store stopped me and told me I was wonderful. :) She told me stories about nursing her two children and told me to keep doing what I'm doing and not be ashamed. She repeated to me over and over again, "You're wonderful. You're wonderful."

Thank you random jewelry store lady. You made my day. As a matter of fact, you made my week!

The Quiet Roar of the Breastfeeding Mamas

A couple of weeks ago I was sitting in a dentist office waiting room with my mom and two kids. Smiley was hungry, so I fed him. I did not have one inch of skin showing, but a woman sitting next to us asked me if I had a blanket or anything to cover up with because her son (who was sitting next to her watching TV) was a teenager. Now believe me, I had a list of wonderfully snarky comments to say to her:

"Well I guess by now he should know what they're for."
"Sure. Here's the blanket. You can cover his head up with it if you like"

And so on. But I didn't say any of them. I simply said, "No."

I think that "No" is one of the most powerful words there is, and it is enough. There is no reason for me to make a snarky comment, no need to explain myself, and ABSOLUTELY no need for me to cover up. "No" is full of grace, but got my point across powerfully.

Am I sometimes uncomfortable nursing in public? Yes. But for every time I do it, I pray that another young mother sees me and gets the courage to do so as well. Or a not-yet-mama sees breastfeeding as beautiful. Or a child sees that it is normal. I hope that someone is encouraged by me.

It makes me sad that people think a nursing baby should be covered up. If I had been feeding him a bottle no one would be offended. But I refuse to give up what is best for my baby because of someone else's discomfort.

I will continue to nurse in public uncovered, and if you are a breastfeeding mama reading this I want to encourage you to do so as well. You make a difference toward making people more comfortable with nursing, toward normalizing it. If you personally do not nurse, make it easy on other mamas. Smile at them. Talk to them about their babies if they seem open to it. Just please do not ask them to cover up. Every step we take toward normalizing nursing encourages it in mamas who have not yet decided to nurse.

Things About Smiley

I know, I know... most people don't wait six weeks plus to announce the birth of their child, but I've been busy, so:

HE'S HERE!!!

I thought I'd just share a little list of things about Smiley:

1. He was born after only four hours of labor. I was only at the hospital for one hour before he was born. The doctor didn't make it in time for the delivery. A resident caught him.

2. He is the happiest baby there ever was. He has smiled since the day he was born, thus the name. And he saves his cries for when he really needs them. :)

3. He has black hair and blue eyes (really blue. I don't think they'll change colors).

4. Big sister loves him very very much.

5. And so do we. ;)

Happy Mother's Day!

Smokers Pollute Everyone's Air

Image: andyket
Because it's my blog and I can rant if I want to.

Smoking annoys the tar out of me. We don't frequent businesses that allow smoking. We will not eat in a restauraunt with a smoking section, even if it is enclosed. I can still smell it. I really hope that Texas becomes smoke-free soon. I love going to towns where there are smoking bans, because I can eat in whatever restaurant I want! Our current town has a grand total of two non-smoking restaurants. Poo.

But what really annoys me are the obnoxious people who do things like smoke on playgrounds. Or in laundry rooms. Seriously?! What is the point of washing your clothes if you are going to stink them up with smoke before they even get done? And stinking up my clothes, too, is just wrong.

And playgrounds? Go away people! My child does not need to smell your stink. I don't care if you move downwind. That's fine with me. But get your butt off the playground!

I don't even like walking through parking lots and having to walk by cars where people are sitting inside smoking. I can still smell it! Even with the windows up! Even people smoking in their own yards bothers me if it's near me. We used to have to go inside because our neighbors smoked in their backyard and it blew on us.

I suppose that people have a right to kill themselves and smoke if they want to, but ya know what? I have a right... my CHILD has a right to clean air! If you are going to kill yourself, do it in your own dang house where I don't have to breathe it.

Thank you.

Preparing for the new baby

Image: handmaidenbymaria

We are well on our way to preparing for the new baby. I realized suddenly that we have just over a month left to get ready... and we were not even started yet! It's harder to get ready for your second child, because you are so busy taking care of the first one! I haven't really had a lot of time to celebrate the fact that we are going to have a new little one, what with hubby's new job, a big move, and a sweet little girl to take care of.

So yesterday I cleared out some room in Doodlebug's cabinet and washed and folded all the tiny little baby clothes we've been given or had saved. I got them all sorted by size and the very tiniest are ready and waiting in the cabinet for our baby boy to come home. It was so strange to think that Doodlebug used to be that size! We will need to do some remodeling in the RV so we can fit a chest of drawers before winter (winter clothes take up more space), but for now there is room.

There is so much left to do, and I seem to be in a fit of nesting. It has been very hot here, so I'm trying to get things done during the heat of the day when we have to be inside under the A/C anyway. I still need to preregister for the hospital and pack a bag for myself, as well as a bag of special toys for Doodlebug (she will be in the delivery room with us most of the time). If anyone has any recommendations for an AWESOME toy for a two year old that's pretty quiet I would appreciate them.

I've been trying to keep up with my blog and pre-write some posts, but obviously I'll be pretty silent for most of the month of May. I still have April, though!

A farm girl, an RV, and a dream

I just had to share these adorable pictures of my baby! You know Sunbonnet Sue? Well this is Raincoat Doodlebug! These are from the last time we went to visit my parents' farm.

Doodlebug loves to water the garden, collect eggs from the chickens, feed the goats and the dog. She likes to do anything to "help" her Grammy and Gramps with farm chores. She even has her own cute little set of real garden tools from Lehmans so she can help. She is learning to not be afraid of the geese (and so am I!). It is so cute how she tells them, "No! No!" She calls chickens "ooh-oohs" (as in cock-a-doodle-doo) and ducks "meep meeps" (which really is more accurate than quack, I think).

Seeing how she loves doing the farm chores makes me long all the more for our someday homestead. One of the best things about having the RV is that someday we can buy land and we won't have to worry about the house. We can either build ourselves or spend as much time as we need fixing something up while we live in the RV.

Still dreaming...



An easy, low clean-up meal for tough days

I know? Appetizing, right? But really, I swear it's yummy!

I am a big believer in using reusable everything. But there are just days when a girl has got to use paper plates. I'm talking about days when the kiddo is sick, hubby is tired, and mama is too darn pregnant to cook or clean. But what is the point of using paper plates when you have to wash the pots and pans anyway? Eating out gets expensive (not to mention unhealthy!). So what's a girl to do?

Enter the foil dinner!

Basically, I just threw a seasoned hamburger patty, chopped up potatoes (wash them first!), carrots, onion, and cabbage in a piece of foil and threw it in the oven at 350-400 for however long it takes (an hour for me, but my oven is slow). I'm not normally a big cabbage fan, but it is super yummy in this. It takes on the flavor from the meat.

Serve on recycled paper plates with plastic silverware (I know, bad greenie!) and the only dish you have to wash is the knife you used to cut veggies!

Spaghetti Squash Dinner

This is a really easy and super DELICIOUS grain free meal. Plus it smells like pizza while it's cooking!

To cook the spaghetti squash, you just cut it in half, scoop out the seeds like a pumpkin, lay the cut side down in a pan and add a little water. Bake it at around 350-400 for an hour (depending on your oven). Or you can put it in a glass pan (cut side down with a little water in the bottom as above) and microwave it for around fifteen minutes. This comes out a little more clumpy, but it was good in a hurry.

In the meantime, put a little olive oil, half a chopped bell pepper, half a chopped onion, and a pound of ground beef in a pan to cook on the stove. Add liberal amounts of minced garlic and italian seasoning, plus a little salt and pepper (you can just do this to taste). Cook until ground beef is browned and add a can of mushrooms (or two!), a can of diced tomatoes, and a can of tomato sauce. Keep warm.

Scrape out the inside of the spaghetti squash (it will look like stringy noodles) with a fork. Add to your pan of sauce, stir, season as needed, and serve with parmesan! This is way better than regular spaghetti!

A Grain Free/ Low Sugar Birthday Party

We recently celebrated our little Doodlebug's 2nd birthday!

We have been making an effort to eat as little grains and sugar as we can, but I still wanted to have a special treat for her big day. I made cupcakes from this muffin recipe (minus the lemon juice) and added a frosting made with cream cheese, super dark chocolate, cocoa, and a little agave nectar.

And if anyone is curious, Doodlebug got play-dough, a Mr. Potato Head, and a musical instument set. :)

A Pantry Organizational Project

Before

After

I cleaned out our pantry when we decided to go grain free to make the things we use most often more accessible. Yes, there are still some grainy things in there that we needed to use up, but for the most part we can find what we need now!

Homemade tortilla chips

Golden piles of goodness!

Homemade tortilla chips are so much cheaper than store bought! And if you happen to have WIC, you can get your corn tortillas through them. Plus they are so stinkin' delicious! There seriously are no words for them!

Making your own tortilla chips is super simple. When I made these I went through a tortilla chip phase where I made some every day.  Just heat up some oil in a pan, cut corn tortillas into fourths, and fry until golden. Scoop them out to drain on a towel and sprinkle with liberal amounts of salt.

Is it a health food? Heck no! But it's yummy!

Blender Ice Cream

                                     Yes, this is a terrible picture, but I'm a terrible photographer, so there you go!

This is the perfect treat for a hot summer day! 1 bag of frozen strawberries, 1 pint of heavy whipping cream, and liberal amounts of sugar, all blended together. Delicious!

The Hidey Hole

This is Doodlebug's own personal space. I think every kid needs a place to go and hide and just be alone to play or calm down or whatever they need to do. We happen to have the perfect spot! The passenger floorboard!

What is it like to live in an RV?

We have lived in the RV for two months now (good grief I need to update my blog more often!), so I thought I would answer this question since I finally sort of know.

Keep in mind all RVs, locations, and situations are different, so this would vary depending on your situation. For example, we live in an older RV, so there's more maintenance. It is also small, so more space would make a difference. And we are docked. Things would be much, MUCH different if we were travelling all the time. So without further ado, a list:

~It is small. Very small. We are constantly getting rid of things we realized we didn't need or just didn't have room for. Even still, it is somtimes hard to find places for things we DO need, like toilet paper. It's also a bit of an adjustment to get used to such a small kitchen. On the other hand, sometimes smallness is good, because:

~It is easy to clean. I can clean the whole RV from front to back in twenty minutes. But:

~It is hard to KEEP clean. The thing gets trashed in two minutes. One toy on the floor feels like three. Because the floor is so small, the carpet always looks dirty (when the dirt is all spread out in a house it doesn't look so bad, but when it's all consolidated into one spot... well, it looks gross).

~Doing laundry stinks. This applies for anywhere without a washer and dryer, though. I just got spoiled to having my own in the house.

~Showers are... interesting. We have a decent sized tub/shower, but the hot water doesn't last very long. One day I had just enough hot water to get my hair all soaped up before the shower started shooting little ice balls at me! (Okay, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit, but it was COLD) I don't know what I would have done if hubby hadn't been there. He warmed up some water in the microwave so I could rinse my hair and then I finished my shower in the park showers. We have been showering there ever since. Our shower is currently being used as a closet.

~It takes a bit more maintenance than a house. We have to move it every month to fill up the propane tank, and start it every couple days to charge the battery (because of a glitch in a fuse, most RVs don't require that). Not really a big deal, but more than a house.

~I love it! Except for the showers and laundry, I really love living in the RV. Doodlebug has lots of places to play and climb and hide, and we spend quite a bit of time outside. Spending less time cleaning means more time with my little girl!

I'm sure I will probably add to this the longer we live here. I am truly enjoying the experience, though.

Simplifying our Stuff

We previously lived in a very large three bed, 2 bath home complete with dining room and garage. We had a lot of stuff. I didn't take pictures every step of the way, but here are a few from the process.

This WAS our office. (No, it didn't always look like that. I was moving, okay?!)

This is what is left! Pretty nice, huh?

Even after several weeks of purging stuff and one HUGE garage sale, it got down to crunch time and we had to haul our stuff to my inlaws house just to get the house empty. That left me with two days to go through all this:

What a mess! I managed, though, mostly by myself while hubby worked. I'm pretty impressed with myself, if I may say so. Everything here either got packed into the RV, stored, or thrown away. I slightly altered Flylady's 15 minutes at a time mantra. I told myself I could just do one box or bag, then I could stop. But once I got started I didn't want to stop working! Plus, having a two day timeline helped. :)



Healthy Habits for December

The habit for the month over at Flylady.net is pampering yourself. Boy, do I ever need this. In the midst of a tough first trimester, a toddler, and the biggest move of my life, I totally let my healthy habits go. I honestly never even want to look at fast food ever ever again!

So as a part of pampering myself I have decided to add back in some of the healthy habits my body has been missing. I started today with a green smoothie.

I have three goals for December:

Drink a green smoothie every day.

Take ALL my supplements.

Drink enough water.

That's it! I'm not taking anything away (I will NOT give up caffeine when I'm this stressed. Nosirree.). I don't want to feel like I'm depriving myself right before the holidays. I'm just adding a couple of simple things that I know will make me feel a ton better.

Does anyone want to join me? Post your healthy habit for December in the comments!

Our New Home

So I finally got around to posting pictures of our new home. I decided that if I waited for it to look perfect that I would never post them, so please ignore the mess!

Obviously we haven't decorated or anything yet. These lovely curtains are circa 1983!

This is our living area. That shelf is really a bed, but we needed it for storage. I need to get it cleared off soon.

I am undecided about decorating. We will be in the RV for a few years, so I want it to be comfortable, and I could easily redecorate the whole thing for a couple hundred dollars, but part of the reason we are living here is to save money to pay off debt. So I sort of think we should use the money for that? I haven't decided yet, and I can't paint right now anyway, so I think I'll just wait.

I hope you enjoyed the tour!

A Big Humongous Update and Life in an RV

Hello there everybody! I'm sorry it has been so long since I've posted. We have been super super busy and blogging has been pretty low on the priority list.

After a terrible four day search for a home in our new town, we gave up. I jokingly mentioned that we should just get an R.V. to live in, since we will hopefully be moving back to our true heart home soon, and hubby went for it. So we bought an R.V.!!! We got rid of a ton of stuff, stored way too much, and moved into the R.V. We've been in it for a week today, so there's been lots to get used to. I don't have pics to share right now, but I promise I will soon.

Hubby is still in training for his job, so his schedule is sort of irregular. And our WiFi doesn't work very well here, so my posts will still be pretty far between for a couple weeks. After he gets started with a regular schedule I have been promised regular blogging time on his days off, so you'll hear from me a lot more often.

I am hoping to actually be able to regularly commit to my blog, growing and improving it. I don't want to overwhelm myself. My first job is wife and mommy, of course; but you can expect at least two posts a week. I've got lots of things going in my head about our purging of stuff, simplification, life in the RV, etc. I hope you'll subscribe and see me again soon!

A New Path

So remember those big changes I mentioned in my homestead update? Time to get them all out.

First and foremost, we're going to have another baby! I am due in May, and we are very excited. Doodlebug is going to be a great big sister. I don't think she really understands what is going on, but it's so cute to watch her feed and kiss her "babies".

Also, we will be moving soon. I am having a little trouble adjusting to this one, as neither of us has seen the town we will be moving to, and I've never lived this far from my family of origin. Plus, when we moved here I really thought that this would be our forever home. But, hubby got offered a job and it is a great opportunity for us.  We will be making a scouting trip soon, and I really hope it is nice there. I am determined to be content no matter where we go, so I am going to make the best of it. Even if we end up in an apartment, I will still be homesteading. It's more of a mindset to be as self-sufficient and live as sustainably as possible, and you can do that anywhere.

So there you go. Big changes coming for our family. Keep us in your prayers, please.