I Fought the Ants and the Ants LOST

Last night our apartment was full. It was a cool spring night with a pretty fantastic wind. I was psyched to turn off the air conditioning and open all the windows. Aunt S was staying in Princess Pea Pod's room, so we turned on the fan and opened the window. And ants went EVERYWHERE! It was ant chaos! I was disgusted. And I had the heebie jeebies!

Essential oils to the rescue! I grabbed my ant spray bottle (peppermint and water with a pinch of salt) and went to war. I sprayed the window sill. I sprayed the walls where they were scattering. Ants were dropping left and right, but there were SO many! I finally got the bottle of peppermint oil and dropped some on a tissue, then ran the tissue over the window frame and the wall around the window. In just a few minutes there were no ants left. Hallelujah!

I have been spraying the door and window frames in the living area for several weeks, but now I know to get all the entry points! Today's lesson: ants don't dig peppermint!

She Is

She was small and delicate, soft and easy.
Then she started talking. Then she started walking.
She started forming her own opinions and voicing them.
She had always been absorbing information, processing the world around her.
Now she shares that information. Sometimes at inopportune moments; almost always catching me off guard. I forget or I don't realize how much she catches, how much she understands.
And then she wakes as her ninth birthday dawns - one groggy and slightly sluggish, the other bright and sunny.
She put on a lovely spring frock and shiny big girl dress shoes.
And then she does this:

And this:

What a girl! Happy 9th birthday, principessa!

Thanks for making life so fun!

Oh Boy... The Window Was Open!

I have said many (many) things as a parent I would like to believe I would not have otherwise said. I keep thinking I should write those things down somewhere so Princess Pea Pod and I can share a lark over it someday, but I don't think I'd ever accomplish anything if I stopped every time I had an "I never thought I'd say THAT" moment. I suspect you know exactly what I mean. And, of course, random passers-by have been privy to some pretty interesting conversations. How many times have I seen a stranger chuckle over a tidbit of conversation with our principessa? (Hint: The answer is similar to the answer one gets when asking Mr. Owl how many licks it takes to get to the Tootsie Roll center of a Tootsie Pop.)

So. The window. Hot Daddy was pretty sure the neighbors were going to be calling the nice young men in the clean white coats to come and take me away tonight. Princess Pea Pod is not a fan of the flavor of her immune booster. However, the combination of chiropractic care, essential oils and the immune booster has helped her allergies greatly. We did a year of allergy shots and don't relish the idea of going through that again. Therefore, it's immune booster or bust! I have been known to silly it up to get her to relax and chew them up quickly. Tonight's cast was a lively pair of faux Brits, 'Ippo and Elly. (Yes. Hippo and elephant.) They were spurred into action by Hot Daddy's reminder that a medicine refused orally must sometimes be delivered via suppository. I did not realize Hot Daddy had opened the window shortly after he made that comment and walked away, so the neighbors got to hear the following conversation quite loudly. In a terrible British accent.

'Ippo: I say, old pal, I do 'ope she chooses to chew us up!

Elly: I'd much rather go in the right way.

'Ippo: Is true! I'd much rather go in 'er mouth than in 'er nose.

Elly: And I'd rather go in 'er ear than in 'er rear!

(Princess Pea Pod is just about rolling by now. There may have been a rather unladylike snort from stage left.)

Elly: And I'd rather go in 'er mouth than in 'er backsies!

Hot Daddy: I hope the neighbors can't hear this through the window. They'll be calling the mental institution on you.

(I completely missed the implication that the window was standing open.)

'Ippo: Oh please! I'd rather 'ave 'er chew me up than have to go up the backsies!

(Insert guffaws and snorts. Hot Daddy says something else about the neighbors hearing. I still don't get it.)

Several minutes later, Princess Pea Pod has laughed herself silly and finally chewed her immune booster. I have streaks of makeup down my face. We're finally breathing normally again and then I realize... the window was open the entire time.

If the nice young men in the clean white coats come to take me away, I suppose I'll probably just thank them for offering a bit of peace and quiet!

Seriously. Why Plan?

Hello, my name is E and I like to plan.

I have been known to stay in bed, plotting my options and determining the perfect order for attacking my day, not actually getting up to face the day until I am sure I have found the most efficient and pleasant method for facing the day. Every day. Because brushing my teeth and washing my face are not always most practical in the same order when you consider the room temperature, how many family members are awake, and which obstacles stand between me, my coffee and my morning paper. Things change and I change with them. Just let me have my plan, my coffee and my paper and nobody should get hurt. (Hey, no promises. I only have a plan and two contingency plans. I don't know that you won't get hurt if you refuse to stick to at least one of the programs.)

So, Granna asked for a spring break with Princess Pea Pod and then my friend A invited me to fly out to visit for a few days. Cool! Except that, long story short (don't you dare laugh at the irony of me making anything short. Or laugh. I might have.) My plans went KABLOOEY! My friend R and her kids were going to be in Woo-Pig-ville when Princess Pea Pod was going to be where they live. My plan to get principessa and her sidekick L together were nullified. My flight didn't pan out. I was bummed to miss time with A, but thankful to have time with R. However, my date night with Hot Daddy kept getting bumped to "tomorrow" until the day my brother called and said, "Your child is crying. You need to call her right now."

Homesick. Our principessa was so very homesick that she didn't want to wait long enough for Granna to bring her home. It was supper time with R and her family, but we never had figured out what to cook, so the plan wasn't really derailed anyway. Not that it mattered. We were out the door pronto-tonto to meet Granna halfway. It was not really all that long before she was in my arms. And here's the deal... I know by now that God's plan is better than mine. So I was bummed when I didn't get to go see A, but I knew there was a reason. I was a bit anxious when I didn't have a supper plan, but there was a reason. God knew what we were going to need and set His plan into motion before it made sense to me.

I am probably not going to change much, but there has been a change to my plan lately and I hope to keep it. My first plan is to remember to go with His plan, because it is always better than mine. That's why He is God and I am just a woman living day to day by His grace.

P.S. I hope to get that date this weekend. It hasn't become a plan yet, though.

Teachable Moments

There's no telling how many times a day I say something as a parent that I simply never imagined I would ever need to say. It happens so often now that I rarely stop to acknowledge the oddity of the words coming out of my mouth. I shouldn't be surprised; she wasn't a year old before we were saying, "We can't get anything past her." She was in preschool when we realized we couldn't dodge a sticky situation by spelling words. We tried speaking in slightly obscure code phrases, but she rises to the challenge and decodes them anyway.

Today I needed a little of this stuff:

I was still drinking my coffee and doing the crossword puzzle in the morning paper. It was so peaceful. Princess Pea Pod got up and came to give me a really great hug. She brought an envelope to me and asked if I could help her mail it. It was this:

That's an order form she pulled out of her most recent National Geographic magazine. Do you see the note where she sealed it? It says "Can I come visit you?" She can't get enough National Geographic! Still, today's first teachable moment is that you need to discuss visiting arrangements with your parents. It's a pretty cool destination, though. Maybe we need to add the National Geographic museum to our list.

I was still reveling in the realization that our kid is really into Nat Geo, when I heard, "Is it ok to choose Bill Me Later?" Um. Huh? "No. What do you want to bill?" I turns out that she wants to order The Body: A Complete User's Guide. Not only does she want to order this book, she wants the more expensive deluxe edition. Oy! I got to teach a couple lessons out of that experience. "We don't just buy things and have a bill sent later." "This is a good book for school, but you have a very similar one you've never used." "You are welcome to order this book if you work around the house to earn enough money."

She got interested in her Usborne Complete Book of the Human Body and found that it will work quite nicely for now. She got so interested, in fact, that she asked to replace her science curriculum for the next couple weeks with a study of the human body. OK!

We encounter so many teachable moments every day. Got a good one? Let me know in the comments. It's nice to know we're not in the trenches alone!

Where We Are and How We Got Here

I used to say I wanted to leave our small town - mostly in the years right after our family moved there. Then I did. When I returned, I changed my tune to, "If God wants me to leave our small town, He'll have to drag me, kicking and screaming." Eventually I matured to a slightly less snotty, "If God calls us to leave here, I'll go. Man, I hope He doesn't ever want us to go."

God called. He said He wanted us to move.

Not to a new house in the same small town, which was a stressful enough thought. He had planted the "maybe it will soon be time to sell our small house and move to a slightly larger one - but only slightly larger. And in the same small town." It took about 9 years of my beloved gently encouraging me to accept that we had outgrown our starter home. I had just agreed that he might be right. Maybe we'd put it on the market in the spring, I said. And maybe, just maybe, this time I meant it.

After all, our lives were an exercise in contentment. We could have moved into a larger home, but I didn't want to do that until I was sure we could be happy with the small home God had given us. We could have moved to a bigger town, but I really wanted to be sure we could be happy with the smaller scale life we lived. I wanted our family to be happy with the small yard, the slightly older vehicle, the lower income and less expensive life. I'm not going to lie; I also wanted to stay near our families and friends, our church and doctors and everything else that had neatly fallen into perfect order. Hot Daddy agreed. So surely everything was just as it should be.

Daddy, on the other hand, had told me several times that we should be looking for jobs in a certain town a couple hours to the west. One with a certain major Woo-Pig university. He would miss us terribly. It would not be easy. But he really felt that move would be right for our family's future. Then my dear daddy died, quietly and peacefully passing from this world to his eternal home. He moved and this time I didn't get to go with him.

Life didn't quit changing then, either. There were some major changes at work. I was no longer able to work from home, so Princess Pea Pod spent most of the summer with my Soul Sister and her family. She was happy with her "other family" and often chose to spend the night there with her friends. It was easier than picking her up late and returning her early the next morning, so we spent most of the summer apart. One night Soul Sister called late and said Princess Pea Pod was crying and holding her head. They could get no explanation from her. Something was wrong and they didn't know what to do. I was there in just a few minutes and our sweet principessa curled up with me and went right to sleep. I called in sick the next day and held her for hours. She finally confessed that she was just miserable because she missed me. There were two such episodes over the summer. And then one day I had to ask Hot Daddy to drive me home from work in the middle of the day. I was having a conversation with my supervisor when I was hit with migraine aura and nausea. My head started spinning and my knees were weak. Surely I was about to have a vertigo attack. But after 5 days it had not progressed into vertigo; I simply could not handle any stimuli. Hot Daddy took me to see our beloved nurse-practitioner who thoroughly examined me, discussed our circumstances, and then gave a painfully accurate diagnosis. I had suffered a stress breakdown. She prayed with us and sent me home with the advice to find a way to alleviate stress. Hot Daddy and I discussed it. We prayed about it. We discussed it some more. And then I submitted my resignation. I was going to become a stay-at-home mom.

I have wanted to homeschool our child(ren) since before Princess Pea Pod changed our lives. But our local schools were good and I worked full time, so it just didn't work out. She enjoyed school, but she wanted to homeschool like several of her friends, working at her pace and learning about life by living. Then, in spite of the efforts of a great teacher and wonderful staff members, our principessa had two bullies to contend with last year. There were days she cried to stay home and days she came home hungry because her lunch and snacks had been taken. We got through the year, and she came out like a champ, but the desire to teach her myself had not diminished. She was excelling and would continue to excel if given the opportunity. With the submission of my resignation from work, I was able to submit something exciting and new - intent to homeschool!

Oh! How exciting this new phase of our lives would be! But that wasn't all the Lord had planned for us. Less than a week after I gave notice at work, Hot Daddy had a call. About a job. No joke, friends, it was an opportunity in a certain town a couple hours to the west. One with a certain major Woo-Pig university. A town my daddy had been encouraging us to consider. (He wasn't always right, but I'll be darned if he wasn't ALMOST always right.) The next thing we knew, they were asking when he could come for an interview. We left after work and used a handy-dandy app to book a hotel room on our way over. We were confident as he went into the interview. Princess Pea Pod and I were killing time at the mall and he met us in the food court a couple hours later.

He looked miserable. I wanted to cry for him. He didn't know what had gone wrong. It was going so well and then they said good-bye and that was that. It was a blown opportunity, or so it seemed to him. But if it was a blown opportunity, then why did I still feel so sure of it? We had spent the morning finding an apartment. It had been easy; the very first place we looked was just right. And I had peace, which was pretty strange when you consider that I just knew moving was going to bring a hailstorm of anxiety. I suggested staying in town for a while, but we had plans back at home that evening. I told him to just wait and see; we would be halfway home and they would want to see him again. No joke, we were 10 minutes from the halfway point when they called and wanted to see him again. I am NOT saying, "I told you so." I am saying God was working on me, because I didn't want to leave our comfort zone, but I wasn't even kicking and screaming. In case I haven't given it away, he got the job. Now came the mad dash... he gave his 2 week notice and we had to get busy. But I still had 1 week at work, then Princess Pea Pod and I were leaving with my momma to visit family several states away.

Our new motto became "Give It, Sell It, Pack It, Store It!" We shoved almost everything that wasn't a family heirloom into the garage and had a yard sale. Even though we were "moving" and it could have been a "moving" sale, it was still a "yard" sale. But when I made the sign, my Y turned into an M and the next thing I knew, I had a "Moving Sale" sign. That was surprising enough, but then a woman came up and asked if she could buy our house. We hadn't even considered trying to sell it yet, but when God brings a buyer to your door, you sell! She agreed to come back after the sale was over and sign the papers. I asked for her name and phone number. Maeve, she said. Really? Really?!? Don't roll your eyes when I tell you this... or roll your eyes, but believe me when I say that I'd had the name Maeve stuck in my head for weeks. I had been praying for this Maeve, whoever she may be, because God had placed her on my heart. I had never actually met anyone with that name, but I prayed for her for weeks. Just a couple hours after we met her, I screeched into a parking spot at the title company with a signed contract. God had alleviated a stress we hadn't even considered having yet!

We packed what we could and then we left Hot Daddy at home while we went to visit our family. I hated leaving him, but I told him not to worry too much; we still had a couple weeks to empty the house after we moved. On August 30, Princess Pea Pod returned to our small house in our small town to find that Hot Daddy had packed everything and had already done the work of moving us. Our minivan was loaded in the garage, so we unloaded our few things from Momma's car, loaded them into our van, and drove another couple hours to our new home. Not only had he moved us, but he and his super fantastic parents had made our new apartment a home.

We had a home, we had a job for Hot Daddy and didn't have to worry about transferring Princess Pea Pod to a new school. We had a doctor - a friend's family had moved to the area a couple years ago and opened a medical clinic just a few minutes down the road. The sweet ladies downstairs gave us some suggestions for a church home. And it wasn't our small town with our small house and our families and friends, but it was already home. No kicking. No screaming. All God. He opened the doors and we ran right in!

And P.S. Daddy was right. As usual.

God Made You Special Part 2

Thanks for coming back! This is one of those issues that needs to be viewed as a whole, but I felt like I was getting really long-winded. So, if you haven't read the first installment, please take a few minutes to do that here before you move on. The "what God has done" is really awesome, but taking into consideration where I was before just amps up the awe!

I like to consider the big picture when I look at a situation, and that was one reason we chose a family physician for our OB care, to deliver our principessa and to also provide our pediatric care. We wanted someone who would know what was going on with our entire family and consider that as health and wellness decisions were made for all of us. So when I felt like my body was falling apart, I wanted to get to the root of the issue. I started thinking about my spine and looking back toward the natural medicines that worked for our ancestors before issues like diabetes and cancer became as common as air and water. I was too busy and too stressed to really follow up on those ideas, but the seeds had been planted.

Then I became a stay-at-home mom and, although my days are filled with homeschooling and household responsibilities, I also found myself with a little bit of time left over to care for myself. All of a sudden it became even more important for me to get back to a functional state to honor the God who made me and the family who trusts me. I started by researching and choosing a chiropractor to help address the spinal issues. I was also able to get in touch with a friend who opened the door for me to begin using and distributing Young Living essential oils. I had already done research and determined that Young Living's purity standards, including their Seed to Seal promise, made them the correct option for our family.

These changes started just about 5 months ago. I have ditched the Epi-Pen and the arsenal of drugs and I DON'T MISS THEM! I am down to one daily medicine, which I hope to eventually eliminate. The daily debilitating migraines are gone. The headaches I do get now are infrequent and minor, and are treated with Peppermint and/or Lavender essential oils. The daily allergy meds and shots have been replaced by diffusing Lavender, Lemon and Peppermint overnight. When I do need a little extra allergy support, I take a 2-4 drops of Lavender, Lemon and Peppermint in a vegetable capsule a couple times a day. (Please note that I specifically refer to Young Living essential oils, as they are the only one I have found that are safe for internal use. Note also that only certain oils are safe to take internally. Read your labels carefully and research before you use any essential oil.) I still get carsick when I ride in the car, but it is alleviated with a little Peppermint or Ginger oil, or by taking a few moments to get out and walk around. No more meds for motion sickness in my purse! The back pain and the issues with pain and lost strength in my hands have been determined to be a result of chronic systemic inflammation. I am already seeing results from an increase in Omega-3 fatty acids and some slight changes to the way I eat. I'm eating fewer inflammatory foods, cutting out things I only thought I would miss. I'm taking in antioxidants and enjoying NingXia Red twice a day. I still enjoy my daily cup of coffee, but I drink it black. I still enjoy water and unsweet tea, but I amp them up a bit with some Lemon or Citrus Fresh for a little extra detox boost. Natural foods don't trigger my mysterious food allergy, and since I no longer eat much meat or dairy, I no longer see some of the digestive issues that often accompanied them.

Now brace yourselves, my sisters, because at the risk of giving too much info, I have GOT to share what happened to my feminine cycle. And I feel fairly safe doing that here because, let's face it, I don't reach many people and roughly 0% of my readers are male. I started taking birth control pills when I was 15 to regulate my hormones so that I could function. The beginning of every cycle brought cramps that caused my legs to not work and pain that kept me in bed, curled into a semi-fetal position because I couldn't curl up tightly, but I couldn't straighten my legs either. I had prescription pain medicines I was instructed to take from 2-3 days before the beginning of each cycle, through the duration of it. I specifically remember one day I tried to get to my meds, but I collapsed on the floor of our home office and it took a couple hours to inch my way to my meds, take them, and lay there while they kicked in enough that I could get back to bed. That info is meant only to express how stinkin' excited I am that my current experience is completely opposite of that! I switched from the toxin-laden products that are so easily accessible to natural products. I worked hard to get my spine in line, and I started treating my pain with my "power pair" of Lavender and Peppermint. The change wasn't instant, but the changes I have made over the last year have started to show results that my family and I greatly appreciate!

Remember the daily puke-fest I mentioned as a result of the antibiotics I was taking for the painful acne? I didn't really discuss it with Hot Daddy; I didn't want to whine and he was busy with the stresses of starting a new job. Then one day he was home and witnessed it. I was only halfway through the 3 month course of antibiotics, but he encouraged me to stop taking them. Could they truly be worth vomiting every single day? There had to be another way to get relief. Enter my new friends, Frankincense and Purification. Within just a couple days, my face was clearing up. I now make my own gentle cleansing wipes to use in the evening and wash with only water in the mornings. I make my own nighttime moisturizer with coconut and jojoba oils as the base and Elemi and Lavender essential oils as my power players. I'm not totally blemish free, especially as my hormones fluctuate, but my face doesn't burn and sting. My blemishes actually heal, where they used to flare in cycles, but never actually heal. I'm calling this success. And it feels good!

I'm not a doctor, I can't tell you what will work for you. I'm just telling you what has worked for me. I am telling you that I am slowly, surely getting back to the way God made me. I am learning that respecting His creation involves respecting and caring for myself. Otherwise, how can I care for the family He has given me? How can I be His hands and feet, caring for the other people God made special?

I was going to wrap up this post with a reference to Jeremiah 1:5, "Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart; I appointed you as a prophet to the nations." Then the Lord gave me 2 Timothy 1:7, "For the Spirit God gave us does not make us timid, but gives us power, love and self-discipline."

If you have questions about God's love, the changes He has brought me through, or Young Living essential oils, feel free to contact me through this page.

God Made You Special

If you've ever watched VeggieTales with your kids, you know that "God made you special and He loves you very much!" I've known that all my life, I've watched roughly a jillion VeggieTales episodes, and I've taught that motto to our Princess Pea Pod. Still, I think it is only now that she has matured to the point that I have a few moments' peace that I have started to realize how very true that is on a personal level.

Don't get me wrong, I've always felt that God made YOU special, and I've always kind-of known that He made me special, too. It just never really clicked. A person is not a person is not a person. There are many people I love, many who are near and dear to my heart, but there's something deeply moving when I look at our principessa and realize how carefully God planned her and put her together. From the eyelashes that fan delicately across her face when she sleeps, to the perfect placement of every freckle. From the slightly maddening cowlicks that add yet another unique flair to her hair, to the toes that are still as adorable as they day she was born - only a tad more smelly. She's a lot like any other kid, and yet she is different. She is special. She was planned by God long before she was formed in my womb, long before her precious daddy and I ever held her.

So my logical mind says that if I can recognize this about our principessa, and about her daddy, or about any number of other people who are also totally amazing... then God really did make ME special. And He planned me for a purpose. Now, I'm not one to get all self centered (and if I ever seem that way, feel free to deliver a reality check) but this is huge. It also means that something has got to change. You see, I've been going through day to day, really only concerned with taking care of my family and surviving til tomorrow, Lord willing. And I hate to complain, so I always figured the aches and pains and oddities with which I lived were the same as everyone else. So I put on my big girl panties and trudged on. I am not going to start whining now - it still gives me the willies and triggers a gag reflex when I hear whining - but I have learned something and I want to shout it from the mountaintops. Are you ready for this?

It doesn't honor God when I let little issues snowball to big issues and allow my health to suffer.

Yep. Read that again. And then internalize it, please. He made me special and I trashed His creation. "Hey God, thanks for putting all that thought and care into making me, but Your work isn't important enough to maintain." I never said that, but boy did I say that. We'll fast forward past the obvious transgressions... junk food and very little exercise. Everywhere you look there is someone talking about diet and exercise. I wrestled with those issues, but they overshadowed much more.

Several years ago I developed horrible headaches. Debilitating migraines that led me to shut myself in a cool, dark room with no stimuli. These started about the same time as the vertigo and constant motion sickness. I can get carsick sitting in a chair in the living room. I can get carsick backing out of the driveway. I can get carsick sitting still in church. I was nauseous all the time. Surely all the fatigue was just the result of new motherhood, or having a toddler, or working while maintaining the home. The back pain was too, right? There were so many times I thought I must have been pregnant again, because my body ached and exhaustion was overwhelming. Not to mention that issue of pregnancy - or lack thereof. After not even having to try to conceive Princess Pea Pod, we've spent nearly 8 years trying to conceive her sibling. I'm not whining, but yeah, I was a hot mess.

A couple years ago I mentioned these issues to my doctor. I ended up with meds for indigestion and meds for pain. There were trips to a fertility specialist and surgery for endometriosis. Then more meds for that pain and the excruciating experience that was the beginning of my monthly cycle. There was also surgery on my back to remove a fatty tumor that may or may not have been pressing on my spine and causing the back pain, and pain meds for that when we found that the lipoma was not the source of the back pain. The ER trip in the midst of a vertigo attack brought about the addition of blood pressure meds for the migraines that may or may not have set off the vertigo, as well as anti-anxiety and antiemetic drugs to take as soon as vertigo symptoms arise. A couple years ago, an anaphylactic reaction to some food somewhere triggered an ER visit and allergy testing, resulting in consistently high doses of antihistamines and the addition of the Epi-Pen to my daily life. Not to mention the daily antihistamine/decongestant and eventually the allergy shots. I had to carry a large purse wherever I went so I was sure to have the right meds at the right time. I was in my early 30's and carried more meds than my 90 year-old grandmother!

How could I honor God when I couldn't even grip a pen to add my daily reflections in the journal I keep for Princess Pea Pod? How could I be His hands and feet when I fell asleep at the computer while I was working? (And thank God for a job at home, where I could make up that time.) How could I respect what He has given me when I was barely functional? I didn't even want to show my face in public because the deep, painful acne on my face made even washing my face with plain water bring tears. Not to mention applying makeup that made my face burn and itch, no matter what product I tried. Or the daily vomiting session that resulted soon after I took the antibiotics prescribed for that acne.

And then God brought our family through a series of events that included my resignation from work and the decision to become a homeschooling stay-at-home mom. Add that story to the list of posts I really, truly have to add. I can't even begin to do justice to the great blessings God has brought upon our family. But check out God Made You Special Part 2 for what He has done to restore my health. If you've powered through this post, you need to know what happens next!

I'm only a wee bit late... I hope you had a very blessed Christmas season.

Our family has been through quite the series of events since my last post, but I am looking forward to moving forward together. I'm back and I'm better than ever!