What that guy you married thinks of you, and why you should care

               

honeymoon at pacific beach 2004

   Rocking my baby this morning at three a.m. ( I do all my best thinking then, it's quiet!) I thought about all the different views I've taken on my relationship with my husband and how those views have affected our marriage. I've said this a billion-jillion times, but it bars being said again- attitude really is everything. That being said, our marriage thus far has been an excellent living example of that.
When we were first married, my attitude was that everything had happened the wrong way. Being young, I had absorbed others opinions on my marriage. That it was premature. That it would likely not last. That we each deserved a better start than we had. Last but not least, that we were missing out on what we were really supposed to be doing with our lives, on something that was probably way cooler and more important than what we were doing with it now. Those opinions colored my relationship with my husband. It made selfishness and resentment rise right to the surface where it was easy to scoop off for fight ammunition. It gave me the attitude of "I deserve better than this" Well, let me tell you, those opinions and attitudes didn't help us out much. In fact, the first couple years of my marriage were the toughest so far. Even princesses with legitimate crowns in real castles are responsible for the messes they find themselves in, and I was no exception. The biggest mistake I made? Thinking of my marriage as a lesser-value model than others' marriages who had a more socially acceptable start. Like the couple who got married after dating for five years and waited for each other through the thick and the thin, or the couple who had a beautiful romance and got married in an enchanted garden kissing for the very first time at the altar to roaring applause. Those marriages are valuable and beautiful, don't get me wrong, they just weren't more valuable than mine. Once again, that attitude caused me to invest less of myself into my relationship. I always had a foot out the door, and I fantasized about my future instead of our future, my dashed hopes and dreams, instead of what we both may have lost. (by the way, nine years later, I can say that we both gained more than we ever lost)

 "I took a friends concept of duty being to first serve and care for the children, and last after everything else to take care of my marriage, as a wild card and applied it as a motto everywhere in my life."

            That attitude ended after we had our twins. I guess at this point I figured, hey, if I'm going to have lots of kids with this guy, I should be in for the long haul right? Right. Too bad I didn't decide that a few years before, it could have spared us some hardship. However, my progress in positive attitude was a slow one and still not perfect, (who am I kidding, it's still not perfect!) as I might have relinquished myself to being committed to the marriage, but my primary focus of my commitment was on our kids and our parenting, not our relationship. Which when healthy, naturally produces good kids and good parenting. I saw nothing but the flaws in my husband's parenting, the bad examples he was setting for the kids, the ways he was failing to lead our family. Our kids were very young, the oldest in preschool, the twins infants, just barely to an age where they could be led, and I was no prime example myself. I thought I was, I tried hard to find my identity, to not use bad language around the budding ears, to eat my vegetables and explore my true self... Really though, what I needed to be doing was loving their daddy and meeting his needs too. Love is the best example we can give our children and I was blind to that. I was caught up in destructing my husband rather than building him up and partnering with him. I let my friends marital ideals and dysfunctions bleed into mine through spending too much time with the wrong people. I took a friends concept of duty being to first serve and care for the children, and last after everything else to take care of my marriage, as a wild card and applied it as a motto everywhere in my life. I used it as an excuse to not clean my house or prepare dinner for my hungry husband and go on play dates with the kids all day instead, stating in defense that the kids were most important and deserved to have my time and to have fun. Honestly, this attitude was better than my first believe it or not, but still clearly not enough improvement considering I was just as miserable as before. I would still revert immediately to thinking of life as a single whenever we'd have an argument or disagreement. I would still lie awake at night stewing over all the negatives in our relationship.
       
 "I began leaning more towards real devotion to my husband, but I was still caught up in the island style parenting I had made myself accustomed to."

         When we moved to Adna and discovered our pregnancy with baby #4 is when attitude phase #3 came into play. I began leaning more towards real devotion to my husband, but I was still caught up in the island style parenting I had made myself accustomed to. (and I don't mean relaxing on a beach with a margarita, I mean everything was done resentfully alone) That time was when some of the very worst of the potty training nightmare with my second son was occurring, the beginning of school troubles with my oldest son had begun, and my young daughter even began a nervous tick of pulling out her hair. In hind sight, I can see that my marriage problems effected my children and their behavior much more deeply than I ever imagined. My further absorption with my kids and my slightly better attitude towards my husband made some friendships that were better off gone begin to dissolve. A step in the right direction, though still not where I needed to be. When our baby was born and my mom helped us move to a bigger house out in the country is when life really took a change in the right direction.
       Moving to our current home was the best thing that could have happened to us. I went to fewer and fewer moms group events, naturally weaning away thanks to my distance from town, my growing number of children, and the inconvenience and cost of traveling long distances that often. I'd like to say to all moms out there that moms groups are a fantastic place to live and grow and, but in reality that's not what I found. I gleaned a small handful of genuine friends from the experience that made it all worth while, but probably a larger fistful of emotional complexes thanks to the silent but constant comparison and competition. Perhaps not all moms experience this, maybe it was me that was easily persuaded into a different train of thought by others. Whatever the circumstances, it was best for me to not be in that circle anymore. On the plus side my children were actually happier to just stay home and chill more often, and our home life regained some much needed routines and structure. I also began to see more clearly what was lacking in my marriage. Regular conversation, blunt chats about our relationship, honesty about our future. Now don't go mistaking those for easy talks!

"He pushed our kid capacity number from 'large but handle-able' for one strong mom, into the 'can't do anything without help' realm where I just plain had to start demanding more  from my husband."

       Before our fourth baby was even a year old, we discovered we were pregnant again. Wowza! "Can't that lady figure out some birth control?" and "Are they crazy?!" probably come forefront to your mind. Alas, my children are my life's greatest blessing, and birth control is a whole separate blog post waiting to happen, so we'll refrain from that part of the discussion for now.  Cohen (baby #5) did amazing things for my marriage: He pushed our kid capacity number from 'large but handle-able' for one strong mom, into the 'can't do anything without help' realm where I just plain had to start demanding more from my husband. You know what? He started giving me the help I needed. In return I was grateful, which in turn made him proud to be a good daddy, which in turn made me hot for this new monster I'd created. It was a good vicious cycle! I realized a great many things too. That involved dads are sexy. That really giving my whole self to my husband and pouring my desperations about parenting and life out to him do much more good than ranting to friends, who tend to give bad advice if it's not coming from God and prayer.
     Finally, I entered the current phase, where my marriage has been better than ever. Through good old fashioned time and suffering, I discovered that I want my man to be happy. I want him to think I'm a good worth while woman. Both of those things take work, everyday. It's worth it, and worth the effort to climb back up the hill after you fall off the horse now and again (which I do frequently) because he is after all what you're going to be stuck with after the kids are all long gone on their own journeys. The kids are all the better for it too. I pray everyday that they don't have to wait five or six years into their marriage to have it start to get good. I love my husband more now than I ever fathomed I would while saying "I do" back in 2004. I think I could have loved him more thoroughly years ago if I'd have stopped to realize his value and began investing in him, in us sooner. Today I am glad to cook and clean for him, I'd even wear a polka dot apron, high heels, and pearls while doing it if it'd make him smile. Oh yeah, and we had one more baby. Maybe it was because of the cooking. ;) I hope to be able to write another blog post (or whatever they might have then) about how much greater and stronger my marriage is in another ten years from now.

 Love and blessings,
Mama Donna

Adventures in parenting- Episode #1567

Our adventure starts with baby number four, boy number three, nearly two year old Griffin starting to escape his crib. After three days of hoping he'd magically quit hopping out of the cage, we finally caved and moved the crib out and the toddler bed in. We were milking every day we could out of the captivity of the crib...funny how with your first child you can't wait for those milestones and then each child after that you draw out the inevitable as long as you can. With the first baby your facebook statuses read "Alex just rolled over!!! What a big strong man, can't wait for the next thing!" and "Johnny just took his first step! We'll be blazing trails in the park in no time!" The more seasoned mother's statuses look more like: "Well, Emma just rolled over. That means I only have two more months of peace before the little monster starts pulling the decorations down and eating everything I don't have time to vacuum."...guess which one I am? ;)
In preparation for this moment we had removed the wardrobe and installed a large cabinet up out of little hands reach to store his clothes, diapers, shoes, etc. (Can you tell we've done this before? How many times have some of you had to re-fold all the contents of a dresser or closet that little hands have found? Let me rephrase that. How many hundreds of times have you had to refold giant mounds of clean clothes?) We put safety plugs in all the outlets, took out anything we thought he could climb up onto and fall off of to hurt himself. The goal here was to make the room kind of like a safe house so that we could just lay him down in his bed and shut the door, allowing him to run around freely and make his own decision to go to sleep. Once again, we'd been here before, and tried many other avenues- Sitting out in the hallway outside of baby's doorway until drunk with exhaustion constantly hopping back off of my perch to reprimand for getting out of bed, for climbing up something, for playing with toys...ugg, no thank you! If there's one thing I've learned, it's that you can't make someone do something. Even if you work really hard to intimidate them into it. (Not that I've ever tried that...;) ) So instead I've grown to appreciate lending a false deaf ear to things. What is this you ask? A false deaf ear? Yes, it's where you can hear Billy and Johnny beating the ever living tar out of each other with the nerf bats, and you can hear Johnny (who had it coming by the way) screaming for mercy, but you smile at your house guests, recross your legs and ask Pam how Gracie is doing in ballet class. You can hear what is going on, but sometimes, you pretend you can't for sanity and mostly, for the child's sake. Children really don't need to be rescued all the time, and if you try, it's you who will need rescuing.
So, back from that bunny trail we have Griffin in his panic room, err, I mean, safe room. Or so we thought... On the first night I still wound up going into his room multiple times to put the toddler bed back in the corner since his room has two great big windows that dominate a whole wall,  wood floors that make sliding furniture around easy for little people, and it was a duh-ism to this tot to make a stool out of the bed and climb up into the window. Hey, I said I tried not to rescue children too often, not that I wanted to assist them in suicide! Also, he was continually taking the mattress off of the bed and then sobbing because he couldn't get it back on again. After a restless night we had to get more creative, and came up with this:

Two ties made from cut strips of an old sheet tying the mattress to the bed frame but staying soft and flush so that Griffin wouldn't be too uncomfortable and feel the strips under the sheet once we put it on. Then the whole shebang placed on an area rug that we put hot glue gun style no slip backing on. (If you don't know what that is, let me explain! Just warm up that hot glue gun you have stored away for crafts, and make a zigzag pattern all over the backing of the rug. Let it dry, and then wala! instant non slip rug without the fussy separate backing sheet that always comes out from under the rug to play ugly peek-a-boo.) Plus...we put a few dots of hot glue on the legs of the bed so that he really couldn't move that sucker. (let it dry a few minutes turned upside down and it works the same as the rug)
Mr. Griffin is now sleeping snug as a bug in his newly made safer safe room and this is one happy mama! How the heck else did you think I'd have time to write this blog post?!
I hope the sharing of these ideas will spread a little more sanity and parent quiet time to the world!

<3 MamaDonna

Mayday Mayday!

Hello! ...and welcome to May!! 
I can't believe it's already May! My calendar is getting dizzy from flipping pages so fast! So, I feel it is my duty to update my blog, and therefore all of my readers on what's been going on in the lives of the Lines Fam. :) (Lucky you, right?)
                As many of you know, we are due with baby number five May 4th, and that is THIS Friday!!!! I am so excited, and impatient, and antsy, and...uncomfortable! hahaha Anyone who's had a baby or is currently this far along knows exactly what I mean. Heck, anyone who has had to live with a woman this far along knows what I mean!  Freezer meals are made and stored away, baby's clothes are washed, folded, and stacked neatly on the nursery shelves, and all the birth center bags are packed and waiting in the van alongside  baby's car seat- don't ask me how this has made grocery shopping the last two weeks, or the other four kids that have had to ride the forty five minute drive home from town with gallons of milk in their laps for that matter! I think we are ALL waiting for the tell tale signs of labor to show up! Which isn't easy when you're body is so ready and prepped for having babies having done it many times before that it is almost always in some state of prodromal labor the last four weeks. I keep telling my husband that this would be so much more tolerable if I could just go into hard labor and have the baby, or quit with all of these teasing symptoms so that I could get rest and be pleasantly surprised when I finally went into labor. Ha! The laws of nature say otherwise. Baby needs to be in the right position, milk has to be just on the brink of production and full operation, muscles, tendons, joints need to all be loosened in preparation for delivery, and last but definitely not least when you're calculating biggest discomforts, cervix has to be at it's prime for a smooth delivery. I suppose some women can glide on through this stage of their pregnancy, ignoring all these signs and symptoms knowing they'll recognize the true blue labor contractions when they arrive. Some women I've talked to  have the same onset signs before labor, or deliver (like my sister) exactly one week before their due date each pregnancy. I truly envy these women! I delivered my first baby in four hours two weeks early after an induction due to low fluids, then came my twins four weeks early after multiple stays in the hospital to stop preterm labor previous to that with an eight hour labor that was stopped and restarted in the middle, then my first home birth baby who is currently twenty months old arrived one day overdue after two hours of total labor, but only thirty minutes of active labor! None of these labors or their symptoms had much commonality. The biggest issue with this pregnancy is timing- my husband works forty five minutes away from home, the midwife lives twenty five minutes away from us, and we have four small children to contend with at home. So needless to say we do a lot of praying that baby will choose to arrive in the late evening or middle of the night so that at least my husband can be home to catch!
            With the worry about when baby will choose to arrive, comes connected the overreaction to each little symptom: "Ooo, that was a stronger than normal braxton hick, start timing them!" "My lower back is feeling crampy and I've been more moody than normal, maybe it's the hormonal surge before labor!"
My poor midwife has probably gotten more irritating phone calls from me in the last two weeks than she's ever gotten from her average soon to be mother of five. Although she's a great sport, and since she was the catcher at my last birth she knows that there isn't room to be too skeptical about me having a baby quickly when it finally happens!
             Speaking of other babies, I've been doing a little bit of worrying about how Griffin will react to a new baby. This is the closest together we've ever had babies and each previous time the older siblings were more at an age of reason and understanding, and definitely at least out of the crib! Griffin is still very much the babe of the family- still sleeps in his crib, sits in the highchair, takes nice long naps and early bed times, and is just now starting to really do any talking other than saying Mommy and Daddy. We've just now gotten him to start patting my belly and saying "baby", but we do that for our own amusement, he has no clue what's about to happen. The twins were simple when Griffin was born, they were born with company so they didn't feel any displacement! They even handed over their pacifiers to him and never stuck them back in their mouths! I pray that things are that smooth this time around. Griff is our cuddle bean, our little snuggle love, and he is not happy when Mommy or Daddy's laps are even occupied by a book, much less another baby! Usually after we have a new addition to the family I move in to the master bedroom for the first postpartum week to work on getting a good breastfeeding/sleeping pattern going and to bond with the new baby(s). My wonderful husband takes a week off of work and brings me food, drink, and entertainment, and brings the other kids in to say hello to the baby and I for a quick little minute and to receive bedtime hugs, kisses, and prayers, and then scoots them on back out. This time around I think I'll have to have Griffin live in the bedroom with new baby and I for larger parts of the day to avoid major emotional calamity and possible hostility toward the new guy. It's so important to me that Griffin not feel replaced or forgotten, he's such a lover I think I'd be pretty wounded if he shifted his affections elsewhere too.
             So! This is the end of my family update for today (mostly because I'm ready for a nap before the kids wake up) but you can count on another update soon!! With new baby pictures!! Woohoo, wish us luck!


         

Recycled jean aprons!

Reduce, reuse, recycle junk in your house for craft supplies!!

Today I'm sharing my own version of an idea I stole off pinterest: recycled jeans aprons :) Don't worry, I didn't steal someone else's instructions or pictures, these are all my own, I just stole and modified an idea....much better, right?
Okay, so it's spring here- if you ignore the six inches of snow anyway, and if you're anything like me you've already started spring cleaning and day dreaming of summer and barbequed food. When cleaning closets I found stacks of old jeans that no one wears, or that have been worn to their limit. So, here are the instructions to turn that into a pile of jean aprons for your kiddos to help in the kitchen, barbeques, and great gifts for all the cooks in the family!

•  Step 1- Cut the butt out. Don't you wish you could do that to yourself sometimes? For this I just used a sharp pair of sewing scissors and cut along the back where the crotch seam lined up to give as much length to the apron as possible. I've seen it cut shorter to make smaller cutesier aprons- so this part is up to your taste.

 

•  Step 2- Get your ruffle material ready to go. For this step many of you may want to take the cheaters way out like me, and use an old dress to cut the ruffles off of- or you can pick any material you like and just pin it into a gathered look before sewing to get your ruffles. Since this apron is for my daughter, and she also happened to have a favorite and very worn old dress that no longer fit and had a perfect ruffle edge for the taking, I just stole that. As you can see in the picture below I cut the dress apart and took the ruffled edge along with a small margin of fabric from above for attaching purposes.

 

  

It worked out perfect too, because since the jeans and dress were about the same size there was the perfect amount of ruffle material for the project!

• Step 3- Attach the ruffles. :) Once again, because of the of premade ruffles I used, this step was very easy.  I just used that little extra margin of material I left on when I cut the ruffles off the dress to tuck behind the jean material and began sewing down the side- jean side down on my sewing machine. When I got to the corner, I wanted it to have a rounded look so I then tucked the ruffle strip to the front side of the jeans folding the little margin over to keep only the ruffle, not the extra material showing. Then I flipped the project to ruffle side down on the machine and kept sewing along that line across the bottom of the jeans. If you are more exacting than I am, feel free to pin this all in place before beginning your sewing...I'm just more of a go by the seat of your pants kind of gal... (har har har) Continue by doing your corner the same on the other side and flipping the ruffling back around to go up the other side. To give it a more finished look when you're done, cut the ruffle to even with the top of the jeans and then fold over slightly and sew along it to give it a clean edge. 

These looked sloppy after pinning them but I readjusted them as I sewed and made them look neater. 

• Step 4- Make your apron ties. For this part I again salvaged material from the old dress to match the ruffles, but another cute idea would be to use the leftover jean leg material. I just cut the remaining seams and ruffles off of the dress to get to the flattest material and then rolled it over and over into about a 1.5 inch thickness strip. I then used my quilting mat and a rotary scissors to cut one of the edges off the roll, opening up to create about four 2ish inch wide strips. If you have enough material to make two equal length strips, I'd recommend that, my daughters dress just wasn't long enough. Then I took the strips and folded each outside edge into the center, with one edge overlapping just enough to sew a seam down and pinned them in place that way- I used two of the strips per apron tie tucking one into the other.  Finally sew down the center fold of each tie and if desired add a secondary embellishing stitch to add an extra touch and  extra strength to the ties. I used a fun flower stitch on mine. :) Lastly fold over and sew down a corner on one end to give it the angled ribbon look. All done!
• Step 5-  Attach the ties. This is the easiest step, just place the ties behind the ruffles against the jean material and sew them on! I went over it twice to make sure it was a good strong attachment. 
• Step 6- Clip all your loose threads, check it over to make sure everything is in place- and find a cute model to show off your finished apron!!!!