Another Promised Fulfilled Coming Soon to our Family!

I am thrilled to announce that the Lord has blessed us with another little one on the way! That’s right, another promise fulfilled coming soon to our family! Our EDD is March 1, 2018. This past summer has been rough with morning sickness and genuine exhaustion, lol, but I know it’ll all be worth it when we hold another little one in our arms.

 

The first clue was the insane need to clean everything (and I do mean INSANE), next came the smell and taste aversions, the unusual exhaustion and finally, the nausea hit HARD. I am so grateful for hospital iv’s and nausea med prescriptions! While the nausea meds are helping me to keep food down now, I still have the actual nausea “feeling” most days around the clock and too much motion seems to aggravate it quickly. If I try to push through, I end up vomiting. This is SOO frustrating for me. I had this when I was pregnant with my other daughter and I struggled not to resent it. So, there’s not much I am accomplishing these days, except for growing a baby of course. 😉

It’s pretty frustrating not to be able to get to all the cleaning and decluttering I wanted to be doing by now, every week that passes I hope that “this will be the week the nausea subsides”. With the family’s help, I am able to get meals done and basic housecleaning done. We do homeschooling the best we can, thank goodness for computer curriculum and living books right now! It is really helping to keep the older ones on track so I can focus on the younger kiddos. My goal is to get my 8 year old working through a 4 subject notebook every day and reading more proficiently independently. He’s doing wonderful now, but he had some delays in reading that we needed to work extra on these past couple years.

Doing What I Can and Planning for the Rest

Since my nesting instincts are starting to go crazy, I’ve been focusing on planning all the things I am going to do when I am physically able:

• I’m planning out a new 6-week menu plan with grocery lists that I can simply rotate. Many of the meals will be freeze-ahead, so I can prepare ahead of time before baby arrives. We are currently saving for an upright freezer which will be a huge help in preparing bulk meals. I did this with my last baby and let me tell you- it was such a BLESSING to not have to worry about meals or cooking for those first few weeks!
• I’m revamping our chore system and schedule and working on training my 12 and 8 year-olds with age appropriate tasks so that they are able to be a little more self sufficient.
• I’m making a list of all the household items and postpartum needs that will need to be stocked before baby’s arrival. Again, making sure there is enough bathroom tissue, toiletries, laundry detergent, and household cleaners is SO nice when you are not feeling up to going out in public due to recovery pain or lack of sleep!
• Because I have saved most of Lil Miss #1’s clothing from her first 3 years, all I need to do is unpack it all, wash, and sort according to size. I’m sure I’ll need to get a few things here and there, but I seriously saved EVERYTHING, lol, so I doubt I will need much at all. Then I am going to pack it all into bins and label by size. Easy peasy!
• I would like to order some more cloth diapering supplies, so I am on the hunt for those right now. I have quite a bit from my daughter, but I could defintely need more newborn size and some extra covers and inserts.
• Baby will be in my bedroom with me, so I just need to set up a small corner of the room for her.
• I am making lists of all the things that need to be done room-by-room, including a honey-do list so that we won’t need to worry about anything significant once she arrives.
• Finally, I am working on organizing homeschool lessons for everyone for baby’s first year so that I will not need to do any serious planning as we adjust to the newest addition to our home.

On my good days, I try to work on decluttering right now. This week, Lord willing, I’m working on the upper level of the house in all the bedrooms. Clothing, toys, misc. gets tossed, donated or stored, and I am trying really hard to NOT store anything unless absolutely necessary because I know we will move again. When you have a large family like mine, stuff can quickly take over! Each year that passes, I find myself embracing more minimalist practices and that is saying a lot for someone like me who has always been house-keeping challenged!

 

 

We had an ultrasound at 16 1/2 weeks and the ultrasound tech seemed very confident that there is another Lil Miss in there! Babies are so fun, and as most of you know, I have REALLY enjoyed having a daughter after having 5 boys, so having another daughter will be a real treat for me. I am excited to see how Lil Miss #1 will be when Lil miss #2 will arrive. As our first daughter, she has added such a sweet and beautiful dynamic to our clan, so it’ll be interesting to see how she acts with the new addition.

A Testimony

Years ago, God spoke to me that He was going to give me daughters. Plural. I didn’t think so many years of boys would pass before I would get to meet them. I didn’t think my faith would be so tested in the waiting for God’s promises. The truth is, each one of my children is a promise fulfilled. I was told at a young age that I would not be able to carry babies due to a medical condition and that I would almost always miscarry before they could live. BUT GOD ladies! 7 miracles and counting!

There have been many ‘promises’ that God has dropped into my heart over the years and one by one, I get a front row seat to watch them all come to pass. And I am still waiting on some! I’ve never been 100% certain on exactly ‘what’ I am supposed to do for the kingdom except that I know I am to be a wife, mother, to write and that I have a voice to encourage people not to waver from what God has told them. Ever. If He has dropped a promise in your heart, a vision in your soul, then He will surely make it come to pass! Maybe that is my small unlabeled way of making a difference in this big world, maybe there will be more in the future, but for now, I really enjoy cheering others on in their faith. Every time I see God do what He said He would do in my life, I am strengthened in my faith even more that He IS Who He says He is! We can trust His Word at all times, and that is the number 1 way you will cultivate fruitfulness in your walk with the Lord.

So yeah, lol, this has been quite a year! Two of our oldest sons moved out to ‘adult’, we moved-again! I was able to be a part of some pretty cool blogging events, online bible studies and a new blessing is on the way! If you would have asked me what I thought 2017 was going to be like, this is not the picture I would have given, lol! But God is GOOD and He is faithful! I’ll be blogging about my crazy nesting adventures in the near future. A lot of other projects got put on hold for the blog because I was working hard at staying out of the hospital these past few months. Hopefully, I will get back into the swing of things for at least a little while, and if not, you now know why. 🙂