Another benefit is that when within a three minute span you pull paper, dog hair and something unknown out of your crawling baby's mouth you don't think twice before putting her into a carrier and continue about your day. The sad thing is the length of time that goes by before it occurs to you that you should probably clean the floor!
Thought I would share some pictures of my son at nine months too, just for fun. My daughter weighed in at 21 pounds about two weeks ago and is starting to really master crawling over the last few days. Still no teeth and will have nothing to do with any food besides mama's milk. Oh, it's so much fun all these stages!!!!!
Remember back when I was still pregnant last summer and completing some projects I'd always wanted to do. My worm bin was one of them and I wanted to share my results. My hubby is giving me the hardest time because I'm happy that these worms made dirt but I am! I wish I had three times as much compost as I do but now I think I've got twice as many worms than I started with so they should be able to eat way more of our food scraps faster now.
Seriously the bin started out feather light just with a pound of worms and dampened shredded newspaper. By winter it was quite heavy and when I took it outside to "harvest" the compost a couple weeks ago it was almost too heavy for me to carry by myself - partly because it was a bit too damp and I probably should have done it way sooner than I did. But all seems to be going well and the worms seem happy enough! I'm happy to have to buy one less bag of compost for my planters and garden so it seems to be a win win situation.
Since nothing around here is complete without pictures here are a couple to show you how we separated the worms from the compost. It's been a preschool boys dream science class around here lately! Wroms, digging, planting, watering, it's great to have a little helper.
First we separated the contents of my bin into piles out on an old shower curtain (since I had one that just ripped through one too many ring holes.) you can use anything - even just the driveway. The worms don't like the sun so the scurry down in the piles. Every so often (20 minutes or whenever we'd remember) we'd remove the top layer of compost until we exposed more worms. Then we'd wait for them to move further in again.
Pretty soon we were left with a bunch of compost and a ball of wriggling worms. We weren't too concerned with letting a few worms stay in the compost that we used for pots and to amend the soil. The mass majority though will be going back into the bin to do it all over again. You can see ground egg shell pieces as well as squash seeds, small pieced of newspaper and other scraps that didn't get fully composted and none of it bothered me as it will all continue to decompose and or give me some random volunteer plants neither of which I mind very much.
Fully Rely On God
Said the paper that came home from Sunday school many months ago last fall with a picture of a big green frog. I accepted this with almost no thought like humph of course I rely on God. Well, these last few months God has once again been reminding me to let him be in control.
I have been seeing Him at work in many ways and it's been awesome as well as humbling and honestly strange.
Of course I rely on God but it's the first word there fully, F-U-L-L-Y that challenges me daily, hourly, and constantly. It means, Heidi that you don't doubt God's plan! It means being confident in times of stress and upheaval, there's plenty of people going to bed hungry tonight and you've eaten like a king.
It means standing tall even in sinking sand since only God knows where and when I'm supposed to be going. Or even if I'm supposed to be going. Sometimes the sand's pull seems unrelenting and exhausting but trusting in Him to lift me up means that it is truly possible to have a happy heart even in times of turmoil.
It's no secret that we haven't had a job since January but we are all healthy, happily fed, clothed and sheltered (all well above the world standard). I try to keep this blog positive so I haven't been dwelling on things here - nor have I been posting or visiting too much either. Sometimes life feels a bit surreal and sometimes I think I try to make life feel surreal so I don't have to deal with what ever it brings.
These last few months however have been absolutely captivating. I have been (more) likely to turn to God for answers and even though mostly these turn into more questions I'm learning to be ok with the answer.
My Adam has been leading us well. He is seriously a wonderful inspiration to me. Maybe not really growing up Christian has enabled his couple year old relationship with Jesus to be more "like a child" than mine. He's just at ease, letting God take his time and being patient about it - while knowing and trusting in His provisions. I sometimes feel that I am the biggest doubter when times get even just a little tough. Asking why, of God like a three year old, relentlessly asking why now, why us, instead of being thankful it's not us with a dearly loved one dying of cancer, or sleeping in a hut or not even. YES I am thankful!!!
Anyway, without rambling on too much, I have seen in various aspects of my life (even in my random on line readings) that God has used this time in me to make me slower to anger, quicker to laugh, less doubtful, more giving, less worrisome, and more trusting. We are always praying about our major life changes and decisions but we are learning to pray also about the small seemingly insignificant things as well.
I think the biggest change has been finding God in those small moments - praying that my hubby's back wouldn't hurt while we were painting our house, praying for wisdom during a rough patch in parenting, or that we'd make it through our errands without needing a diaper because the diaper bag didn't get restocked.
Sometimes the larger life decisions, health, family, safety, jobs, houses, money seem to be the stuff we get caught up in prayer with yet the small things are not so. I've been trying to get caught up on the laundry for well, too long to admit so I'm going to say a prayer about that too.
To us a three year old crying over a broken marker seems quite trivial but to that kid on that day who wanted to color the school bus this particular shade, it was everything in his whole world. Sometimes that's how those 'little' moments catch us off our guard, we have the life experienc to know they are not the the BIG stuff - but truly for us in that moment, it is big - and really are we to judge which parts of our lives are big enough to pray about or shouldn't we let God be the judge - ah, that's a whole other post!
As always I just kind of ramble my thoughts down to see what's going on and I actually wrote much of this several weeks ago. We currently have a job offer on the table now and a tentative start date next week so things are looking up - oh what an answer to prayer! And even though it amazes me His timing always seems to work out - ah, to have that child like faith - stepping down a curb reaching up to find the already stretched out fingers strong and steady waiting to help me across the street. His hand is always there.....
Since our little baby sister is going through so many stages I feel like my focus tends to be on her on this mommy blog. Not today. Today, it's all about my spirited rough and tumble, dancing, singing wonderful three and a half year old son.
Yesterday when I was putting him into his carseat he took my necklace between his growing fingers and said, "a heart" then looked up with his gorgeous eyes and said, "Mommy you are my love!" And he grabbed onto my arm and snuggled me. Can I just say he totally melted my heart!!!! Oh, I am so incredibly blessed!
The other day my husband and I looked at each other at the table and said we are getting to that imaginative stage. Everything and I mean ev-er-y-thing is a question. Mommy why? Mommy who is this and what does this do and why is there a yellow spot on this paper and what are you doing and what are you eating. It is exhausting and exhilarating at the same time. He retains so much information it is daunting to me as I have no idea how on earth I am supposed to keep up.
Somehow he thinks being a "super villain" is as fun as a "super hero". When I ask where he learned something he ALWAYS answers on TV. Yet at least once a week he asks to have school where mommy is the teacher and I will whip up some paper for him to trace lines on or counting or letter matching game. I even taught him a joke to go and tell his Daddy and when Daddy laughed and asked where he learned it - yup he answered on TV. I guess it's a good thing that we sold our TV two weeks ago and haven't yet replaced it.
He likes to pretend our house is full of booby traps and lions or giants. There is always some problem that needs to be solved. Yeah, maybe we have been watching too much Little Einsteins or Backyardigans two of his favorites (again good thing we are getting off the tv addiction.) He'll come up to me while I'm doing the dishes and say mommy how are we going to do? I can't get to the other side of this room how can I do it? Then he'll proceed to find a key and say a magic word or climb over something and figure it out. I'm glad to see his imagination at work - overtime.
Sometimes I feel like I am actually in episodes of the Cosby show however, saying "Come here like five times" - that's got to be one of my favorite episodes. And having to specify that soap is used when we wash our hands.
I do love how the simplest answers are accepted as truths. When he starts getting a bit too rough with his sister lately I've been saying now what does Jesus say? Be kind and love one another, he'll reply. And I know that I'm getting through the real stuff
