Reflection: Content

I'm not someone who goes to church.  I'm not sure where I fit in the realm of religion.  However, every once in a while, we poke our heads in at the Laird Mennonite Church.  The kids like to sing in the choir and participate in the plays, and in my opinion, it's probably one of the best places for them to spend some extracurricular time.  Today was a church day for our whole family.

I'm usually preoccupied with the little kids and, admittedly, don't actively listen to what's being taught.  Today was different.  Graysen sat quietly and when he got tired, I nursed him and he slept peacefully in my arms.  Eloic sat quietly beside Reno and played with his action figures.  Aurora and Denali sat at the front for the children's feature after doing an adorable choir performance.  Karen started off talking about clothes and being picky about what you wear.  It caught my attention.  I was going to listen carefully so that when we went home we could talk to Aurora about clothes and picking them out and exactly how long that should take her in the morning.  Anyone that knows Aurora, knows this is a bone of contention in the morning.  BUT the children's feature took a different turn than I thought - one that talked about what we wear being love, gentleness, forgiveness, etc.  Still I listened intently, hoping to find something to stick in my back pocket for later.

Following children's feature, the discussion turned to money, possessions, and worry.  About how we should not let ourselves be tied to our belongings, not let ourselves be defined by what we own... not let what we wear be a matter of the physical sense rather than the spiritual.  We should be content with what we have rather than fixating on what we won't.  There will always be something we want that we don't have.  Money  and physical belongings will not fill a void - only create a new one or displace it.  I thought very deeply about this.  This sermon was meant for me.  I was no longer listening for a lesson tool to use with Aurora - I was listening for myself.

I've been really struggling lately.  It started with doing my Christmas shopping online.  I liked it so much that I've been doing it since.  Really, what is better than finding a smoking deal on something with free shipping??  What's better than picking up the mail and finding that you have some goodies waiting for you? 

What's better is being content enough with your life that you don't need to order the stuff in the first place. 

I have a great life, with friends and family and everything I/we need.  I am content - are you?

Silence is not always golden

Wow - what a week!

There's so much to say, and I'm not quite sure if I should squeeze this into one long blog post, or if I should split it up.  If my readers (HA - the handful of you!) wish to see this as separate blogs, let me know and next time I'll try to do that :)

As for the visit with J & P and fam, I am sad that it's over.  You would never have known that we had 8 children under the age of 8 in the house most of the time.  True - it was loud.  True - it was busy.  True - it was so much fun!  The kids played VERY well together.  They went skating and to hockey practice, played outside, video games, cards, playdough... etc. 

Here's a picture of them all together (minus Graysen who was napping):

The kids were usually in bed by 10:30ish, at which time, we adults relaxed and watched some TV.  Mostly we just hung out together.  P and I bonded over online shopping and cloth diapers :)  It felt so good to just relax with some people who I truly do feel are our friends just as much as they are family.  Everyone seemed to be very comfortable and made themselves at home which was great to see.  I went scrapbooking on the Friday night and made a great little FAMILY scrapbook (from the word).  I felt guilty leaving everyone, but they seemed to have fun with or without me ;) 

Linkin in 10 weeks old already... he's getting so big.  I got my baby fix, holding him and rocking him.  Such a cutie with his big brown eyes, and that big gummy smile.  I look at him and Graysen together, and I can't believe that he was once that little...  G started crawling the day before everyone came, and by the time they left, we was getting pretty good at it!

We finished up the visit with an unplanned trip to the city for P and I to buy some new cloth diapers, and for us all to eat in the city.  We "attempted" to go to Fuddruckers, but discouraged by the line-up, went to Bonanza instead.  That was actually a great move as Bonanza is very young kid friendly.  I can't believe how well all the kids behaved.  It was great that we weren't the ones with the kids screaming and jumping on the benches!

Coming home to the house afterwards felt very empty and quiet.  Odd to feel lonely when the house is still quite full, but that's how it felt.  I wish we were closer to family.  Laird has taken us in and we have found a family in our friends and neighbors, but nothing replaces your real family.  I can only hope that we get the chance to see more of all of our families over the coming years.  We really like the new setup with the extra bedroom downstairs for COMPANY (hint hint).

For a shout out to Ilane - Eloïc loves his new clothes, so Thank You!  My favorite is the shirt that says "Under Construction Please Excuse my Mess" on the front and "Adult Supervision Required" on the back.  So cute!

That just about sums it up!  Thanks so much, J & P for coming to visit!  You made this week full of family fun.

Promise

J & P and family are here visiting, and will be leaving today after a fun filled couple of days :)

I promise I will follow up with another post tonight, telling of all of our adventures!

PROMO: Another cloth contest

GIVEAWAY!! In honor of Dr. Seuss's birthday on March 2nd, Sweet Lil' Bumbums will be giving away a Seuss diaper! See http://www.facebook.com/Sweetlilbumbums for details.

Mother of a Sale!

As confessed in my previous posts, I love cloth diapers... and... I love shopping online :).  My endless search has me signed up for all kinds of "Sale of the Day" sites.  You receive alerts regarding the sale of the day - usually 50% off of something. 

Today I opened my Facebook to see Mother Of A Sale is having a $250 Cloth Diaper Start Up Set Give Away.  Eagerly, I checked the details.  I'm excited.  They are giving away $250 in 3 new lines of cloth diapers, and all I have to do is blog about it to get entered.  I couldn't track down all the details, but I'm thinking that the Mother of a Diaper Sales Event starting February 22nd is a three day event - each day with a deal on a new diaper line.  Today's was Oh Katy Diapers which I think is a revamp of the Katydid diaper.  Pretty darn cute diapers, and if I hadn't already bought a new AMP Duo Pocket diaper today, I might have been tempted with this deal.  I'll update with more details once I know more.  

Stay tuned as I may get to review one of these new diapers!  A perk to being an obsessive online shopper AND cloth diaper fanatic.

Check out www.motherofasale.com or check out Mother Of A Sale on Facebook for fantastic daily sales, discounts and coupons!

Family Day Ramblings

It's Family Day today.  It's also the start to an entire week of the kids being off from school.  There are some welcome breaks that come with this (not having to make lunches, Aurora can sleep as late as she wants...), but I'll be the first to admit, these weeks are also dreaded at times. 

Don't get me wrong - I love my children more than anything in the world.  I have some truly enjoyable moments with them, both as individuals and as a group.  I also have some moments where I am ready to scream or run or simply implode.  The constant nattering, fighting, wrestling, and arguing grates every nerve by the end of the day.  It can be overwhelming, and anyone who can do this alone is my hero.  Thank God I have Reno - not only to share the workload, but also my frustrations and joys.

This morning was not a great start to the week.  For the past year, we've been dancing around discipline with Eloic.  He's a more trying child than any of our others.  He pushes buttons, limits, and people.  Being 4 years younger than Denali, our solution for a long time was just to have the older kids give him what he wants.  After all, he was young and didn't understand in the ways that Denali and Aurora did.  Gone are those days.  We've put our foot down, and we are following through on our repercussions for him.  While some expectations are different from the bigger kids, most certainly apply to him. 

This morning began with an hour long fiasco because he wanted juice in a cup with a lid so he could drink it in the living room.  My answer was no - he needed to drink it at the table just like everyone else.  In the end, we followed through on every single request/consequence.   There was a lot of crying, screaming, throwing things... but he got it.  He was happier for the rest of the day than I have seen him in a long time.  And listen - absolutely!

The remainder of the day was pretty spectacular actually.  We played games with the kids, did puzzles and made cookies.  The two youngest boys napped in the afternoon at the same time, so we got in some great card playing with Aurora and Denali. 

There are times when I look at them and wonder how they got to be such amazing and wonderful kids.  I think about all the people in their lives that made them who they are today.  I think of all the days when I was at work and Reno was home with them, holding true to the values we both share and moulding our children to fit them.  I also think of Henny and Theo - two of the most important people in Aurora and Denali's lives (and will be in Eloic and G's!) - who helped us raise them for two years while we both worked/went to college.  Without Tante Henny and Cha Cha, I'm am certain Aurora and Denali would not be who they are.  I look at Graysen and the little personality beginning to emerge.  I can't wait to see what he's like, who he takes after, and where he fits in our little (big) family.

Not such a bad start to the week after all... I think I'm going to look forward to the rest of it.  In the end, this house isn't just full of chaos and noise - it's also filled with some pretty awesome people if I might say so myself... Let's just hope I feel the same way tomorrow ;)

Happy Family Day!

Change isn't always bad... right?

So.... I won. 

It's been pretty interesting this last week - grabbing sleep in whatever bed or couch we can.  We moved Graysen over to our bedroom so that Reno could begin his Daddy sleep bootcamp with him (very successful I might add), and we didn't want Eloїc to have to listen to any potential crying that might come with this.  Graysen was a trooper, and within 2 nights was sleeping pretty much through the night.  Everyone got sick after this, and with all the coughing, we just kept G in our bedroom.  I can't sleep in the room with him (I'm convinced he can smell the milk), and Reno can't either because he snores something wicked sometimes.  Reno's been bunking on the floor on a twin air mattress in Eloїc's bedroom, while I've been bouncing around the house.  Now we're expecting.  Not the baby sort - we are expecting J and P to come stay for a couple of nights this week with their 3 girls and newest little boy. 

This all got me to thinking about how nice it was before when we had more than enough rooms for the number of people in the house.  I liked having a spare bedroom that Reno could slip off to if he was snoring.  I liked having somewhere for company to stay when visiting that didn't require a week long adventure of pestering Aurora to clean her room.  I just missed having a room that was there "just in case".  This week, I really could have used this room.

Obviously, with 4 children in a 1200 sq. ft. house, that's just not possible without having them bunk together.  I'm fine with the two littlest boys sharing a room.  We've tried Denali and Eloїc sharing a room, but that ultimately didn't work out, and it's just not fair to expect a boy and girl to share a room at 7 and 8 years old. 

The basement space that isn't currently consumed with bedrooms, bathrooms, storage, etc. is pretty uncultivated.  It's basically a not-so-big open space with a couch, toys, area rug, and TV/Video game area.  The kids like it down there, and spend a fair amount of time in the space.  It was working for us quite well, and the area was very comfortable... BUT there was potential for more.  There was a portion of the area that was largely used for storage that could be better utilized.  The whole space could be divided into two parts, and we could make one into another bedroom.  Was it worth the effort?  Was it worth changing what we liked and risk not liking what we transformed it into? My resounding YES, was met with a flat out NO from Reno.  I, of course, had to see how steadfast he was in the answer :)

We bantered back and forth, which elevated to a light yell.  Aurora was watching us argue and laughing all the while.  By the time we were done, we hadn't agreed.  I felt defeated and gave up... but so did he, so being the opportunist I am, I jumped on his feelings of defeat.  We've changed the spaces around, and while I'm not totally convinced either of us are going to like it, we are going to give it a shot for a while....

In the meantime, I'll count this as a win ;)

I'll update with pictures once it's a bit more finished.

Video Trial

Just testing out a video here :) 



Thinking of doing a video Saturday...

It's a Lifestyle Choice

This is something you hear quite often.  People get harrassed enough about a certain decision they have made about the way they live, and after defending it time and time again, begin to just say "it's a lifestyle choice".  It's usually an unconventional or contraversial decision, and you have some real nay-sayers and some real supporters.  We have had some "lifestyle choices" we've made in the our times as a couple, a family, and as individuals.  We had children before we were married; we moved to a small town far from the city limits; we've chosen to have 4 children...the list goes on.  Most recently, we started cloth diapering.

The may or may not come as a big surprise to you, but this happens to be seen as a lifestyle choice.  Some people are completely supportive of our decision, other's give a smirk or roll the eyes a little.  The nay-sayers think it's hippy-ish, that we are doing this as a way of showing we are superior in some way, or that we are actually subjecting our child to sitting in a sopping wet piece of cloth that will ultimately result in a wrinkled little butt with terrible diaper rash.  Cloth diapering is something I feel passionately enough about that I'm not going to sit and defend this as being a "lifestyle choice".  I'll tell you exactly why we* have chosen to use cloth diapering:

1. Disposable diapers are the 5th largest contributor to landfill garbage.  It is expected that a single disposable diaper takes over 500 years to decompose.
2. Disposal of human waste in a landfill is actually illegal and cause for a fine.  You are supposed to scrape the poop out of a diaper before tossing it in the garbage.
3. Disposable diapers are laden with carcinogens and chemicals with hormonal ramifications.
4. Nothing feels as good on the skin as natural fibres.
5. Diaper rash is almost non-existent with cloth.
6. Cloth is so much cheaper!  $300-500 for a child's lifetime in cloth diapers...  $2500-3000 for a child's lifetime in disposables.
7. I love looking at Graysen in those cute little fuzzy diapers :)  Shopping for diapers has become a bit of an addiction.
8. Graysen loves his cute little fuzzy diapers... maybe not for the same reasons as me, but he is visibly more comfortable in cloth.

There are actually many more reasons, but those are the biggest.  To me it's not a personal lifestyle choice... that would imply it only affects us/me.  It's a choice we made with everyone in mind.  Granted, we have the most to gain from doing this, I'm also hoping that by being a big proponent for cloth diapering, I can influence somebody else to make this change.  In Graysen's lifetime we will have kept approximately 4,500 diapers from hitting the landfill.  Now, if only we had made this decision when Aurora was a baby - nearly 20,000 diapers is a lot!

Here's a picture of our stash :)

And one of the little cutie that wears them

*by we, I mean I :)  Thankfully Reno is completely supportive and involved in carrying out this decision.

8 Months Old Today...

G celebrated his 8 month birthday today with a visit to the doctors and subsequently pokes, prods, and x-rays.   He's had a cold for 5+ days.  It seemed to be getting better, but yesterday he was gagging on his cheerios.  He's crazy for food - devours cheerios by the handful, so it's quite unusual for this kind of behavior.  I brushed it off - thought it was just the fact that his nose was plugged.  I knew something was up today when he was yawning while eating his breakfast.  He was extremely tired and irritable.  By 2 in the afternoon, we couldn't take the crying anymore, and thinking there was something very wrong, brought him in to an impromptu doctor's appointment.  The doctor was concerned enough about him that she ordered a CBC and chest x-ray.

Probably the hardest thing I've had to endure with one of our children, I was in tears almost as much as he was.  If you've never seen what the contraption looks like that holds an infant to take an x-ray, take a look at this...

As you can imagine, it's not fun.  Ironically, the little man that didn't nap all day today fell fast asleep as they took x-rays in this position.  Taking blood was a different story... his chubby little arms were hard to find veins in, and at 8 months old, it's pretty damn hard to make him stay still.  The lab technicians were fabulous and did a great job helping him (and me!) stay as calm as could be expected.

Both tests turned out fine.  His chest is clear, no infections of the ears or throat, and his blood counts came back perfect.  Doped him up on Tylenol and Advil and he's happy as a pig in mud.

Go figure.

Oh well, better safe than sorry!  Oh - and the little man weighs 20lbs :)  Happy 8th month Mr. G!

10 Facts About our Family

1. Graysen has 6 teeth.
2. Reno has been applying at places to finish his practicum (after almost 6 years)
3. Aurora has been enjoying playing hockey.
4. Triscuit loves to eat toilet paper.
5. I am addicted to cloth diapering and natural fibre clothing... and shopping online (GULP!)
6. Denali asks for craft day every Saturday.
7. Eloїc is obsessed with the Avatar The Last Airbender series.
8. We have been sleeping wherever we can in the house because Graysen is sleeping in our bedroom.
9. I start back at work on May 9th.
10. We love having company :)

New to blogging...old to facebook

I'm giving up.

I'm giving up on Facebook.  I like logging on and seeing snippits of peoples lives.  I like seeing who has had a baby, who's getting married, and who's had some amazing luck and is happy with his/her life.  What I don't like is seeing status updates about petty fights, how utterly unhappy someone is, or how some people have the worst luck in life.  I'll admit, I am guilty of the last part, just as much as the first, and while I try my hardest to put a positive spin on life, it doesn't always happen. 

Facebook only shows you those snippets... maybe even a picture or video or two. If your life isn't juicy or your status isn't eye-catching, it doesn't get read.  People don't just go to your profile and look to see what's up with your life, and if they do, it's more to snoop than anything (GUILTY!!).

I'm starting a blog.

I'm starting a blog to write about our family.  To write about what's happening in our lives.  To show pictures and catalogue our journey.  I'm inviting everyone to come and look and see what's happening.   I want you all to see more than what a line or two can say on a page surrounded by people who are living super juicy lives or reposting chainlike statuses.  I want you all to want to take the time in your day to check out what's up with the Therriens, just the same as I would want to check out what's going on in your life. 

It's worth it to me - is it worth it to you?