Charlotte Bartlett Pear

My darling Charlotte, you are our gift. I have been told in blessings that you are a gift for our family. I believe it wholeheartedly.

Your pregnancy was a joyous one. Your babyhood was beautiful. You are healing in so many ways. You are love, embodied. You always have love to give and you never run out.

I think about the time that we could have lost you and my whole soul was pleading for God to save you. My girl, my beautiful girl. The one who loved me before she was born.

You are adorable and you know it! The twos have been a hard time for us so far, because you know that I am swayed by your big brown eyes. You have such a strong will, that sometimes you win. I work hard to make sure you don't become spoiled, because it is so easy for everyone to spoil you.

You have been babied more than your sisters because of your accident. I love it most days, but some days I worry I'm doing you a disservice. I think it will all be okay though. Your sweetness will win out over anything.

You are a sensitive little spirit. You need a lot of love in order to give a lot of love. You were given to us to teach us how to love more deeply and show it more frequently.

Sweet Charlotte, you mean so much to me. I cherish you.

Bananers

Nathalie, you are my fun loving child. You love people, you love life, you love almost everything (except tomatoes). You have such an enthusiasm and zest for life, it's infectious! You give everything your all. You are such a bright spot in our lives. Sometimes we clash because it is hard to contain such a huge personality in such a tiny body, but I'm constantly amazed at you.

I love your wild side. I love how you can just let go and have fun. You are passionate. You forgive easily and happily. And you love. There's so much love in you, you extend it to everything and everyone. You are joyous. In all of your baby pictures you are smiling or laughing, even when no one else is. I try so hard to teach you correct principles without breaking your spirit, because your spirit is such a joy to have.

You have quite the sensitive side. You are compassionate and concerned about others. You know how to be kind and inclusive. Everyone is your friend. When someone is hurt, you are the one to help them feel better and get laughing again. You are afraid of the dark, of loneliness, of discord.

You are so inquisitive. You especially love to be with your dad. Gardening, playing outside, cooking, watching River Cottage-- you love to do these things with him. He loves it. He shines when you come out in the garden with him.

You want to be a great sister. Sometimes it's hard to learn to be calm and quiet when you just love your sisters so much. Sometimes it's hard to learn to leave them alone because you want to get a reaction. But you will learn. I know that because I know how smart you are. And sometimes that scares me, because I hope to be smart enough for you.

 

We call you the spice of our family. It's true. You provide so much life for us.

Nan, I absolutely adore you.

Six going on sixteen...

Emily you are my sweetheart. I love your creative ways. I love your imagination. (See the "scarecrow sloth"? She's red riding hood.) I love how you play princesses, teacher, monkey, horse, or anything else that comes to mind. When you step in and let your imagination free, you fly. I love seeing how your mind works and letting you take off with it.

Emily, you are my serious child. You have a strong sense of right and wrong. You love to do the right, even though you struggle with some of the same things I do-- impatience, anger. I'm sorry you learned those traits from me. You almost always make the responsible choice, even when you don't want to-- such as letting Charlotte have the coveted purple bowl at breakfast.

I love to see you let your silly side come out. I have taught you too much seriousness and now you and I have to work at being silly. But I know it's in there! I can tell by the way you baby talk Lydia. By the way you love to tickle and be tickled. By the way you dance like crazy or dive into those waves with abandon.

You love being creative. You have such an artistic side to you. Someday I imagine teaching you how to sew. You already love to draw, paint, do play dough, craft, create. Creating is one of your gifts. I encourage you when you tell me you are an artist. I see it in you. You teach me so much every day-- how to be thoughtful, how to be excited by simple achievements, how to stop in the moment and climb that tree.

You are so smart, my sweetheart. You are like a sponge, soaking up everything. I only tell you once and you remember, like our conversation about the Earth's tilted position in the summer. You love to be the best student and strive to get perfect grades. You come home and prefer to read or write over everything else. You love to teach. You love to ask questions. Never lose that curiosity. There is always something knew to learn.

My oldest, my beautiful Emily. You are a leader. Like a brilliant star, you have so much to offer. Hold fast to the right, to the Lord and always grow.

I love you dearly.

Lydia is 7 months!

 Lydia is 7 months!!! Actually, she turned 7 months last week.

 I'm pretty much the coolest mom ever.

 She is SO adorable! She is still pretty needy, but since figuring out how to sit on her own (and get there from lying down) she's been much happier.

 We're still a little behind on vaccinations, so she got her 6 month shots on Tues. She weight 16 lbs even and was 29 inches long!

 She likes the umbrella stroller pretty well....but not the jogging stroller so much. We're working on it.

 She LOVES her sisters. Well, not Charlotte. But hey, if I were her, I'd cry every time I saw Charlotte too. It's unrequited love, because Charlotte loves her so much.

 See? Happy sitter.

 This is not poop. I accidentally left some black beans in a bag on the counter and she grabbed them.

 She's almost crawling! She kind of scoots/crawls right now. She's not fast and she usually only uses it to get to me if I'm close by. I can tell she's going to be my little shadow.

 She also holds her bottle on her own which is GREAT. And she has two teeth!

We love this Lydia.

LOVES:
sweet potato or regular fries
goldfish
mac and cheese
beans
noodles
pancakes (oh my, she loves them!)
waffles
cookies
butter crackers
ME
ME
ME
her pacifier
Emily
paper
Nathalie
dogs and cats
being outside
ME
ME
ME
clang noisy toys, like measuring teaspoons

DOES NOT LOVE:
her carseat
her crib
being put down
Charlotte
Matt
baby food
strangers
being put down
the jogging stroller
being alone
taking long naps

Gettin' some quality farm time in

Nathalie's preschool took a field trip to a farm close by. Nathalie and Charlotte had SO much fun. They fed this pig, Hazel.

And Charlotte especially loved feeding the goats.

There was a corn field with corn just the right size for little people!

I love this picture of Nan.

And there was a straw house which they loved.

Then we went to another farm day.

And the kids had a blast with the chickens. They chased chickens for over an hour.

A lot of times they would catch the chicken and hand it off to another kid who couldn't catch a chicken.

And I got to hold my first piglet! It was so cute.  It fell asleep while I was holding it.

It was good to get some country time in.

Beans and rice

First off, let me just say thank you. I have received a few emails, a phone call and your comments of support and encouragement. Parenting is hard stuff sometimes (most of the time) and I so appreciated all the positive words that reminded me that I'm doing okay. Sometimes I take the criticism to heart and forget that other parents feel the same way I do. So thank you for reminding me that we're all in this together. And that I don't suck.

 

 

Now onto food storage. In each of these pictures, you'll see our stash of food. All of our cupboards, some closets, under beds, in the garage... (As a bonus of this post, you get to see our big kitchen which we love!)

 

When we moved here, several people from church who helped us unload our van commented on our huge amount of food storage. Matt and I are preppers! I love feeling secure and having food storage makes me feel really safe. So out of our 26 ft UHaul, about 6 ft of it and the "Mom's Attic" space was full of food storage.

 

And then my parents brought some of their food storage that they don't need anymore (because they bought enough food storage for a family of six over a decade ago and now they don't need that much). So now we have a TON of food storage.

 

I'm not complaining! Matt and I have made a goal that while we live here we will eat our food storage. That was one of the reasons we built it up so much--so that we could cut our food bill during grad school.

 

There are two exceptions to eating all our food storage-- first being that we will not eat 12 boxes of no. 10 cans. They are our bed frame, and we'd like to keep that. Second, when we leave Georgia, our empty jars will be full of peaches. I mean, come on! I'm not going to live here without canning peaches (and peach-raspberry jam...)!

 

It should be quite the experiment. We bought this wheat grinder which we love. That was our one splurge when we moved here. It's no Nutrimill, but will grind wheat and oat flour. We've cut back drastically on white flour and typically change the recipes to 50% wheat, 25% oat, 25% white. Oat is a sweet, soft flour. It doesn't hold together great, but it is delicious. Our new favorite is whole wheat waffles. Everyone loves them, especially Charlotte.

 

We have a TON of beans though. We do make a lot of bean recipes. One of my favorite recipe sites is Provident Plenty, which has a great bean burrito recipe. I'm looking for some new ideas! So please, leave a recipe or two!

 

See how much food storage we have? It's a little ridiculous.

 

On the upside, I feel secure!