2012: A year of big changes, including baby #3 being born in May

I'm laying on my couch as I type this. I have managed to come down with the stomach flu (Viral gastroenteritis) twice in the last six weeks. Both times while we were traveling for the holidays. Ugh... I've decided that stomach/intestinal issues while pregnant make a superbly horrible combination. When motion makes you feel ill and you have a little one rolling around in your belly, eek, not such a good sensation.


Since I actually manged to get my kids down for naps today and I pretty much can't do anything else but lay on the couch at the moment. This seemed like as good of a time as any to write about some of our plans for 2012. It's going to be a big year for us, with lots of changes, some of which will affect this blog. 

Changing Jobs

The first actually happens in just a couple of weeks. My husband is starting a new job. This is huge for us and a change that we have been seeking for quite a while now. Now that the new job is secure, we know where we are going to be living. Our entire life has been on hold until this was figured out. We wanted to trust the Lord to provide the right new place to work. My husband opened up his search to just about anywhere, and low and behold, he found a new place to work right here in town. Not a huge surprise since he's a graphic artist (Art Director to be more specific) and Minneapolis is one of the best cities in the country for this profession.

Buying a Home/Land

With the job on course, we are now scrambling to find a home/land to buy, since we only have a month to decide whether we are renewing the lease for our apartment (WE DON'T WANT TO DO THIS). We started this adventure last summer, but put it on hold when we decided that maybe Minneapolis wasn't where we were supposed to stay. For the time being we've been living in a 2 bedroom apartment, which is fine, but I can very honestly say I am greatly looking forward to being in our own home with a yard for the kids to play in.

Finding a new home is not particularly easy, especially when you are looking for a place with land that is affordable. For us, this is pretty much limiting us to looking at foreclosures/short sales. We are essentially trying to find something akin to a hobby farm. Not too much land because we don't know that we'll have the money to buy the equipment to maintain, but not so little that we can't live at least partially off the land. If we weren't restricted to being near the city, this would be a bit easier and far more affordable search, but we still haven't figured out a way to do that financially.

It's our goal to begin steps towards a more off-grid lifestyle. I've really no idea what this will look like for us, but in the end realize that it's going to come in very small steps. Right now we have to work with what is available to us and see how things unfold.

Welcoming Our Third Child

I am actually at the half way point for this pregnancy already. We found out we were expecting a week before we were supposed to move. It came as a surprise to us and although it wasn't the greatest timing with everything that has been going on in my personal life, I am extremely thankful to be having a third child and can't wait to meet our little one.

I think I can say at this point that this has probably been the hardest pregnancy physically, between the extreme nauseousness and exhaustion. With our move has come a lot of difficulties with our two children, especially our youngest who nixed naps on most day and bed time turned into a bit of a nightmare as I struggled to not go off the deep in from exhaustion. My kids (especially our youngest) wouldn't go to sleep. Our kids started sharing a room once we moved and this has been a huge adjustment for them both, that combined with the many noises that come with an apartment building and the stress of all the changes has been hard on everyone. Our daughter has the most changes because with the surprise pregnancy, I was forced to ween her from nursing right after we moved. On top of that she started crawling out of her crib in the first week of our new place so we converted her bed into a toddler bed, because we were concerned she may hurt herself by falling out.

I have been very low key about this pregnancy thus far and actually haven't even been to see a midwife yet (not something I'm recommending, it's just the course life has laid out for us). I decided a couple of months ago that I wasn't go to deliver this baby in a hospital. I'll share more on that in another post. Instead I'm hoping to have a home birth or go to a birth clinic. With us not knowing where we were going to live, I decided that it didn't make sense to start seeing a midwife, only to have to change in a month or two, especially since we have to pay everything out of pocket. Our insurance won't cover anything. This isn't my first pregnancy and my other two have not been a problem, so I haven't felt the need to see someone, especially since I'm not going to do any type of testing or ultrasounds. I want this child born in the most natural way possible, the way I feel that God first intended it. Over the next week or two I'm going to try and do some more research for finding a home birth midwife, so stay tuned for the updates on that.

Buying a Car

Not really a big deal, but in it's own way it is, at least for me. My husband and I have been sharing one car for about 5 years now. This was working fine until we had our second child and moved further away from his job. Since my husband has had to use the car to get to work, this has meant that for the most part I just stay home with the kids. However, as the kids are getting older and it's seems like there is more errands to run and places to be, this has gotten harder and harder and has left me feeling very restricted and isolated. Now that we are having our third child, we actually have to get a new car, because we can't fit three car seats into our current vehicle. We are still working towards a goal of being debt free, so buying a car is a big step financially, especially while trying to buy a house too. It's easy to get caught up in all the extras that cars can have and start day dreaming of owning a new car, but in all reality, to stay with our financial goals we will get a very used, and hopefully inexpensive vehicle that will suit our current needs. I am really looking forward to some of the flexibility this will allow me to have though!

Homeschooling

We are finally getting to that stage where schooling is going to be of greater importance. Our son turns five this year and I've decided that homeschooling is the route we are going. I'm still not exactly sure what this is going to look like for us. We've been doing some "schooling' already as he's been practicing writing his letters and working on counting and numbers, etc. He wants to know how to read and write so much that I can't help but want to encourage that enthusiasm. Sometime over the next couple of months I'll decide if I'm going to use a curriculum or not. I'm honestly not sure at this stage, because I feel like much of learning happens in simply everyday tasks and interaction. I know I'll use a curriculum at some point, but have a lot more research to do before I know what type. 

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I am looking forward to the changes that are in store for us. Now I just need to keep practicing patience, because if there is one thing I feel like the Lord has been trying to drill into my head over the last couple of years, it's to allow things to happen in His timing and not my own and not be stressed when things don't go as planned. I so hope we are blessed with the land that we desire to start growing our own food. This has been such a huge desire on my heart. It's going to be a fun, but hard year. Through it all I'll being doing my best to continue to Walk with The Lord and use Him as my great instructor and guide.

I hope you stay tuned and join me in the adventures that 2012 is sure to bring!