It is disheartening how many young moms are not taught how to help their little ones avoid illnesses through proper care of the baby bottles, pacifiers, and sippy cups.  Over the past few omnths, I have heard many young moms talking about their little ones getting sick often or having chronic problems with catching colds or other illnesses, sometimes even thrush.

One of the ways that we have avoided illnesses with our little ones is to be very diligent in the care of the bottles, sippy cups and pacifiers.  Amazingly, most young moms have no idea how to sterilize these things.  Just this one simple task has helped tremendously in preventing illnesses.  Now that we have 2 little ones, it will be even more important.

The first thing that helps to prevent illness is the obvious of limiting contact of your children with others who are sick.  Of course if you have a little one in day care or public school, they will share the illnesses with the little ones at home.  Whenever possible, you should limit contact however.

Teaching little ones to wash their hands during the day is also important.  Especially after using the bathroom.  You can also make up a batch of hand wipes for them to use.  Take a stack of wash cloths and soak them in a solution of water with a few drops of baby wash in it.  We use these as baby wipes for diaper changing also.  If you have a container of these where the little ones can reach them, they can easily be taught to use one to wipe their face and hands.

One effective way to prevent the sharing of illness between little ones is to not allow them to share sippy cups, bottles or pacifiers.  Take this also a step further.  Each night after the little ones have gone to bed, when you wash the bottles, sippy cups, and pacifiers take the extra time to toss them into a large kettle and sterilize them.    Sterilizing these items will do much to help prevent the sickness from speading.  Especially things like pacifiers!  A little one who has just gotten over a cold can have a relapse if you do not wash & sterilize the pacifier they used during the illness.  As a matter of habit, I sterilize the bottles and all their parts, the sippy cups and all their parts, and the pacifiers every day.  Whether it be at night or during their afternoon nap, I sterilize a whole day's supply of these.  Sterilizing all the little parts is especially important if you use the Dr. Brown type bottles or others with parts that are hard to clean.  The same goes for the flow restrictors in the newer sippy cups that are very difficult to clean due to the flow restrictor's design.

Here is the process that I use to sterilize.  I use my water bath canner kettle as it is large enough to hold everything.  I place all the bottles, sippy cups, their parts, and the pacifiers into the kettel and over with enough water to allow the bottles & cups to be fully submerged.  Place the kettle on the stove and bring the water to a boil.  Continue boiling for 15 minutes.  I then turn off the heat and allow the water to cool.  They are then dried with a clean towel.  Since I make up a day's worth of homemade formula each day, I go ahead and refill the bottles with the formula.  Sippy cups are allowed to dry fully before I assemble them, unless they are needed before they have dried.  Pacifiers are allowed to air dry, then are stored in a container to help keep them clean until they are needed. 

There are some websites that say sterilizing bottles is no longer needed if you make the formula with city water that has been treated.  Some medical websites disagree though.  I agree with the doctors on this one.  We live in a rural area.  The water we get is through a rural water system, similar to a city's system.  We are receiving letters in the mail on a regular basis however that the water is not yet up to the standards that it is supposed to be ~ containing pollutants that should not be there.  The other reason is the design of the bottles & sippy cups.  Even using hot soapy water and a bottle brush, you cannot get into all the areas that need cleaning.  So, to be safe I will sterilize them.

Hopefully some of these ideas will be of a help. 

It has been many years, but I *was* one. So I wanted to try to share my personal angle. I believe there was something going on this weekend in Homesteadblog-dom that had to do with homeschooling, but I have no idea what that was as I wasn't online. A comment I left last week made me think about the past. It's distant enough not to be painful anymore, still fresh enough to be vivid. And it's a part of who I am. So, I'm blogging it, but the timing of this post might be sorta bad, so don't take it personal in light of . . . whatever it was that happened this weekend!

Yes,  I'm pretty confident that if you had known me, you would agree that I was an ugly duckling . . . .

I wasn't so much shy as I recognized at a glace that me and you would have had very, very little in common. I would probably have had an easier time talking to your mom, or your siblings, or even your twin brother, just about anyone besides a girl my own age! But I was probably perceived quite often as shy and backwards.

The few times I opened up to female peers, I was usually stared at, then told "You sound like you were raised like my grandma." AKA, "I can't relate to you." Which is almost teen code for "You're weird."

I could smell pity a mile away. I didn't need or want it from anyone! Let alone for something as superficial as my looks!

I grew up butchering chickens, milking cows, and at 14yo I bought a 2yo, untrained Quarter Horse mare.  I spent two years saving up for half the cost, and two years paying the rest off. I didn't get my driver's license until I was 18yo because I had not interests in the mall or movies (I didn't have the money for the mall after I fed my animals and we rented movies. What was the big deal?) I could drive 4 miles to the town library and that was as far as my interests really went!

The older you get, the more acceptable it is to have an "odd" upbringing. People like to hear about it. They admire your "strength" and that you know how to do these things and wish they had learned. Hahaha! Right. As a teen you were probably grumbling about mowing the lawn instead of watching cartoons, let alone being handed a knife and told to put up fifty fryers. I used to wonder what it would have been like to be born when everyone's grandmas were, so that I could have fit in more. When nobody watched cartoons and hard work was more respected.

At a time when most of the girls I knew could carry on a half hour conversation about nail polish and lip gloss (or so it seemed to me!) and 'cute' guys (I always thought that term insulting to the masucline gender), I was more interested in if a young man was a hard worker and what kind of daddy he would be than how he looked in jeans or if he was a football player or homecoming king. I wanted to be appreciated, but mostly I wanted a husband I could really respect - that was such a high priority for me! It was also very important to me to know if he would hit or throw things when he was very, very angry. I wanted to know how he would react when he had to change a tire in the rain.

Most of the girls I knew would have been so annoyed by brothers 4yo, 8yo, and 10yo younger than they. For me, they were my "clique" and I *wanted* to hang out with them! I was strong, I was inventive, and I was funny - I was the 'perfect girl' to them. My brothers were my peers, and as such I was influenced not to be "too girly".

Yes, I would have looked different, shabby and messy to the standards of highschoolers. And it would smart - but only around peers! At the same time it was deeply ingrained in me that the right man would love me for my heart, not my looks. I used to look into the mirror and pray that someone would take the time to get to know me enough to see past the exterior I didn't know how to frame to be "fashionable". Most of the time, riding my horse on the prairie or hunting with my younger brothers, it just didn't matter what I looked like.

Today, the pictures I have from that era frame some of the happiest, most innocent moments of my life, but I would never, ever ever show them to anyone. Simply because of what I'm wearing in them. Vanity, I know!

The summer before I turned 19yo, I got my first job off the farm and was enrolled at a local, junior college. If I left my peers alone, they left me alone. For the first semester, as I got my footing, that was fine at college. In the shoe department in a retail store, I blossomed. I love to help people! And I got paid to do it!

Besides, at college it was hard to find the kind of guy I had set myself up for. Most didn't seem to be hard-working, epitomes of virtue. It only took a curse word or two to make me lose all interest in a pretty face. And did I mention everyone cursed? Just about?

My Sunday School class gave me more hope. I desperately wanted to fit in there - here were other Christian young people! Perhaps not raised like I was, but fellow followers of Christ. They must have thought I was so weird to take my younger brother to get-togethers and such. The events always sounded like so much fun that I wanted to include one of my best friends!

It was at Sunday School that a young man that I respected asked me to "please repeate that in English". After reading book after book growing up - and I had the vocabulary to prove it. However, after that comment, I spent years rephrasing things in my mind, dumbing it down, forgetting words I decided no one used but me. I picked up slang, and invested in the many ways to entone grunts, sighs, and other non-words.

Working in retail, I finally learned how to dress, how to walk, how to flirt. I went off of comments I recieved and stares. In a way, I had spent most of my life praying for a young man to see past my shabbiness, now I was realizing that I was still going to have to hope for a young man to really get to know me past my attractivness! Instead of fashion dropping the last barrier to my happiness, I found that I was attracting (by the droves) the wrong kind of guy. These seemed to possess even less virtue!

By the time I met Jonathan, I was working my way out the other side of my adventure and searching for balance. I was still dressing mainly to attract attention, but I was longing for something modest and attractive. I still had a very long way to go before I would find again where I was comfortable. I had decided I was different and that I didn't mind that. I was done apologizing for "me".

The only thing I can figure, is that when Jonathan and I met, it was a meeting of our spirits. I think both of us were moving, in tiny steps, towards the same thing. I had gigantic subwoofers in the back of my car, I wore makeup in layers and listened to bands like Demon Hunter. Jonathan was obsessed with sports and at first I thought him ambition-less! There was very little to indicate that this was a man who would appreciate homemade soap or that I would ever make an effort to learn how to cook from scratch.

Anyway, I just wanted to share my own personal story of transformation . . . from ugly duckling into something a bit more attractive! So the next time you see a "poor" homeschooler . . . save your pity. Spare them your judgement based on their looks, and maybe they will do the same!

You never know what you could learn from each other!

~Ashley~

I'm even less inspired to blog today than before Homestead ate my first post. Grrrr!

Here are a few pictures from Elijah's birthday:

Yes, it's a decent cake. Not spectacular, but fair for icing piped out of the end of a plasic baggie. I still can't find my cake decorating things!

I can't believe how BIG Samuel is. He's so . . . so grown up!

And, here is me. At 25 weeks.

And now, I hope this posts. Because I'm definatly not inspired enough to blog it again a third time!

Hope everyone has a great weekend!

~Ashley~

First of all, I don’t really feel like I do keep order! We are a family of individuals, and each does what they can. Right now, I have to handle many of the tasks necessary to run the house, so when Samuel can help me with something I’m grateful and appreciative. I'm mainly a co-ordinator of different skills, temperaments, abilities, and I try to help each of us help the other.

I'm a Helpmate - which is not a Do-It-All'er!

That means the family is primarily Jonathan's burden. As he works 50+ hours a week, he needs help. But when I need help occasionally, I don't feel like a "failure" as much as I could/would in the past.

I do have a sort of a method for our madness, and it works for me. I beat myself up for years for not “keeping house” with my mama’s method, so if this doesn’t work for you, skip it. If you find something that helps, I’m happy for you!

Here are a few standards or precepts by which I run our home:

• I don’t compete with media. We watch 0% TV during the day, unless, say, Samuel is sick and I’m trying to get him to relax, or I’m sick - both rare. I turn on the radio when I have a task that requires that I’m going to be standing for a long time in one place, say cutting up green peppers and freezing them, or canning. Because we rarely watch movies, Jonathan and I talk a lot and if there is something he needs to get done, he has the time to do it. If you watch two programs a day, then I average 7 hours more to my week. I use that, even if it’s to “do nothing” with my family.
• Without the media, when the boys are napping, I get a lot of “silence”. I enjoy it! Even half an hour of quiet can really let my mind unwind and regroup.
• I (try) to keep things simple. Samuel has one pair of shoes and a pair of sandals. I keep my main kitchen utensils in a wire basket on the counter so they drip dry after I’ve washed them. All Jonathan’s socks match, so I toss them in a drawer together and don’t fold them. If I find a corner I’m comfortable cutting, I cut it. It makes my life easier, and gives me more time to unfold other corners, like making tortillas by hand or soap.
• The boys have toys. They just don’t have a million-bazillion. If they leave them all out, I don’t want to spend more than a few minutes picking them all up. If it takes me forever to pick them up, I certainly can’t expect them to accomplish such a task! I go through them every few weeks and weed out some to keep the number manageable.

As long as they are playing nicely, the boys are free to play. Unless they want to help; in which case I (try) to always welcome their “help”. If they are grumpy or irritating each other, I might put Elijah on the countertop while I cook, or have Samuel look at a book in the kitchen or have one boy stay in the living room and another in the kitchen.

I am not quite as focused on having my boys' help in the kitchen as I would be with a little girl. It is more important that Samuel helps his Daddy mow the lawn and change the oil in the vehicles and work with wood than it is that they help me with dishes every night, etc.

 I think the lack of media keeps their attention spans a bit longer. I also hardly ever “entertain” them. When we’re in fun moods, folding socks can be goofy and great. If we are in grumpy moods, someone has to sit on the sofa, or stand in a corner, or sit right smack-dabby next to me until the mood is improved. If the grumpy person is me, hopefully I pray and repent of it and move on when I realize it!

 Needless to say we don’t handle bad moods around here with much tolerance! Even Mommy gets scolded for having pity-parties by Daddy and reminded too get her heart right.

 We can be really noisy when happy, but quiet and reflective as well. Often I curl up with a book on the sofa and the boys quietly play around me. Books, for me, are easier to put down and I don’t resent it (unlike being on the computer!), possibly because I grew up in a family of 6 and constantly had to put my book down in the middle of something – it’s habit and I expect to be interrupted!  

·        Assumptions = irritable mommy. I try, as much as possible, not to make assumptions. You just can’t plan to wake up to a telephone crammed into the VHS or dried cheese stick crumbled strategically so that you have to vacuum at 7am or jump over it in the hallway. I do not “assume” both boys will nap at the same time, though they often do, because it sets me up to be a grump when it doesn’t happen. Usually the only awake boy is subdued without his companion and we enjoy our one-on-one time greatly, but not if I’m mentally “caught off guard” and battling resentment of the loss of something I feel “I deserve”.

My list of Must Do’s:

·        Make my bed

·        Eat, dress, take vitamins

·        Fed my boys and dress them as time allows/necessary

·        Read the Bible

My list of Would Like to Accomplish’s:

• Vacuum before Jonathan comes home (we’re messy folk)
• Make dinner
• Clean up kitchen
• Clean up dining room, living room

My list of As Needed’s:

• Laundry
• Dusting
• Cleaning bathrooms
• Sweeping & Mopping tile (often sweeping is daily needed)

Often I get the first two lists done as well as something off of list #3, BUT if it’s a really interesting day and I spend more time teaching the boys to get along, or I'm super tired, or I just don't feel like doing anything, I don’t beat myself up about it. Tomorrow is another day.

I plan, plan, plan for the future. If I allow the boys to be selfish now, I expect them to be selfish in another year. With increased vocal capacities they might have more excuses or be more polite about it, but selfish is selfish . . . .

That is not to say that I make my children hand over toys every time someone else wants them!

But we work on things now, to the best of our limited capacities, so that one day they might be easier for us. Which means on my part, practicing selflessness as an example. Oh, yeah. Like I don’t need to work on that!!!!

I guess because the focus is on where our hearts are, the whole house is rather secondary. I don’t mind loud, happy children, or Daddy playing noisy games with them. The whole house shining like it’s out of Better Homes & Gardens wouldn’t matter if I was grumpy and irritable when my honey gets home! We might have dust in areas, but Lord willing not on the covers of our Bibles . . . it’s all perspective!

Pick your priorities and taylor them to your family. Each has different needs!

~Ashley~

My youngest is snarfing it down as I type.

Have I ever mentioned how much I LOVE to sit at the feet of women who have bunches of children? Because for one thing, they wouldn't think I was crazy to be day-dreaming about a *gasp* 4th child, and they have so much wisdom that they have collected over the years. Frugal ideas, too. And I love frugal!

I have this theory, see, that if you take care of what God has already given you, it shows graditude and appreciation. While we are all recipents of undeserved blessings at times, I feel like it would be really inappropriate to mis-use what I've been given now and expect more.

So, I try to take care of the money God has blessed us with, and to make my household budget go as far as possible, even as we add people to the family.

I got my baked oatmeal recipe from a mom of fourteen. Who can't use a money saving menu idea?

Baked Oatmeal

1 & 1/2 cup oats
1/4 cup brown sugar
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 cup milk
1/4 cup melted butter or cooking oil
1 egg, beaten
1 tsp. baking powder
3/4 tsp. salt
1 tsp. vanilla

I put this in a greased 8x8 pan, but if you want it thinner you can cook it in a 9x13. Place in a oven heated to 350 for 25-30 minutes.

Now, I know my Jonathan would like this in milk, but I ate it "strait" and so did Elijah. I might mix up Samuel's with a bit of milk so he can eat it with a spoon. It also tastes like it would go great with yogurt, if you're into that kind of thing. It resembles, in a chewier form, the packaged granolas that my second mama buys at the store.

Samuel is awake now and has given his stamp of approval as well.

I know what I'm making Saturday morning!

~Ashley~