32 weeks pregnant and 7, week 4

so the day i hit 32 weeks of pregnancy (12 days ago now) also marked the beginning of our fourth week of 7 fasts. this time, it was a fast from "media". while i was tempted to hedge and include certain things as "allowable" during this week, i ultimately decided to go all out (and so thankful my husband is wonderful and joins me in these fasts...) no one else in my book group fasted from Facebook (!!!) so i got my important updates from them ;) my fast was from the internet completely, as well as all phone apps that use the internet (except i could check my e-mail once a day, since i have things for sale online, and need to ship quickly when purchased). also, no music. this was the one that surprised me as being the hardest! i always thought music wasn't a huge deal for me. i'm almost NEVER the one to turn it on in my house, and usually don't even think of turning it on in the car, unless i'm driving more than an hour or so... but i missed it! like when joey was at papi & nona's house for a couple days, and i had some time to be alone and/or with jason, working on things around the house... it was TORTURE to clean and organize silently! who knew?   

some amusing results of not being able to use apps or the internet...

*we had to use actual maps! like unfold a map of Los Angeles county in the car on our way to try to find an estate sale on a street we were unfamiliar with - it was hilarious watching us try to decipher it - "where is S-11?? oh there! but i canNOT find gretna anywhere!" looking up from map: "Oh - there's gretna in real life - turn here!! ...wrong way..." jason pulls over so he can look at it himself, and we eventually find the intersection of Clive & Gretna! amazing! and makes you realize JUST how convenient Google Maps on your phone really is ;)

*couldn't check traffic and change my route as i drove into LA for work - and without music, it felt like it took 3 hours (it was actually only 1 1/2 hours... to go 25 miles ;)

*jason wanted to go hiking and couldn't look up where "the bridge to nowhere" was located (he made his friend he was going with do it ;)

*couldn't look up all my ADD questions i have throughout the day: does sugar worsen reflux? can i eat medium-rare steak from chipotle right now since i'm pregnant? what does insouciance mean?? when are the olympic opening ceremonies? WHAT shooting in colorado?!!

*my addiction to weather.com was unearthed (people, i live in southern california - how much is is gonna change in the middle of summer? kinda hot, hot, or hotter?? but i ALWAYS look at it before i get dressed for the day!)

and some good things, too:

*i finished a book i started reading over 2 years ago (Grace-Based Parenting by Tim Kimmel) and made it halfway through The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning - yep, that's what happens when i don't have 500 blog posts backed up in my google reader, and all the ensuing pinning and clicking around... also skimmed through a book about composting in preparation for the next fast: waste. now for the other 6-8 books i'm currently in the middle of...

*discovered how different the rhythms of my day can feel without constantly checking for updates on facebook and instagram, playing draw something (i actually completely forgot game apps existed this week - didn't even think about catching up with them till a couple days after the fast was ended)... instead of looking at my phone constantly whenever there was a "down" moment, such as waiting for someone, or if joey was otherwise entertained for once... i watched joey play, or prayed in those waiting moments, or even read something if it was naptime or something! i just felt so present to my actual life (as opposed to caught up in a virtual internet world). 

funny, though, that since the fast ended, i have gone back to my exact same ways. compulsively checking Facebook being the main offender. i said when i was finishing that i planned to only check it once or twice a day, and only when i wasn't with somebody else (e.g. during joey's nap or in the evening if i'm alone). but i didn't "commit" to it, and it so hasn't happened. 

i'm in process on this... 

but i am so happy to be able to get back on here to blog! i missed it while i was gone...!

7, week 3

today was the last day of week 3's fast: possessions. i'm still sort of processing it. it felt natural to jump into this one on the tail end of the clothing fast. just realizing how weighed down i can be by all the excess in my closet ("i have nothing in my closet that i want to wear" actually means "i have very few outfits in my closet that i actually wear, so it's overwhelming digging through what i don't want to wear to find what i do."), and how freed i have felt in the past after "ridding the excess"... translates over into the rest of life as well. i mean, who needs 2 dozen bath towels in their home?? we decided that 3 per person is plenty.

this week, we cleaned out every inch of both bedrooms, the bathroom, the hall closets, and the rafters in the garage! paring down to what we actually need and use regularly. i'm sure we rid ourselves of at least half our clothes (again! we just did this in december! how did it creep back in?!) and a huge portion of the rest of our "stuff" in general.
the fact that my due date is 8 weeks away, and i had a couple of "nesting" energy bursts may have helped us get all this done... (also, in the process, we brought in the clothes and baby furniture we'll be needing oh-so-soon, and got everything rearranged and deep-cleaned :) 


but i wanted it to be about more than just "cleaning out our closets" yet again. a big focus of the book 7 is on the poor. part of what drove her to write it in the first place was interacting with the poor and really realizing how nauseatingly excessive her american dream lifestyle was. and so, her commitment for the third part of the book was to "give away 7 possessions a day for an entire month." i gladly took this as a challenge as well (yay! rid the excess! give away 7 things every day! ...for a week, not a month, of course). but she found, and so did i, that this was "too easy". just in the clothes i cleaned out from my closet, i had more than that to give away.
my big thing was i didn't want to just go make a random donation to Savers or Goodwill.
she points out in the book that the problem isn't that the rich don't WANT to give to the poor, it's that the rich don't KNOW the poor. there is a disconnect, and we don't even know what the needs of the poor are to be able to try to give to them what they need. so i wanted this to be more than a "purge" of my home. i wanted it to bless someone else that needed it.
so, the day after we cleaned it all out, we carted it over to an old friend's house, where they were going to be hosting a yard sale fundraiser so she could have a surgery she has been needing. still not the intentional person-to-person giving of a needed item i'd been hoping for, but it did some good. i will also be taking a few bags of baby clothes to a local church, where they have a "swap shop", where if a mom needs anything for her growing kiddos, she can come and take it. great ministry.
and found some friends who welcomed the diapers joey will no longer be using.
and i will be meeting up with a couple of friends from MOPS to pass on some baby items as well. so i guess i did end up finding 7 people/places to give. it just wasn't how i pictured it, i guess (in the book, she and her friends are able to furnish an entire apartment for a refugee family flying in that day - how cool would that be?!).

 and part of my commitment was to give away 7 handmade items, just knowing how much more personal that would be to me... and vulnerable. i totally haven't started that part yet.
since we're still in process, though, i think it's ok if it carries over into the next couple of weeks (and hopefully, into a generally generous lifestyle!). 


the one other thing i committed to, in light of paring down possessions, was to fast from estate sales that week. which was exceptionally difficult, since there were a BUNCH of good ones in our area over this past weekend! but it was a good exercise in stopping and taking stock of what we have, what we need, and what we don't need...

we went on a couple-night vacation at the beach during this time, so that took away from being able to continue with it, and since we've been back, we've been exhausted... and sort of paralyzed in the process of all the decision-making (does jason need all his seminary textbooks? maybe. maybe not. part of the hard part of all of this is discerning what is wise to hold onto, and what is straight-up hoarding).


so that's us in process. praying that we learn through this to both be scandalously generous, and good stewards of what we have been given. and so excited for the soul-space that is getting freed up by losing some of the clutter!


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week 4 begins in the morning, with our "media fast". i will not be blogging (or checking Facebook, instagram, or other phone apps/internet sites), just so you know. i'll be back in a week or so to let you know how it went! :)

7, week 2

...and then came clothes. this "fast" ended up being slightly comical in nature... i thought, "hey, this'll be easy - i did the experimental 20 pieces for 20 days in december, so i've already basically done this!" and it's true, i had already processed through a lot of what the fast was meant to allow us space to process. just how much excess we constantly live with, and how it presses on us, and how freeing ourselves from the majority of the zillion choices we have to make (starting with what to wear in the morning), can make life simpler, freer in general. this one had a few modifications, though. shoes "counted" into the 7 clothing items we could wear for the 7 days, and no accessories (!!). this definitely ruled out the whole "creative" factor that i generally enjoy seeing come out as options become limited. bo-ring! but i decided that, hey, maybe that's the point. so, for 7 days, i wore only 7 items of clothing (first question everyone has asked me: NO, underwear doesn't count. ;)

so here's a look at my 7 i chose...

1. black tank top: old navy maternity hand-me-down (jason pointed out halfway through the week that the top was wearing thin enough that he could see my belly... you win some, you lose some ;)

2. cutoff khaki shorts, thrifted & cut

3. flip-flops, old navy (for some reason the author of the book counted 2 pairs of shoes as one "item", so i went with it, and had a black pair and a brown pair to match both ;)

 part of the reason i thought "this will be so easy!" initially was because it's summer in southern california, and i knew i'd only need shorts and tank tops, so i was going to have at least 3 or 4 complete outfits to rotate between. however, the first "complication" was that we went camping up north for a few days during this week's fast, and it got down into the 40s (huge departure from the 80s we were having at home)! so i couldn't get out of at least a pair of pants and a sweater of some kind... the girls in my "group" encouraged me to bring an (uncounted) extra "warm, but not fashionable jacket". unfortunately, i don't own that particular piece of clothing after "simplifying" in december, so i went without, deciding that i'd just pile on blankets as needed (and it was all fine). also, i needed these things to all be comfortable (i had to wear these pieces to bed, too!). so i went with:

4. yellow sweatpants, thrifted. this made me not have the issue that some of the other girls in the group had of getting bored with their clothing options because they were all drab blacks and neutrals - yellow! heck yeah!

5. plaid tank top, thrifted

6. camel cardigan, anthropologie

note: i may or may not have chosen my outfits for this week based on whether or not they matched my "turks and caicos" pedicure

and last, but not least:

7. the little black dress, white house black market, thrifted. if i could only wear one thing the rest of my life, it'd be this. it is that comfortable. 

sleep in it, party in it, anything in between... 

fits me all the way through pregnancy, and hides the "extra" afterwards... 

it's pretty much awesome. 

 so there you have it! a pared down, simple wardrobe that i was not even close to sick of by the end of the 7 days. i really only missed wearing accessories (i mean a plain black top or dress real warrants a necklace or scarf or something gracing it...). the comical moments mostly had to do with jason sharing the experience with me. he chose his 7 items of clothing, and had dirtied all but a fleece and his hiking shorts by the end of the first day - like, enough that they could not be worn again until they were laundered. so, we threw a load in first thing in the morning, and he went to the farmer's market in a fleece and hiking shorts ;) boys just get so much dirtier faster, i guess (working out, working on cars, yard work, hiking, off-loading... all activities he did during this week that got him in trouble and in dire need of laundry :)... when we broke down on the way to Kings Canyon National Park, and he had to change the alternator himself (sexy!) he wore only his hiking shorts, so as not to dirty any of his shirts before needing to wear them the next 3 days without laundry. good thing, too, 'cause this is what he looked like partway through:

 hahahaha SO DIRTY!!

so, i'm not sure that i learned a whole lot of new things this week of "clothing fast", but i was reminded again how much freer i can feel when my world is simplified... which leads into the following week: possessions (stay tuned!)...


p.s. what he wore:
good thing "cow appreciation day" at chick-fil-a was not until the day after the clothing fast ended, or we wouldn't have all gotten free food for our costumes we wore... i'm only willing to show you joey's, though. mine was a little too embarrassing - he's just cute :)

28 weeks (old news)

28 weeks is WAY old news, now that tomorrow will mark 32 weeks (and the next photo shoot ;)! but i wanted to at least post the pics so you can see the progression! if you missed them, here's 20 and 24 week posts in the same top... this kid is getting HUGE inside! just wait till you see 32 weeks! ;)

what he's wearing these days:


big boy underwear!

joey is potty trained - woohooooo! :) and so cute in his undies ;)

happy summer!


p.s. if you don't hear from me for a little while, it's because of my "media fast" that starts tomorrow...

7, week 1

i can't believe i've made it three whole weeks without posting about this...! (i know, it's been a month since my last post, but about 7 specifically) i am reading a book called 7: an experimental mutiny against excess by Jen Hatmaker with some friends. the basic premise of the book is that we live in a culture of excess, and that ridding ourselves of this addiction to excess in so many areas of life will allow life to be simpler, and allow God to be "bigger" in our "smaller" life. she quotes the catch phrase "simplified life, amplified God". the author of the book created for herself (and, sometimes, her family) a series of month-long "fasts" in an attempt to live simpler. she started with food, then clothes, possessions, media, etc. so this group of friends and i are reading a chapter a week, and doing our own (weeklong, much easier) versions of fasting in these areas. 

so tomorrow finishes our third week, and i need to tell you all about it!

Week 1: food

 this was definitely the hardest one (so far... i'm a little nervous about next week's media fast...) for me. partly because i'm super pregnant, and i tend to feel very "entitled" when i'm pregnant, to eat whatever i want, seeing that it is a short season of life. partly because i generally have no self-control. but i have been ready to eat healthier. and simpler. so, for a week, i ate nothing but apples, avocados, sweet potatoes, whole wheat or homemade bread, spinach, eggs, and chicken. boy, did i miss sugar! i knew i would, but how MUCH surprised me. i had no idea that i looked to a little sweetness here and there throughout my day to just cope emotionally, until i went without... which was a point of the fast, i guess (for me, at least), to allow me to see how i'm using these in unhealthy ways, when i could be going to God in the midst instead. it took a couple of days, and lots of encouragement from my co-readers, to push through the miserable part. 

the first 2 days, i was super-irritable, depressed, even... just didn't want to deal with life... it came to a breaking point with this salad, of all things. 

looks amazing, right? i had all 7 of the food items in this meal, and it should've been delicious. but my gag reflex is hyperactive when i'm pregnant, and can only take so much chicken and eggs... i gagged my way through this beauty, and was so discouraged i almost quit. but my "girls" didn't let me ;) also contributing were these perfect chocolate chip cookies i made for Jason's Bible study guys and couldn't even try a taste of the dough!! 

torture! after i made it through that day, i actually began to enjoy eating simpler and healthier, and didn't miss the highly-processed-or-baked-and-must-include-at-least-flour-sugar-and-butter kind of stuff so much. i definitely began to understand reliance in a different way than i had before, and resonated deeply with song lyrics about being dependent on God. like this kari jobs one: "i believe you're my healer, i believe you are all i need. i believe you're my portion; i believe you're more than enough for me. Jesus, you're all i need." oh so true. and the food started tasting better, too...

part of the turning point for me was this smoothie (ha!) - 

adapted from a few different internet sources, here is my final recipe:

1 granny smith apple, peeled and cored
1 ripe avocado
2 handfuls of spinach
2 handfuls of ice
a cup or two (consistency to your taste) of pressed apple juice (i used "simply apple", since it is pasteurized and i'm pregnant. we got a different organic kind later in the week that was NOT pasteurized, so i had to boil it before anytime i wanted to use it - doesn't work so well for a smoothie, but is EXCELLENT as hot apple cider :)

so yummy. never has a smoothie (especially a green one!) tasted so delicious.

the other turning point was successfully baking artisan bread from nothing more than flour, water, yeast, and salt. just feels so earthy and natural and the-way-it's-been-done-for-millennia! i love it!

fourth of july was the end of our fast, and we did feast...!

(thanks to jason's family, especially sister-in-law joanne :)

but found ourselves still so ready to eat healthy and natural! i have started buying organic/shopping at the local farmer's market for the first time, and looking at the ingredients on things... so, while the fast was an exercise in simplicity and looking to God, it has resulted in actually living the healthier food life we have long desired.

stay tuned for week 2: clothes