This is my window sill over my new sink.  Which is beside my new dishwasher.  I love both of those new things.  The white shiny sink makes me clean it so much more.  Because it looks.. clean.  I love that my husband buys me flowers.  For no particular reason other than he knows that I love them.  I love the cheapy apple spice candle that was on sale after Christmas for $2.50.  I love the little winter snowmen that we’ve had since the second winter we spent together.  My parents gave it to me and it makes me smile.  It’s seen us through some cold winters.  I love, love, love my lego sculpture that My Middlest made for me for a Christmas present.  Can you see the 2 hearts?  The red one is me and blue one is him.  Do you also see the “I {heart} U” ?  I love that he made it and spent so much time designing it for me.  I love the sunshine coming in through the window in the sunroom.  (I’m not so fond of how desperately dirty my 2 windows are, but whatever)

I love the saying that is behind the lego sculpture.  Here’s a close up of it:

It came in my little $4.00 calendar I got just after Christmas.  I love that my kids now know most of those references from first-hand reading of the Bible this last year.  (Which by the way, I think I need my own teacher’s guide to Isaiah, whew.)

I love our Rod and Staff Language Arts.

In this lesson they were to tell about each picture.  They’re studying pronouns.  Not only do I like that these kinds of pictures are included in the lessons, I also like seeing my children’s interpretations of them.  Because I think I would’ve said “She is praying.”  But My Middlest put it this way:

And though both are accurate, his is so much more personal.  Oh, love.

I love that your words were so encouraging to just keep writing.  I don’t know why this is such a struggle right now.  I read back through some of my old writing and I think, “Wow, did I write that?  Who is that person?  And where is she now?”  I keep thinking it’s that I don’t have as much time as I used to (or at least don’t carve it out right now), that I’m interrupted more, that I don’t have a computer desk where the kids can’t literally crawl all over the top of me, that I haven’t been taking as many pictures of the kids (and we know how visual I am), that I haven’t been getting the camera out as much because it’s difficult, it’s winter, it’s…. I don’t know.  It all seems so hard right now.  But I do miss writing.  I miss capturing life through my camera.  I miss connecting with y’all.  I must work harder.  But see, even as I try to write this morning there have been 500 interruptions, lots of fighting, a peeing on the table, and I’ve yelled twice.  This is why.  It doesn’t seem worth it compared to being engaged and not being perturbed that they’re bugging me while I’m writing.

Speaking of being bugged..  I’m sick.  I have a cold.  Two weeks ago I started out with a head cold, it has moved into my chest and I’m just totally sick of it now.  I can’t breathe, I cough nonstop, and sleeping is evasive.  It makes me cranky.  Chamomile Lemon Tea with honey has been a good friend this go ’round.

I’m 6 weeks along now.  And just this week I have begun to have morning sickness.  Which is good.  I always worry until I feel that.  I’m a worrier.  And so far the sickness has been mild and livable.  I had a meeting with my midwife and I’m super excited.  I need to go write that whole post separately – y’all’ve had lots of questions (I did too!) and I want to address them.

My family drama is settling, but it has stirred a lot of inner thoughts and emotions in me that I’m working through.  Big stuff.

A friend of mine is doing  Learning Adventures next year with 2 of her boys and I’m loving the look of it.  She has done it before with her older two and I’m seriously considering dumping what we’re doing (at least for a year) and doing this alongside her.  If I buy the first volume, the student pack, the game, and the supplemental younger pack (one at a time), it isn’t too pricey to teach everything except math to all of them – and I am planning on incorporating the soon to be 6th grader, 4th grader, 2nd grader, and Kindergartener into this (we’ll stick with Math-U-See, another thing I love) and I’ll teach phonics to BigMan, who will be in Kindergarten next year using Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and Hooked on Phonics.  I’ve really been thinking I wanted a unit study again.  As much as I’ve loved all the independent work this year, I miss being with them more, learning with them, directing fun stuff.  It’s time.  And this looks perfect.  Still thinking and praying on it, but I’m really excited about it.

So once again.  Random.  But an inviting in.  Oh, and I was thinking.  Maybe it would help my writing if you asked questions and I answered them.  Like I’ve done before.  Up for that?  You can email me or comment and I’ll address your questions, anonymously if you’d like.

You are.  Even today.  Even in what you’ve done and are currently doing.  In your anger, despair, ugliness.  You are pursued.  Just say okay.  Just give up.  Just be embraced.  Today.

You.

Even you.

Especially you.

Though I have enjoyed the scaling back of my site (fewer ads, no reviews, no money generated) I miss the moving forward of my blog.  It feels kinda stagnant to me.  I realize this is a season and I’ll sit here until I feel really encouraged and pushed to become really proactive with it again, but I miss it.

But my lessened writing leaves me feeling like “why write?” and makes me feel like “what message do I have that others aren’t already writing?”  But I know those are just doubts and lies.  Because I know what I tell someone else if they were to say that to me.  I would tell them the world needs their voice.  That what they have to say unique and important.  And so I know it applies to me too.  And so, I will continue to write even when it doesn’t flow, even when it’s not on topic, and even if not one of you decides to keep reading.  I will keep trying.

In other news, I have spoken with my midwife (who happens to be a good friend! *squeee!*) and I’m beginning the beginning process of this new different adventure.  I’m really excited about it.

I’m still exceptionally tired and that’s mainly the only symptom I’m still having.  I have felt a bit of stretching, but not much (my belly is, after all, incredibly already stretched out!).  But the other day while cutting up some raw deer meat I felt very sick to my stomach.  Like shaky sick.  It made me happy.  Yes, it did.

My Middlest struggled most of the last week with hives.  Severe full body, scalp, face hives.  The oatmeal bath worked wonders, as did Benadryl for most of it.  I did take him to the ER towards the end of the week because I was worried it was more than “just” hives.  But it wasn’t more than that.  And we don’t know what caused them.  I don’t know that I’m going to take him to an allergist this time around either.  Just so glad it’s over.

I tried to watch Courageous, but I couldn’t make it past the tragedy.  Not in this phase of my life.  I don’t need to see someone else’s made up pain and live through it.  I have enough from other areas.

I watched The Help last night and though it was a tear jerker too, it was phenomenal.

My extended family is dealing with drama/tragedy and it makes me quiet.  I can’t talk about it and it leaves me speechless in every other area.

School is still moving forward.  BigMan just finished up the Animal Play from Teach Me Joy and we loved it.  We’re now gearing up to start the Fruit of the Spirit curriculum from the same place.  And I’m preparing to add an official spelling curriculum to the older kids’ already full school days.  We’re in desperate need of it.  ;)

So, that about sums it up for now I think.  Not earth shattering, not soapbox standing, not witty or fun.  But just another glimpse into the dailyness of it all.

So with all that early knowing I have to remind myself that yes, I am really pregnant and that it is really early in the pregnancy to be feeling anything yet.  If I don’t remind myself just how early along I am I get worried.  I begin to fear that something is wrong and therefore I’m not showing any signs of pregnancy.  It becomes particularly acute in my mind since I tell the world (everything!) and then they ask out of sweet curiosity how I’m feeling.  I think, “hmm.. I feel… fine.”  And then I start getting paranoid.  But in reality going by the date of conception I’m not even 4 weeks along yet.  Yes, like that early.  Actually, I’ve had a symptom of pregnancy already.  I’m tired.  Now yes, it could be that I cut my 3 cups of caffeine a day down to zilch over the course of a week, but I’m not just tired those times of day, I’m like, lazy tired.  And I hate lazy.  I’m a do-er.  But yesterday I laid on the couch in my pink fuzzy robe with my kids cuddling and climbing all over me and watched Tangled.  And felt no desire to go do anything.  And over the last week I’ve fallen asleep on the couch trying to watch my favorite shows with my honey after the kids were in bed more times than not.  We’re talkin’, like 8 or 9 at night.  Cuhrazy, right?

And I feel silly, but I remember doing this with each pregnancy too.  I keep checking my pregnancy test.  The one I put the number on and keep as a keepsake, oh yes, I do.  Like those little lines are a phantom or something, like they aren’t going to be there when I go to look again.  It’s kind of like my daily silly reminder.  I go to the closet, look at those little lines and smile.  My own little happy moment.

It’s just so hard to believe that we are so blessed to get to do this again.  I’m beyond happy!  And this time I’ll be researching with more intent midwives and homebirths.  I don’t know if I will do it or not (I checked into it as far back as the pregnancy with BigMan and again with Baby (he needs a new nickname – wanna suggest one?!), but just haven’t gone through with it.  One of the main reasons being that we were so far from a hospital before if anything had gone wrong, but now, we’re in the cit-ay!  So maybe I can talk myself into it!  (It doesn’t hurt that I have an awesomely sweet friend who will be a certified midwife very very soon!)  Praying for a completely healthy pregnancy so that we can attempt a homebirth and then have a completely healthy birth to go with it!

Oh, and another friend of mine who is a photographer (you know her from A Familiar Path!) ran a special for a newborn/birth photo session.  I texted her when I was still in that waiting time to test and asked her if I could take her up on her offer.  So, this time around you might get not only a live-blogging, but a homebirth, and professional photos to boot!

Also, we already have a name picked out if we have a girl (we might have had the name picked out for several pregnancies!) but the boy name is up in the air.  Wanna suggest some Biblical boy names?  And you gotta come strong on this challenge, because we’re not standard inside the box Bible boy naming fools.  Pull out some rarely heard names and throw ‘em at me!

And that’s that.  My rambling pregnancy excitement all things thrown in post.