First Time for Everything

Today I went to the mom's group that meets at the church we go to.

My husband had been trying to get me to go to this group for the past two years, and I finally got the courage to go. I am a shy person, if you believe it, so to go to a new place and meet new people is very hard for me. I become an observer and I often think to myself "will they like me?" It's silly, I know, but it's just how I have always been.

This group of ladies are really nice. I knew most of the mother's in passing whenever we attend Sunday morning mass, so I knew the faces, but never knew their names. A couple of the mom's I knew from preschool as well. Their daughter's attend the same class as my eldest, so it wasn't too bad of an introduction.

I wanted to go to this group at the beginning of the year, and had made it my "resolution" so to speak. After talking with a couple of the mom's from preschool that go to the group, I felt a little more at ease.

The group is very relaxed. We are studying the 10 Habits of a Happy Mother, but it's nothing like you would think, when you hear the word "studying" in a group. The habit that was read today was number 7 (yes, number 7!) and some of the passages that one of the mother's read, really helped me out.

I have a struggle with my anger, especially with my eldest being so strong headed as I am. I just yell at her when she does not do things I want her to do and that is something that has been a struggle since she could talk. It gave a couple of tips on how to help your child if they become out of control and I hope it may help you as well.

In the passage from the book, there was a mother, whose 7 year old just screamed his head off when his mother told him to pick up his toys. (As a side note, the boy was adopted so they were not sure if his outburst was caused by a memory). Instead of the mother yelling at him or wondering why in the world my child has gone beserk! She grabbed him, sat down with him in her lap, and just hugged him against her until he was calm. One of the mother's in the group told a story about her husband, who is a teacher for  special ed children, having to calm one of his children down since he was off his meds. He was bouncing every which way and just wouldn't sit still for anybody. Her husband just held the little boy against his side and after a while, finally relaxed. The mother told us that sometimes children need like some sort of pressure against them that has a calming affect on them. She couldn't remember the technical term for it, but that was the best way she could describe it.

As your day leads on and you notice your child (or children) throw a tantrum out of the norm, try giving them a hug before the emotions take head. This, I will try my hardest to do and try to stick to it.

Cat Naps Anyone?

For the better part of this month, my husband and I made the decision to really buckle down on transitioning our youngest to sleep by herself in her crib.

With the news of a new bundle coming in May, we did not think it would be fun (note the sarcasm) to have both children sleeping in our room, let alone in our beds. It has taken a few weeks for her to sleep through the night in her room, but it has finally come! Every now and then, she wakes up once and I rock her back to sleep, which works out fine with me.

Lately, she has not gotten used to taking naps in her room! Seeing as I have a growing belly now, it would be very hard for her to sleep on me during the daytime for naps that she was so accustomed to. It has been a real struggle getting her from my arms and into her crib. Every time I make a move, she wakes up and so I have to lay her down, rub, and pat her back in order to calm her down. When I finally get her settled and close her door, she gets about a 20, sometimes 40 minute nap, depending on how tired she really is.

I've read different forums about my situation and all seem to say that their child eventually grows out of it and will start taking longer naps (or start to sleep through the night, if that is your situation). I just hope and pray that it will not be another 11 months for her to take longer naps!

I am so grateful that she has started sleeping through the night though. I pray and thank God every morning for letting my little girl sleep through the night, even if she wakes up once.

Just remember, it will pass and your little bundle of joy will start sleeping the way we hope she/he will. :) Just hang in there!

Pages

I forgot to mention this in my earlier posts, but the right side should have a list of pages. I will post different resources in that area that I find helpful. Just keep a look out every now and then!

If you can think of anything that you are unable to find yourself or would like to see, just let me know!

Pie, Pie, all about Pie!

With this third pregnancy, I have this HUGE need for baking. I love to cook, especially trying out new recipes or a new item. It's always fun to see how everything turns out with the creative ideas you can come up with when backing.

Last night (22nd January 2012) I decided to bake a cherry pie. Cherry pies are one of my favorite pies, next to a good dutch apple pie (Yum!). I found a couple of recipes that I could start out with since I only had frozen cherries to begin with.

I was amazed at how many recipes popped up on Google.com when I searched. I found one that I thought I should give a try and see how much I like it.

Here is the link to the cherry pie recipe that I found.

I had to make some adjustments to the recipe. For one, I didn't have 5-6 cups of frozen cherries, just had a small bag of it, so instead of 1 cup of flour, I used 3/4 of a cup of flour. Although, after tasting it, I think I should have used a 1/2 a cup. I kept the 1/2 cup of sugar because I like my cherry pies sweet!

First off, if your cherries are still in the freezer, get them out! The recipe says to leave them out in a bowl for at least one hour so they can defrost and the liquid from the cherries can come out.

After your cherries are thawed out, combine the flour and sugar mixture in a separate bowl

Then add your flour and sugar mixture to your cherries. Let the mixture and fruit set for about 15 minutes, stirring occasionally.






















Instead of making my own pie crust (that's another adventure I will have to pursue later!), I just used your typical store bought pie crust. It normally comes two in a package. I gentle rolled out the first crust in my ungreased 9" pie pan (glass is preferred if you have one!) and pressed the bottom and sides to the pan.

Once you have your pie crust pressed into the pan, pour your cherries into the pie shell and spread out. Mine turned out to be a little on the thick side so I really had to help it along with a spatula. Also, my mixture was not over flowing like I hadn't wanted it to be, but it's a learning experience! Now I know that I need two small bags of frozen cherries!


The next crust is up to you. Traditionally, the top crust of a cherry pie just has a couple of slits for "venting" the steam out of the pie while it bakes, but I'm not a big crust eater so I did the lattice crust instead. Plus I like the look of it. :-) I floured my countertop with some flour and rolled out the second pie crust. You could use a sharp knife, but I found that a pizza cutter is easier to use when cutting the strips. After all the strips are cut, I used the first longest strip of crust and laid it vertically at the center of the pie. I then used the second longest strip and laid it horizontally at the center of the pie on top of the first strip. I then weaved the rest of the strips and pinched it off with a fork and cut the extra crust around the pie pan. I found that these instructions were very helpful!

Once the finished with the lattice crust, I used a milk wash and brushed it all over the top. You could use an egg wash, but I did not have an egg to use. :-( I then sprinkled some clear sugar crystals over the top for that extra crunch.

I did a little "pie crust decoration" with the extra that was left over from cutting the strips and cleaning up the edges of the pan. I rolled out the rest of the crust and this time used a sharp knife to cut out one big heart and one little heart and placed it on top. I made two more sets of the big and little heart and made some sort of a design on the crust. I brushed the milk wash on top of them and this time sprinkled red and white sugar crystals.

I placed my pie in a preheat 425 degree oven for about 10 minutes. After the 10 minutes, I placed some foil around the edges of the crust so it would not burn too badly and reduced the heat of the oven to 325 degrees. I baked the pie another 55 minutes at 325. The recipe says 40-50 minutes after you reduce the heat, but every oven is different, so I had to add an extra 5 minutes to the 50 minute. And here we are!

I hope some of these instructions help you out when it comes to baking with little ones running around your feet. I know it helped me! Please feel free to share your creations and what adjustments you made! Every experience is welcomed. :-)

Spiritually Threaten

Have you ever questioned whether a Catholic ever experiences their life (and faith) being threaten by another person. You've always seen these movies about a person being possessed and an exorcism needs to be done. But have have you actually witnessed something so real to the movies you see in the theaters/on TV.

I never thought I would witness my personal life being spiritually threatened until May of 2010. After this experience, my husband and I talked about it. I need to back up and start at the beginning of this experience.
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One evening in May of 2010

I never thought I would ever have this feeling of unease about a person. Usually I get along really well with a variety of people, but that night....that night was a whole different story.

My family and I went to our church one evening to finish watching Pope John Paul II, a cinematic movie based on the life of the pope, starring Cary Elwes and John Voight. A woman from the Eastern part of Germany was there and she was very out spoken. It was quite hilarious in the beginning when I first met her, but I was also fascinated by her accent so I never really took noticed to her behavior until she pinpointed my husband about being in the military, then I started to feel threatened. I have always been fascinated by other countries and in the way they speak. You learn so much about them and it's just...awesome, but I digress.

Her actions were very spontaneous and very disruptive during the movie and I truly feared for my daughter (my eldest, who was 2.5 at the time). This woman kept shouting out things that had nothing to do with the movie, and still pinpointed my husband the whole time. It was as if she was mentally ill, but maybe didn't know it?

About half way through the movie, she just kept talking right after the actor would talk. People around her would tell her to please be quiet so that they would be able to hear what the actors were saying. At that point she thought a friend of the family had a concealed weapon in her bag and thought she was threatening her and stalking her. By this time I turned around to talk to her to see if she would clam down, but she didn't. It just escalated and she got more out of control. This time one of the elderly stepped up and told her to leave and it just spiraled out of control even more. I was told that she gave the one finger blessing to the people that made sure she walked out of the basement and not into the sanctuary. We locked the doors after she left and the atmosphere seemed much lighter.

On the way back home, my husband was telling me that it seemed like this woman was going through some demonic oppression just by the way she was acting. He told me that during the time she was sitting there, he started praying to Mary and asking for St. Michael's protection. He told me that every time he started his intercession, the woman would speak up, and then he would start it over again, but when he started to say in out audible, but only for his ears, thats when she started to blame our friend about having a concealed weapon. When he told me this, I started to believe that she, too, was going through demonic oppression and was quite glad my husband was with me, saying these prayers and protecting our daughter.

Later, we found out that she has some kind of mental illness and has meds, but does not take them. I believe she has schizophrenia and possible Tourette's syndrome, but that could be her multiple personalities coming about.

I have never witnessed this in my whole 24 years and was really taken aback by it. It is sad to see something like that in a person. To see them lash out at you even when you haven't said or done anything to them.

One thing did come to mind after my husband and I talked about it. You know when a person sneezes or coughs, you would say 'bless you'? He once told me that instead of Bless you or God Bless, you should say 'God Bless You'. He said that if someone every truly gets taken over by demons or some kind of demonic power, that if you say those three simple words, it would be as if they got stung and would back away from you. In a sense, it's like a miniature exorcism without having to call a preist to perform one.
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And so, I leave you with something to remember: whenever someone sneezes, coughs, or closing an e-mail, remember 'God Bless You.'

Life's Story

I thought I would start off with my "life's" story around the time of my first miscarriage to present times.

Two years ago in June, I had a miscarriage. My husband and I went through our grief and had made peace with what we were dealt. We gave the name Vincent James. We tried again after the miscarriage and I found myself pregnant again in late July. I didn't really know what to expect with that pregnancy seeing it was only a month after the miscarriage in June. I waited with baited breath until my first doctor's appointment at 8 weeks. I was feeling the same as I did in June.

Around the 5 week mark I started having morning sickness at all hours of the day until I was about 7 weeks, then everything would stop and I would feel fine and nearly starving. My 8 week appointment came and I was beyond nervous. I watched as the doctor looked with the ultrasound to see if they could find anything in my womb, but there was nothing. No image of a fetus, no heartbeat of my baby. I miscarried August 8th, giving the name of Rebekkah Anne to the baby if she were born a girl.

I was so lost after that. Being miserable and hating God was what seemed to take over my life as a mother, a wife, and a Catholic. I stopped taking communion and started emerging myself in the universe of the Twilight series. Reading the books over and over along with the fictitious stories that are out on the web. I didn't want to be near my daughter, nor did I want to take the role as a mother at that point.

It felt like I was being punished not being able to get past the 8 week mark of a pregnancy, but I didn't care. By doing those things, I felt like I was punishing God rather than taking the blame. It didn't help my relationship with husband in the least, but he was always there to keep me from drowning.

After four months of waiting, I found out that I was pregnant for a third time. Things felt different than the last two pregnancies and I felt hope once again. Around Easter, we had some friends over for an Easter lunch/dinner. I felt fine throughout the whole day. After I ate, I really had to use the restroom. After I finished, I saw blood on the toilet paper and started to freak. It wasn't just some spotting, it was heavy, like I was having a period, but not too heavy where I was having a miscarriage.

I came out of the restroom, some what stalling the inevitable. I looked to my husband and he knew something was wrong. I told him and one of my best friends what happened in the restroom, and we rushed to ER on base. It took 3 hours to be admitted into the hospital and another 3 hours until we were discharged.

During the stay they did blood work and a PAP to make sure I didn't have any kind of diseases that would cause me to be bleeding. They also did an ultrasound to see what was going in the womb. When the results came back, they said that there is a fetus still there, but the heartbeat is very low. All that we can do is hope and pray that I will still have a baby within a week. With that, we left the hospital in hopes to become new parents onces again.

The week passed by with me bleeding the entire time, but it was a constant flow, never getting heavier. One day I went to the restroom and thought I might have passed some tissue. I took it out of the toilet with a ziplock baggy to examine it more clearly and to keep it just in case it was in fact tissue.

When I took a closer look, I could make out the rounded part of the head and little webbed hands and the beginnings of feet. Then I knew. I knew that I had passed my baby that day. We gave the name Jude Elliot to this baby.

I went to my 8 week appointment as scheduled and told them what happened. They asked if I brought the bag with me so they could do some testing and with my brain on other matters, I totally forgot. They did an ultrasound to make sure what I told them was correct and they saw that my uterus was empty.

After this third miscarriage, the doctor's finally started to be concerned about why I've had some many miscarriages in a row after having a healthy baby for my first pregnancy. So they did more blood test and chromosomal testing for myself and husband. The results came back negative, meaning there was nothing to be found that would cause these miscarriages.

To say that I was angry again is an understatement. I was livid by this time. It took the doctors three miscarriages before they started to consider that there was something seriously wrong with me and yet, the results clearly show that there isn't. I will never understand the base doctors and their method of thinking.

I struggled even more after the third one. Really truly fighting with my family, my husband, my true friend, but he was always there. Even after I've hurt him with some of the things I have done in the past, he was still there.

You are probably wondering why I keep writing how thankful I am that my husband is still with me after all the turmoil and hurting I have done to him. Let me now go into the "obsession" aspect of my life for you to have a better idea of why I keep saying how thankful I am.

My Obsession:

I had often wonder how one gets over an obsession, whether it be drugs, alcohol, or romance novels, to name a few.

Would it take them days, weeks, months, possibly years to get over it?

I can't answer that for everyone. It's really up to you to decide...am I right? Or am I wrong?

I, yes I, had an obsession. It all started out with the wonderful series known as the Twilight books. It came about my senior year in college, a year after the movie came out, that I picked up that first Twilight book. It took me a week to read all four of them and be able to start over with the series yet again. I've read the series four times.

After I slowed down reading, I turned to the movie. I watched that sucker practically everyday after I bought it in May of '09. Then I found out about fan fiction through various people I followed on twitter. The first story I really got into was Tropic of Virgo in which I fell in love with Debussy_88 and Ordinary_Girl. After that I spiraled into any story that involved a Edward and Bella relationship (all with a happy ending of course).

I found myself following authors like crazy on twitter in hopes that they would, in turn, follow me. Some did and others hadn't. I tried my hand at writing my own story called My Saving Grace (which has been removed from the fan fiction site for 2 years now). I had started it back in August of 2009 and completed in March of 2010. I found myself getting more ideas for other stories as I wrote the finally chapters of my fiction. I did, however, start writing a new one, but have put it on hiatus and continued to read my favorite stories and seeing many come to an end.

I am writing this because in all of this, I never once asked myself how this is affecting my husband...my family. I have been lost in the world of Twilight since I first discovered the books in 2009. I have lost interest in reading anything else and have only gotten myself deeper into what is happening with all the cast of the saga and the great stories that are out there. I even found myself obsessing over two stars and trying my damnest to see if I can catch a glimpse of them holding hands or something to let me know what I knew all along.

My husband started to take notice in the changes that were happening within me that I was too stubborn or blind to take notice myself. It always takes a outsiders point of view to notice things like that, weird huh? 

Anyway, he notice how I would ignore my eldest (my only child at the time) and had a very terrible relationship with her. At one point, she had locked me out of her bathroom when she was 2 and I was yelling, screaming, and cussing at her to unlock the door. I actually had the MP (military police for those not familiar with military terms) called on me by a concerned next door neighbor. They came into my house to examine my child to make sure I hadn't beaten her or left any marks on her after my outbreak. Needless to say, I wanted to change after that experience. I kept telling myself I wanted to change and for the better.

I'd say I never really actually tried to change. I wound up going to back to the stories and becoming more angry at my daughter for interrupting me. My husband, bless him, saw that I was turning away from him and from God. It got so bad that after one special night that I shared with my husband, I got onto my twitter account (which I have closed 2 years ago), started a direct message (or DM) with a "character" from one of the stories I was reading. I told myself, and my husband after he found out, that "it's just role playing. I'm not hurting anyone." Boy was I wrong.

May of 2010 was the HUGE turning point of my marital relationship with my husband. As I stated above, my husband found out what I had done on my twitter account, I was confronted about it, and in my anger, I started packing up some of my items and was planning to leave my husband with our 2 year old daughter. But by God's grace, or some miracle, my husband stopped me from leaving.

This was my breaking point, where everything that I had built up inside me, came forward. I had to gain my husband's trust back with every aspect of my life. I was a stranger to my husband and I didn't know what I was going to do to fix our relationship. I didn't know if I was going to succeed at all. I had to become vulnerable. This was not an easy accomplishment for me. It took some time for me to gain my husband's trust back.

The most struggle I had during this part of my life was lying to my husband and hiding in a world that does not exist what so ever. I had lost all trust with the one person in my life, even the respect. In a sense I felt like I was a lost dog and did not know if I would be able to find my way back home.


Thankfully I was able to go through this life experience, not to gain just the trust and respect of my husband back, but it was a way to show myself what a mess I had become over the series and how horrible an obsession can be to my life and my marriage, and to trust in God that he will be there to guide me through my life.

Fourth Pregnancy:

Just before we moved to another base in June of 2010, I found out that I was pregnant a 4th time. I was so grateful that God has graced us with a fourth pregnancy in which I had another little girl, whom we have given the name Victoria Faith.

I had started this post shortly after I had my third miscarriage, but have never been able to sit down and truly write how and what I was feeling during the time. I wrote this not as a way to gain pity or sympathy, but as a way to show that even those who are truly in the Grace of God, that they too go through struggles of things that are unseen to the eye.

I hope with this post that even those who put God first, struggle through their faith every now and then, but with the help of someone close to you and God's will, you can always find your way back home.

New Beginnings

I thought I would start off this blog as a way for Catholic stay-at-home mothers to come and see that they are not the only ones struggling through the times.

This blog will be like a diary of some sort that will entail things that I have found when I was first learning how to sew, some tidbits that our family uses with the recipes we use when we cook our meals, but also, to show the struggles I am going through and have gone through as a Catholic, stay-at-home mother of 2 (almost 3 come May 27th, 2012!) and the fact that I have kept my faith in mind throughout all the trials and tribulations that mothers go through.