Wearing Babies

When Carter was a baby I thought baby carriers were the car seats that came with our stroller travel system.  In fact, he spent a lot of time in his car seat.  Too much time in there.  With Elizabeth I did use hotslings and carried her a lot more often.  Praise God that I have been able to fully experience the benefits and blessing of wearing baby.  Lilah loves to be close to mommy and her carriers make it possible.  

We loved the hotsling and peanut shell when she was really little.  

And the ring sling is great too.  

But my favorite all time carrier is the Beco Butterfly.  We have been able to experience the world as a family thanks to this carrier.  We go places and mom and Lilah participate!

Family Mission Trip

Dancing

The Zoo

Family Walks

Our latest family adventure was attending a reenactment at the Shaker Museum at South Union.  We were asked to be as authentic as possible and were given clothing to wear.  One problem, my beco butterfly is not exactly authentic.  So I did a little research and was surprised to find out that there is very limited information out there on wearing babies in America in the mid to late 1800’s.  What I did find out (without doing any extensive research) is that most likely American settlers didn’t wear their babies.  There are references in journals and memoirs from American settlers commenting on how strange it was that Native Americans strapped their babies to theirselves.  So what did they do?  Most likely babies spent most of their time in baskets (cribs) or were watched by siblings or older family members while the mother went about her work.  No wonder mothering has become so difficult for us.  The ancient tradition of wearing your baby was lost and figuring out what to do with baby was put in its place.  

So what did I do?  I basically improvised.  I used my peanut shell turned inside out.  

It is not as easy to use as the beco butterfly with a near 20 pound baby, but it did work.  Carrying a baby on your hip all day is near impossible so we settled on the warm, fleece sling even though it wasn’t authentic.  But, we were portraying Shakers and they wouldn’t have had children anyway!

Wearing baby has so many advantages.  Lilah has been such a fussy baby that I am not sure how we would have survived without me wearing her close.  She feels safe and comfortable being close to me and dad (when he straps her on).  When the kids want to go on a walk we are not restricted to places that we can take a stroller.  Mom and Lilah can participate in everything that the rest of the family is doing:  gardening, long hours at the farmers market, long walks.  There really are no limitations for us.  Another huge benefit is that it is a great way to get your body back in shape.  Wearing baby uses your abdominal muscles in a great way, perfect for the Post Purdum period.  No wonder women in other countries are still wearing baby (and toddlers)!

 

 

Beautiful Photos of Ethnic Baby Carriers

Addicted to the Bright & Convenient

As Nathan and I attempt to tread lighter on this beautiful planet God gave us there are a few things I have discovered about myself.  The first is that it is much harder for me to reduce, reuse and recycle when I am stressed, overly busy or in a bad mood.  When I am frustrated and we have accumulated it is easiest for me to pull out a big trash bag and fill it with our junk.  Another reason to be proactive in reducing stress in my life!

And the next is that I am a recovering addict to brightly packaged cleaners and conveniently contained foods.  Oh how I love my brightly colored, fresh smelling container of clorox wipes.  Or my lunchables and capri suns for the kids.  And I can’t forget my swiffer wet jet.

So rather than completely cut myself off I have found ways to continue my obsession, but move towards living lighter.

Addiction #1

Clorox Wipes

My lovely co-worker at the flower shop gave me these beautiful decorated cloth diapers as a baby gift when Lilah was born.  They are so pretty that I wanted to find another use for them.  Being cloth diapers they are super absorbant and clean really well.  I fill the clorox container with a small amount of simple green and my cloth diapers and they absorb all of the fresh smelling goodness of the cleaner.  I keep one in every room of the house!

Addiction #2

Capri Sun’s

I have to admit that when Lilah came into our world I indulged on a lot of capri sun’s.  They are quick easy and the kids could grab one out of the fridge when I was nursing Lilah.  An easy alternative is mixing a container of 100% fruit juice and filling up several days worth of sippy cups.

 

Addiction #3

The Lunch Box

Another quick and convenient item we tend to grab at the grocery store is the lunch box.  The kids love them, especially when we are going out to the park or Co-op day.  After making Lilah some baby food one day I realized that the compartments in half of an ice tray are perfect for making our own portable lunch box!

 

Addiction #4

Swiffer Wet Jet

I love the smell of the swiffer.  While I realize that they really don’t clean that well they do get up a lot of the mess.  But I didn’t like throwing away all of those disposable liners each time I cleaned.  So once again I found a handy use for my cloth diapers!

 

Addiction #5

Brightly Packaged Baby Food

On my last trip down the baby food item in the grocery store I was reminded of all the convenient foods I fed to Carter.  Apple-banana stars, the cute little juice containers and of course the carrot wheels!  So I broke down and bought a package (how can you resist those beautiful bright colors).  Moments after Lilah indulged in a couple I remembered how sticky and messy they were.  But rather than pitching the container we are using it for our wheat bread crumbles.  A great way to use up the heels of the bread!

 

 

 

Laundry Soap {- the suds}

 

There are some things in life that are so simple that we just suppose they aren’t as good as the more complicated, expensive, and artificially made.  I had this recipe for laundry detergent for a long, long time but just kept waiting to take the plunge.  But once I did I can’t tell you how excited I was to be able to save on detergent and stop lugging those huge containers in on grocery day!

Here’s the recipe.  Warning:  please do not eat.

5 Gallon Bucket

Three Gallons Hot Water-straight from the tap

1/2 cup of Borax

1 Cup Washing Soda

1 Bar of Soap (you can use scented or scent free)

Step One:  On your stovetop heat 4 cups of water and shave the bar of soap slowly into the water until it is dissolved (keep the water below boiling).

Step Two:  Add this mixture to three gallons of hot water using your 5 gallon bucket.

Step Three:  Add the Borax and Washing Soda

Step Four:  Let it sit overnight. 

Use about 1 Cup per load.  You can also use 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar (added to the fabric softener dispenser) to rinse water for a squeaky clean wash.

Cost:  3 cents per load (compared to 30 cents for store brands)

Don’t have a 5 gallon bucket or a place to store one?  Don’t want to cook soap on your stovetop?  You can also try this super quick and easy dry soap method.

Just combine 4 cups of soap flakes, 2 cups of washing soda and 2 cups of Borax in a glass jar with a lid.   

 

Want to make up a Free & Clear detergent for towels, cloth diapers, children’s clothes but need some “good” scent for your husbands work clothes?

Just add a small amount of sweet or spicy essential oils to detergent for that load!

 

And just a side note:  this detergent will not be sudsy like store bought detergent.

Finding Our Gilgal

I love how Beth Moore’s brain works, I imagine it is a lot like mine, except that I don’t have all of those scriptures floating around in there, although I am working on that…very…slowly…working on that.  It gives me hope to compare my life experiences to those in the bible that messed up but saw God at work in their life.  Reminds me that I am flesh and all of the people around me are flesh.  The truth is that we screw up, hurt each other, struggle to make up and then usually do it all over again.  The problem is that if you stay in the cycle of defeat you may find deliverance as Moses did, but you will never get to the promised land-your Gilgal, as the Israelites finally did after decades of defeat.

Nathan and I have recently found our Gilgal and while I know we won’t be permanently residing here, I do believe that God has given us the answers so we can finally pass the test.  He wants us to live our marriage the way he designed it.

Now I have to add that Nathan and I have a wonderfully blessed marriage.  We work really hard to meet each others needs and are very focused on keeping our priorities straight.  But the truth is that we both came to our marriage as, well, humans.  Our own selfishness and limitations can and do rise to the surface from time to time.  Like most couples, I imagine, we have periods of greatness where everything seems to be going really well.  We are communicating with each other like civilized adults, spend lots of time snuggling, catching each others eye from the other side of the room.

And then…

You know what happens.  Someone gets their feelings hurt (usually me), or someone gets the bank statement (not usually me) and things just aren’t as peachy anymore.  It’s amazing how quickly this can happen too.  All of a sudden I am doing my regular chores with the energy of a triathlon and the attitude of a three year old.  And at this point anything he says is going to make me upset.  We were both failing the test.

While we did have more days in that state of marital bliss we did have more days than we would like to admit in the (D-) category.  One morning when we were not communicating very well we both stood there staring at each other.  We didn’t want to hurt each other so we both realized that we better not say anything at all.  We were at a moment of testing, but we didn’t want to fail anymore.  We wanted to believe, in each other, in what God wanted for us.  We both prayed to ourselves and God showed up.

So we found ourselves days from our 7th anniversary going to marriage counseling at our church.  We discovered what we already knew.  Men and women are different and that is okay, God created us that way.  We were given the tools (answers to the test) to communicate in a healthy way.  And told that it would be hard at first and require a lot of practice, again we figure that would be the case. 

But then we were told something that we had not really thought about before.  As we have been chugging along in life we weren’t exactly  headed in the same direction.  I was headed North at warp speed and Nathan was enjoying a slow stroll South.  We needed to decide where we wanted to go together as a couple and as a family.  So together we worked on our goals and plans for the future.  We shared the life experiences that we hoped to have and the things we didn’t want to miss on the journey.  We talked, cried, shared our biggest hopes and dreams.  As partners in our marriage we created a roadmap in which we can direct every decision, commitment and activity of our lives.  And on our 7th anniversary Nathan hand wrote the Howell Family Vision and brought it to me with a bouquet of flowers.  We had found directions to our Gilgal.

Only As God brings us full circle and breaks the cycle of failure we have been working on for so long can we finally start believing in Gods ability to work in our marriages.  We begin to see what he originally intended for man and wife and that he must be the center of our marriage for us to get there.  Now we won’t always be in Gilgal, I realize that, but now that we have seen it and have the map to get there we can come back more quickly than ever before.

In Gods Word

I have met a couple of very dear friends through the internet, mostly through my original blog {fresh floral art}.  While I realize that the internet is not a place to seek and invest great amounts of time on friendships I do believe that God brings people together, even online.  My friend Sarah is one of those people.  We challenge one another, pray for each others children and provide honest feedback for each other when we need it.  While we may never meet IRL (in real life), we look forward to the day when we greet each other in heaven and chat about our homeschooling ventures over coffee (that’s how it plays out in our head anyway).

Sarah is my friend I go to when I am trying to streamline and organize my life.  Her latest advice came from a need for a simple way for me and the kids to study the bible every day.  Through the bible with my child is the perfect addition to our curriculum.  It is set up so that you study the entire bible every four years and it can be repeated several times during a child’s homeschool experience.  It also includes questions and writing supplements.  While I may order the book so I can hold it in my hands, I started by downloading it HERE.

Building a Community

Nathan and I have been talking a lot about community.  While we both have family nearby we have longed and prayed for a group of people that we can share life with on an intimate, christ centered way.  And you know our God, we pray, and when it is his will, he answers.  When we were asked to attend a small church on the edge of town in place of our much larger church we were not exactly sure how we felt about that.  You know how it is, you attend the same church for a long time, each and every Sunday.  Enter the same door, talk to the same people, sit in the same pew…

Praise God that his plan is much bigger than ours!  That small, intimate church has become such an important part of our lives.  It is more than a Sunday morning worship experience, its a collection of real people who love God and it shows.  We come early, worship together, stay late and meet up during the week.  We know each others names.  If you aren’t there on a Sunday morning, someone notices.   

So our prayers continued that God would give us a group of people that we could connect with, share with, live with.  It happened slowly, but we feel that God carefully drew a group of people together that needed each other.

The twelve disciples were followers of Jesus whom he had chosen to become his core group, the people he talked things over with and depended on. Just as Jesus continued to share the good news with others wherever he went, he needed that smaller community to be himself.   We believe that God wants that for us too.  That is what we prayed for and what God provided for us in the most beautiful way.

God Came Calling…

…at the Goodwill again.  I have been saying that a lot lately.  God Came Calling is something my great grandmother would say when she would receive a blessing or answered prayer. She would say “God Came Calling” and I would come waiting to hear what magnificent thing God had done in her life.  Most often it was a 2/1 deal at the save-a-lot or the extra checks she had ordered from the bank arrived a day earlier than she had expected.  But what God Came Calling with wasn’t as important as the fact that GOD CAME CALLING.  He comes in the huge and tiny, powerful and gentle, moments of miracles and moments of silence.

There are a few reasons why I shop at Goodwill.

It is right by my house, cheap and like I like the hunt.

God always blesses us with something we really need.

But the other reason is that God always puts someone in our path that we can bless.  When Carter and I go by ourselves he heads right over to housewares because he is drawn to the older men that are standing around talking, discussing the weather, electronics, or the economy (he also knows that there are usually a few toys there too).  He has one liners for these older men like “do you have a  tractor”, “are you a grandpa”, “Goodwill is cool isn’t it”.  You know, all the normal things a 5 year old says to a male stranger at the Goodwill.  But the truth is that God uses Carter to bless these men.  There also times that I take all three kiddos with me to the Goodwill, which is minor miracle in itself.  And Elizabeth is equally as chatty with many of the people who are obviously needing some love, while the baby strapped on my back always makes someone’s day.  Shopping at Goodwill is more than simply buying cheap stuff.  It is an experience that I can provide for my children and the people shopping there.  We come through the door like a tumbleweed in a cowboy movie, stick around, make people laugh, and always leave praying for others.

God may have some rocky paths planned for us in the future because he keeps blessing us with shoes.  A couple of weeks ago the men at our church were getting together to play some basketball.  I wanted to go because I love, love, love my church family and they have become our community.  But Nathan just wanted to spend time as a family, equally important so I didn’t think more about it.  We went fishing and stopped by church on our way home.  The boys were still playing ball so we stopped and Nathan ended up playing in his dress shoes.  It didn’t occur to me until that night that Nathan didn’t have any tennis shoes.  And because he is very selfless, and a little cheap, he didn’t want to spend money on shoes for himself.  So I guess you have already guessed what I found at the Goodwill.

A gently used pair of size 12 New Balance tennis shoes.

Praise God.  And I must add that Nathan needed God to come calling with something just for him.  You know, God loves us like that.  He wants to provide for our needs, but we have to let our needs last longer than a trip to the Target or a click of the mouse.

A Limerick

There once was a girl on the floor,

Who seldom thought blocks were a bore.

She hid away to read Berry,

Then mommy snuck up not to scary.

And the girl laughed out with a roar.

Circle of Life

Our church is doing an amazing study on how your life would change if you only had 30 days to live. I believe that we all have moments when we feel more connected to the reality of our death, but most of the time we are just living life (eating, pooping, sleeping, driving, working, talking on the phone, searching the web, watching tv, planning our next day).

My mother and I were very blessed through the pain of her illness and healing of our mutual survival. She has been given 6 months to live so many times that when we speak those words we do it with a chuckle. But the truth is that when you hear a doctor tell you that you may die, will probably die, in the next 6 months you begin to evaluate your life. Praise God that I was given this wake up call early in my life because it gave me a realistic view, Godly view is a better description, of my time here on earth. I have always viewed my time here as very short, like a vacation to a wonderful place, but not like home. And that realistic understanding of our time on earth can only come through the holy spirit as a gift from God.

As a young child we believed the doctors, always question what you believe to be true, and we were always evaluating our circumstances and discussing what we would do if mom died. I learned to dial 911 early in life in case I found my mother not breathing. If mom started to appear like she was having a brain bleed I had specific things to do to take care of her. There was talk about where I would go if she was in the hospital, went into rehabilitation or died. I remember at the age of 6 my grandparents came out to California, stayed a week, gave me all of these instructions and then went back home. Truth is that there were days that I prayed God would let me go to heaven with my mom or that he would go ahead and take her so I could find a permanent home here on earth.

Between the ages of 10 and 20 my mom refused to go to the doctors. She just believed that she would live and I believed that too. Talk about a faith that works! She decided that she was going to focus our lives on God and that we both had specific work that needed to be done for him. She would tell others her story and they would say the same. There were days that I just wanted to live like everyone else around us, just be. But most of the time God would intervene and remind me that we are not here just to live, we are here to save. And because I have to be reminded of this often and in substantial ways, I faced my own doctors and talks of death when I was pregnant with Carter. How odd it is that I grew up praying I would not have the same illness as my mother and was always reassured it was not genetic. And later found out that it was genetic, that I had it and that the doctors did not know what to do. Of course, God heals and new studies proved that a baby aspirin can and does save. How amazing that when the fears of my childhood became reality God filled me with an overwhelming peace so powerful that it saved my husband.

I was reminded of all of this today on a visit to the butterfly house. There was a butterfly caught in a spiders web. Carter asked if we could save it, take it out of the web. But as I looked at the butterfly and noticed his legs were broken I knew that taking it out of the web would not respect the circle of life. What an awesome visual to teach how fragile life is and how the circle of life, created by God, is beautiful. We talked about it again this morning. How God created that butterfly for many things. Our enjoyment in watching those beautiful creatures emerge from a caterpillar is an important part of their life. But feeding spiders is another very meaningful part of their life and, of course, death. I share this with my children because I do not want them to fear death. For if they fear death they will not live. If they do not live, they can not save.

The Boys Shoes

As we are raising our children to be good stewards of God’s money and stuff, I am reminded of the impact my mothers prayer and Gods answers shaped my mind and heart.  

It is just something that changes you forever, for the better.

Nathan and I have made a conscious choice to live a slower, simpler life.  And with that we find ourselves living on a fairly tight budget.  All of our basic needs are met very well, but we have to be careful with extra purchases.  I’ve writtenabout how we do this before, but today I want to share how this choice is already blessing my dear sons heart.

There are two times of year that you can expect my home to look like it has been picked up and shaken.  Our semi-annual Lil’ Angels Attic sale moves me to start thinking about what clothes my kids will need for the upcoming season.  They are all still in that growing at a rapid pace stage and require new clothes each new season.  And what things we no longer need.  This is the first year that Carter has recognized that stuff costs money.  So he has been asking a lot of questions about how we will buy new clothes.  Let me start by admitting that there was a fleeting moment when I wondered if I should allow my precious little boy to ponder for a minute over our clothing.  But the truth is that not only would God work wonders in my life, but also in his.

As God always does he has challenged Nathan and I to become even better stewards of his money.  And I must admit that every time God does this I think we have been stretched to the limit and met our breaking point.  But once again he reminds me that we are being shaped for eternity.

Our living with less challenge to limit purchases as much as possible (and focus on trades and thrifting) has really challenged my thinking when it comes to my childrens clothing.  I had decided that I would sell their gently used items and re-invest that money to purchase more gently used clothing.  I still may do this, but God has shown me that his way is always more amazing!

Carter and I have been going to Goodwill every other week and have found some amazing clothing that he loves.  We have also met some wonderful people that God placed in our path.

Neighbors sent us clothing that we were both thrilled to get (lets just say that it is much nicer than I would have purchased myself).

As I surfed ebay and Craigslist for used tennis shoes our door bell rang and it was our neighbor with a bag of tennis shoes he had outgrown!  Praise God, isn’t he amazing?

So this morning Carter and I went through his wardrobe and talked about how amazing God is for providing us with such nice stuff.  And we both decided that there were two things that would be great to have.  A pair of blue crocs and a pair of brown dress shoes.  On a post it note I wrote those two items down and put it on the computer so we could search later. 

On the way to the store today I stopped by Goodwill by myself.  I found a few very nice shirts for the girls (that I will be upcycling later-photos to come).  And before I went to check out I decided to check out the shoes.  On the floor was a pair of very nice blue crocs and I was instantly filled with the holy spirit!  And I knew that there was a pair of brown dress shoes for us too.  I went to the back of the store and there they were.  A pair of brand new Gymboree shoes in size 13 waiting for Carters precious little feet.

When I showed them to Carter he took them and went out on the porch by himself.  He sat in his blue chair for a long time wearing, touching and looking at his shoes.  The truth is that these shoes fit his heart just as well as his feet.  

~I took this photo through the front glass so not to disturb his moment with the Lord.