Matthew at One Year Old

My how this year has gone quickly. Never would I have thought that I would have been pregnant twice and borne two children within one year. Here are some pictures of our little Matthew.
You can see he isn't too little here. I had trouble feeding him a bottle in later pregnancy. You can see why. I'm just starting to feed him again now that I'm recovering from my c-section.

You big boy. I can't believe you fit in momma's belly a year ago!



This picture I took this morning. November 17th. His birthday was on November 14th. It was a glorious day, labor and birth I will never forget. I walked around in the sun for 4 hours near the hospital to make sure I was in labor. I kept talking to my husband on the phone to let him know about the progress. I was so excited! He called for childcare and came to meet me at the hospital when I was 5cm and getting some good pain. He was so big when he was born, we couldn't help but be proud of our boy.

Here's our little softie. I always shared with Matthew that our son would probably be the most "wump womp", even more than the girls. And he is! But, I love his tender heart. Now I know why some are "momma's boy". Though I will let him become a man too one day. : ) You'll find me praying and filled with worry when Matthew teaches our son how to cut wood or chop the head off of a turkey.

Standing but not walking yet. I'm in no hurry.

Matthew sitting quietly. I love this picture.

Birthday boy and his cupcake.
I made homemade vanilla cupcakes with our blackberry preserves with a dollop of homemade whipping cream. Yum!

He's having fun with his cupcake.

More fun!

Just look at that mischievious expression on his face!

Matthew didn't eat much of his birthday cupcake but he sure did have fun with it! I guess that's all that matters. : ) Happy birthday my son. I love you so very much.

Here he is with his momma not too many weeks after his birth. I miss his first year already dearly. It went too quick. I shed a lot of tears this past week. A lot. Of all the children I didn't want him to get any older. I wish I could keep him between 4 and 7 months old for life. I'd tote him with me everywhere and he'd be such a joy to me. But, I guess God intends for our little ones to grow up. I pray I can savor their babyhood and childhood moment by moment so much more. It seems the moments get lost in dishes, diapers and daily work. I'm far from it and far from where I want to be there. It is hard having lots of little ones. Please pray that we continue to mature that we can look back and know that we have done well and more so be pleasing to the Lord.

Our Little Leah

First for the pictures... : )


Here she is still at the hospital. Born October 28th at 1:09pm. Weight: 6lbs 14oz, Height: 20". She is really tiny.

Mommy and baby Leah.

Our growing family, all six of us. I can't believe there are six of us already. We now have four children three and under. I would have never thought it possible if someone told me we would have this many children by now.


Marilyn. She was with us with three of the four children. She is a wonderful lady and we hope she'll be coming to our home for a visit soon. She has her beautiful, black horse next door to us on our neighbor's property. She just loves her. We love how wonderful she is to see each year when we return for care with another labor and postpartum care. Lovely, lovely lady.

Another picture of Leah. Almost like the first one but a different pose. : ) We think she's pretty!


Our story: On the morning of October 28th I got out of bed and found I was bleeding again. I had been bleeding throughout this pregnancy and though I had had several ultrasounds, there was no appearance of a separation of the placenta. I went in for my nearly 39 week appointment I had scheduled that morning at 10:00 and had an ultrasound to see if she was head down. I mentioned to the ultrasound technician that I was bleeding again and could she please check the placenta. She quickly found a separation from where my scar was in the front from a c-section in 2006 and called a couple of doctors in for confirmation. They confirmed and shared that I needed to get up to labor and delivery for a c-section right away. She shared that once it starts to separate from the womb, it's like a cloth tearing... it can tear away pretty quickly and we could lose Leah or I could even possibly die due to blood loss (though rare today). I called my husband and he made arrangements for the children to come to the hospital.

Once in labor and delivery they wanted to get me in the operating room quickly. I discussed with the doctor about the spinal not working in 2006 and how terrified I was about it not working again. I've also had two epidurals that didn't take as well. She talked to the anesthesiologist and when the anesthesiologist came in she immediately shared they would have no problem giving me a general to put me out completely providing the circumstances. The only thing is my husband couldn't be in the room with me then. I was okay with that as I knew I would see him and Leah when I woke up. I couldn't believe we were going to see our baby for the first time so soon and this day.

I woke up extremely groggy of course and remember seeing my husband and Leah when they wheeled me to my room. Matthew was holding her and feeding her a bottle. She was so pretty like our other children. She looked and still does look a lot like Hannah to us. Marilyn helped me a lot through the next few days in the hospital and Leah started nursing well. Much of last week is a blur to me as I've been on pain medication but I'm recovering very well compared to my c-section in 2006 and we are already getting a little back on our comfortable schedule at home... two weeks earlier than we would have ever expected. Leah is a week old today and we are all loving her. Little Matthew is just starting to come up to her lately and wants to touch her head. Of course he being a boy wants to pat her kind of hard on the head. Elisabeth and Hannah love getting little things for me, her blanket, a towel or anything I forget when I am nursing her. They are doing really well for having a new baby here. I love them all. They are all such a blessing to us. I can't wait to see what this next year brings forth from finding out who Leah is more and more to looking forward to the excitement of wanting to be pregnant again.

So, welcome to this world little Leah. We hope to provide a good start in life for you. We know things are a little noisier here at the Geraci household than when your earlier siblings were born. But, it's a good noisy... most of the time. ; )

Baby Leah is Here

Little Leah was born on October 28th, at 1:09pm via c-section. She and her mama are doing great. I had started bleeding again that morning and found through the ultrasound that I did indeed have placenta abruption (separation), so we were happy to go forward and have our baby that morning safely. I will post pictures and a birth story within a few days when I am feeling better. She is beautiful and a doll. All 6lbs 14 oz of her. She is so tiny!

Baby's Coming

My husband just took the kids down to the barn to play for a while and it just hit me hard that within three weeks we will have a new baby here again. I can't believe it. I'm so excited! These past few weeks all I can think about is having the baby so I'm finding it hard to blog or sew or do much but a little cooking.

It seems that each pregnancy goes by quicker than the last one and each child hits their first year quicker than the last one. All through this pregnancy Matthew and I have been in a good anticipation about me getting pregnant with our fifth child because that will be a fulfillment of what we saw three years ago from the Lord - five children. Now we are praying for more by faith.

I have another ultrasound tomorrow to make sure Leah is head down. I will be 39 weeks the following day. I always felt that she would be born in October... we still have some days left so we'll see. Little Leah sleeps more than any of the children I've had in my womb. I have a good feeling she will be a good sleeper after she is born. So far with these three children I've borne, they have all been sleeping through the night (until 5:30am) by twelve weeks. By six months our lives are really feeling quite normal.

Please pray that all does go well with the birth. The bleeding I've had concerns me as I am hoping it's not placenta accreta where the placenta attaches to the c-section scar in my uterus (and the placenta is in the front). This causes bleeding through late pregnancy and hemorrhaging at birth as the placenta detaches from the scar, usually resulting in an emergency hysterectomy. I wish the doctor hadn't have shared this with me because it is always there in the back of my mind. My midwife shared that if it's the cervix (which I hope it is), I may have a really quick labor or bleed a lot. So, I am a little scared up front but my spirit is at rest with all that is before me. I just really have a feeling that I can't shake that all will go very, very well. So, as long as I stay in God's rest and not put my mind to such things I think I can be at peace throughout these last hours or weeks.

I may not be blogging anymore until Leah arrives so please be patient with me as I'm sure I will have plenty of new pictures of our newest daughter very soon. : ) May the Lord be with you.

Turkeys

Here is my favorite turkey. He is always the first to come near us, to puff all out, has straight legs for reproducing and is one of our largest of the three largest toms. I've just always liked him. So, we are going to keep this one for reproduction purposes to three of our hens.

Here are a couple or more pictures of this big guy.

Can you tell the difference between a hen turkey and a tom turkey?
See the hen in the background?

Homemade Vegetarian Pizza

Poor Matthew wasn't feeling too well to his stomach last week so I made a vegetarian pizza instead of our usual. It was just as delicious and made for a nice change.

Here I rolled out some dough that I made earlier that day. When I first started making pizza a couple of years ago, I sure had trouble rolling out the dough and getting it on the pizza pan.


I usually just heat up some tomato paste with olive oil and Italian herbs on the stove for my pizza sauce. That way I can get it to the consistency I like. I like to slather the sauce on the sides of the crust too.


Added cheese. I received a large hole type cheese grater from Matthew's mother a couple of years ago. It saves me time when shredding cheese for pizza.

Lots and lots of mushrooms. Yummy!

Next, I added green peppers, black olives, fresh garlic and onions. I then cooked it up and added fresh basil, tomatoes and topped it with parmesan cheese. Sorry, the cooked picture just didn't turn out but you'll have to trust me, it was delicious! We had no problems not having the meat on it this time.

Home Grown Turkey

Here is our first turkey we butchered out of our flock. My husband picked out a smaller one and he could barely fit in the pan. I don't know what we're going to do when he butchers one of our big boys. We raised the White Broad Breasted turkeys this year as they do not show any pin feathers and come out looking really clean as you can see for yourself. My husband does a wonderful job cleaning them. He just made a stainless steel table for the rest of the birds he will be butchering. I will try to get a few somewhat clean looking pictures of the procedure again this year (depending on when this baby will be born).

And how was the turkey? Absolutely delicious. Full of flavor and the gravy is nothing like you've ever had. We're still enjoying turkey sandwiches now and I can't wait to cook another one for Thanksgiving.

Fresh Collards

My husband picked these collards a couple of weeks ago to go with dinner. They are simply delicious. He shared with me that each night when he would put the birds away he would walk out to the garden and pick a little bit of a collard off with dew on it and eat it. I tried a piece and couldn't get over how delicious it was. I almost didn't want to cook them. We still can't believe how different food tastes when you grow it yourself.

These are just a few of what we bagged up to freeze for the winter.


They are just as rich and green as the picture here.

Coming Up on a Year

Oh, how this year with Matthew went fast. Emotions well up in me that it went so fast and my baby is fast becoming a toddler. I have always wanted a son and God gave me such a beautiful child in heart and beautiful to watch him too. I sometimes can see him at the age of five or eight already. I can't wait... to see him running through the yard or fields. I will so much enjoy watching him grow through his childhood and love that I get to be the loving mom he needs to help him develop into a good, young man one day. I believe a son really needs a good mother while a daughter really needs a good father. Oh Matthew, I will always cherish you as my little boy. I know it will go too fast so all I can do is love you each day. I'm so glad the Lord brought you into our lives. We love you so very much son.

Here baby Matthew is going to get his first real haircut. I think Daddy is looking forward to this. We always thought it would be at about 18 months but after I give him a bath he looks like a rooster in the back and top of his head. So, I guess it's about time little Matthew.

All innocent looking and ready to go.

What's going on back there?

Wow, this is neat stuff. I love the noise daddy's toy makes.

This isn't too bad!

All done and given back to mom. He was a good boy and did very good for his first haircut. I'm glad the change wasn't too drastic. Daddy did a great job!

You Little Three Year Old

I really like the age of three. To me it's when you start to get that first break. Elisabeth is finally softening down. Boy was she a hard child as a toddler. She makes all the others seem pretty easy so I guess that is good. I'm looking forward to sharing some things about the Lord with her this year and just watching her come to a greater place of maturity. She's a sweetie and still so much of a baby.



I

Free Strawberry Plants

A couple of weeks we drove to Westport and saw a sign that said, "Free Strawberry Plants". Of course my husband wanted to stop and could you blame him? A very kind, older gentleman gave us two huge black bags of strawberry plants. He shared that they were picking over 5 gallons of strawberries a day and he just couldn't keep up with it anymore. So, here are our strawberry plants all ready for next year. Looks like we will have a nice size field of them. I bet the kids will eat half of them!

Homemade Laundry Soap

Here is the 18 gallons of laundry soap I have been making for nearly 3 years now.

INGREDIENTS:
Three bars of Fels Naptha (Top Foods $1.59 per bar)
Washing Soda (Sodium Carbonate).
Borax Powder
Grate or chop up 3 bars of Fels Naptha. This has been around as a laundry bar for over 100 years now.


Melt on stove in 54 cups of water. This is the longest part but still only takes about 40 minutes.


Once melted add 4 1/2 cups of Borax powder. I paid about $4.50 for this 4lb 12 oz box.

Add 4 1/2 cups of Washing Soda (not baking soda). This is sodium carbonate. I bought this 50 lb bag for $19.00 nearly 3 years ago and still have lots of it left. You can find this at many pool supply places. It has a higher PH and gives your clothing a good cleaning.

Here I have it added to the Fels Naptha soap mixture. It dissolves in about 5 minutes. Make sure to stir it really good.

I had my husband transfer the mixture into our 22 gallon container we've been using. Now add 235 cups of water. Yes, 235 cups of water. We have a line on our big, black pot we used to melt this all together in that is 55 cups so we only have to fill a little over 4 times. Maybe use a milk jug as that holds 16 cups. Hopefully, you have something larger. Stir with a stick or something large several times a day for the next 12 hours or so or it will gel up.

We bought this 55 gallon barrel at an Ocean Spray cranberry factory for $3 last year. I asked my husband if he could configure it to hold our soap. We already took some out as you will see below but it looks like we will get nearly 3 batches in here. So, I guess I will be making another batch next week if I don't have the baby by then.

Here are some of our gallon milk jugs filled with the soap from the barrel in the garage. It makes it very convenient for many months to come. The clothes wash wonderfully in this and smell so good. We've had no complaints about using this formula so far and the savings is phenomenal. We used to go through all 18 gallons in about 9 months. Now we are going through it pretty quick with all of the kids.

You can use as little as 1/4 cup of this detergent. We use a full cup though as we have kids playing on the farm and Matthew working with chickens, etc...

Upcoming Pictures...

First of all, things are looking great these past few days with my pregnancy. I do feel that I may have an early baby and hope so. There are some signs... : )

Here are some posts I will be posting in the upcoming week:

Making homemade laundry soap - 18 gallons
Our homemade pizza
Sugar cookies from my favorite cook book
Little Matthew's haircut from daddy
Homemade scones
Collards from our garden
Matthew's stainless steel table he built

I may be posting a little less frequent since the baby is nearly due. But, you can count on me to post tons of baby pictures for the first several months after little Leah is born. I can't wait to meet her. Our children are just beautiful to us and so precious. After three hard years of learning to adapt to having to be on demand to everything... especially when tired or sick, we are getting the hang of it. We have a wonderful routine that has just saved us so much. It has improved the home and our marriage tremendously. We get things accomplished and have rest (8 hours of sleep and a nap many times too), teach and read to the kids daily, read the Word, sing a hymn, cook delicious meals, tend to chickens, gardening and harvesting, butcher turkeys, build things for the home, enjoy company and more. Our lives are full. They haven't been for either of us until we married and now we are in the fullness of it. It is rich. It is beautiful. We are so, so grateful. Thank You Lord, only You could have put us and this together.

In Need of Prayers - Pregnancy

I've had bleeding throughout this pregnancy. Last night it started again and I went to have an ultrasound this morning to check the low lying placenta for separation. Unfortunately the ultrasound won't pick it up unless it's 30% or more separation. It looked fine. The doctor noted the amount of blood with the exam though and sent me to Labor and Delivery with a warning that if it didn't stop within a few hours they would be doing a c-section TODAY! I prayed and prayed while there during my 7 hour stay. The bleeding did cease but started again lightly right before my release. They do not know why the bleeding. It could be the placenta separating or the placenta growing into my c-section scar which is not good. Please pray for the health of our baby, my health and that the next time I go in will be to deliver a baby vaginally. I was just in last week for bleeding. I am on complete bedrest and know that if I go in for ANY kind of bleeding again they will do an automatic c-section. I am just humanly scared, but I also love being in the position of having to turn something completely over to the Lord. My eyes look upward now so much more than when all was well. Thank you for your prayers.

Getting to be Closest of Friends

We always heard that one of the benefits of having children close together is that they will be best of friends. We are already starting to see that this year with Elisabeth and Hannah. I pray they will be close throughout their lives and that they will be of comfort to one another one day when a spouse dies.

Jumbo Garlic and Sweet Onions

Last week my husband gave away some of our roosters and Lloyd gave us some jumbo garlic and sweet onions from his garden. Boy, what a treat!!! The fragrance is delightful.

Fresh Snap Peas

Here are some fresh snow peas from our garden. We have so many of them that we cannot keep up with picking them. We've given much away, sold some, tried to make baby food - yuck, too fibrous and have eaten much. The girls love to pick these and eat them raw. Yet, if I put any greens on their plate they will not touch them. Live local? Stop on by to get some fresh snow peas. : )

Baby Chicks Made it to Kansas

We sent these baby chicks out to a family in Kansas about a couple of weeks ago. The hatch we "intended" to send out to this family ended up hatching and needing to be sent out on Labor Day. Of course the Post Office was closed but thank God we had more hatches coming up. Here are some pictures of this special event.

Hatched and just a few hours old.

Getting ready for the journey

To the Post Office you go you little chickies!!! May God be with you on your journey.

They arrived to their destination 36 hours or so later - All alive. They did lose two since then but we recently sent them a hatch of 29 chicks and they made it as well and are thriving beautifully. They are well taken care of.... especially by their new momma! : )