Motherhood Unexpected - book review

I have been working really hard to read more (pleasure reading for myself) this year. When my friend, Deanna, announced that she was writing a book, I knew it would be on my list even though I don't typically read a lot of fiction.

Deanna has been a friend of mine since we lived on the same hall one semester in college. She is a very gifted writer and I have enjoyed following her life over the years through her blog, Everything and Nothing from Essex. Deanna has a precious daughter named Addison who is beautiful, hilarious, spunky, loves fashion and chocolate, and has Down Syndrome. I love reading Deanna's witty, real-life posts about her adventures with Addison and her two little guys. 

Motherhood Unexpected is an outstanding book! It is a novel about three women who each face difficult, life-changing circumstances and struggle to see God's hand through them. I could hardly put the book down! I laughed and cried as I felt the vivid emotions of the characters. 

Here is the book description: "All Claire wants is to be a mother, but her perfectly planned birth ends with a surprise. Forced to question everything that she has ever believed, she struggles through new motherhood. How can God still be good when nothing about this is even remotely good? 

Meanwhile, Claire's teenage sister Felicity goes too far with the wrong kind of guy. Faced with a life-altering decision, she can't help but wonder, "why me?" 

Julie counsels her daughters as they deal with the complications of sex, disability, broken expectations, and jealousy. However, a deeply buried secret won't leave her alone, causing her to have her own doubts. 

Three women face circumstances that leave them broken and desperate. Will they find peace with the unexpected before it's too late?"

I am thankful to Deanna for challenging my own heart on mothering, God's goodness, and His sovereign plan for our lives. Motherhood Unexpected is not just about motherhood, but about life, and life's biggest decisions - something everyone can relate to.

This week Amazon has a really great Mother's Day sale on Motherhood Unexpected! You can get the Kindle edition for $0.99 and the paperback for $7.99! This is a perfect gift to give your mother, friend, wife, sister, daughter, pretty much any lady in your life! :) 

When it rains...

Last week was a doozie of a week. It's kind of comical now what all happened, but at the time, it was not. I am praying that this week will be a better week (how can it not be?!). 

So, just for memories sake, I'm going to list all the crazy things that happened. I know when my children are older, it will be fun to look back and laugh.

Two weeks ago I completely forgot about the children's chiropractic appointment. It was supposed to be on Thursday morning and it didn't even cross my mind until Sunday. All last week I meant to call and apologize for missing the appointment, but I forgot. Every.single.day. Yes, we will be making cookies as a peace offering for our dear chiropractor.

Jacob and I were cleaning out our utility room and noticed dryer lint all over the place. Turns out the dryer vent was clogged. Fixing it was not nearly as easy as it should've been. 

I was hurrying to fix Jacob a sandwich for him to eat on the road while going to youth orchestra. I opened the refrigerator and a glass 9x13 Pyrex dish with freshly made granola bars in it fell out and completely shattered. It took me at least 30 minutes to get up the slivers of glass from every crevice of the kitchen.

I haven't been making Jacob a big breakfast much the last few weeks because Ava is waking up and needing to eat right at the time I would be cooking. So he's been having cold cereal most mornings. One morning Ava was up earlier and finished in time for me to make an omelet for Jacob. I got it all ready and then realized he was running late and would actually be home between teaching to eat breakfast a little later. Warmed over omelets are not the same. FAIL.

After the omelet fail, I made muffins for the kid's breakfast and was out of regular cooking spray. I have a Misto thingy where you put oil in and pump it up, but I've found that it doesn't work great for baking bread or muffins. Well, it's all I had, so I spent like 3 minutes pumping and spraying the muffin pan. When I tipped the pan over to dump the muffins out, the tops and insides fell out and all the bottoms stuck in the pan.

Our water heater went out on Wednesday, but we didn't really realize it until Thursday. Jacob was able to get a new water heater right before Lowes closed on Thursday night. He installed it, but late that night figured out he needed some other parts. He went between teaching Friday morning to get the parts and thought he got it all fixed. I waited a couple hours and then checked to see if there was hot water (I was dying for a shower by this point). The "hot" water was ice cold. Jacob was gone until late afternoon and I had errands that had to be done in the afternoon. After waiting awhile longer, I washed my hair in the sink. My brain was basically frozen by the time I finished. Ahhh!! 

While the kids and I were out running errands Friday afternoon, a rock was slung up off the road and cracked the windshield. I kept thinking when is this crazy week going to END! Ha. We got home with just enough time for me to make a pizza for the kids supper and change clothes before Jacob and I left for a dinner party. In the meantime, Jacob had gotten the water heater fixed, but of course I didn't have enough time for a shower. Ugh! 

So, I'm rushing around making a pizza and a glass jar fell out of the cabinet and broke the glass bowl I was mixing the pizza dough up in. For the SECOND time in a matter of a couple days, I was cleaning glass shards off my kitchen floor and counters. By the time I got it cleaned up, I didn't have enough time to mix up another pizza. While I changed clothes, Jacob ran to Chick-Fil-A to get some supper for the kids. 

Our babysitter watched the three older kids and Jacob and I took Ava with us. Miss Ava did not want to sit quietly (or sleep) and listen to various people talk at the dinner, so I spent my evening tip-toeing around an echoing antique building trying to keep her quiet. If I had known that the dinner was with important financial donors for one of the youth orchestras Jacob conducts, I probably wouldn't have taken her, but um, that vital piece of information wasn't mentioned to me. 

By the time I finally got to take a shower, I realized that the water pressure is nothing compared to what it was before the water heater was replaced. Jacob thinks he knows what the problem is, it's just a matter of finding the time to fix it. 

All this along with Asher and Ava waking up way earlier than normal in the mornings and many, many training moments throughout the days, just made it a tough week. I'm thankful that this week is going better. God is faithful!

I'm sure many of you mamas can relate to days/weeks of everything seeming to go wrong. Hopefully we can all look back and laugh at all the mishaps and praise God that tomorrow is a new day. :)

weekend snapshots.

Life is so busy. I know every season of life has a different form of busyness. Right now, I feel like I'm just in the hardcore mom-of-littles kind of crazy - where your brain starts hurting from millions of questions, spit up is your perfume, your clothes wear out so fast because they must be washed after every wear since there is spit up or other substance on them, you are lonely (for adult conversation) even though you are constantly surrounded by needy little ones, and you love those little ones so much that when you get a chance to be alone, you miss them like crazy! 

Last Friday, I took the kids to my youngest brother's basketball game. It was so fun! The kids were great and my brother's team won. 

Levi potty trained two weeks ago! My mom has always said that boys are easier around age 3, so we just waited, especially since he wasn't interested at all. He caught on super fast and has had some random accidents, but overall is doing fabulous!

After dinner reading with Grandpa.

After dinner music by my brother-in-law. :)

So I made homemade bread and gave the kids sandwiches for supper one night (it was the night before the ball game, so we were trying to rush out the door) and I went to change Ava's diaper and came back to this. I guess a whole sandwich each wasn't enough. Ha.

My children have an obsession with taking pictures on my phone. I am always finding pictures like this whenever I leave my phone on the table. Btw, they have figured out the passcode twice.

Miss Ava is a little sweetie...well, she is now that I've found something that helps her tummy. She's been clearly uncomfortable after every feeding for awhile, but it got really bad about 2 weeks ago. I had ordered an essential oil blend, so when I got it, I immediately started applying it (diluted with coconut oil) onto Ava's tummy. Ever since, she has been sleeping well at night (she probably won't tonight, since I mentioned it. LOL), not spitting up nearly as much, and is just peaceful and calm. She will go some days without spitting up at all and then sometimes she'll spit up some. I am a very thankful mama!

It's moments like these that I want to remember in 20 years. How I love these little ones!

Lately.

(this picture is not meant to imply that Ava is an unhappy baby...it just goes well with what I'm about to say)

My days have been non-stop busy the last few weeks. We've had our ups and downs. Some days I've felt like the only thing I accomplished was keeping my children alive. I'm not joking. Some days I've felt so productive and like "wow, maybe I can do this!"

Um, yeah! So unfortunately most days have been rough. Add postpartum emotions to the normal craziness of having 4 children 3 and under and you've got a mama who basically becomes a puddle of tears over the smallest thing and feels like the ultimate mom failure when her sons have to sleep in their clothes because they have no clean jammies. 

I really don't think I've ever been more thankful that God gives those good days (good moments, good parts-of-days) sprinkled throughout the hard ones. I'm thankful that He gives grace and strength abundantly when I feel like I just. can't. do. it. 

Ava is a serious little girl.

These boys. Oh, these boys. Asher has started climbing out of his crib. He apparently is pretty good at it because he's never hurt himself, but it scares me to death! We are going to move him to the toddler bed and Levi to a twin bed as soon as we can get a twin mattress. 

The other night, Jacob was gone and I hurriedly put the older children to bed a little early because Ava needed to eat. Lily went straight to sleep but the boys were being loud and obviously not ready to go to sleep, so I told them they could come play quietly until I was done feeding Ava. They were pretty rambunctious (we had cleaned up everything off the floor, so you can see they did some mess-making) until I told them Daddy was on his way home. Then they jumped up on the couch with a book and read quietly together until he got home. Little stinkers! :)

Last week, Levi was being naughty and I sent him to his "time-out chair" in his room to wait for me to come talk to him. Well, when I went to go in his room, I found that he'd locked he and Asher in the room. I got the little stick key thing and tried to get the door open, but I couldn't. I started to panic. Jacob was about 40 minutes away teaching for the day. I could hear the boys up on their dresser so I told them to get down and play legos. Thankfully they obeyed! :) 

After trying unsuccessfully to get the door opened, I called Jacob's dad who works about a minute from our house. He was so sweet to drop what he was doing and come (after finding a few tools that he thought he might need). He was able to get the door open very quickly...using the "key"...then he taught me how to unlock the door. Ha! We found the boys playing legos sweetly. Notice the time out chair. LOL

An older sibling wanted to share. :)

Play dough!

Lily wanted to see how Ava would fit in her doll cradle :)

Most of this post was written last week. Praise God, this week has been a bit better. Levi had his final post-op appointment yesterday and the doctor is very pleased with how he has healed and how his eyes look! That is a huge blessing!

Nehemiah 8:10

For the JOY of the Lord is your strength.

Happy Day.

We had such a fun day on Tuesday. I decided to take the kids to pick out little pumpkins at a "pumpkin patch" a local church had. When I drove by on Monday, they still had tons of pumpkins, but when we got there Tuesday morning, they had packed up and all that was left were little gourds. I felt so, so bad because I'd gotten the kids so excited about this special treat.

We tried the farmer's market next and hit the jackpot for pumpkins and apples! I was so thankful that the kids were able to get pumpkins. Then I decided to take them on a nature walk around a local park to find pretty leaves. We wandered around for over an hour, munching on apples, picking up leaves and acorns. The children were so well behaved and we really just had the best time. It was a balm to this tired mama's soul.

Three cuties.

burning off energy.

Later the same day, our babysitter came for a few hours so I could take Lily out on a special date with mama before Baby Girl is born.

I let her choose where she wanted to go. Our first stop was the Dollar Tree for some new dress up stuff. She loves all things girly/dress up! After that, we ran by a local consignment store to see if they had any shoes in Lily's size, but they didn't, so we headed to a new frozen yogurt shop.

It was super windy and sunny, but Lily wanted to sit outside anyway. She kept having to hold her hair out of her face so she could eat. 

Our final stop was Target. We found some shoes (on sale! yay!) and she picked out a new book. In the picture, she's riding in Levi's carseat. Whenever her brothers aren't with us, she loves to ride in their carseats. Silly girl!

After I put the boys to bed that night, I came in her room and found this little setup. I think Jacob's going to need to build her a dressing table! :)

I am so thankful for the fun days with my babies.

Sometimes you just have to laugh.

Random pictures and confessions from the "other" side of mommyhood.

When you don't get breakfast ready soon enough, your toddler just helps himself to whatever he can find.

My child is the one when singing her favorite song in church hollers out between stanzas "louder" just like she does when it plays in the van.

You are afraid that people driving by will assume this is a not so good part of town just by the state of your window blinds. Yes, we still live in the dark ages (ha!) with mini blinds. Someday we hope to replace them with the amazing wide ones, but until then, scotch tape has become my BFF.

A three inch roach crawled across the kitchen (and got under the stove before I could kill it) one morning and I so terrified my children with my screams, that they set up a barricade of Daddy's shoes and the ironing board and kept watch from high stools. Thankfully, after about 20 minutes of watching, the roach made a beeline for the refrigerator and I was able to stomp it to pieces (of course with many screams accompanying the furious stomping).

Sometimes I'm totally ok to let the kids make a huge mess just to keep them occupied while I clean the bathroom or make an important phone call.

Attempting to make granola with a 1 year old.

I am the mom who...

lets the children play "getting ready" so she can get her make up on and hair done without too much interruption. (Levi was "painting his toenails." Ha.)

brushes her teeth with kids toothpaste and doesn't realize it (or think about it) until she is rinsing her mouth.

makes banana bread for the specific purpose of sharing it with someone and completely forgets to share it until it is completely eaten. oops!

rarely irons. If something is a little wrinkled, I just flick some water on it and toss it in the dryer for a few minutes.

while backing out of a parking spot, hears a little voice saying, "mama, aren't you going to buckle me?"

on Saturday night realizes she hasn't had a shower since Wednesday morning. ugh. (thankfully this hasn't happened too often)

while driving down the road after leaving the house, frantically starts asking if every child is present and accounted for because she can't remember if she put them all in.

realizes she's been singing "I'm a little teapot" to herself for the last 20 minutes while washing the dishes after the children are in bed for the night.

starts talking to the kids about the beautiful blue sky and saying, "look out Lily's side (of the van), there is a fire truck!" only to remember she's out running errands by herself. (obviously a very rare happening around here)

After talking to our new neighbor and laughing with him about the way Lily and Levi were dressed (Lily in a poofy flower girl dress, Levi in a blue/green striped shirt and red plaid shorts, both with their winter mittens on) I was mortified to remember that Lily had "done" my hair this morning and I was still sporting an "up-do" with a large bow and play plastic bright green handled knife stuck in it. Wow. Welcome to the crazyhood!

Going out and what we eat.

Just answering some questions and comments...

I got several comments recently about how much I get out with all three kids. I wanted to clarify, that we do not normally get out that much. Jacob was recently out of town for 4 days, and it seemed to help the time go faster if we got out of the house each day.

Here is a look at a typical week for us -

Sunday - morning church, dinner with family, evening church, supper with family.

Monday - stay home all day unless the kids have chiropractor appointments (about once a month)

Tuesday - I may run some errands while our babysitter is here, then take babysitter home

Wednesday - errands in the morning, prayer meeting in the evening

Thursday - stay home

Friday - go out for supper (we usually eat out on Thursday or Friday night depending on Jacob's schedule)

Saturday - grocery shopping, visit Memaw (doesn't happen every week)

We do go to the park a lot when the weather is nice, and we do other fun stuff, but none of it is weekly/set in stone type stuff. I've found myself doing more spontaneous stuff lately because it's easier for me to see how the day is going before I decide if we'll get out, than to plan something and have a rough day and then be disappointed or feel guilty if we just need to stay home.

I love being at home. My sister and I joke that having kids has turned us into home-bodies. Ha!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I got a question about what kind of meals I fix. Basically, quick, easy, healthy and cheap. :) This year I started grocery shopping every other week instead of weekly. I love it! I usually do end up going to the store on the "off" week to get a few things for our meals with extended family since it's hard to plan with everyone so far in advance. 

After reading this post by my friend, Lauren, I decided to try her idea of simple menu planning. We have the same meals for two weeks in a row. It has simplified my grocery shopping so much! We do a new set of meals every 2 weeks. So far we haven't gotten tired of it or felt like we're in a rut. :)

I plan to cook 4 suppers every week since we go out one night. Saturdays we usually eat leftovers, and Sundays are our meals with family. 

Here are some of the meals we've had in our rotations:

Chicken and Broccoli Casserole made in the slow cooker

Bean Burritos (I'm going to use this recipe next time to make them ahead)

Bacon & cheese lentil pie

BBQ baked potatoes (using leftover smoked pulled pork from the freezer)

Beef Enchiladas

Twice Baked Taco Potatoes

Beans and Rice

Pasta night (basically whatever kind of pasta we have on hand, pasta sauce, ground beef (cooked with spices, onion, and garlic), and cheese)

Black bean and corn topped potatoes

Baked lentils and rice

• We eat meatless meals about twice a week. 
• We have salad or a vegetable and fruit to go with each meal. 
• I buy organic whenever I'm able to. 
• We eat very little processed foods.
• I make as much as possible from scratch.   
• I know these may not be considered the most healthful meals you'll ever find, with all the potatoes and tortillas, but in this season of life cheap meals are a necessity...at least it's not fast food. :)

I hope you enjoy this little peek into how we "do" things around here. Let me know if you have any questions about my life or whatever. :)

Weekend Happenings

Lily and Levi got violin lessons on Friday afternoon. It was Levi's first, and he was beside himself with excitement! Lily is doing really well with her lessons, although she has a hard time just playing on one string at a time. :)

Jacob taught some private lessons Friday afternoon. Whenever Asher hears the violins start playing, he speed crawls to the door and peeks under. It's so funny! Last week he started banging on the door, so I've had to move him back to the living room to play. 

Asher managed to find the newspaper, which kept him occupied for awhile.

We got a quick supper at 5 Guys and then ran to Target to let the kids pick out something from the dollar section. We aren't paying them to do their chores - because there are just some things you do because you live here and you're part of the family. But we are paying them a little to do extra jobs. They are learning about giving money to the Lord and saving some and having some to spend.

Lily chose to get CandyLand band-aids. She used all 10 of them within 10 minutes...on one doll. :) 

This cheesy boy has got to get a haircut. My word! his hair is out of control!

The most amazing thing happened to me on Saturday. Now, for those of you reading, this is not to get sympathy or make you feel bad for my family. I've rarely talked about our financial struggles on here for those reasons, and the fact that God always provides, but I have to share this, because I saw God answer a specific prayer and I never want to forget it.

It was raining on Saturday afternoon, so as soon as Jacob got home from rehearsal, I headed to the grocery store by myself. I prayed on my way there that God would provide for me to get everything we needed on my list - I wasn't praying for someone to give me money, but that there would be unexpected sales, that I would find manager's specials, and that I would use our money wisely. 

{I know it may seem silly to some to pray over a little thing like this, but God cares even about the sparrows, and I know He cares for even our smallest needs. Side note: My Dad planted the church where I grew up and still go. He worked a secular job on top of being a pastor so he could provide for our family. I remember going shopping every week and my mom praying that God would stretch the money to cover the needs.}

This was my facebook status later in the day: 

    My heart is overwhelmed by the faithfulness of God! Today as I was getting ready to check out at the grocery store, a group of high-school age guys came up to me and said they had some money left over after getting what they needed and they wanted to give it to me to help pay for my groceries. All I could do was blubber out "thank you" through many tears. 

Never underestimate the power of prayer even in "small" things.

Saturday night while I was putting the boys to bed, Lily said she needed to go potty. She got a little chair so she could turn on the light, then all was quiet and I assumed she was doing her business. After I put Asher in bed I went to check on her and this is how I found her. She "did her eyebrows." LOL What I didn't find out until I was doing her hair Sunday morning was that she had also cut her hair with my little scissors! Thankfully it's not in a really noticeable place! She is a mess!

Levi insisted on wearing a tie to church because Uncle Joseph does. He didn't care that I didn't really go with his outfit. ha!

Playing at Grammie's house after Sunday dinner.

I made homemade pizza rolls for a fellowship after church Sunday night. They were soo good!

Sweetie just after waking up from her nap. 

Here's another story about Lily - she had trouble settling down for her nap so she got out of her bed (which she's not supposed to do and she normally doesn't) and closed her door (which I didn't hear because I was in the kitchen) and had a big time playing with her baby dolls. She eventually fell asleep on the floor which is where I found her when she woke up. Like I said, she's a mess!

Reading a bedtime story with Daddy.

Midweek Randoms

Monday was a really rough day at our house. All the kids were cranky and mama's patience wore thin many, many times throughout the day. I think the main reason for the crankiness was the busy weekend and not getting enough sleep. All three kids were up by 7:00 Monday morning...and they normally sleep til around 8 or 8:30. I think that day will go down in the books as my hardest day being a mother so far. I'm thankful for God's sufficient grace! I can't tell you the number of times I cried and prayed (out loud). 

Praise the Lord, Tuesday was a much better day! 

Jacob has so much going on this week - gone early in the morning and late at night.

It is so, so weird not being pregnant right now! This is the first Fall and Winter I haven't been pregnant in three years. As weird as it may sound, I kind of miss it! That being said, I can't imagine being pregnant with an almost 3 year old, almost 2 year old, and a 7 month old! Wow!

Asher started saying Da-Da on Monday. :)

Levi's favorite song right now is Amazing Grace. When I was rocking him before his nap yesterday, he asked for "Grace" and then after we would sing it he'd immediately say "again, again." 

Lily is getting to be so grown up. She is such a big helper to me and she cheerfully does her chores each day. I really need to make her a chore chart so she can mark off the chores when she gets them done.

After taking our babysitter home yesterday, we stopped by and visited Memaw and my parent's. Lily and Levi were so excited to go to the barn and "help" Papaw feed the animals. My dad is so sweet to give them little jobs to do so they feel like they are really helping. :)

Today we have errands to run and we are hoping to stop by and visit Jacob's Pawpaw. He loves to see the kids.

The verse that has been going through my mind all week is: Psalm 34:1 - I will bless the Lord at all times: his praise shall continually be in my mouth. Oh how I pray that this would be true in me!

Happy Wednesday!