(And All My) Work Be Praise

With a long, unplanned morning stretching out before me, I decided that today would be a good day to try fingerpainting again!  Last time we did this was August, 2011 .  At the time, I thought that Levi's reluctance to touch the fingerpaint was a product of his compulsiveness; even now, nine months later, he still asks to have his hands cleaned off in the middle of a meal before he'll pick up his milk cup.  He was totally fine with the paint, though, and it was Owen who was less than thrilled about touching it.  So perhaps it's more of an age thing?  (On the other hand, Owen is seven months younger than Levi was when we painted last summer, so I don't know if that's it . . . ) I used the  same recipe as last time , though I didn't remember at the time that it was the same recipe.  It turned out better this time around, though -- I instinctively took the saucepan off the heat sooner, and the end result was a much smoother product.  I also made si...

[First, two asides: 1: My apologies for publishing a post that didn't actually say anything.  I'm still getting used to the new Blogger look.  If you don't follow through Google Reader, you probably didn't notice. 2: I said not long ago that I likely wouldn't be blogging much, if at all, for a while, and instead I've managed a post nearly every day this week.  I'm on a sort of modified bed rest, and it turns out I have little to do while I sit on the couch . . . except write blogs.] It's been a while since I wrote a "natural living" post, and this week I've got quite the doozy for you.  This past Saturday evening, while the rest of the world . . . did whatever the rest of the world does on Saturday evenings . . . I made homemade deodorant .  (And you thought going no 'poo was bad.)  The reasons for my foray into homemade deodorant are several: 1. We stopped getting the Sunday paper, so I no longer have coupons at my disposal.  De...

Even though my oldest is not yet three, I decided to attend the homeschool convention held here in Cincinnati a month ago.  I heard opinions on both sides of the issue: "Don't go! You'll be completely overwhelmed and will never want to go again!" vs. "Go this year, while there isn't any pressure to get started immediately, while you can take it all in without having to make decisions."  The latter seemed to make sense, so I took a deep breath and clicked "complete registration."  :) I am so glad  I went.  Even though the vendor hall was just as overwhelming as convention-veterans promised me it would be, I was extremely grateful for the opportunity to flip through curricula for the first time and get a sense of what homeschooling might actually look like (in book form, not in day-to-day form!).  I was fortunate to run around with a friend who is looking at the same basic grade-level material that I am, so we asked questions and opened books a...

My eldest son is obsessed with all things numbers.  I don't just mean interested (though that's true), or that he's good with numbers (though that's also true); he is obsessed .  Microwaves, timers, clocks, watches, calculators are all a source of endless fascination. Case in point: we recently decided to start limiting the amount of time Levi is allowed to look at watches in the same way that other people limit television or computer time, because it was becoming increasingly impossible to tear him away.  Those of you who attend my church and witnessed the hysteria during the baptism this past Sunday?  Yeah, that's because I told him to be "all done" with his grandma's watch so that we could talk about the baptism.   Last week I caught him with a chair pulled out so he could watch a timer counting down on the microwave.  As if it was a hit movie or something. The radio is broken in my car, so we're on our own to amuse ourselves on any...

As you may or may not have noticed -- I don't actually believe that anyone is racing to my blog every day to look for new posts -- I've been pretty sporadic in blogging lately.  The simple fact is that life is getting in the way of blogging about life!  With third trimester came the return of the intense need to nap, and the loss of that hour (or more) of productivity has been a struggle.  As I'm now 5 weeks (or less . . . oh, please, let it be less!) from baby's arrival, I don't anticipate a great surge in new posts over the next few months.  I do hope to get back into the swing of things eventually; it's been fun to chronicle our little life moments.  I'm hoping for the opportunity to write posts about the past two weekends -- my first homeschool convention, and my longest-ever weekend away from my children -- but I've got two weekends of being away to recover from first! In the meantime, a small peek into life here: I'm 35 weeks pregnant today...

It's been ages now since I promised you information on the crafts I did for Levi's first weeks of preschool, but by golly, I'm going to follow through!  We spent the first two weeks talking about creation, but only did crafts for the first four days (plus a generic one on Genesis 1:1 ).  Now, a month later, every time I tell Levi we're going to do a craft, he asks if it's for day five.  Mental note: don't start things you're not going to finish! Note: the picture-numbers shown above each craft can be found here . GENESIS 1:1 First we made a coffee filter earth : color with blue (water) and green (land) markers on a coffee filter, spritz with water, let the colors bleed.  Everything I read warned about not getting the filter too wet, and in the end we didn't get it wet enough -- you can still see the marker lines!  Oh well.   Then I poured a little bit of white paint into a bowl, dipped a paintbrush in, and helped Levi use a second paintbrush to t...

A while ago, I blogged about the best mothering advice ever : Rachel Jankovic 's assertion that everything gets better in twenty minutes, if you simply do the work in front of you instead of complaining about it. Today, I remembered another little nugget that has kept me sane over the past year or so.  Most of the interaction I have with women is with mothers just a little ahead of the game: 5-10 years older than me, with kids up to twelve years old or so.  So when I chanced to be talking to an "older" woman, whose children are in their late teens and early twenties, I listened closely: her children are amazing, godly individuals.  Whatever she and her husband did, they did it right! At the time, Levi was about eighteen months old, and giving me quite the constant headache.  "Oh, yes," this woman nodded knowingly.  "Those half-years were always the hardest for me, from six months all the way up to 5-1/2 or so."  It seemed odd to me, but the piece o...