Lest I Forget

Peter doesn't sleep very much or for very long. I have been trying to keep things in perspective. I mean, there are people with much worse problems than a sleepless baby. I keep thinking of those future saints who undergo being tortured for the faith. Then I think, isn't sleep deprivation a form of torture? I am averaging two hours of sleep a night. On a good night. Right now I am still functioning but I have a feeling it is going to catch up with me soon. I am offering up these sleepless nights and crazy days for a very special and worthy intention. My arms are so tired. Not just from holding him, but from our crazy nursing sessions. I am happy to report that he has been gaining weight and we have been able to completely eliminate the formula supplement. However, any visions of sweetly nursing a newborn are not happening here. He squirms and twists his body the whole time. He pops on and off. He arches his whole body until he looks like the letter u. It is like a wrestling m...

As most of you know, my last two children have dairy and soy protein intolerance. Little did I know that once you have a child with such an intolerance, subsequent children have a very high likelihood of also being intolerant. I really, really want to breastfeed this new baby. So, I have made the decision to go dairy-free before the baby is born. I am 18 weeks right now and my goal is to be completely dairy-free by 20 weeks. I want to be good at not eating dairy long before those sleepless nights arrive and I am in a fog. So I have been tweaking recipes, searching for new recipes and searching for dairy substitutes that are not yucky. This morning, I made Dutch Apple Bread. The recipe is filled with dairy. So I started making changes as I added ingredients to the bowl. It turned out delicious! Everyone agreed. Here is the dairy-free version: Dutch Apple Bread 1/4 cup coconut oil 1/4 cup applesauce 1/2 cup sugar 2 eggs 1 tsp. vanilla Cream together these ingredients, then ...

With all the other things that will be happening in these last weeks before our baby is due to arrive, I felt the need to ready the "nursery". The nursery is really a corner of our bedroom, but everything fits in just so. Waking up and seeing that little corner makes my heart happy. I did not want to spend a lot of money on bedding, but I accidentally left some batteries in a crib attachment that plays music and ruined our old set while it was stored in the attic. There were deep orange stains all over it and they would not wash out. I found the bumper on ebay for less than $20 and the quilt was a Target purchase that happened to be the exact amount of a gift card given to us by Tony's fellow bandsmen. I think my mom and I will make a bedskirt to hide the diapers underneath. Speaking of diapers, here they are, washed, folded, and ready to go! I did not use cloth diapers until our 4th baby, but I love using cloth. We tried out MANY different styles of diapers, but in the...