September colds and Mom visits us

Well, Naisa caught something on Sunday at church and on Wednesday after Mom's group she got a shot nose and a fever. Then Thursday night, Yonah got a snotty nose and had a bad night sleep. I felt off yesterday and tired (because of the bad night of sleep and now today feel totally zonked (I don't know if anyone will know the meaning of that word in fifty years). I have a slight sore throat, and a slight stuffy nose, but mostly "stuffy brain" aka sinus stuff. and my energy went whoosh after my third visit to the little lady's room (which I think is caused more by the excess consumption of Vitamin C than anything else.)

Mom was here Wednesday through Friday morning and we made salsa and sauced some apples, and went to Shelah's garden. We got tomatoes, peppers, onions, chard, and a big bowl for making the salsa and the juicer! The juicer is fun! and easy to wash, so I love it.

We made 19 quarts of salsa, that will really help with covering our salsa costs for the year! And I have been making applesauce a couple times a week. I go out to the dwarf yellow delicious apple tree that is on the property we live on, and go pick half a bushel and fill my 5.5 gallon stock pot with halved (and de wormed) apples and cook it until they are soft. Then we get almost 8 quarts of apple sauce. I've been freezing it because that's where we have the most storage and it saves the most time. So now we have several gallons of applesauce.

We are almost out of the berries I picked in June and early July. I have one more gallon bag. The kids love them, and so does Ben so it makes sense they are almost gone.

The weather here has cooled down significantly, and it makes me think (fondly) of when I was pregnant with Naisa (the last month of pregnancy) and when she was first here. I have also had some interesting memories that weren't so pleasant: When it was raining outside and mom was here and we made popcorn I had a memory of watching seventh heaven in fredericksburg last year. And later that day when Ben and I were riding in the car and it was raining and the heat was on in the car and I was wearing my knitted hoodie (the feeling on my skin), between all of those things it reminded me of the two day drive we had to do from Fredericksburg, VA to Nashville, TN, and how I had to drive with four month old baby Yonah by myself for a the long drive. I had to stop to nurse him several times and he had gas for a last portion of the drive on the first night and just screamed for like a half an hour in the car and because I was so exhausted I just cried with him. I needed a break. It was hard. So it wasn't a happy memory to be reminded of.

Please pray for grace for the neighbor boy that no one has enough patience for. And that everyone starts feeling better.

29 weeks: we all get sick, and a circumcision decision

Naisa got a cold last Monday:  coughs, runny nose, and she passed it on to Mommy first. . . As to be expected. I didn't think it would get too bad, because I've been working on taking  my vitamin, FCLO, and eating pretty clean. But, woe is me , it seems that Ben and I got the brunt of it. We have major nose cloggage and pressure that goes with it. It's very uncomfortable; we have had a lot of trouble sleeping. I think this is the main thing that has made our colds seem to last longer than Naisa's. We haven't been able to nap during the day, like I have mandated Naisa to.

So we are grudging through, looking forward to the end of it. And I'm hoping that I will begin to sleep better. I have been experiencing third trimester insomnia, which I experienced last pregnancy as well. I think that I have had trouble because of the weather warming up, and I only sleep well when I am relatively cool. 

On another note, I have been against the circumcision procedure since we were pregnant with Naisa. I didn't do research on it, mainly because toward the end of pregnancy, we had a name and a feeling it was a girl. This time around, because we had our "twin" ultrasound and met this little boy, we knew that we needed an answer to that question. Ben wanted to circumcise, and had this idea of finding a mohel (traditional Jewish official that performs circumcisions for Jewish parents on the eighth day, at their naming ceremony). We knew it was possible that we wouldn't find one, and since I put Ben in charge of doing that research because I didn't want to do that, he was doing the research. He got excited when h found a Messianic Jewish mohel, only to find out through email that he had retired from performing circumcisions years ago. 

Then a mom through one of my natural blog networks posted a question finding good research on circumcision. And several moms posted links to lectures, videos, and blogs with information. I opened one of them and surprised, found myself watching a lecture by someone I met when I was in DC! 

Naturally, I was intrigued and I listened to the lecture. About halfway through, he showed a video clip, with sound, of a little newborn boy being circumcised. I only watched maximum five seconds of it, because my momma alarm was going off and I couldn't soothe that baby. 

Later, I finished the lecture, but I told Ben about it and he said he wanted to see it. So I pulled it up for him, started the video, and promptly left the room with Naisa so I wouldn't be traumatized.

After that, Ben decided that we weren't going to circumcise. The problem with modern circumcision is that it no longer resembles the Jewish tradition of cutting the foreskin. Babies foreskins were "trimmed", not removed. This is what the modern procedure does: it separates the foreskin from the glans, a VERY painful portion of the experience, and then is cut off, with no anesthesia. Lots of boys fall into shock during this process. And then the newborn has a wound in the most sensitive organ of his body for the first two weeks of his life, exposed to feces and urine. The foreskin actually protects the penis from the diaper contents.

Anyway, I am thankful to have this information, have this decision out of the way.it would have been a challenge to figure out which doctor to circumcise our son, due to the financial situation we are in.

This little baby has been kicking away and is very lively all day long. Braxton Hicks contractions come and go, and are prevalent when I walk. My appetite is way down, and I think thats because of feeling sick. I am looking forward to enjoying eating again. 

That's all I can think about right now. Ben is listening to Ray Comfort, so it's hard to focus. Especially because I'm sick.

Cold Weekend

So it wasn't really cold. I was cold. I had a cold.
Full blown, crusty itchy nose, sore sinus, headache in the morning, cough with hacking tendencies, and also a little chest pain when I would breathe in deeply. These things all combined led to some rather bad nights of sleep in a bed that wasn't mine.
What did I do?
I went down to EMU for the weekend.
I rode in with Doug, Kim, Emily, and Lindsay, and I actually drove part of the way down. (I haven't driven a car since December). The discussion in the car was interesting, as they are the directors and we are the students, they were asking us about the other people in the house, and what is going on with the current alcohol situation. We arrived a little after five.
My dad came into town, and I stayed at my grandparents house. We had a great supper--Grandma Peg is doing the East Orthodox fast for lent--she's eating vegan this lent, so there were many different options for me to eat vegetarian food, which I was thankful for.
Friday morning I woke up with a gravelly voice at six thirty. Sure, I had time to get ready, but I was really unmotivated by the cold that was overtaking me. Jess and I practiced before everyone else came to plan the skit and it was still really bad, so I decided that I was going to sing softer than I would normally, which turned out fine, except the song didn't have the "graceesque" that I wish I could have added.
Bryan did a prayer, Jasmine and I shared. My sharing was all over the place. I had about half a journal page of notes that I was going off of, and I could have kept sharing, but I was talking fast, covering a lot of material and baring my soul to a lot of people that didn't know a lot about me until that point (there was a large amount of campus visitors attending the chapel). We shared three skits about our time in DC. The first one was about my experience at the Funky Fleamarket, and I was Doug's character, not myself. The skit after that was about Marty Langelman, who came in and taught us some self-defense ideals during orientation--Jess was Marty, and she did an amazing job. Corrie played the "man in the grey sweater". The third skit was about Fetsum and the Dkembe Mutombo experience after the MLK event at the Kennedy center. Fetsum played himself and it was completely hilarious. Corrie shared after that and the entire chapel was a success.
I met with Laura after chapel. The discussion wasn't as great as the first one we had (there was a bit of distraction in Common Grounds), but it was beneficial nonetheless.
I stayed in common grounds for a little while. I was checking my connections on my computer (aka Facebook and Gmail) and then my friend Anca came in and ate lunch and talked with me, and that was nice. She's taking three sciences this semester (insane) but it also working at taking piano lessons, and was telling me about how she's working on a Music minor and really loves music. I was glad to hear that and relate with her. She had made a comment about me asking her for the recipe for her vegan chocolate chip cookies, so I was telling her about my conversion to vegetarianism, and my tendency to want to eat vegan (though it's really hard to resist a good cup of chai tea) We ended our discussion close to one, because I wanted to be able to use my coupon to eat in the cafeteria.
I ate with Jamila, Mike, and a Prospective student named Liz and her father. Once they left I sat at a table with Taylor and Austin and was having a great conversation with them about dumpster diving, and other things, and soon we walked over to Common Grounds and watched the men's basketball game on online feed. (which the Rocking ROYALS WON with a 20 point advantage)
Janelle and I went thrift store shopping.
I got some new running shoes when Dad and I went to the mall later.
We went back to Grandma and Grandpa's for supper later.
Saturday started out awesome. I went over to EMU for part of Jamila's birthday celebration, and Margaret and Melanie where there from HDC, and I got to connect with them a little bit. Some of the guys made couscous and a chickpea stew that was very spicy.
Then Meg and I decided to try to get some people interested in playing a board game, and sufficiently getting some, we trooped off to find some board games. Coming up with only Settlers and Taboo after a long search, we came back physically tired, while the group we came back to had been exhausted--by homework, tours, activities of other excitement and such, and so there we were, three other participants willing enough to play a card game. Not what we had in mind, but it worked.
Crystal and I also ended up watching an epic movie that was four hours long. It was a good movie. but it was long.
I went to the Haiti benefit meal with Dad, Crystal, and Ellie, and had fun teasing a little boy while waiting in line to get food. I did try some of the desserts, though I gave up sweets for lent, because I knew it would be a long time before we had them again (I haven't had flan since my sophomore year in high school, and baklava since last fall).
Dad and I went over to Jon and Amy's house to see the boys after that--we saw baby Jarren, and also how much all the boys had grown up. While we were there, The Longest Yard came on, and we watched it until the end. I got a lot of knitting done on my blanket square I was working on.
Sunday I didn't come to church until later, and had a hard time finding it too, and then felt sick the entire service, and had to stare at a couple sitting in front of me, looking lovingly into each others eyes the entire time. It was cute, but at my state of nausea, it was sickingly cute. Literally.
Dad and I left for DC around 2:40, after having some Ethiopian coffee with Grandma and Grandpa.
I started working on my fourth square for my blanket.
Dad came with our group to the interactive project at the Dance Place that was one of the things we were going to as a group. It was interesting and beneficial, but also awkward at the beginning--I don't know if anyone was expecting it to be what it was, but we had a good time.
What should I have done?
Slept more, drank more tea (although Dad will tell you that I have no problem downing it)
sat somewhere and knitted.
sucked my cough drops and blew my nose.
But I did all of these things within my days...