I wonder what the neighbors are thinking..

I have entered the town of Potty-training…and I am certainly not the mayor. As I write this I find myself sneaking glaces at the pink princess potty across the room. It will not defeat me, or should I say… the floor.

Siery is a free-spirit, to say the least. There is nothing this child enjoys more than taking off every piece of clothing and ripping off that diaper and standing right infront of the window to feel the breeze…although even with the window closed it remains her favorite activity. Now it brings me to question what the neighbors are thinking watching this toddler smile and wave at them in her birthday suit…I admire her free-nature, I’m proud of her…And it also makes me giggle, because I did the same exact thing when I was a kid. When I stop and realize I tend to wear sandals 12 months out of the year (in Massachusetts) I think we would do well living on a tropical island.

So I figured this would aid in potty training, and for sure it has. And she has been doing really well, even though this is the third day I’ve cleaned a huge lump of “doodoo” off the floor right infront of that pink princess potty. At least she eats plenty of fiber, cause they are very easy to pick up haha.

Being Mommy has been the most wonderful thing in the world. There is nothing money can buy that can match that feeling in your heart when your child laughs at something silly you did, when they say they love you, when they caress your face. There is nothing that hurts more than when your child is hurting, scared, sad.

I want all the best things for Sierys life. I want to give her the entire universe and more.

You better be prepared to be surprised

During my years at Gordon I would see cars with the most bumper stickers out of any concentrated population. There was a certain thrill about owning your first car, growing up, and collecting cliché Christian stickers at Book Stores and Retreats… a thrill even I fell victim to- and don’t even get me started on my sisters awesome jeep haha. A few of those bumper stickers I saw were pretty cool, a few alittle more extreme, and some just made me think.. ‘Im not quite sure thats right’.  I saw one that said “When the Devil gives you lemons, Jesus makes you lemonade”…haha. What? But perhaps the most popular was “If you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans”. And its pretty true I guess. Although Im confused, I guess I thought if you project Godly and beautiful dreams, plans of hope and love and Godly passion and family that God wouldn’t find humor in that, but be proud that you share in something that would match his vision for anyone of His children…right? Yes, thank you legalistic folk- I am well aware that this world has sin and it is fallen and therefore things may not be able to be truly in the line of Gods vision and plan… but seriously whatever happened to faith, faith in beautiful things, in lovely endings? So that silly statement of why then do things happen to throw off your plans? Why do bad things happen, blah blah… I don’t know. Are the bad things happening in order for something greater through God to come forth? Why do you need to be broken down to be built up stronger? Like in Extreme Home Make Over..if they just built additions to the old house it would eventually fall and could be dangerous, maybe it’s filled with a mold or mildew thats causing an unseen illness that would have become serious over time? So they tear the whole thing down, start over with new materials. Well sometimes they use recycled goods, so in essence they are just rearranging the foundation. Maybe thats all they need to do. Strip it down, clean it up and rearrange it? I don’t know, but now I’m in the mood to watch that show, I love it. haha. Dan In Real Life is one of my all time favorite movies. Again though why do things happen like that? His wife passed, he was left as a single Dad, then Marie walks in to his life and he truly appreciates every moment and cherishes the love as he is truly grateful. I don’t know I guess you can’t think about the “whys” in life too much or it really messes with you. I get overwhelmed easily and just need to clear my head and have a disco dance party with Saoirse to forget everything. At the end of the movie he says “All I can tell you about life is you better be prepared to be surprised” (or something along those lines) And I guess that pretty much sums it up. As long as you have faith and keep your head up and know that there is someone greater than us holding us tight…then you can just live life and live it well, and know that tomorrow the sun will rise, and after winter the spring comes, and all that jazz.

A few things I’d like to do

1. Be a Mommy

2. Cross-Country road trip (half done but not fully)

3. Publish a book

4. Snowboard down black diamond trail

5. Live in a third world country

6. Spend at least a month in a European orphanage just to hug and love on the babies

7. Sleep on a hammock in a tropical climate for at least 2 nights

8. Buy someones groceries

9. Live off the land for a month (food, fire, housing, etc)

10. Hot air balloon ride in fall

11. Bring a homeless person to dinner

12. Become certified to scuba dive

13. Build and start a fire with no matches

14. Get a stamp in my passport from each continent (except antarctica): Europe, Asia, Africa, South America, Australia, North America.

15. Skinny dip

16. Tour a non-active volcano

17. Ride an elephant

18. Ride a horse bareback

19. Swim with a dolphin

20. Build an awesome tree house

21. Eat at that restaurant at the top of the space needle

22. Officially name a star in the sky

23. Change a cars oil by myself

24. Fly a kite

25. Learn to play the violin

26. Own a dog

27. Get a henna tatoo in India

28. Photograph a destination wedding

29. Buy acreage with lake access and build (or have built and help) an off the grid cabin to permanently reside.

30. Go a year without shaving

31. Learn to play the guitar

31. Host an art exibit for proceeds to go to charity

32. Go back to Haiti

33. Have my home look like Anthropologie (work in progress)

34. Be on Survivor or The Amazing Race

35. Become fluent in sign language (work in progress)

… More to come

Blessings and Love

My breast-feeding, sling-riding, co-sleeping, free-birthed, loved little baby girl

She changed my life. From the moment I peed on the little “at-home” tester and saw the double pink line. I felt her in me immediately. I had dreams of holding a baby girl in the sunshine wearing a white dress and I knew the baby growing in me would be a girl. God whispered to me in my dreams. I have always felt like pregnancy and labor were such natural things that if you are in a healthy state your body would know what to do, and so I felt no need to see any doctors and didn’t want to have any chaos put through my body with ultra-sounds so that was never an option for me. I had faith in God, and I believed in myself and my body to respond to pregnancy as God had intended. I spent my pregnancy dancing, and walking, and sunbathing, and taking hot baths and laying on my back and trusted in all situations that your body knows whats going on. I knew a free-birth would be best for us and it was. A free-birth is a planned unassisted home birth. And the labor was beautiful. Yes it was long, 40 hours of deep contractions. We knew if I had ever been near a doctor they would have rushed it, but we could be patient. Lit dozens of candles around our apartment and played music and just praised God through every pain and said “yes” repetitively during contractions. We used EFT and prayer and meditation and I was able to go without any yelling. If you know what is happening to your body then it isn’t scary, if it isn’t scary then the fear never builds to a point of panic and raising your voice. She slid out while I stood up in the bathtub, right into her Daddys arms. He smiled and said “Its a girl, we have a baby girl!” She was born in her water sack, and it broke as my husband caught her. To prevent excessive bleeding I took an herbal remedy, Shepards Purse, which also slowed the placenta from coming out. So it came out 8 hours later. We had planned on having a lotus birth, but cut the cord another 7 hours after the placenta arrived because it was already very small and drained. We knew she would share our bed and nurse whenever she wanted, and thats what happened. I get anxious when I think of babies in cribs and strollers and away from their parents. It makes me really, horrifically sad. I believe in the saying that when a baby cries it is because it has an unmet need. And allowing your baby to cry causes stress to go into their body. We named our daughter Saoirse, pronounced “sear-sha”, because of its meaning which is “FREEDOM” in Gaelic. Because it symbolized her amazing free-birth. And Ive always been a fan of having a unique name. Saoirse is now 18 months. As I write this she is asleep across my lap attached to her natural pacifier (boob). She hasn’t slept even a nap in a crib or anything. She still nurses 90% of her daily calories and she is the best. I had a case of food poisoning and passed it through my breastmilk to her a couple months ago which caused her to throw up, but besides that sickness she has never had a cold or illness. She lights up the lives of everyone she meets. She is beginning to wake from her nap, so I’ll end here. I look forward to all her updates in the coming months, etc.

Blessings and Love