Moving!

My blog is moving! The new address is http://www.alifelessordinary307.blogspot.com Hope to see you all there!

Sweet Dreams

Precious Lord, take my hand
lead me on, let me stand
I am tired, I am weak, I am worn
Through the storm, through the night
Lead me on to the light
Take my hand, Precious Lord, lead me home.

I just sung my beautiful baby angel to sleep. Precious Lord, take my hand. It may seem like an odd way to sing a baby to sleep. But it's how my mom sang us to sleep.

Abby is growing to look more and more like Bella. But they fall asleep so differently. Abby goes to sleep very suddenly. One moment she is all wiggling arms and legs, turning her head side to side, sucking on her pacifier as if it holds her last drop of sustenance....the next she is suddenly still...she turns her head to the side and takes a deep breath, her passy falling out of her half-open mouth, and then....sleep. You can almost feel it, that magic little moment when her dreams begin.

Bella is another story altogether! Once she has finally decided to surrender and stay in the bed, she lays on her back and plays with her fingers, or her glow-worm, or whatever toy she drug to bed with her. After a while she will lay it down, and yawn, and toss and turn a little. Then she'll lay very still for several minutes, just letting her eyes wander. Finally, they will close, but she's not there yet. For some reason, just before she falls asleep, she smacks her little lips. (they are shaped exactly like her daddys!) When I hear that sound, I know sleep is very near!

I always feel relief when they are both asleep...I think: "I can get things done!" I do dishes, I pack diaper bags, I tidy up the house. Maybe what I should be doing is watching them as they sleep, listening to each precious breath, remembering what a miracle they are. Thanking God that they are fearfully and wonderfully made.

After all, why should the angels have all the fun?

For he shall give his angels charge over thee, to keep thee in all thy ways. Psalms 91:11

Welcome to the Jungle

Well, I survived my first day back at work! I can't believe it came so quickly.

To be honest, I never dreaded the job itself. I love my office and my co-workers, and 90% of our patients are wonderful. The other 10%...well, that comes with working with the public!

The worst part was just trying to get both of them ready and out the door in the morning. Bella isn't too hard, I give her some chocolate milk and toss her in the car with her pj's on. But she still has gear to take along. And I have to get dressed, which luckily doesn't take long 'cause I am most definately a low maintenance kind of girl. Somewhere in all that Abby wakes up to be fed and changed, then we all load in the car!

Nighttimes are kind of like morning in reverse: haul everything/everyone upstairs, change out of my scrubs, then dinner, baths, pick up the house, pack diaper bags for the next day...etc.

The most challenging night of the week is going to be Wednesday, I can see that already! We go to church at six o'clock for a meal and then fellowship. This week it was after nine o'clock when I got home! And Abby (who gets held a lot a church, of course!) had slept all evening. I finally got her in bed at 12:15. Luckily, Thursday is my last day of work for the week.

That's right, I have every Friday off! Jealous, aren't you? I have to admit it's one of the reasons I chose the profession- most dental practices are closed on Friday. I figured no nights, no holidays, work 8-5, and have a long weekend? Sure, I'll be a dental hygienist!

Most people's reaction when I tell them what I do is ,"Isn't that gross, digging in people's mouths?" Probably not nearly as gross as it was about twenty five years ago, when they didn't wear gloves yet! Actually, I can handle anything from the neck up! Now urology, thats gross...

Wood you look at that!

Last week we accomplished one of the biggies on my "Home Improvement To-Do List". Kenneth (with a little help from Bella!) pulled up our very light colored carpet and padding, then pulled up a million staples. Okay, maybe not a million. But a lot. Kudos to him.

Then we had Darren Shelton come over from Erwin and lay our hardwood floor! I was SO excited! I was especially excited because in order to clear out the living room, we put our kitchen table in Abby's nursery, and moved the couch, loveseat, end table, and coffee table into the kitchen! The computer desk and t.v. went into Bella's room, and we just took our old entertainment center apart and pitched it! So the house was a wreck. Trying to navigate my kitchen reminded me of a show I saw on Discovery Health about people who hoard...

I put Bella in bed with me for a couple of nights because I was afraid she'd get up in the night and run into the extra furniture in her room. So for a couple of days everything was topsy-turvy. It took Darren and his guys one day to lay all the hardwood floor, then they came back the next morning for about an hour for the finishing touches and to lay the shoe molding. The result was fantastic! I am absolutely thrilled!

The only downside is that between ripping out carpet and putting down new floor, my house was covered in dust! Mom came and helped me get rid of some of it, she even swiffered the living room walls! Then she and my friend Jess helped me move most of the furniture back. ~I did invest in felt padding for the bottoms of all my tables, chairs, etc!


Bella "helping" her Daddy take up the carpet...

Hmmm, the plywood is awfully nice...maybe we should just leave it?

Ahhhhhhhhhh....looks good enough to roller skate on. Just kidding.

Yay! I'm so happy with my new floor!

Our next project will begin in a couple of weeks, we are finishing a 14x14 room in the basement. We will also finish our basement stairs, lay carpet, and take off the door to the stairway so it opens to the rest of the house. This will be Bella and Abby's own personal Toy Land! Fisher Price, Playskool, and Matel have staged a coup and taken over my living room- I can't wait to reclaim it!

School Daze...

Since before Arabella was even born, I dreaded the day she had to start school! I told myself "It'll be a long time, she doesn't start school till she's five!" Well, time has flown by and she will be turning three in a couple of months. I know that before I can turn around, it will be time for kindergarten.

Honestly, the thought of sending her to public school makes my stomach knot up. It's not that I have anything against public schools...the theory is great...kind of like socialism, and we see how that turned out. And I know there are wonderful teachers out there (one of my best friends is one of them!) and wonderful kids. I don't harbor a secret fear that inside every school system employee lurks a gun-toting pedophile. (But they are out there.) I don't want to move to a commune and live like Laura Ingalls Wilder....although shoot, if every problem in life ended like an episode of Little House on the Praire it might not be a bad idea.

But I do want to protect her, and make sure she learns the things that are important, and from a Godly standpoint. And I don't think that happens in public schools.

Now we get to the difficult part: I work full time! Or at least, what's considered full time in the dental profession: four days a week. Monday through Thursday, 8a.m. to 5p.m. For a long time I thought my home-school dream was totally out of reach.

Now I'm not so sure. I believe where there's a will, there's a way!

So since it isn't financially possible for me to stay at home (right now, anyway- but all things are possible!) I'm really considering just working around my work!

Which would leave us Friday, Saturday, and Sunday for school, and then if we worked a couple of hours on Monday and Tuesday evening, I believe we could cover the necessary curriculum. It would be difficult, for sure, and we would have to make a family commitment to make it work.

So right now we are discussing it, and I am going to be praying about it, and ask the Lord to lead me in the right direction and open doors for us!

Change is coming!

So, there are some changes on the horizon for the Edmonds family! First and foremost, I'll soon be returning to work. Next week is my last week of maternity leave. I dread going back- not because of the job itself. I love my job, and I have awesome co-workers. But I do dread leaving my girls, and the general chaos of getting two little ones ready and out the door every morning. My twelve weeks off have flown by!

Another change we are making is to our house. We had hoped to be able to get some land in Erwin, and move over there. It would have been convenient since I work there four days a week, we go to church there, and most of our family is there. Lord knows it would've saved us a fortune in gas money!

But, as is so often the case, it didn't work out as we planned. We were a little disappointed, but just moved on to Plan B! Plan B is to make some changes to the house we currently live in. We live in a raised ranch, and have a full basement with drive-under garage. So we are going to finish a playroom in part of our basement, and relocate Bella's considerable toy collection down there!

We are also getting rid of the carpet in our living room, something I've wanted to do for a long time. When they built the house they put down light colored carpet. And while it's pretty, it only works if a) you don't have kids b)you never eat outside your kitchen, and c) you are the kind of family who take their shoes off every time you walk in the house. None of the above apply to us!

So today Kenneth and I went and picked out wood flooring for our house! I am so excited about getting it put down! We are also (eventually) going to get rid of our big old entertainment center and replace it with a gas (or electric) fireplace with a flat-screen t.v. mounted on the wall above it.

I really excited about our home improvement projects, and will be posting before/after pics at some point!

Tired of Weighting Around...

I have to admit, I've had a little trouble with those last few pregnancy pounds. They really like me and want to stay. I really want them to go. I've told them this several times, in between bites of the Chocolate Chip pie I so recently blogged about.

Then I realized I was talking to my extra pounds. So I said to myself, "Self, you must stop this. You must make a plan of attack." So I sat down to do just that. To aid in my attack-planning I popped a bag of Orville Redenbockers (sp?) Ultimate Butter Popcorn, because anyone who has ever done any decent attack planning knows you must have snacks, and the word "snacks" does not incorporate the healthy, unbuttered, mini bags of popcorn that masquerade as such in the junk food aisle. But I digress...

So aided by my popcorn, and a Mason jar of ice-cold Mountain Dew (my inner dental hygeniest cringes at that, I'll admit), I set out to plan my attack.

Before I divulge said plan of attack let me just clarify that my motive for weight loss has less to do with vanity and more to do with being comfortable. The bottom line is, I want to be able to fit into all my old clothes. By "fit" I do not mean suck in until everything is buttoned and zipped and then pray it holds. I long ago came to terms with the hard fact that having babies changes your body and I am probably never going to fit into a size 2 like I did in high school. I'm okay with that. My husband is okay with that.

So my motive is not to look like a supermodel. And let me just add here that the so called super models hold us to completely unrealistic expectations. Kate Moss recently came under fire from some health organizations for revealing that one of her favorite diet mantras is , "Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels". She apparently has never had my grandmother's Hundred Dollar Cake. Her loss. (literally).

I keep going off on tangents.

First I thought about doing the Soup Diet. This is a plan where you make a vegetable soup, and pretty much eat it for seven days. With fresh fruit added certain days, salad on certain days, etc. That looked good at first, I like soup. Till I looked at the recipe. It has cabbage in it. I don't like cabbage. Or mushrooms. And where are the potatoes?! No potatoes...

That's stupid.

Then I considered the Atkins diet, which my father had a brief (albeit successful) encounter with some years back. I remembered him eating lots of bacon. I like bacon. I like to fry it and crumble it up on my baked potato...oh, but wait, you can't have potatoes. Or pasta. Or bread. For crying out loud, what are you supposed to eat? Can a girl live without potatoes?!

So finally I decided to simply limit my caloric intake. I decided to measure all my food (for a day) and record the calories in it, and try not to go over a certain number. I decided that number should be 1200.

Why 1200? I really don't know. I just picked it. A friend later informed me that 1200 calories isn't even enough to really keep your basic metabolic functions going properly. I didn't know. I'm an idiot. (nutritionally speaking).

So for breakfast the next day I got out my pen and paper. My granola bar was 160 calories. My coffee was 4. The caramel flavored creamer was 30, but I wasn't giving that up! So far, so good.

Lunch was a can of tuna fish (100) with crackers (105) and diet pepsi (0).

For a snack I had more coffee with creamer (34) and a 100 calorie snack pack of cookies. (100!)

Dinner got a little more challenging. I was running low on groceries, and had decided to go the easy route that day, and have some popcorn shrimp and fix a box of macaroni and cheese. The shrimp wasn't too bad, 210 calories for 15 shrimp. But the macaroni was like 380 calories in 3/4 a cup or something ridiculous like that.

3/4 of a cup is just enough to make me mad.

So I made the mac' n'cheese for Kenneth (who can lose weight with annoying ease thanks to his stupid male metabolism) and Bella, and I made one of those Birdseye Steamfresh bags of rice and vegetables that you cook in the microwave. 190 calories per cup. So I had 10 shrimp, and 2 cups of rice, and drank water. The rice and veggies were actually really yummy!

For a snack before bed, I had a cup of Special K cereal (dry), and ended up with like 27 calories left.

It was very educational. For example, did you know that for 2 calories you can have 8 fluid ounces of coffee (wonderful, marvelous, aromatic, caffeinated coffee!), or one measly tic-tac. Or that there are more calories in two tablespoons of peanut butter than a whole can of tuna? I learned a lot.

I went to bed a little hungry.