Labor

Our Birth story:

On the night of September 16th, Jon and I were enjoying (not really), more like forcing ourselves to drink some tea to help our very soar throats. I had some Braxton Hicks contractions (finally, hadn't had any in a couple of days) and Jon and I were just talking about how this baby will probably come on time (September 21st-23rd)

Anyways we went to bed, and at about 12:30am I woke up for a potty break, as many of you know at 39 weeks pregnant its hard not to wake up to go pee in the middle of the night. I went on with my business, and went back to sleep. I woke up about every half hour after that until 2:15am with a contraction, but they were not unbearable, just what Braxton Hicks usually felt like. Then from 2:15am-3:00am they became 6 minuets apart, but still not very hard, I was sleeping in between them, but still keeping track of the time just in case. I got up to go to the bathroom again to see if my baby bump had "dropped" yet. It hadn't , so I was like, this is probably false labor, but I woke up Jon anyways and told him.

From 3am-6am they were still ranging about 6 minuets apart, alittle stronger. At 6am they started getting very strong, and Jon called our midwife. He got our wood stove going and was making a place to birth inside where it was warmer then outside in our bathtub birthing room oasis. (it was 28 degrees outside).

By 7am the midwives came, and my contractions were still going strong, dilated to 5cm. Labor was moving right along and by 8am I was fully dilated to 10cm ready to push. I really wanted to have a water birth, like I had with Jeremyah and Charlotte. But I was too far along to move and had to do it on our futon.

Baby was born at 8:20am. This labor was the easiest out of my three children. Our baby girl was also the smallest, weighing 6lbs 13oz. Introducing Amariah Autumn Rose:

Elderberry Cough and Cold Syrup

Recipe:

1 cup of Fresh Elderberries
3 cups of distilled water
2 TBS echinacea loose leaf tea
2 cinnamon sticks, broken in half
3/4 cup of raw honey

Optional:
2 tsp of ginger root
1 tsp ground cloves

- combine all ingredients EXCEPT raw honey, and let simmer for about 45 minuets or until the water has half evaporated. About every 10 minuets, stir it and smash the berries, to get the juices out.

- put in French press or cheese cloth to strain and put the remaining liquid in a jar.

- let stand for 10 minuets to cool down, but still warm enough to melt honey.

- place honey in jar with liquid and stir until it has dissolved. Make sure your liquid is not too hot, otherwise it will kill the honey's antiseptic properties.

For children take 1 teaspoon daily for good health or 1 teaspoon every waking hour during sickness.

For adults take 1 tablespoon daily for good health or 1 tablespoon every waking hour during sickness.

39 weeks and severely sick!

I have not posted in a while, because I have come down with a nasty cough and fever. Jeremyah and Charlotte have a less severe case of it, but they are getting over it more quickly then I am.

We went on a last minuet camping trip, because Jons best childhood friend was in town for only two days. So we drive 2 hours to the top of a freezing cold mountain to join his friend and family on a bear hunting excursion. It was fun, I was (and still am) very run down, and tired. Sleeping on the ground in the freezing cold is not exactly conducive for a 38 1/2 week pregnant woman! Anyways, I think that's how we all got sick, the wether change, not being warm enough and being tired just ran my body down.

Thank you to God's wonderful creation and Jon's good eyes, on the way down the mountain heading home, he saw a big elderberry tree! Jon stopped an cut off some branches with elderberries and on the way home I picked them. As some of you know, elderberries have great medicinal properties and are very high in antioxidants, and great for you when you are sick!

Stay tuned for the next post on how to make Elderberry cough syrup, safe for pregnancy and children!

Freezer Meals for postpartum

At 38 weeks pregnant, I and two friends made freezer meals to stow away for when the baby comes!

We made lasagna, enchiladas, bean burritos, meat loaf, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and zucchini bread!

We made enough to last a month, but I am thinking it will last longer (I hope).
We filled our chest freezer to the brim!

I would not suggest doing this so far along, as I was exhausted by the end of the day! I would say make freezer meals weekly, a good date night idea, or a way to get the children involved in helping make meals.

Choose foods you would love to eat after birth, and foods that are easy to assemble and that are freezer stable.

The book I recommend for recipes is :

Fast, Freeze, Feast

I like how you can make a small or large batch, and she gives recipes for both. She also give nice breakfast and snack alternatives, instead of just dinner.

Circle Time

Today's post will show what we do for Circle Time. We do this 7 days a week (or at least try to). This happens after breakfast and cleanup time, to start our day.
                                                                                                                                                              

We start off with our Velcro Calendar, which I purchased at a school supply store, laminated it, and added the Spanish days of the week and the Velcro.

I then laminated the square numbers that I also purchased at a school supply store and put the attracting Velcro on the opposite side.

I made a printable of the English/Spanish days of the week and months of the year, and also laminated those.

As you may of noticed, all of these things are hole punched and ringed, so that I can hang them on a curtain rod. Since we have chosen the "debt free" path, we currently are living in a 5th wheel trailer, to save up to build a home; more on that in another post. Hence, I must make do with the space I have!

After Calendar Time, we move to our "black board" which has the rest of our Circle Time subjects on it. We reiterate what the date today is and move on to "today's weather", and "yesterday, today, tomorrow", both printables from Confessions of a homeschooler.

We then will cover the "Bible Memory Verse" of the week and "The Character Quality" of the week.

The bottom section, is our "flash card" section. Here we cover:
The letter of the week
The sign language letter of the week
The shape of the week
The color of the week
The number of the week

The last thing we do in Circle Time is read our book of the week, which will correspond to the letter of the week.

Hope you enjoyed this post!!

Bible

Weekly we study the bible 3 times, M-W-F.

We have a verse of the week, that coincides with the letter of the week. For example, this week we are doing the "Letter A" and the Memory verse for this week is: "All have sinned and come short of the glory of God" Romans 3:23.

Right now, Jeremyah is able to repeat the Memory Verses to us, (each word repeated after we have said it) and it is very fun to hear him learn new words.

We then have scheduled certain Bible stories, in chronological order for the year, and we may do a project with the reading of the story, to reinforce the memory of it.

We use the KJV Bible for many reasons, but Michael Pearl explains it well here: Why King James Only? and if  you would like to know more, view here: King James Only?

37 weeks!

I am 37 1/2 weeks along, and this week, I am starting to feel the baby getting bigger and feeling more uncomfortable.

I am really wanting this baby to go full term so that I can wrap up everything I have on my to-do list, before this baby comes!

We have many names picked out, whether it be a baby boy or baby girl, but we are super excited to see what it is! We are almost positive it is a baby boy, because of how I am carrying, and how similar my pregnancy is to my pregnancy with Jeremyah.

We still have a few things on our to do list to do, such as:
Hooking up our outside bath tub to te hot water propane tank
Getting Jeremyah fully potty trained
Getting Charlotte to fully feed herself
Getting a start on firewood for the winter season
And getting well established in our homeschool curriculum!
Oh and the most important.... Freezer meals!!! More on that in my next post!

Math

I hope I am gaining a following here, and not just talking to cyberspace! Hehe, just kidding, I am doing this to log my efforts to one day pass down to my daughters to teach their children. I just hope Blogger is still up and running 20+ years from now, otherwise that would be bad....

Anyways, on to math! For math we use workbooks. I know a lot of homeschoolers hate the "sit down and do workbook pages" method, but here me out :).

Each week for math we have workbook pages AND hands on, visual learning for math. We love workbook pages, because it teaches our children self control, quiet time, and sitting still time. But we also love hands on learning, because it reiterates the concept in a different way, which will matter for some children and not for others. Since we currently do not know our children's learning curves, our curriculum includes all the senses of learning so we can evaluate our children's learning abilities for the teaching in the years to come.

I choose math readiness books from the dollar store and Walmart that include the following concepts:
Numbers
Shapes
Same/Different
Sequencing
Patterns

The hands on things we do:
A million types of counters to count things
Number pies
Pattern picture cards with manipulatives
Puzzles


For DIY Montessori Math Materials, this is my favorite post over at :The My Little List Blog

Phonics

Currently for phonics we are doing part of the Confessions of a Homeschooler "Letter of the Week Curriculum". We have chosen what is best for our children at the age and their ability to learn. We know all children are different and have different learning paces. Out of her curriculum, we have chosen the following content for this year:
Letter Tracing
Do a Dot
Poke Page
Size Sorting
Letter Sorting (uppercase vs lowercase)
Letter Magnet
Letter Coloring page

The list above is what we do for phonics every week for each letter. It was a lot of work to prepare, because we knew we wanted it to be durable and last multiple children. So we printed and laminated and cut out each piece for this part of the curriculum.

We currently store the phonics pages in an accordion style filing folder that has a section for each letter. I know that confessions of a homeschooler has a binder for each letter, but she does her whole curriculum and has the space!! Letter of the Week Storage

Art

Art! We love art around here! This trimester we are focusing primarily on painting. Reason being, my oldest son Jeremyah, does not exactly like the texture of it, so we want him to become more comfortable and exposed to different mediums and ways of painting. We have been surfing pinterest and google for many many ideas, and have come up with affordable fun activities and masterpieces to produce!

We will be using powdered tempera paint that I purchased from Discount School Supply because; it had good reviews, its more afforable then buying ready made paint, we do not have to deal with freezing paint in our shed in the winter, we could use different mediums, such as: condensed milk, water, bubbles, soap, oil, chalk ect.

Please stay tuned for one of our art posts, as it will be filled with pictures and tutorials on how to make your very own masterpieces with your children!

Music

For music, we choose a "hymn of the week" to learn, that matches with the letter of the week we are currently doing. Papa learns to play the hymn on his guitar, while teaching us all the tune. We try to memorize it all week, so that we can share it at home church at the end of the week.

We do music 2-3 times per week. I try to do a craft involving, how to make a musical instrument, and then incorporate it into our song of the week. This subject is our children's most favorite, they both love to dance and sing!

Laying Hens

We just moved out our 64 meat birds from the chicken coop to the chicken tractors, so that we can make room for our new laying hens!

Our meat birds are 3 weeks old, and they are being moved to an outside pen, so that they can have fresh grass to roam on, while still being protected from predators and weather in the tractor. The hens will be in the coop, where they have their laying boxes and roost. We can not let them free range until they know their new home better, and until we know that the last few young ones are laying. We like to ensure that they know where to lay, so that we don't have to go looking for their eggs, and so that they don't get smashed, and eaten by the chickens, or that they don't start going broody.

Anyways, we are so0o0o excited to get farm fresh eggs again! We love hens wayyyy better then meat birds!

Chickens!

This summer we have grown just over 250 chickens!

We are on our second batch, which we started out with 65 and now only have 64. That's an AMAZING death rate, considering our first batch of chickens this summer we lost 80 in the first week!

Anyways, we raise chickens for meat and then to sell. We raise them all natural and non- GMO. Which means : we do not feed our chickens genetically modified feed, which include the typical filler of corn and soy products. They say this filler is "critical" for their growth, because with out it, they will be deficient in protein.. Anyways we don't want to eat anything GMO, so we don't feed our chickens GMO, because we are going to eat them!!! :)

So in May, which here in North Idaho is still freezing cold! We purchased a batch of 207 chickens! Right away we got them settled in and going on the right track.... Or so we thought.

We lost so many birds because it was too cold or too hot. In the first week of life, they need to be at a constant 90-95 degrees. When our chickens were too cold, they would all huddle up under the heat lamp, and then the ones in the middle would get too hot, from the ones on the outside pushing to get warmer. Needless to say, we had many fried chicken... Hehe, sick... I know. And the ones on the outside would be frozen cold chicken, so we had 80 dead :(

My husband was very discouraged, and did not want to raise chickens anymore! But we had already had orders for our chickens, and they needed to be filled.

So, a little more on the facts:
Our meat birds are grown for about 8-9 weeks. They reside in our cozy chicken coop for the first 4 weeks of their life, then are moved to chicken tractors for the remainder of their lives. Our chicken tractors have no bottom and are moved daily onto fresh grass, as to get the best nutrients and fresh air as possible.

We then butcher them, after their life span is up! Next post will be on how to butcher a chicken!

Homeschooling PK1 and PK2

This year we are starting our homeschooling journey!

I have put together a curriculum combining confessions of a homeschooler's "letter of the week", several ideas from the Internet and some of my own works to make a curriculum that best suits what I would like to teach my children. It has taken me a month to prepare, with being pregnant, having a one and a two year old, printing, thinking, laminating, cutting out, thinking, organizing, shopping, comparing prices and more thinking to come up with only 4 months of schooling!!! Ahhh good thing I am writing it all down, and laminating almost everything to reuse with each child!!

This year we are covering the following topics:

Circle time (which includes: days of the week, months of the year, sign language, shapes, numbers, letters, bible memory verse, and character qualities, all in English and Spanish)
Phonics
Math
Reading
Art
Science
Bible
Music

In the next two weeks, I will cover what we are doing in each subject! Stay tuned!!

Preparing for Baby Byrum #3

We are quickly preparing for baby Byrum #3 to arrive in mid September.

We purchased a Costco Shelter to store our wood for the winter and to give birth in. I love having water births, but let's just say our 5th wheel trailer bath tub just isn't big enough! So we also purchased a huge bath tub to use in the shelter, and then to use for our future home :)! Our shelter will also serve as a mud room, which will come in handy during the winter/spring months of mud and snow.

Picture of shelter/birthing room to come! It's still in a working progress!

In the next month, I will be making freezer meals for our family to eat when the baby comes, to make it easier on us, not having to full on cook! We have heard that adding #3 to our family is going to be a big change, so we are hoping to help make everything run smoothly.

I will try to be blogging several times per week, covering our daily lives; topics will include:

3 babies under 2 1/2
Homeschooling PK1 and PK2
Healthy Meal recipes
Natural Alternatives
Biblical Church
Homesteading
And I think that's all for now :)

Busy Bag Exchange

{Toddler and Baby}
Busy Bag Exchange
This is a post for my local friends who are interested in joining in the busy bag exchange OR for those of you who want idea on how to host your own. Or just ideas for how to keep your toddler busy. :)

I spent the better part of Sunday afternoon scouring the internet and pinterest gathering idea for our kiddos.

Guidelines for the exchange
1. I sent out an email or facebook message for each of you to sign up.
2. Select your bag of choice by emailing me. I will update the blog when bags are taken.
3. Signups are open until 3/15: After it closes, I will email with how many bags we each will be making. You will then have 2 weeks to make your bags and we will meet up (date and place to be decided) to exchange.
4. You will make X number of identical bags (such as: 10 button snake bags), 1 for every participant.
5. The bags should cost between $1-2 per bag. Please price out your ideas and shop with coupons if needed.
6. Please put together a quality bag; the kind you would like to receive in return. Remember, these have to hold up to toddler use! ;)
7. Put each of your finished activities into a gallon size bag (if possible).
8. Include anything we might need to complete the activity including instructions and game options.
9. There is no need to laminate anything (unless you really want to do it.) We each have the option of laminating the activities we need for our own use.

Here is a link to my pinterest montessori/busy bag board.

http://www.pinterest.com/byrumboutique/montessori/

You can see pictures of all the bag ideas. They link you directly to the site with information on putting them together. You are also welcome to contact me and I'm happy to help give you ideas of how to put them together or where to get the supplies. (I will try to get links added to the list below...)
I've tried to include a large variety. If there is an idea you'd like to try instead, let me know and we can change it!


Here is a list. If there is a name behind the game, its already been taken.

Animal Matching
Button Matching and Lacing {PARIS}
Button Snake
Clothespin Matching
Color Matching Clips
Colored Pasta Sort
Magnetic Pom Poms
Pipe Cleaner Matching Sorter
Play Doh Mats
Pom Pom Stuff It
Pool Noodle Stringing
Baby/musical bell rattler

Update on everyone!

Here we are!

We felt that deleting my facebook would be the best for our family! so here we are, you will see our updates, please check back weekly, as that i how often i will try to update!

our new email: byrumlove[at]hotmail.com
Skpye: byrumboutique

Im 10 weeks Pregnant! this is how i told Jon: