Still here

Yeah, not much happening today, the baby still isn't here, the waiting is driving me crazy.

I just want the labour over and done with, I am not looking forward to the pain, but I just want to not to have to wait any longer.

I had the start of labour yesterday, but it stopped. I am hoping that this means that the baby will come soon....

Eviction

I am seriously considering serving the baby an eviction notice ;)

Still waiting on the baby, he/she is 3/5 engaged and is about 3kgs at the moment.
I hope that sometime soon I will get to meet the baby, 7 days until the due date

Baby movements

The baby has started to move down. It isn't engaged, but it has moved out of my lungs (thank goodness) but now is resting on my bladder :)

The joys of being pregnant.

Baby Preparations

Okay, so while I am not the most organised person in the world, I do like being organised.

So one of the first things that I did when I found out that I was pregnant, I made a list of the things that were actual needs for the baby. So I had my nice list and quite nicely, we haven't needed to buy much of it ourselves. My parents, Husband's parents and friends have been generous.

The baby room was ready with about 4 weeks to go.

The last thing that I did need to buy was nappies. I didn't want to buy them too early, or too late.

But I did spend a lot of time researching. There are many choices, the traditional terry squares, Modern Cloth Nappies (MCNs) or disposables.

I didn't want to go the entire disposable route. For many reasons:
*Cost (about AU$179.94 a month)
*Environmental reasons
as well as others, but those are the two main reasons.

So, I am going the MCN route. Modern cloth nappies are fitted like disposables, but you wash them and reuse them like terry cloth nappies.
Yes, I know that there environmental concerns with the washing (it uses a lot of water etc) but I am confident that it is the best way to go.

I forked out about $400 for the modern cloth nappies, which is about the cost of 2 months worth of disposables. I did, however, buy one pack of disposables. I am not against the use of disposables like some advocates of cloth nappies.

How to clean your house

Okay, so I may not be a domestic diva, but I do like having a clean house.

Most of the time I am on top of everything. But sometimes, like throughout this pregnancy, I get behind and overwhelmed.

Flylady is a great website for those who are not Born Organised, who need a hand to esablish routines and need reminding every now and then that the house doesn't have to be perfectly clean to bless our families.

While I do tend to be "Born Organised" I do need to relean how to clean the house every now and then.

One thing I did learn was to have a folder in the house where I keep records, like bills I have paid, contact details etc. Flylady calls it a Control Folder. Here is a link to one version of a control journal

He is risen!

Happy Easter

Enjoy your chocolate eggs and remembering the fact that Jesus died and rose again for our sins.

An interesting Article by Lauren Winner

Giving Up Sex for Lent
My friends' fast from sex gets to the heart of Lenten discipline.

BY: Lauren F. Winner



My Episcopalian friends--I'll call them Sharon and Greg--are giving up sex for Lent. Not chocolate, not caffeine: sex.


Lent

, the 40-day church season that begins this week, is a time of fasting and repentance--a somber and reflective season that precedes the celebrations of Easter. Christians who observe a
Lenten fast

are both honoring and reenacting Jesus' forty-day fast in the desert. At the end of those 40 days, Satan came to tempt Jesus--and the Gospel of Luke suggests that Jesus was able to withstand the Devil's temptations not despite, but in part because, of his fasting. Somehow his fast made him stronger.

Modern-day Christians interpret "fast" broadly. Many Catholic communities retain the practice of giving up meat during some days in Lent. Orthodox communities abstain from meat, dairy and egg products. Most Protestants, like me, undertake a fast that is either, depending on your perspective, more creative, or too lenient--like abstaining from alcohol or TV. This year, I am giving up wine and cheese. And also, at the urging of my spiritual director, I'm trying to get to know my neighbors. (Today, it is popular for people to "take on" a Lenten discipline, like daily prayer, or neighbor-knowing, instead of or in addition to giving something up.)

Which brings us back to Sharon and Greg. Forty days without making the beast with two backs.

Actually, Sharon is quick to point out to me that it's not quite as bleak as all that. Traditionally, Christians break their Lenten fasts on Sundays, since Sundays are meant to be festive--the celebration of Jesus' resurrection trumps the strictures of Lenten discipline. So, says Sharon, she and her husband will have, um, sex dates on the weekends.

I did a little digging for her, and also found that there is a monastic tradition of breaking one's Lenten fast at the hour of the none prayers--that is, three o'clock. "Maybe ya'll can take late lunch breaks from work?" I suggest.

But, of course, all this seeking to evade the fast itself rather misses the point. Why didn't Sharon and Greg just give up sugar?

'I Think Sharon Is Not Crazy'

It turns out there's not much precedent in church tradition for Lenten sex fasting per se--but this is because in the early church, there were already all sorts of prohibitions about conjugal sex. Many church fathers preferred singleness to marriage, and only grudgingly acknowledged marriage as a viable station for a Christian life.

Why the skittishness about conjugal sex? According to Peter Brown's magisterial book "The Body and Society: Men, Women, and Sexual Renunciation in Early Christianity," anxiety about sex stemmed from a number of sources--a disdain for women; a belief that bodily discipline and even bodily suffering were good for leading a righteous Christian life; and, perhaps most pervasive, a Gnostic anxiety about bodies and bodily desire. To read Brown's account, married Christians might have only had sex a few times a year. A Lenten fast would have been overkill. (But, as I told Sharon, having sex on Sundays is very much in accord with traditional Judaism. Married couples are awarded rabbinic brownie points for having sex on the Sabbath, because making love is seen as a robust fulfillment of the Sabbath command to be joyful.)

Still, there is scriptural imprimatur for a fast like Sharon and Greg's. In his epistle to the Corinthians, St. Paul makes clear that husbands and wives can choose to take a mutually agreed upon break from sex--provided that such a break is only temporary.

I think Sharon is not crazy.

Actually, her fast from sex gets to the heart of Lenten discipline. We give up something for Lent to align ourselves with the heart, will, and experience of Jesus. Fasting teaches us that we are not utterly subject to our bodily desires. And in sated and overfed America, fasting reminds us, sharply, of the poor.

True, in a world shot through with discomfort about the body--or in a marriage plagued by some Gnostic anxiety that sex is not really good--a Lenten fast from sex may not be a good idea at all. I would not advise such a thing for my friends June and Bob, for example. June was raped 5 years ago, and is still pretty far from a place of seeing sex--even sex with her wonderful and dishy husband--as a good, enjoyable, holy thing.


Should Married Couples Walk the Chaste and Narrow?

I came home from my breakfast with Sharon and casually asked my husband what he was thinking of giving up for Lent. "Do you think we should give up sex?" I asked. He cackled. We married three weeks after my mother died, and with bereavement has come a predictable coma of my libido--the body in mourning shutting down all unnecessary drives and desires like the desire to sleep with your brand-new husband. A Lenten fast from sex, it seems, was probably not what the doctor (or shrink, or spiritual director) would order for us this year.

But in a society that is utterly sex-saturated, Lenten sexual abstinence may be indicated. Indeed, it is only in the last few decades that many of us have come to look askance at disciplining our sexuality. Birth control has allowed married and unmarried people alike to be much more cavalier about indulging sexual desire. Even Christians, who spend so much energy trying to help unmarried folks walk the chaste straight and narrow, don't think much about disciplining sex between spouses (the logic, I think, goes something like this: we've spent all these premarital years being disciplined; now, on the other side of our marriage vows, sexual discipline is a non sequiter.)

We fast during Lent because fasting gets our attention. It is a necessary tool for rousing us from our day-to-day sleepwalking.

We fast during Lent because when we willingly give up something we delight in but do not, strictly speaking, need, we come closer to participating in, understanding, and reverencing the self-emptying act that is Christ on the Cross.

The very discomfort--the uneasy chuckles and tight smiles-that a Lenten sex fast inspires may be precisely the reason that Sharon and Greg's idea is such a good one.

http://www.beliefnet.com/Faiths/Christianity/Lent/Giving-Up-Sex-For-Lent.aspx

Reflections for Easter

I have been reflecting on Easter and Lent lately (not early enough to actually do anything for Lent). But I was reflecting on what I have done for lent in years gone by, and the hardest thing I ever did was giving up reading..... I was inspired by Lauren Winner, one of my favourite writers. Here is an article on Lauren's experience


Mattingly: Writer's eyes opened to Lenten sacrifice

* Terry Mattingly

It was a decade ago during Lent that author Lauren Winner was visited by an angel, unawares.

"Actually, it was my priest," said Winner, who teaches Christian spirituality at Duke Divinity School. "I have learned that people in my life often tell me what I need to do during Lent. ... It's kind of like hearing from angels."

Although the voice wasn't miraculous, Winner thought it would take a miracle to follow her spiritual guide's advice. The challenge was deceptively simple: Could she give up reading during Lent?

At the time, Winner was working as book-review editor for Beliefnet.com and studying for her doctorate at Columbia University. She was a writer, editor and student and, naturally, was surrounded by books day after day.

How in the name of God was she supposed to stop reading?

Nevertheless, she decided to try.

"This was not your normal 40 days of work," said Winner, author of "God Meets Girl: A Memoir" and other works of contemporary spirituality. "What I was doing was attacking my own work obsessions.

"This forced me to examine the place of work in my life. It made me examine other parts of my life, as well."

Fasting traditions during Lent - the 40-day penitential season before Easter - have evolved through the ages, especially in Catholic, Eastern Orthodox and liturgical Protestant churches that emphasize the church calendar. Winner is active in the Episcopal Church.

For centuries, Catholics ate only one real meal a day, with no meat or fish. Today, Catholics are supposed to observe a strict fast and abstain from meat on Ash Wednesday at the start of Lent and Good Friday at the end. In many parishes, the faithful are still urged to avoid meat on Fridays during Lent. Orthodox Christians strive to fast from meat and dairy products during all of Lent and Holy Week.

Meanwhile, millions of Americans in a variety of churches follow an informal tradition in which they choose to fast from "one thing" - such as chocolate or soft drinks - during Lent.

Winner noted that this practice of "giving up one thing" was supposed to build on the traditional Lenten disciplines linked to food, prayer and almsgiving - not replace them. The goal was to shine a spotlight into some unexamined corner of one's life.

It didn't take her long, for example, for Winner to realize that she couldn't stop reading - period. She needed, for example, to reread one book to prepare for an exam. She had to do some reading in order to do her day job, but she asked if she could be relieved from some assignments that she would have accepted, if not for this unique Lenten discipline.

The surprise, said Winner, was how this fast touched her life after the working day. That's when she could almost hear her favorite volumes of history and fiction calling her name.

"What this showed me was that I was using reading as an escape. I was reading books as a way to get away from some things," she said with a laugh. "Fiction is probably a better way to cope with some issues in your life than heroin. But if books are what you're using, then you need to find that out."

In the years since, Winner has repeated this bookish fast several times, while searching for other disciplines that would have a similar impact. This year she is trying to fast from "saying 'yes' all the time," which is harder than it sounds.

"The thing is, Lent isn't a therapeutic self-improvement project," she said. "We're supposed to take a hard look at our sins and then repent. But how do we get to repentance if we have never truly paused to examine our lives? ...

"Most of us are morally and spiritually sleepwalking. We need to wake up and see where we are and what we're doing."








http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2010/mar/13/writers-eyes-opened-to-lenten-sacrifice/

I seem to have lost my way....

I haven't spent much time with God lately.

I have prayed a fair amount, but not deeply. I haven't read my bible much lately.
I have also been slack at attending church.

I have excuses for everything....
I have been sick and tired for the past 8 months, and Husband has had a lot of weekend work....
But they are just excuses. I know I should be more faithful, and with God's help I will.