what's up weekly. (and juniper at five months!)

FRIDAY, FRIDAY, FRIDAY!  (Anyone hear me saying that in my best Monster Truck Rally Announcer voice?  Because that's what I was going for.)

Okay, let me just jump in with our main news of the week.  Last Thursday night, I went grocery shopping.  I buy groceries every three weeks, so when I bring groceries home, our house is kind of busting at the seams.  Then on Friday, I noticed the freezer drawer in our main upstairs fridge was kind of warm.  The ice wasn't totally frozen, and the ice cream was soggy.  By Saturday morning, the upper part of the fridge was warm as well.  By Saturday night, the fridge was caput.  Bad timing, with all that fresh food in there!

I got in touch with a friend of ours who is an appliance repairman, and after running him through some details of what was going on, he was pretty confident that it would cost more to repair than to replace.

So I moved all of the food I could to our downstairs fridge and chest freezer.  I also ordered a fridge, but it won't be delivered until next week, and in the meantime our dead fridge stinks to high heaven and I'm in a panic every time we have to carry food and beverages up and down the basement stairs.  (PTSD from the time we spilled milk on the basement stairs and wound up having to replace the carpet to the tune of $2500.  If you haven't heard that story, you should go back and read it - God is so good.)

But I suppose the good news is that I will have a brand new fridge!  (That looks pretty much exactly the same as the old one, except perhaps a bit too deep for the old fridge hole.  Fingers crossed that works itself out.)  And miraculously, all we lost was some ice cream, some frozen veggies, and most of our condiments.  And I'm totally trusting that God will work out the details of the unexpected expense - he's always been so faithful in the past.  So I'm excited to watch what happens with all of this!

Other than that, life has been relatively normal around here.  Saturday morning at Shelter Gardens - beautiful as always.  I'm really loving my weekly retreats, and would love to fill you in on those sometime soon.

I've been working on getting some bookshelves up in the dining room, and this week I tackled the first stages of building them in.  A friend lent me some tools, and showed me how to get started with removing the trim so I could get the bookcases flush against the walls.  And then I went to town.  You guys, it turns out I am handy.  I used a power saw - albeit a tiny, adorable one, but that makes it all the more up my alley.  I like my power tools diminutive.  (Have I ever told you that I keep my tools in a cute little bag that I call The Tool Purse?  Also, it's purple.  Also, so are all my tools.)

Anyone have a pretty, vintage door laying around that I could have to replace this godawful eyesore? 30x80, kthanks!

Todd caught this classy candid of me: wine, cheese and a good book.  Does it make it less classy that I'm eating the cheese by the 'hunk,' and that the cheese smelled so bad that Todd thought I'd farted?  (No cheese-cutting here in any regard.)  Ahh, Manchego.  How I love you and also am embarrassed to be around you.

Juniper turned five months old on Sunday!  She is so wonderful and chill.  She will seriously just hang out on the couch or on the floor for an hour or so while she's awake, watching the kids, chewing on her hands or a blanket, kicking her legs.  Living her best life.  She has figured out how to roll from her tummy to her back, but hasn't yet figured out how to roll from her back to her tummy... which is rough in the middle of the night, as she sleeps on her tummy.  She'll roll over onto her back, and then not be able to get back to a comfortable sleeping position, and then just cry while she lays there like an overturned turtle.  At which point, she's awake enough to want to eat again... the four month sleep regression is still going strong a month later.  I miss her old pattern of sleeping through the night.  But it's all good, because LOOK HOW BEAUTIFUL AND PERFECT SHE IS! (I'm not smooching the computer screen; YOU'RE smooching the computer screen.)

Oh, oh.  Guess what else!  SHE IS LAUGHING AND IT IS THE MOST WONDERFUL THING EVER.  Watch this with the sound in - the best part of your day is about to start right now.



And, not to be outshone, here is Lissa Lou in a knight helmet, showing off some of our new porch décor. Becuz ynot.

And not to be outshone by the one who refuses to be outshone, here is Laurelai singing an original song.  The tied-for-best part of your day is about to start right now.




Pretty soon, I'm hoping to have the girls' room ready for Callista to move in, so that I can move Juniper into the nursery.  I have curtains and curtain rods to hang, and some stuff to square away in the closet first.  But in the meantime, the sleeping arrangements in there are satisfactory to all.

And, as a reward for reading all the way to the end, here is something to delight you.  This came up on my feed recently, and I couldn't not share.  TINNNY VAN VOORSTS! FIRST DAY OF SCHOOL EVER!  POTTY TRAINING FINNEAS!  MY OLD, PRETTY PORCH! So much delight for one day.

caring for my people, and the unusual reasons i use essential oils.

In the last two weeks, we've had a weird amount of sickness in the house.  This is unusual for us - we usually don't feel 'hit' by cold and flu season until about February, from which point on we are often sick until June.  (That's life in a large family; the germs just keep making the rounds.)  But here it is, September, and it's in the eighties so it still feels like summer, but my mind is suddenly feeling forced into Doomsday Prepper mode - what will I need to have in my arsenal to hopefully fend off The Crud this winter?

An old photo of broth simmering away on the stovetop and in my pressure cooker.  Remember when my kitchen used to be green and brown?  Rough times.

I have stuff on hand to start brewing Fire Cider.  I have elderberry syrup kits.  I want to get some garlic fermenting.  I have ascorbic acid Vitamin C, colloidal silver, and Vitamin D3/K2 drops.  My freezer is typically stocked with plenty of broth.  And I have essential oils.

I use a nail polish organizer to keep them within easy view inside my linen closet.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again:  I like oils.  They work.  I don't think they're a cure-all for every result of the Fall, but I do think they're a helpful part of a greater wellness arsenal.

I have been musing on home life lately, and looking to author-mentors to guide me along the way, and two things that have continued to come to mind through my readings are atmosphere and memory.  And I realized that essential oils could play a much larger part in a home atmosphere of care and compassion than I first realized.

To use an example, if a child has a headache, and I give them a Tylenol to swallow, it may help the headache, but it has mostly removed me personally from the process.  I have solved the problem, but I have not necessarily entered into the sickness.  However, to use a medium like essential oils is to touch my hurting child.  Some of the oils themselves, like peppermint or eucalyptus, feel immediately soothing, and my hands administer that.

Personally, I need this opportunity.  I'm not particularly patient with illness; it frustrates and exasperates me when the kids are sick.  I know myself too well to think I can be trusted with a cabinet full of easy, impersonal pills as my first line of defense.  I need to be trained to enter into my kids' suffering with compassion, understanding and patience.

(Now, I realize there may come a time for pharmaceuticals.  But I want to make my first attempts mine.  I want to be personally, intimately there with my kiddo as much as I can.)

Additionally, not only do oils utilize healing touch, but they also have distinct smells.  Which, I know, duh.  But the sense of smell is strongly linked to memory, and I want to leverage every tool at my disposal to help my kids form good memories of their life in our home.  Edith Schaeffer says that the only way to keep time is to take it with us into the future as memories.  Our life on earth is fleeting, but we can redeem the passing time by hanging onto as much of it as we can through intentional memory-making.  I want my adult kids to smell peppermint and experience comfort as they remember me rubbing their heads or their bellies when they didn't feel well.  I want them to have triggers for memories of being cared for and loved well when they were at their most vulnerable.

So I have made it a point lately to pull out my oils when there are opportunities to do so, and my kids are noticing.  They are asking for them, and telling me how much they like it when I use them.  I know that in our home, an atmosphere of care and compassion is slowly growing like leaven through a lump of dough, and I'm excited by that.  And time will tell whether they're forming the memories I hope they are, but I can pray they are and I'm doing what I can to help them.

Practically speaking, if you haven't used oils much, I can tell you that you don't need a ton of them to start, and you don't need to buy super pricey ones.  Plant Therapy is an excellent, super high quality brand, and Edens Garden is also good and comes in prettier packaging.  (Priorities, am I right?)  Most of the oils and blends I use are in the $8-$13 range, which helps me feel like I'm balancing the stewardship of both our heath and our finances at the same time.

These are the oils that I personally use the most:

Peppermint: for headaches and tummy aches in kids over six.  Peppermint can irritate airways in younger kids, so we don't use it on them.  Plant Therapy (here and here) and Edens Garden (here and here) both offer oil blends for these ailments that are safe for younger kids.  For the older kids, I buy the kind already diluted in a roller bottle, as it makes it easy to apply, and peppermint is a strong oil so I want to make sure the dilution is correct.

Lavender: for headaches, sleep disturbances, stress, and skin issues (rashes, itchiness).

Tea tree/melaleuca: as an antibacterial in cuts and scrapes.  I also sometimes put it in homemade cleaning solutions for extra germ-fighting.


A couple extras that get more occasional use:

Helichrysum: to stop bleeding.  EXCELLENT for nose bleeds.  It's a pricey oil, though, and while I'm glad I have it, I'd be able to live without it if I needed to, as my kids aren't major bleeders.

Frankincense: for skin issues, especially scarring.  This oil is also a bit more expensive than the first three (though not as expensive as helichrysum), and gets less use.  I just personally have a major beef with scarring, so I like having it on hand, but it's not absolutely necessary.

Healthy Hero: a kid-safe immunity blend.  (Did you know Thieves is not recommended for use around children under the age of 10?  As this is the age range most of my kids are in, I don't even have a normal/non-kid-safe version on hand.  It's important to me to make sure I'm not risking their health when I'm trying to build their health!) I honestly don't use this as much as I could/should, but it does get pulled out occasionally.


And, not related to curing illness, but for creating atmosphere and smell-linked memories in our home, I've fallen in love with diffusing this lately:

It is called Lemongrass Ylang Ylang from Edens Garden, and it has magnolia in it, so it's definitely floral.  But it's balanced with citrus, which smells really clean.  It might not be for everyone, but we love it!  I have become super sensitive over the last few years to synthetic fragrances, and 'stuff' in the air.  Sometimes I even get physically ill.  But oils haven't done that to me, so I like having an intentional scent in our home that doesn't make me feel crappy, or put toxins in the air around the kids.


So while those aren't earth-shattering reasons to use oils, I do feel like they're the most compelling ones in our house, and ones I don't see mentioned often in the discussion.  Soon, I'll fill you in on another surprising tool that Scripture instructs us to have in our wellness arsenal...

what's up weekly.

YEAH YEAH YEAH.  Friday!

Friday is quickly becoming the best day of the week.  (For reasons other than because Friday is objectively the best day of the week.)  (Though, subjectively, it is now giving Mondays a run for their money, and y'all know how I feel about Mondays: All The Smooches.)

Fridays now involve tea time, artist and composer study, mapwork (which is weirdly a favorite subject amongst all of us, which I didn't anticipate becoming the case), and our nature walk.  This is major for me, because consistent nature walks are something I have been terrible at keeping on the schedule.  It's something that easily gets dumped off the list for me.  But I have found my magic Nature Walk Formula: set an appointment with someone who expects you to show up.  Namely, set an appointment with Todd.

So now every Friday we head over to Shelter Gardens, where we eat a picnic lunch with Todd and take a walk around the grounds.  Is it nature in its most primitive? No.  Is it nature at its most varied?  No.  But it is nature.  And I like the fact that we'll become really familiar with this one spot, and see it change week to week as the seasons change.  I'll hopefully get around to documenting more about it, but for now, that's all I have to say about that.

In other Notable News: Finneas turned seven and a half!  He now has one big tooth on top, filling the hole that has been there for the past two or three years, since they pulled the baby one.  It's nice to see a toothy grin again, though I will miss how scrappy he looked for so long.

In Bruise News, I have a Bruise.  This is no ordinary bruise, friends.  This Bruise can be seen yards away.  This Bruise looks like I should be pressing charges.  But in fact, this Bruise exists because I scratched a single bug bite too hard.  Scripture says creation is groaning under the curse, and I can tell you that the capillaries in my thigh are definitely under the reign of entropy.  It will all be made new.  It will all be made new.

On Saturday, I took the morning to head out by myself for a little alone time.  This chunk of time has become a lifeline for me.  I look forward to it all week - not because I don't love my people and my home base.  I really, really do, and even now, I can't get enough of them.  But there is something about being alone for a couple of hours to think linear thoughts, to read my Bible, to plan my week, to breathe... I come home refreshed and ready to pour it all out again.  This week, I grabbed an iced coffee and then headed back to Shelter Gardens to read my Bible in the shade of a tree, listening to a waterfall.  Not too shabby.

After I got home, we rounded up the kids and ran a couple of errands.  We needed to get some plywood to support the girls' new mattress, and I needed to get a new vacuum.  Our old one is on the fritz, and while I think it's just a belt issue that will be easily resolved with a little finagling, I don't have much time to finagle in the immediate future, and I'm in desperate daily need of a vacuum.  We vacuum twice a day at the moment, and that's still probably not as often as we should be doing it to keep up with the mess.  Our floors are disgusting.

You know that thing like when you watch New Girl, and Jess is so cute with her fake eyelashes and her big hair, and then Megan Fox shows up, and Jess suddenly looks like a big dull dud you could run into at Fareway on a Thursday?  My new vacuum makes my old vacuum look like that.  They're literally the same make and model, but my six-years-newer vacuum is just so Megan Fox.  It is now evident to me that the hose on my old one is held together with neon pink duct tape, and the canister is coated with greasy slime.  I still love it but... the magic has faded a bit.  It will be relegated to basement duty.

Sunday's big news was that Juniper cut her first tooth!  WHERE DID MY BABY GO AND WHO IS THIS TODDLER?  Okay, okay.  Maybe that's overkill.  She's still in toe-grabbing stage, so I still have time to grieve the passing of her infancy.  She had her four-month appointment on Tuesday, at which she measured at the 44th percentile - I'm pretty sure that's the largest any of our babies has been at four months.  I'm going to start calling her The Big Tiny.

(Rando sidenote, I was once in a yoga class in which the yoga instructor kept mixing up the two names for this pose - Happy Baby and Dead Bug - and calling it the Dead Baby.  I think that may have been the last yoga class I ever attended, but I don't think it's because of that.)

This week, school has been much kinder to us.  I think I'm finally finding a rhythm that works for us to get everything accomplished without major stress, which is an answer to prayer.

On Wednesday, we found ourselves with a very unusual, totally open day.  Normally we drive up to the Amish in the morning, but a friend was headed up there and offered to pick up my stuff for me so I didn't have to go.  And we typically take Wednesday afternoons off anyway.  And Atticus and Todd had driven to Kansas City for an orthotropics appointment, so I was actually down one kid.  So the day was wide open... so I had a friend show me how to cut some trim out in the dining room to make room for our bookshelves, and I painted the boys' room.  It was a much bigger undertaking than I had anticipated, and I was a little underprepared, so the ceiling still isn't totally done, but it needed it and I had time, so I just jumped right in.

Did I clean up to make this room look better on the internet?  I'll let you be the judge of that.

Of course I don't have "After" photos, which I really should get because it looks so much better, but that's clearly not hard.  Their room was a total sty.  It's in the back corner of our basement, so I don't have to face it very often, so it gets bad.  It was dingy and dirty and cluttered - but things are looking much better now.  (You'll just have to trust me.)

And yesterday was more of the same: schoolwork and house projects.  We have been keeping busy around here!  I'm ready for our house to hit a period of rest and rhythm, but I'm loving all the transformations taking place - maybe I'll have to do a tour post on all the new things happening.

laurelai's sixth birthday.

Laurelai's birthday party was a couple of weekends ago now (how the time flies!), so I thought it's about time to tell you about it!

First of all, she turned six, so I think it goes without saying that it was Hello Kitty-themed.  (I'm not sure where she has even seen Hello Kitty, but she's seriously obsessed.  Anytime anyone leaves our house - Todd, myself, strangers - she pleads for us to "honk and say, 'Bye, Hello Kitty!'"  So when Todd walks to work in the morning, he has to make the hand gesture for honking and mouth, "Bye, Hello Kitty."  It's a whole thing.)

As usual, we served tacos at the party, because they feed a lot of people (my parents came down for the shindig) and who doesn't like tacos?

As pictured above, she chose a donut cake for dessert.

Penelope spent the morning working on making her some maple fudge.  They'd seen the recipe in Farm Anatomy months ago, and it has been a plan long in the making.

Two things about maple fudge: first, it was weirdly difficult to make.  I figured since it only had four ingredients, it should be easy enough, but it involved a candy thermometer and like twenty minutes of cooking, followed by an hour and a half of cooling, followed by a half an hour of stirring until our biceps turned to dust, followed by four hours in the fridge.  It was a major undertaking.  Second, it turns out Laurelai doesn't like maple fudge.

Luckily, she does like presents.

She got a quilt set for the new bed we're putting in her room.  Which, if you know me at all, has turned into a mini room makeover, because once I get the decorating ball rolling, I just can't stop it.  It's physics, that's all.  Pure physics.

She specifically requested ballerina clothes, and my parents came through.  After presents, I dug out my old pointe shoes and we danced together for a bit.  Laurelai says that her biggest dream is for us to form a mother-daughter ballet troupe when she's a grownup, and spend our days dancing together.  However, it would appear I have some work to do to make that dream happen, as I am most definitely no longer in ballerina shape.  My ankles hurt for like three days after her party.  So she may just have to be the headliner, and I make a token appearance gracefully waving a rose in the background.

The kids made her all kinds of amazing gifts, like this little cutout of the family that Finneas created...

...and this paper doll from Atticus.

We are so in love with our little six-year-old!  She is funny and adorable and pocket-sized.  She loves playing with Barbies and dancing ballet.  She doesn't seem to require food or sleep, so I'm pretty sure her body sustains itself on oxygen and rainbows.  She tells the funniest jokes with no punchline.  (Last night's joke was, "Someone asked me, 'how big is a car?'  So I was lookin' online, and I found a Beetle.  And I was lookin' online, and I found a Smart Car.  And I was lookin' online, and I found a Mustang.  And I was lookin' online, and I found a regular van.  And I was lookin' online, and I found a pickup.  And I was lookin' online, and I found a Kraken.  And I was lookin' online, and I found a MONSTER TRUCK! And I said, Monsters have trucks?"  Bah-dum-cha.)  She loves school, and is quickly learning to read.  She draws the most adorable pictures of people, including melt-your-heart pictures of Jesus.  She is a prayer warrior.  She loves praying any opportunity she gets, and will beg to pray and sing over any siblings who are being laid down to sleep (including every single time Juniper goes down for a nap throughout the day).

Our little Lolo is such a gift to us, a constant ray of sunshine with a beautiful smile and kind words ready for everyone.  She is salty sweetness that makes getting out of bed in the morning worth it.  We just wouldn't be the same without her!

'what's up' weekly.

It's Friday, Friday, gotta blog down on Friday.  Also, HOW IS IT FRIDAY?

Does anyone else feel like this week was super weird?  Like time bent or something?  It went fast, then crazy slow, then super fast again for us.

Saturday was Lolo's birthday party!  My parents came down from Iowa, and we all partied like six-year-olds, which meant we ate tacos, and donuts with Hello Kitty confetti all over them.  (Six-year-olds know how to party.)

Our gift to her was big girl bedding, to go on her BRAND NEW BIG GIRL BED!  I had found a gorgeous Jenny Lind bedframe on Facebook that's so old, it was evidently made before standard mattress sizing, but with some modifications it now fits a double mattress.

But you know how I am with decorating projects.  We got Penelope's bed taken out of the room, and the new bed set up, and it was obvious to me that we needed to rearrange things.  After trying a few different positions in the room, I found the perfect spot for it... but it meant taking out the crib.  And once the crib was out, it was obvious the bookshelf needed to move.  And once the bookshelf moved, it was obvious how pretty the old blue and white rug from our living room in Cedar Falls would look in there.  And once the rug was in there, we discovered the pile of the rug was so thick that the closet door wouldn't open, so we removed the closet door...  Like I said, it became a whole 'thing.'  It took up most of the evening on Saturday, but things are mostly situated now.

But now it's obvious the girls need curtains and a bed skirt, and now that the crib has been dismantled, I need to figure out where we're going to put Callista when we move her out of the nursery to make room for Juniper.  (Rocco is now on the toddler mattress that slides under the bed during the day.)  I think the closet is just deep enough to fit a pack and play, so I might put Callista in there.  But if I do that, I will need to find a spot for Penelope's dresser and all the kids' church clothes... Gah.  You solve one problem and cause fourteen million more.  But it will all fall into place at some point, I hope.  In the meantime, it seems people are happy with the current setup.

On Sunday, Todd taught on Genesis 23 at church.  If you haven't listened to it already, you really should.  It was about Sarah's burial, and it was informative and challenging and moving and thought-provoking.

Monday was Labor Day, and Todd was home from work, so we didn't do school.  I spent the morning out on my own - lately, I've needed to take a few hours each week to clear my head and be alone to think.  With vacation and Laurelai's birthday, it had been about three weeks since I'd gotten some space like that, and I was really needing it.  So Todd offered to hold down the fort, and I went to Lowe's to pick up some plants for the front yard.  (The hostas I had planted around the rock a while ago all got sunburned and ravaged by deer, so things were looking pretty sad.)

Later in the day, the kids caught both a skink and a praying mantis.  The skink-catching was pretty impressive since those things are bonkers speedy.  (Oh, don't you know what a skink is?  It's been described by authorities as a snake with legs.  It moves at about the speed of light, and it has a fluorescent blue tail that it can shed when it's in danger, and then respawn.  If that's not the stuff of nightmares, I challenge you to tell me what is.)  Unfortunately, one of the kids removed the lid from the jar the skink was in, and it got out, but not before biting said kid.  So now it has a taste for human flesh, and is lurking somewhere in my garage.  SEE? NIGHTMARES.

Early, early Tuesday morning when I got up to feed Juniper (oh, did I not tell you she's back to waking up to eat in the night?  Dang four-month sleep regression is killing me), I noticed that my head was pounding and my body hurt really badly.  I thought I was just sore from planting stuff the day before, but it turns out I was coming down with something bubonic.  By the time we were set to start school Tuesday, I was completely incapacitated.  Fever, chills, a migraine, body aches, a sore throat, the whole shebang.  My head hurt so badly that I threw up, and the only thing that I could stand to consume all day was a single Snicker's bar and a Diet Coke.  (Those things help speed up healing, according to ancestral wisdom.)

Penelope was so sweet and ran me a bath, and the kids watched a movie in the afternoon so I could nap.  It goes without saying that we didn't do much school.  I was feeling better by the evening, though my throat has continued to hurt for the last few days.  Such a weird, quick punch of a virus.

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I got too hasty. I mentioned in my last blog post that I’m pretty sure I can’t be killed... and just because I needed to be humbled, I now have the flu and I’m quite confident this is how it ends for me. At least I’ll look stylish in my ice pack hat when they find my body.

A post shared by Paige Van Voorst (@theminivanvoorsts) on Sep 3, 2019 at 9:25am PDT

On Wednesday, we went up to the Amish to get milk in the morning (my friend Irene had her seventh baby on Monday, so I got to see a sweet, brand-new baby wearing THEE most adorable, most miniscule Amish outfit.  I die).  After stopping at the library on our way back into town (and successfully navigating that terrible parking lot WITHOUT flattening anything/anyone with the Kraken!), I just laid low, trying to rest and bounce back from Mystery Virus.

WHICH MEANS THAT YESTERDAY WAS OUR FIRST SCHOOL DAY THIS WEEK.  I am so freaking far behind.  Which is why I love/hate that today is Friday already.  On the one hand, I need it to be Friday.  On the other hand, I have too much to squeeze in before the week's finish line that I need another day before the weekend.  I suppose I could just roll things over into next week, but that's not a sustainable method for long and it's only the second week of school.  I don't want to be pulling those shenanigans already.

But if shenanigans must be pulled, then pull them I must.  Here's to a more boring week next week!

advice for going from one kid to two.

A friend of mine who was expecting her second recently asked my advice for keeping the transition smooth when going from one kiddo to two.  Since I actually know quite a few gals who are expecting their second babies right now, I thought I'd share my thoughts here as well!

Rest.

I know there's the temptation to roll your eyes when people say 'sleep when the baby sleeps.' "Do I clean when the baby cleans, and shower when the baby showers, and cook when the baby cooks," you ask.  No, maybe not.  But those are things that you can either do when the baby is awake and in a carrier (or a bouncy seat, as is my preference, or lying safely on the couch or in a pack and play nearby, as has been Juniper's preference), or are things that don't need to happen right away.  Naps are more important than cleaning, if you're allowing them to compete in your mind.  Take a nap and then serve chicken nuggets for dinner.  Take a nap and then shower when your husband gets home.  Take a nap and let the mantel get dusty; in the long run, it's not doing any harm.  But refusing to rest can do you harm. 

As a recovering clean-freak myself, and someone who doesn't really like napping anyway, I had to start seeing rest as a discipline.  It had to stop being optional in my mind.  

Two things are going to hang you up on this point: first, the older kiddo.  If your older kiddo is not in the habit of napping, maybe they should be.  And if they really, really refuse to nap, you can still instate quiet time.  My kids, up through the age of six, spend an hour or two in their beds at the same time each afternoon.  If they sleep, great!  If they don't, oh well.  At least they're contained.  It does take training - no child likes boundaries.  So this might be something to work towards while you're still pregnant if it's not routine in your house yet.  But if you know your older kiddo will be safe in their bed, and that you will have a window of time where you can doze next to the newborn for a bit, you are much more likely to rest.

Here's a bit more about our sleep routines.

Second tripping point: thinking a nap needs to be a naaaaaaaaaap.  Some days, you may only get a 15-minute overlap where the newborn isn't wanting to nurse and the toddler is still in bed.  I have a new mantra for you, both for napping and for life: "Some is better than none."  Some sleep is better than no sleep.

And once the baby is about six weeks old, you can start gently guiding their sleep routine so that you can be on the path to getting more nighttime sleep as well.  Here is a video I did on using Babywise with gentleness, flexibility, and compassion.

Rest, 2.0.

Resting goes way beyond just sleep.  (If you can't tell, I honk the "Rest" horn pretty loud.  If there is one thing I've learned in my course of parenting, it is that there are very few things that are as crucial to family life as adequate rest for everyone.  We have suffered too much at the hands of my refusal to rest early on that I cannot, in clean conscience, shut up about resting.)

Take the first six weeks.  That's about 40 days.  Don't go to MOPS.  Don't go to Target.  Don't go to church.  (In the Old Testament, women were commanded to stay home from the general assembly for 40 days after a boy was born, and 80 after a girl.  God's okay with you missing church after having a baby.  He is protecting you.)  If you absolutely must take your tiny baby out to the pediatrician's office, I guess you absolutely must, but that pediatrician will receive a lot of muttering from me about the insanity of forcing a vulnerable mother and baby out of their nest into a den of infestation and percolation.  STAY AT HOME.  Set boundaries.  

Yes, you'll go stir crazy.  Yes, it will be hard.  But seriously.  It's only six weeks.  If you don't rest, and you end up with a preventable season of PPD (I get that it's too simplistic to say that all PPD can be prevented with adequate sleep, but I really believe many cases can be), it will take you longer than that to crawl out of the hole, so just choose to do the hard work of resting on the front end.  You're capable.  I believe in you.  Stick close to your bed, stay off your feet, rely heavily on freezer meals and meal trains and food delivery.  You need this for your amazing body to heal, and to establish breastfeeding, and to actually get some sleep.

Set the laptop up in your bed so the older kiddo can watch Thomas next to you.  Have a stack of picture books and a basket of snacks nearby so you're not constantly up and down.  Get creative.  Message me if you'd like me to help you troubleshoot.

Practical Logistics.

Park by the cart corral.  I know when you were young and single and carefree, you were told never to park by the cart corral because what if someone hits your car with a cart?  Just reconcile yourself to the fact that your car will one day get written on with gravel and always smell a little like old diapers, and rearrange your priorities.  You're a mom of many now; park right there next to the cart corral.  That way you can load the toddler into the cart right away, and either put the pumpkin seat right in as well, or put the baby in a carrier.  (This is my favorite carrier for really little babies, then at around five months I switch them to this one.)  Then, you can also haul them back that way, and put them in the car right before just popping the cart away.  That way you're not schlepping two babies through the parking lot with no help and no hands.

Keep an umbrella stroller in your car at all times.  A cheap, basic, no-frills umbrella stroller.  This thing is a godsend.  I just plunk the toddler into it when we go to doctor visits, or other public places that don't have carts.  It's mobile restraint.  When you get into the doctor's office, just leave the kiddo in there until it's time to leave, unless it's an absolute must that they come out.  (And I don't mean, "take them out if they don't like it."  They probably won't like it at first.  Again, kids don't naturally like boundaries, and again, it's a trained skill.) The baby goes in a carrier (see a trend?), the toddler goes in the stroller, and you have two hands mostly-free.

Anticipate needs.  Mealtimes will be busy; do as much as you can in advance.  Fill milk cups and prep breakfast the evening before, so that you're not dealing with a hungry toddler/preschooler and a crying newborn.  Don't plan on potty training the older one within the first four months of the baby's birth.  Have a stack of both sizes of diapers, plus wipes, plus extra clothing for each kid, next to the couch, next to your bed, in the van, in your purse, and next to the changing table.  Try to anticipate times in which you'll be needed in two places at once, and try to do as much as you can in advance to help these times go smoothly.

It's okay to make both kids wait.  Often, despite your best efforts, both kids will need something at the same time.  It's okay to tell a toddler to wait a few minutes for seconds on lunch while you nurse the baby.  It's okay to let the baby cry for five minutes in her safe bed while you finish wiping the toddler's butt.  We all have to lay down our "urgency" sometimes, including kiddos.  Don't let these times get your heart racing.  Just remind yourself that it is okay and good for them to learn to wait.

TV is okay.  Maybe you didn't know this.  It's okay if you use it to keep an older child occupied while you do something you absolutely can't do with them underfoot. Be discerning.  Surfing your phone is not a TV-is-my-babysitter kind of situation.  But showering might be.  Sleeping definitely is.  SUPERVISE, THOUGH.  Don't let your young children on YouTube or give them access to the remote.  Let them watch a Daniel Tiger DVD on the laptop in your bed while you sleep, or on the bathroom floor while you shower - do not leave the room when a child is watching TV.  Intentionally pick a show you feel comfortable with, and allow the episode length to be your boundary for how much time you have to get said thing done, and then turn it off.  Here's a helpful hint from me to you: the less TV your child watches on a typical day, the more this works.  If it's just background noise most of the time, it won't occupy them when you need it to.  So turn off the TV until you are ready to employ it as your babysitter, and then let it do its job, and then send it home.

Blanket train the older child.  I'm not sure where this came from originally, but it seems people sometimes react strongly to this idea, so I think I'm using the phrase differently than in its original context.  I'm not sure why people would freak over it, so hear me out.  Get out a crib blanket.  Put 5-7 toys and books on it.  Put the toddler on it and set a timer for 3 minutes.  If they get off, just pick them up, say no, and put them back on it.  Do it however many times you need to.  Then, when the timer goes off, give them a raisin or a chocolate chip.  Eventually, stretch the time to 5 minutes, then 7, then 10, then 15.  Eventually, stop offering a reward every time.  ANNNNNNNNNND, Blanket-Trained.

This is a huge help when you're nursing, in public or at home.  I've heard it referred to as 'a playpen in your purse' - just use a swaddle blanket, a nursing cover, or a towel whenever you need to.  (Usually, if you have a younger baby, you have one or all of these items on hand most of the time anyway.)  It gives the kiddo a visual boundary line, and keeps them from wandering away when you're unable to go after them.  It also teaches them the super valuable lesson of sitting still for a hot sec and getting absorbed in a short stretch of independent play.  Teaching them this skill is a kindness, with all kinds of applications.

And, a final word...

You will feel overwhelmed sometimes.  That's okay and normal.  Unless adding twins, there is no other point in mothering where you literally double your workload all at once, and usually your older child is still young and pretty needy, so the buck stops with you for EVVVVVVVVERYONE'S needs.  You will have to learn how to multiply (rather than divide) your attention and affection for the first time.  Getting out of the house will take eons and you won't know why.  Parenting multiple kids is a learned skill; it takes time to feel comfortable.  Have patience with yourself, and be realistic.

But there's also the flip side: this isn't your first rodeo.  Many of the most important skills are second nature to you by now.  And you will love watching your older child become a sibling - watching them love someone new, someone that you also love, is so bonding and wonderful.  If you can believe it, the new baby will make you love your older kiddo more, not rob from them (or you!)

And for further reminders and help, here is a Facebook video I did on surviving the newborn days...




...and here is a link to a YouTube video I posted on the themes I covered in today's post.

And, as always - don't hesitate to get in touch with me if you have follow-up questions, comments or concerns!  I'm typically easiest to get ahold of through The Minivan Voorsts Facebook page, or my personal page.