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World Breastfeeding Week

August 1st-7th is World Breastfeeding Week! Click here to find events in your area. I breastfed both of my babies for two and a half years --- five years straight. I feel blessed by the nursing relationships that I had with my babies.

Breastfeeding can come easily or it can occasionally be difficult for various reasons. My firstborn took right to it and I had no difficulties nursing her. My second baby was born with an extremely short frenulum (tongue-tied) and it took a lot of time, effort, and too many tears to count to establish our nursing relationship. If she had been my first, I might have been convinced that I wasn't able to breastfeed. That is why I hope that anyone reading this and contemplating whether or not breastfeeding is right for them will educate themselves and realize that obstacles in breastfeeding aren't the norm nor are they insurmountable when they do arise.

Breastfeeding your babies is one of the greatest gifts you can give to them. If you are not convinced, read this.

A Time To Launder

Every year, when we finish our lessons and summer is quickly upon us, I think that I will be able to relax. I dream of long, lazy days riding bikes with the girls, reading books, napping in the yard and going swimming together. I think of our upcoming vacation as an idyllic week of soft sunrises, lapping waves, long walks, and ocean breezes. When we finish up our school lessons, I breathe a huge sigh of relief and think that the pressure is finally off.

I must be delusional. And July is the month that really proves it. This year, as in previous years, we end up driving one of our dear daughters to camp for a week and then going back the following weekend to pick up the one and drop off the other dear daughter. Then we must go back to fetch the second dear daughter and turn around and head twelve hours away to a house on the beach of a beautiful island that my husband's family goes to each year.

These are blessings, but they also find me spending an entire month doing nothing but laundry, it seems. Well, more laundry than I typically do. I wonder why I can only find three pairs of socks for my youngest to take to camp and when my oldest decided to take a size nine-and-a-half in women's shoes. I wonder how every stitch of clothing I sent to camp with each of them manages to come back wet. I wonder how much sand will come back with us from the beach and if it will have a detrimental effect on our new washer and dryer. I hope that no one decides to bring home another half-dead starfish in a suitcase. Or brings home another palmetto bug squashed for twelve hours in his shoe. My only comfort is in the fact that we often have fewer clothes as the summer wears on. If that could be considered a comfort.

Just when I think it is all over, it is all over. Suddenly it is September and we are back to our lessons. I think, perhaps, it is time I quit dreaming and just start enjoying whatever it is that's set in front of me.

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;
A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

What profit hath he that worketh in that wherein he laboureth?
I have seen the travail, which God hath given to the sons of men to be exercised in it.
He hath made every thing beautiful in his time: also he hath set the world in their heart, so that no man can find out the work that God maketh from the beginning to the end.
I know that there is no good in them, but for a man to rejoice, and to do good in his life.


Ecclesiastes 3:1-12

Say Cheese!

Look at me now! I'm being featured over at Self Portrait Day!

A Day Late...

Yes, I know I am a day late posting this, but the fireworks didn't go off until after nine o'clock last night and we didn't get home until nearly midnight. It was a beautiful night with young children spread about our family's big blanket. Mostly our friends' children. Some napping, some holding small frogs and giggling, some just lying there in awe of the magical light show in the sky.





Freedom is not an unlimited license, an unlimited choice, or an unlimited opportunity. Freedom is first of all a responsibility before the God from whom we come. ~Alan Keyes