For my girls

One night as I was perusing through Pinterset I ran across this pin that put a few things into perspective for me! You see when I was pregnant and had Lindsey I was 24 years old. Little did I know I was in the process of a complete makeover on the inside! Faster than I would have liked I was growing out of college girl and becoming a wife and a mom. The wife thing was not too hard but becoming a mom was a whole different story. I was not ready! I was still selfish. I was just out of school, I just started a job, I was still young, I just got married! So when the first stretch mark appeared at around 30 weeks I was devastated. I was too young to have stretch marks. I mean I had bikinis to wear!!! It seemed like overnight my abdomen was covered in these silvery marks. To make matters worse after I lost all the baby weight and then some they were still there but now my abdomen just hung and was saggy! I was 24 years old with a abdomen of an old lady! I allowed my view of beauty to be all wrapped up in the way my belly appeared. I have spent the past 3 years shedding that selfish self and becoming a mom my girls deserve. Any who, as I saw that pin my perspective changed almost instantly.  Here is what I am coming to know as truth:

Each mark reminds me of each month God allowed me to carry my girls. Every line is a reminder of each breath you took, each kick you kicked, and even each punch to my bladder. Each mark is a reminder of the nights I prayed for your healthy arrival. Each line reminds me of God's love for me and you. Each mark reminds me of the love your father and I share that created you! Each line is proof of God's grace and mercy. The belly that now hangs and sags was your home that kept you safe and nourished you until the time came that I could hold you in my arms and make you feel safe and warm.

No longer will I allow myself to look in the mirror and be disgusted. I will now stand in the mirror with pride knowing that each stretch mark and the saggy skin is a reminder that God allowed me to be a mother to 2 beautiful girls. Those marks are an outward sign of the inner change my sweet Jesus has been doing in me.

***A special thanks to my sweet friend Cheryl for taking this picture for me! She is by far the best photographer and friend I could ever ask for!!

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas. . .

In case you have not noticed Christmas is approaching at record speeds this year! Traditionally we put up the tree the day after Thanksgiving and this year is no exception! We have spent 5 Christmas' together now and our tree is not exactly showing it! I don't have enough ornaments to decorate the back and I refuse to spend any more money on ugly balls to fill the spaces! Classy I know! 

This year to try and save money, add a personal touch, and most importantly keep my 3yo busy I decided homemade ornaments were the way to go!!!! Some of my favorite ornaments from growing up are the ones that were made by me or my great grandmother! My great grandmother made for my mom ornaments out of egg shells and they are so beautiful! I love pulling an ornament out of the box to hang on the tree and all these sweet memories come flooding in. Trimming the tree becomes this precious time of recalling the past.  

Since I do not have a creative bone in my body I turned to Pinterest and searched for ideas. I ran across a pin for Salt Dough and thought this would be great opportunity to create new memories with my favorite toddler that she can pull up each Christmas! (Side note a 3yo has a hard time understanding that these are not cookies to be eaten had many hard conversations with her about that one) So recently we spent the morning making memories! I decided to show you through pictures how easy and fun these ornaments are to make. 

Ingredients:

1/2 c. Salt

1 c. Flour

1/2 c. Water

Bake in 250 degree oven for 2 hours (Should be hard all the way through)

Combine salt, water, and flour and stir. 

This is the perfect dough for Lindsey to stir up as it is not too heavy!

Knead the dough a few times and the flour you surface and rolling pin and roll out to 1/4 in thickness.

 

 Lil miss EC loved watching Linds roll out the dough! I happened to have a ruler out so Linds made me measure every time we rolled out the dough!

 

Once the dough is rolled out cut with cookie cutters and placed on a parchment lined cookie sheet. (to reinforce colors I had Linds sort all the cookie cutters by color while I fed EC)

Make sure that your dough surface is smooth and even as those cracks will show in the final product.

Once the cutout is placed on the cookie sheet poke a large whole at the top for ribbon when done. A straw works great.

 Once you pull your ornaments out of the oven let them cool and then decorate! We used homemade glitter made from food coloring and salt (tutorial coming soon) and then coated them in modge podge and glitter. You could paint with acrylic paint or dye the dough before you cut them out. There are so many ways!!!!

Umm love plastic wrap and duck tape mats. I can throw away the mess at the end of the project!

 

Once dry I would coat with some form of spray on clear coat to protect the glitter for a long lasting ornament. 

Tie a ribbon on the end an you are ready to go! I do not recommend curling ribbon but it was what I had on hand at the time.

Okay now it is your turn to make sweet memories!!!

Cloth Diaper Update Part 1

EC has been in cloth for about 5-6 weeks now and honestly I love them. I wish I could say that they have been nothing but smooth sailing but as with any new journey there are bumps in the road. Over the next few weeks I want to share with you some of the bumps we have encountered and the lessons learned so hopefully if you use cloth or are interested can learn from them and avoid them!

When we got EC home I was so excited to put her in cloth but the one size covers I bought swallowed her and irritated her belly button. Her newborn clothes did not fit because of her diapers not her size! So we used Pampers until her belly button fell off. Once it fell off and I ran out of pampers I invested in 4 newborn covers and 2 All-in-1s. I already had 4 newborn fitted diapers and 12 prefolds so I was ready to start our diaper journey. I had 4 all-in-2's with 8 inserts and 2 pocket diapers that were just way to big so I put those in the back of the drawer with her one size covers. I started out using the prefolds with a cover because they were the least bulky. My first few attempts were not successful due to operator error. We had a poop explosion in public because I put the cover on wrong and a few leaks because I folded the prefold wrong. So I went into Green Bambino and they showed me a new way to fold. Once I had the fold down and remembered that the cover actually has to cover all of whatever is inserted inside it we were good to go. The fitteds were ok at first but once we switched to formula with some cereal in it the fitteds were great. The all-in-1s I hated from the beginning. They fit for about 2 weeks, took forever to dry, and leaked out the side. As EC's stomach was adjusting to the change in feeding she was not pooping everyday. When she finally  poops it is massive. The fitted just does a better job handling the massive amount! The prefolds with a cover do keep it contained but when cleaning it up it is just messier. With the prefolds I did run into her bottom being irritated. I figured it was because her bottom was not getting air and the material does not wick away the moisture. I asked my fav diaper store and my instincts were right. My solution was to alternate the prefolds with the fitteds and then when her other diapers fit I used those in the rotation as well. And of course I changed her more often and used a cloth diaper friendly cream. So.....the morale of this story is don't just buy all one sized diapers or all of one kind. I will get into the all of one kind in another post but trust me on this one for now. My All-in-1s may not fit but my newborn covers and fitteds still fit and will continue to fit for a good while. They just extend my stash!

Stay tuned for Laundry and why buy multiple styles. I know you are on the edge of your seats for it!!!

Just ask already

I can't sleep! Tonight is the first night that Jay is traveling and I am all alone with both girls! My heart is heavy with many things so why not share them with the internet! I put pictures up of my loves to lighten the heavy.

My pastor posed a question recently about what breaks your heart. What makes you stop and cry? I tried to think about all the Sunday School answers. . . you know hunger, poverty, the orphans and honestly they do not break my heart! What breaks my heart is the thought that my kids will make my mistakes and that they will never come to be passionately in love with Jesus. I want so much more for my girls than just being good people. I want to raise girls that go against the grain, that are not afraid to be weird and stand out because they refuse to just do what the world says is normal! 

Here is the kicker, I am scared to death to lay my heart open before God and share with Him my fears and desires for my family. I know that when I FINALLY lay it all out there God will say it is about time and get busy stirring up all kinds of change. I keep trying to plan my life and I know God will come right on in and change all my carefully crafted plans.

I know the end result will be so beautiful. I mean 2 years ago I laid open my heart to God and my world changed dramatically. I am now staying home with my girls and actually loving it. My carefully crafted plan did not involve day care drama or full-time mommyhood but O looking back what God had planned was so much better in every way possible. So I guess I write all this to remind myself that yes opening yourself up to God wrecking your plans can be painful but from that pain and fear comes this beautiful outcome that you can not recreate with all the careful planning in the world. . . just not possible.

Been a little busy

Introducing Ella Clair Beth Dunks aka EC! She made her arrival on Aug 21st! She was 9 lbs and 21 inches long! No wonder my ribs were hurting! She has beautiful RED hair and long fingers and toes. I think she is pretty darn cute!

Lindsey thinks that Ella Clair is pretty awesome! She is a great big sister! I am so proud of her. 

Thank you to all who prayed boldly that we could have this baby naturally. I was suppose to have a C-Section since Lindsey's birth was so traumatic. However as the time got closer my heart knew that God could deliver this baby safely and naturally. So I put all my trust in God and began to pray that God would allow us to have her naturally. Our Dr. agreed that it would be safe and so we went in for a natural delivery! Please don't read this as anti C-section. I just knew in my heart that it was not the delivery we were suppose to have! 

So on Aug 20th we went into the hospital at 2:00pm to be induced and at 5:00 am on Aug 21st a beautiful little ginger was born with NO complications. The delivery was pretty close to perfect the way I knew God could provide. God is so amazing. I was so relaxed I fell asleep between contractions when I was pushing. 

From the moment she was born I was able to hold and love on her. No having to sneak out of the room to the NICU to see my little girl. It was just my little family all together from the beginning! I feel incredibly blessed!

She is so long! 

So pretty. She is my little snuggle bunny! If I sleep with her in the recliner she will sleep for hours on end! She just wants to be close! She is the opposite of big sister!

I have so many posts to share with ya'll! Eventually I will get caught up! o and cloth diapering is going great!

Hmmm. . . .

Well still pregnant! We go to the Dr. Fri. and will have a baby no later than Sat! Not much longer! We had some fun Sat night though! I could have sworn we were in labor so we rushed Lindsey to a friend's house and headed to the hospital in cautious anticipation that this was the day! Well after 3 hours, 4 miles of walking, and 5 flights of stairs later we were sent home! Dang! What was really frustrating was as soon as we got settled into "our" room everything calmed down! Well stink! Our sweet friends kept Lindsey over night so Jay and I drowned our sorrows in cheez-its and 4 episodes of Breaking Bad! Not a horrible way to end the evening! As Jay and I were taking our labor inducing walk we had a mini date! Jay and mine's best dates are always the nontraditional dates. Dinner and a movie is great but give me hours of uninterrupted time with that man and I am in HEAVEN!!! As we were walking and talking we both came to the happy conclusion that hopefully E-C came at the end of the week so we had a few extra days with Linds! We remembered that our sweet little fam of 3 is coming to an end. A small part of me is sad! For 3 years it has been just the 3 of us on an adventure now we are welcoming a 4th member and it will never be the same! Don't get me wrong I am excited but Linds is pretty awesome!! Hopefully the next post will be pics of baby E!!! Can't wait!!! 

Keeping my mind off this growing belly!

I could write 8 billion posts about how miserable I am or how many days I have left. The last thing I need however is to wallow in my own discomfort! What I really need is to remember that this is a short season and I have way more things to write about than this pregnancy!

For the last hundred and some odd days I have been reading my Bible through in chronological order. I am in the middle of the Old Testament right now. This has been a big challenge. Lets just say Chronicles and Job are not my favorite! I am actually loving reading it all together. The story is so beautifully woven together and points to our amazing Savior. I love the stories of hope and redemption. I love seeing how angry God was with their sin but yet he loved His people so much He continued to deliver them when they certainly did not deserve it! I wish I would have read the Bible like this years ago. I am seeing a more complete picture of my Heavenly Father and oh how He loves us!!! Some days when I read I am just overwhelmed by the love He has for us!!! O if I can only love my husband and children with just a fraction of that love!!! I encourage each of ya'll to read the Bible this way and see His love unfold! Yes some days it is all I can do to make it through but I have to remember those words are important to My Father and He has all kinds of treasures for me to find!

P.S. 10 days!