One day past the due date!

I am now 40 weeks and one day. Still no sign of our sweet babies arrival. My husband has learned a few accupressure techniques that are supposed to help start labor and has been practicing them on me. I am taking evening primrose oil, walking and any other thing we find that may help. I know she will come when she is ready, I just don't want to be 2 weeks late and have to be induced - come on baby girl, we are waiting.

For the most part I feel good. I went for a bike ride on Friday morning and took R to the tennis courts yesterday. Went for a walk and practiced yoga. I also finished the cutest sweater for her. I was inspired by the creative mama over at Little Home Blessings and her vest she made for her baby girl. It was cream with wood buttons and knew I had to make something similar - it was too adorable and wonderful.
After a few gliches, I finished it ! I love it!


Of course I can't wait for her to wear it with the pants I made her. The pants are made from a felted sweater using the sleeves and I needle felted the little mushroom on the leg. Too cute .

Next I am on to making a knitted wool diaper cover.

Blessingway

What is a Blessingway -

Blessingway ceremonies create a sacred and safe environment where a mother-to-be can explore the challenges and joys that lie before her as she approaches birthing and mothering. Surrounded by the most important women in her life, she gains a sense of power, confidence, and support that will help her rise to motherhood.

Birth is a key life passage for women. But modern culture has become preoccupied with the arrival of the baby-to-be and has lost touch with birth's profound impact on the expectant mother. While our most common birth preparations focus on getting women physically ready to give birth, the blessingway ceremony helps a woman to prepare mentally, emotionally, and spiritually for the work of birthing, and it opens her to her instinctive abilities, which will guide her as she steps into the role of mother. (from www.blesingwaybook.com)

This was my first blessingway ceremony and it was beautiful. It was held here at my house and 5 of my dear friends came to share in this beautiful time. One mom is due with her 3rd baby 2 weeks after me, so this Blessingway way for her too. It was nice to share this time with a friend ! With the 6 of us mom's there we have a total of 14 kids (soon to be 16) and 7 of them have been born at home (soon to be 9)

We started by Steph lighting a Sage brush and cleansing the house and each one of us. Then they took turn presenting us with special beads to make our birth necklace. A necklace we can wear or have near by during labor to remind us of the support we have.

Each of us wearing our finished necklace:

Next in the ceremony was the Henna bellies. It was fun and little Adeline must of enjoyed it from the womb, because she kept moving around. Each mom decorated a petal on the flower, including me. The lavender smell from the henna was so relaxing - I can still smell it!


Everyone also made birthing flags. Little blessings, verses or words of wisdom to have hanging up. It will be a great thing for me to focus on during labor.
I added my sweet babies to the nature table which is now the "birthing table" until the baby comes. A reminder that I have done this 2 times before and everything was fine.

My friend Steph said
"Your labor can't be stronger than you , it is you"! My babes will help me to remember this.
The birth candle to be light at the time of labor. I then will have a candle chain for each one of the moms who were here today and they will light their candles when I am in labor. The idea is that the baby will be born before the candle goes out (let's hope)

It was a wonderful and spiritual morning that I will always remember and cherish. To have such amazing friends who give me so much strength and confidence in not only having my first homebirth, but as a mother and a friend.

Thank you Steph, Marie, Karen, Kim, and Anna! I am ready!

Happy 1st day of Spring

"Little Children when you pass
lightly on the tender grass
skip about but do not tread
on my small and lowly head.
I'm the flower that comes to say,
Wintertime has gone away"
(from Suzanne Down's Spring Tales)


We are so happy that spring has arrived here at last! I love this time of year watching the world awaken from its long winter sleep. It feels so rejuvinating.
We celebrated the Spring Equinox by writing notes to the fairies to welcome them to spring.

Ryan's:
Sage's :

The fairies celebrated by leaving us these beautiful flowers to bring sunshine into our home.
This is a time for new things to come. A new baby will be here soon and a new job we are waiting to hear word about. The warmth of the sun helps me to remain positive that good things will come.

Heidi is also very happy that Spring is here. She celebrated by napping on the porch - oh has she missed being able to get outside. Such a cute thing. Hard to believe that yesterday she ate Sage's tooth that he lost. It feel out of his hand and when it landed on the floor Heidi ate it up!!! goofy dog.

Math and Word Families

Well it has been awhile since I have posted about our lessons. We have been very good about working on them everyday. After we finished our Alphabet Journey, we started our Math block that includes all kinds of fun games. We made our own math board game, taped a hopscotch board in the kitchen, played bean bag and clapping games and solved math problems. Ryan seems to really enjoy math. Next week he told me he wants to work with the Math Gnomes again.

Our Math board game. Basically we rolled the dice and added up them up, and moved our pieces to the cooresponding number spot. Simple, yet Ryan kept wanting to play it many times!


Ones :

Two's :
Three's :
Four's :

******************************************************************************************
Word Families
We had worked on the individual letters for some time now and I felt it was time to move on to see if Ryan was ready. He is and is enjoying the word families. He has caught on pretty quick and is even able to add words before I come to them. We spend time on the families and their words and then Ryan and I work together to form a sentence from them and draw a picture to go with it.

AT family. We started with this family and wrote them on the chalk board. Here is the sentence he came up with.

AD family.


AN family :
This time we added a few extra words with the an in the middle of the word. He also wanted to add a bonus word at the bottom - panda.
This was the sentence he came up with. He was not in the mood for drawing today. He even knew it, because he told me that I would not like his drawing. UGh - that makes me feel horrible as a mom. I try not to be over critical, but there are days when I do tell him that I can tell he does not feel like drawing, writting ect... . I have showed him in the past the difference between when he wants to and when he does not - although I have never criticed his work. When he does it quickly and sloppy then asks me if I like it , what do I say? I dont want to automaticall say "good job" even when obviously it was rushed and not thought about. But I do not want to tell him I think it is horrible. I think that is the hard part for me , Is letting go and learning the right thing to say to encourage him without hurting his self esteem. Giving him confidence and the ability to critize his work, without worry of feeling like a failure. I feel it is so imprortant to be able to judge our own work and know in our hearts whether or not we have done a good job and if not be able to accept that "today was just not a good drawing,handwritting, ect day" Anyway..... I got off on a tangent there : )





We also spent lots of time playing, hangin out with friends, learning about electricity, listening to The Magic Tree House books of tapes

Cooking:

And starting a weaving project

Spring Fairy for Eileen

This Spring Fairy is for my friend Eileen over at Little Acorn learning. She came out rather cute so I thought I would post her here. I plan on making some more similar to her for the shop.

Spring time fun in the hay!

It looks like spring is starting to arrive here in the northeast - yipeee!!!
On Sat Ryan and I headed out to the local Waldorf school for one of their puppet shows. They only have a few a year so I try not to miss any. The story this time was "Mother Holle". As usual it was beautiful and inspiring.

After the show we headed out to the playground. Ryan spent a lot of time on the hay stacks they had set up. He jumped , did somersaults and had a blast. He made a friend on the swings and they headed back over to the hay stacks - they were very popular.



On our way out Ryan found this hollowed out log that is great for crawling through.



A blossom fairy just in time for spring to arrive. Ryan made this one below. He is really starting to enjoy his handwork and getting better at doing them by himself. This one he only needed a tiny bit if help.

Blog award

Last week I was given a blog award from Mountain Pulse - a wonderful lady in Alsaka. I enjoy her blog . We'll she gave me this Lemonade award for attitude and/ or gratitude. Even though I started off blogging for myself and my family , it has been wonderful to connect to many other moms and share our ongoings with them as well.

the LEMONADE award for Attitude and/or Gratitude

Here are the rules:
1. Put the logo on your blog or post.
2. Nominate blogs which show great Attitude and/or Gratitude
3. Link to your nominees within your post.
4. Let them know they have received this award by commenting on their blog.
5. Share the love and link this post to the person from whom you received your award.


This award goes to:

1. frogcreek -
The randomnly updated chronicle of our journey as a life learning, farm starting, kind parenting, organically minded, sustainable family.

2. little acorn learning
Eileen is a WAHM to four beautiful daughters and runs Little Acorn Playgarden out of her Connecticut home. She also offers a monthly nature curriculum for parents and caregivers of children.

3. Pineneedlegarden
Under the canopy of life some things stick to you, and sometimes they don't. When they do wouldn't it be nice if they could bring happiness to another human being? These musings are the pine needles of my life.

4.firstbabynextgeneration
New parents raising the first Kirchner/Bergstrom grandson! Very exciting times...thought it might get interesting enough to read once in a while.

Weekend in NYC

Well at 37 weeks pregnant we headed to NYC for the weekend - sometimes I myself think I a little bit nuts. We were supposed to take this trip the first weekend in Feb but Sage got sick and we had to postpone it to the first weekend in March. Why the first weekend?? That is the time that a Bank of America card holder can get into certain museums for free. So for Sage's bday we decided to take him into the city to the Museum of Natural History. As a surprise bonus we booked a hotel using our points and stayed the night.

We left Sat after lunch and headed into the city:



Our first stop was to the new Mets stadium. Sage and his dad are huge Mets fans and Sage wanted to see the new stadium up close. The funny thing is that directly across the street from this new stadium is a whole block lined with auto body shops! The whole place was run down and shady. I was worried that if we stopped to long someone might strip our car for parts - I had never seen anything like it .
After an hour long grueling ride from the stadium to our hotel I headed to the room for some much needed rest! The Hotel was at 63rd and Broadway across from the Lincoln Center and a block away from Central Park. It was a very nice , cool, hip hotel - as you can see from the robes laid at the bottom of the bed. The first thing we did was to tell the boys the goodies left on the desk are not free - do not touch!




Heading down to the museum. It was fun to watch Ryan running and skipping along the city streets. It reminded us of how Sage used to do the same thing when we lived there from the time he was 3 till he was 7. The weather was beautiful.
Finding a bird of prey sitting in the trees. Ya know when we lived in the city, I do not know if I would of noticed that.
After an hour at the museum - it closed shortly after we got there on Sat so we decided to go back on Sun. We headed over to Strawberry Fields - the memorial for John Lennon. For those who may not know, Ryan is a HUGE Beatles fan and this was a must see. We stayed for about 1/2 an hour. Three guys with their acoustic guitars had set up and were playing the Beatles songs. One guys was lighting candles and another lady was dancing in her own little world.
I had never been so it was a nice stop to make.
We then headed off in search of food good food, yet not too expensive. We found this Asian restaurant called Amber that fit the criteria. The food was awesome and as an added bonus they get you in and out. I think we only spent 30 - 40 min there! They had a very cool Buddha statue that changed colors.
The boys then dropped me off back at the hotel around 7:30 - I was done for the day!! I crawled into bed and watched a movie while they went off exploring the city. They went down to Times Square and Madison Square Garden and took the subway home. Funny when we lived there I would of thought nothing of that - now If I had known that was where they were going and they would be taking a subway I would of been a nervous wreck!!

They came home around 9:30 with cupcakes yumm. We each had one and then headed off to bed.


We started off our morning with cupcakes! we each split the 2 that were left, got dresses and then headed out to find real breakfast.

On the way back to the musuem we stopped at a playground that the boys had played at when Sage was 10 and Ryan 2.


Sage took a ton of pics of the dinosaurs and animals around the museum. It was fun, but honestly I was exhausted at that point and could care less about the museum. I enjoyed it more when we were there Sat night. Hey I just noticed that that is Tony sitting in front of the dinosaur with the orange jacket.
Fortunately we took a taxi back to our car and headed home straight into my bed!!!!

We all had a wonderful time and I am glad Sage enjoyed his belated Birthday present - Happy Birthday Sage!

Hanging out in the birth tub

We did a test run of the birth tub yesterday to see how long it will take to fill and how long the hot water lasts. It went well and now Tony is an expert at it! Ryan and I had fun relaxing in it for a good half an hour and it never got cold. Today the midwife and came for a home visit and our Doula intern was here to met the kids. She will be here for sibling support. Everything is ready - now we just hang out and wait for miss Adeline to make her debut.