But I am not the only one growing a baby these days, it seems to be quite the trend. I’ve been thinking back on having the other kids, about being a first-time mom, about being new to the world of nursing sagas. Thinking about welcoming babies, about things that could have been easier. Thinking of things that I’ve learned now, but wish I had known the first time. Terribly incomplete, but I can’t focus for very long these days, so you will have to forgive that!

Ways to Ease the Welcoming of Babies

1) Buy some new make-up, get a haircut, paint your toenails, and get some cozy new stretchy lounge clothes that are cheerful and fresh before you have the baby. It makes you feel so much better, and the pictures will thank you. With my first baby, I gained 22 pounds. She was almost 9 pounds. I figured with the placenta, the water, and everything else (besides the fact that you feel super skinny right after delivering),  I could at least get into a few of my old clothes. Pulling out what I had deemed a loose button up shirt, I was unable to button any button but the neck. Nice. Don’t do this. Just wait until you are in a mentally and spiritually stable place before trying on your pre-pregnancy clothes! Now I have a pile of fat pants and fat-chance pants, proving that I have traveled this road before.

2) In the very beginning, trust your instincts, and look to your baby for answers. Do not let other people tell you what your baby needs, figure it out yourself. Of course I am not meaning to disregard medical advice or serious situations. I mean, in the normal scheme of “Is she hungry? Is she gassy? Is she wet? Is she tired?” Try to figure it out with your baby. Don’t stress about the baby crying and run look somewhere else for answers. Stay calm, look to your baby and work on figuring it out. And then, don’t take this too seriously. If you can’t figure it out, and you are sleep deprived and desperate, get help! Ask for ideas from people you trust.

3) About worry. I’m sure every mother remembers the first baby worry. Little burbles in the night, squeaks, choking while nursing, etc. Just remember that your baby is a gift, not a statistic. God created and sustained that life inside you. He gave you this child, open your hands to Him, and trust Him to protect what He has given you. I can remember specific times when I had to think, “Do not cling to this baby like it belongs to you. Open your hands to God, and trust Him to protect and preserve this little life.” Your protective instincts are good, but don’t let them rule over your heart.

4) Take advantage of the help you hopefully have in the first week or so. Everyone tells you this, but sleep when the baby sleeps! I did not do this the first couple times. Now, I know well that the help will end, the days will come when you cannot snooze in the middle of the day. Sleep when you can! It pays off when you are up in the night.

5) If you have other kids – especially little ones, put a baby gate in your bedroom door. I did this with Blaire, and it really helped. She slept in our room, so first thing in the morning I would clean our room, make the bed, etc. Then step over the gate into the real world. When I needed to nurse her, or change a blowout, I would go into our room. The little kids could come to the door, ask questions, and shout observations about how cute she was. It enabled me to not spend all the nursing time saying, “No, don’t climb on my lap. Don’t lean on the baby! Back off!” The gate was a simple way to enforce a boundary that everyone would have forgotten to obey in the excitement of a diaper change.

6) I used gallon ziploc bags to make what we called “blowout kits.”  They smashed flat easily in a purse or diaper bag, and came in excessively handy more times than I could easily tabulate. I included a one-piece outfit (usually pajamas), a cloth diaper or two (the cheap kind – in lieu of a changing pad). Diapers and wipes we always have in my purse, in the glove compartment, and in my husband’s back pocket, so I don’t include those. The best part is that you simply insert all the soiled goods right back into the ziploc, later to be plunged into oxyclean. If your child is a blowout hobbyist, you might want to keep one in the car too. And a stack of cheap cloth diapers kept me from always having to change the changing pad, or sanitize the diaper bag.

7) Do not mind telling people who want to hold your baby, “No thanks.” If you don’t feel like passing your baby around, don’t. This is a great reason to have a baby carrier of some description. It keeps people  from just trying to take the baby away from you, and might make you feel less awkward about saying no. Especially when the baby is new, and when a lot of people are around, feel totally free to say “I’m gonna take her back now, thanks!”  or “I’m gonna keep him right now.” Babies are not public domain, it’s ok to say no. You and your husband are the only people who have rights, everyone else is just asking.

Enjoy yourself. You know babies- they don’t stay that way long!

Well, Happy New Year! With the resurfacing of my old milkshake post came the reminder to me that I had promised a little more on the topic. Well, here I am, a whole year later, trying to do just that.

It does seem that every mother has energy, joy, and fulfillment sometimes, but consistently having these things can challenge us beyond what we feel is a reasonable amount. Joy all day? Every day? Even if Daddy is out of town, or when the whole family has the stomach flu, or when the pre-dinner warp spasm is upon the children? How can we maintain a cheerful, calm, happy, giving attitude when we certainly don’t feel like it? Well, here are a few thoughts, incomplete though they be, that may help us  get a little perspective.

1) Perspective is the key word. I mean big-picture, honest, for-reals perspective. Things can get smoshy and desperate and smelly and tense in our homes in very little time, because we keep people there. But the reality is, no matter how terrible it is, it isn’t terrible. Not in the cosmic scheme of life. Watch a little cell phone video made by people on high ground who watched their world float away in the tsunami in Japan. Think of your grievances about your day, were you to be airing them to a person  who suffered through something of this magnitude. Remove yourself from your fussing at the coffee shop to a nice caring friend and think of talking to someone like Corrie Ten Boom or Elizabeth Elliot about this problem. “AND THEN,” you say with dramatic tones, “THEY GOT NAIL POLISH ON THE CARPET!”  Get outside yourself for a minute and see what is really happening. You have miles and miles of a list of things to be actively grateful for (no matter how difficult your situation is), and you should try to keep it in mind when you start wanting to tally up the troubles you suffer.

2) The milkshake analogy is just descriptive of a feeling, but it isn’t how the thing works. A friend of my sister’s once sorrowfully told her husband that her well had run dry. His very wise response was to say, “But it isn’t a well, it is a river.” In actual point of fact, my energy and joy is not something that I drum up somewhere alone. It has tributaries. Contributors. Often times the takers are also the givers. This is especially true of your husband and children. When you give freely, you receive fully. Stingy out gets stingy in. An example of this would be holding yourself back from your husband simply because you feel tired, stingy, selfish, or generally put upon. Not only have you cut off a way that you could give to him, but you have cut off a cycle that gives to you as well. Nothing, when it comes to people, is entirely simple. When you need, give. When you are tired, look for ways to lift the burden of others.

Another example of this would be the mess in your house (I trust that you have one). When I focus on the mess, I am aggravated by the things that do not matter at the expense of the people who do. When I consciously refuse to be upset by the side product, I am free to enjoy the people who are messing it up. Giving my own work freely does not just make me a martyr.

Let’s say the twins come up the stairs in wild dress- up ensembles. Chloe has a purse full of playmobile people, and Titus is pulling a blanket loaded with duplos. I know what this means to the playroom, and I know what it means to the place they are seeing as a destination. It means an imposition on me. But if I freely give, I am also free to get a good laugh out of them. I enjoy what they are doing because I took my own little issues out of the picture. They delight me. They delight me even when they are bombing the house out, if I am looking at them and not at myself. So try to see moments that feel like a take-take-take as more of a give-and-receive, give-and-receive cycle.

3) Let’s talk more about messy houses, because I can’t stop. Imagine you spent the day rearranging and cleaning up the living space in your home. You have flowers and clean curtains and fresh throw pillows and maybe a candle. You are pleased. The right lights are on. Things are good. And then, like the wolf on the fold, the people in your life descend upon your work. They peel off socks and put their feet on the coffee table. They come from afar bringing baskets of craftiness to spread out upon the couch. They pop popcorn and carelessly munch. Someone goes so far as to get out the puzzles. In such a moment, it would be easy (don’t ask me how I know) to become shrill. It is easy to see each chin-glancing popcorn shrapnel as an insult. “Don’t you value the work I do?!” “Don’t you care how long this took me?!” “Why can’t you just not do this??” Even if you don’t say it, you may feel a little despair, a little resentment, and a little “why do I even try?”.

But the truth is, we need a new perspective. It is moments like this that should give us a lot of job satisfaction. These people are enjoying you. They are enjoying your work. But, like a great dinner all laid out on the table, you don’t enjoy it without touching it. A chef would not look at dishes coming back to the kitchen untouched as a sign of success. It would not mean great things about your work. Yet this is what we want from the work we do in our homes.

I’m sure most of you have noticed the magnetic power of what you clean. Clean the bookshelf up, and everyone wants to read. Organize the little toys, and everyone wants to play with the things they have been callously walking on for days. This is a sign that you are succeeding, that your people love your work. Think of it like food, because that is how it is getting used.

I love sharpies (I don’t listen, don’t bother to warn me about them) for writing names. So fast. Not fiddly. Come in good colors.

I love that Blaire prefers the bows for brooches, and removes them with haste from all presents that she notices.

I am relieved that I am almost done with Blaire’s stocking, all but the toe and the holly berries. I love that this picture captures the droopy tree, the enormous advent calendar, the stocking, and the wild party animal that is Blaire. The double-point needles that she stabbed into my yarn in a gesture of goodwill. Most of all, I love Christmas for kids. I love doing things that are outrageously tacky because the kids will love it. Like maybe stringing a full string of FLASHING Christmas lights across the kids’ table at Sabbath dinner. We want them to feel like we are really classy, you know?

But if you are all on board with the thought of loving your calling at home, but simply having trouble with the tangible ideas, here are a few:

1) Love the unlovely. Do something nice for the place you don’t like. This is one of the reasons that I knit dishcloths and buy nice soap for the kitchen sink. Not because I was so overwhelmed with love for the sink, but because a nice cheery dishcloth, cute tea towels, and yummy soap work together to make the kitchen sink a place that I have put some love, not just a bunch of stuck-on oatmeal. I always love the final step of rinsing out the cloth and hanging it to dry, making the sink look all cheery again.

2) Buy a book, and read it. Spend some time trying to absorb more information about what you do. Read a cookbook. Love of things can be contagious. Find a person who is so full of love for that thing, and listen to them talk about it. Find a passionate cook, and read what they have to say about it. I have read books on baking bread, books on laundering methods, books on interior design, and books on decorating cupcakes with strange combinations of candy products. Does this obligate me to a life of baking our bread, precision laundering, and perfect decor? Of course not. But it gives me more respect, more understanding, and more excitement about what I have to do.

3) Get some goals and work on them. I once made bagels every day for a week until I got them right. It was the same recipe, and it took me that long to master it. Did the same thing in our early marriage with baguettes. Turns out that things don’t always work the first time, but if you actually want to be able to do it, keep trying. Figure it out. I bet your husband won’t mind if you decide to master roast beef, or homemade pasta, or the perfect cookie. There is a lot of joy and satisfaction in achieving goals, as well as lots of opportunities to give up. Don’t.

4) Get your head in your home. If your head is always some place else, it is no wonder that your affections are also. A good way to refocus is to spend a couple days without any online activity. Give yourself a few minutes in the evening to check your e-mail and such, but otherwise spend your day mentally at home. Just give it a whirl. Although I think there are a great many fine things about social networking and iPhones, and all manner of technological advances, sometimes it just bogs you down. If you were really trying to get something done, would you invite thirty people over to run around the house with you showing you their family vacation photos, favorite songs, games they are playing, things they found shopping, or jokes they heard? Can you imagine the horror? But we do this all the time, and then wonder why we are feeling mentally fuzzy and zonked. Your mind is a busy thing, use it to help you with your own work, not the petty business of others.

As I rather speedily write this, I hear Chloe yelling “Baby Moses!!!” and Titus is just talking and singing about chicken on the bone. As for the birthday gifts? Chloe is looking for something girlie. Titus asked for a real sword. The kind that would make blood. However, he promised in advance to not wiggle it around anyone in the family. Just practice by himself in the basement. I don’t think he will be too disappointed with the nerf gun.

Love and respect are both very transformative. A loved woman becomes more and more lovely,  and respected men become more and more respectable. We all know this at a foundational level. It is true all over the world that when someone bestows love on something or someone, change is visible. I am not talking simply of emotions here – I mean the action of loving, or the action of respecting. Emotions follow actions, and it is one of the great myths of our time that love is an uncontrollable force, coming and going in ways beyond human control.

Our culture is plagued with women who do not love or respect their own callings.  Loving and respecting your calling at home is almost unheard of. Not one, not the other, but both. When you respect your calling at home, you will not struggle with your purpose. You will not feel wasted. You will feel the value of your work, and have the faith to see its power. But respect alone is not enough to make your work powerful, because respect alone is not enough to give you joy.

Homemaking is not respected in the world – it is held up as something that women with either no ambition or no ability might do. So when a Christian mother chooses to be at home because she understands what she is called to do, she may very easily fall into a low view of herself and her work. It would be easy for her to think, “My lot in life is messy diapers. I do this because I have to, and my church thinks I need to be at home with my children. Personally, I could see myself doing really well in real estate, because at least that is something that I am interested in.” So she begins to do the least possible to get through her tasks to just complete each day.

The problem in this sort of situation is that the woman is at home out of some sort of respect for the calling, but she has no love for it. Without the love there is no joy, and without the joy, the home becomes unlovely.

In another situation we might have a woman who has a lot of love for being at home, but no respect for what she actually is doing. She spends her days scrap-booking and watching reruns. She likes coziness, but not influence; comfort, but not power.  She does not value the force of her position, only the leisure and freedom it affords. In this situation, we see how the lack of respect for what she has turns into a different kind of powerlessness. She becomes irrelevant. If the woman who has no love for her calling communicates nothing, the woman without respect for her calling has nothing to communicate.

God does not want a bunch of women at home with discontent and fussy spirits, and He does not want us at home burying our talent in the ground. The Lord wants us here to do His work, to do what we are able to do. He wants our children to grow up in a place of joyful and loving faithfulness.  If we struggle with joy,  it is not as though there is no hope. We simply need to look for some tangible ways to love our homes, and our calling in them. And if we struggle with fulfillment, we need to look for some tangible ways to respect the work we are doing. Honor your calling by working hard, by pushing yourself to grow, to learn, to give. When you love, the object of that love grows more lovely. When you respect, the object of that respect becomes more worthy of it.

By God’s grace, a home that is full of both love and respect will become a place of joyful influence and potent comfort, a place that overflows with loveliness.

Have you ever noticed that when there is more than one straw in a milkshake, everyone sucks faster?  Everyone knows they are competing, and every sip from someone else means less for you. People start breathing through their noses to minimize lost time.

I have felt for a long time that when you have little children, they have a straw that taps directly into your energy. The milkshake cup is me, and the milkshake is my energy, and every child is armed with a straw. Infants who are either in the womb or nursing have a competitive edge on this, and get to take as much as they want before it even hits the glass.

The thing is, when the glass is full, things are pretty pleasant. No matter how much milkshake the kids are drinking, there is still some left. It feels pretty good. I am happy to feed them all. But when you hit the last inch of milkshake, all the straws start making that horrible noise as they swab around in the bottom of the glass looking for anything they could snag. They all feel the panic of limited supply. They all start getting intense and sucking much, much harder. They are panicked. I am getting panicked. I want everyone to stop so I could have a chance to whip up a new batch.  No one stops, because  they are trying to get the last of the film off the glass, leaving nothing behind and all that.

The demands for your attention and energy get suddenly loud and obnoxious when you feel like there isn’t anything left to give. The truth is, your children aren’t demanding anything different than what they were made to need. Usually, when they use this straw, they get fed. Right now, when they use this straw, mom gets eggy.

Of course the ideal would be to never run out of milkshake. To come up with strategies for sensing when it is going to run low. To start noticing what time of day this seems to be happening and taking preventative measures. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t even need to think about it, the milkshake would just replenish itself at intervals.

But this is the real world. The real, fallen, messy, difficult world. Every mother deals with having an empty glass and a bunch of straws. Almost every day. And while practice and training, and preventative measures might make things smoother, that doesn’t mean it will make it easier. It is simply going to be hard work.

If you trained as a runner, you would get better and better at running the same race over time. You would speed up. Your form would be better. You would probably enjoy yourself more. But it wouldn’t be easy. Professional athletes make what they do look easy. But if they are still pushing themselves, it is still hard.

I think it is common to have this mental ideal of what your days as a mother are supposed to be like. We think that if we were doing it right, then it wouldn’t  be this hard. Of course there are a lot of ways to improve what we do, that make things easier. But it is like improving the form of a runner. They still have to run in order to use it. It still won’t be easy. You can continue training to the point that you are no longer puking in the bushes and all red in the face by the end of the first block, but you aren’t ever going to take the running out of the running.

I was recently talking to my husband about this whole problem. Why is there almost always a time in the day when I feel like my head may explode, or fall off, or something equally dramatic? He pointed out that the apostle Paul addressed this very issue when he said ” therefore, since the race is so easy, and we aren’t having any trouble as we try to finish it….”  Totally cracked me up. And it is true.

When we are at home with our children, this is our sanctification. This is the testing of our faith. And it is Christ’s faithfulness that enables ours. It is our job to cast off sins, to be faithful. It is Christ’s job to renew us. We need to be faithful, because He is faithful to us. We can trust him to fill our milkshakes, because His never runs low.

And just to set the record straight: “Wherefore seeing we also are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us lay aside every weight, and the sin which doth so easily beset us, and let us run with patience the race that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the author and finisher of our faith; who for the joy that was set before him endured the cross, despising the shame, and is set down at the right hand of the throne of God.”

I have a couple of cookbooks that are slow cooker related, but if you have to sear the meat, caramelize the onions, and make a broth all before it hits the slow cooker, I think it has defeated the purpose. If I am going to do things like that, I use a dutch oven.

So, what do you make in the crock pot? Tell us about it! We need ideas!

So. Guess  what I just ordered for the home front. Vomit absorbing granules. Yes. Turns out that they make this stuff that neutralizes odor (!!!), and absorbs all fluids, enabling the vomit to be swept. I know what you are thinking. Swept? Disgusting! Of course it is, but not so bad as paper towels. Not so bad as rags that have to go in the laundry. Not so bad as vomit. Anyways, work with that info as you will. I just thought we should all know about this. You know, to be armed when the time comes.