Head out into the back yard or drive out away from city lights. Bring blankets and warm clothing as needed. Look up and enjoy the sight of the stars.

Your best bet is on a moonless night if you want the best view of the stars, but the moon itself can be a lot of fun too, especially with binoculars.

Knowing at least some of the constellations is nice, but you can get a book from the library if you aren’t too good at spotting them, or look them up online first to see what you should expect in your area. AstroViewer.com has a free online interactive sky map you can try.

Binoculars won’t do anything impressive for anything other than the moon, of course, except in rare situations. Sometimes a comet will come close enough that binoculars help with viewing.

I’ve always had a lot of sympathy for moms who have to or prefer to work outside the home. It’s not an easy thing, even if it’s your preference. And in Florida they might just be making it worse.

They’re looking at the possibility of a 4 day school week to save money, making the days longer so the kids would be in school the same number of hours.

Can I just say how miserable that sounds all the way around?

Miserable for the kids, who need free time to play every day. Being stuck for extra time 4 days a week in a classroom doesn’t strike me as a good plan for most ages. I don’t see it as being good for the kids academically, emotionally, socially or any other way.

And of course it’s miserable for the parents with kids young enough to still need daycare. That’s more time they’d be paying for, or a rougher time working their work schedule around the kids’ school schedule.

Given the tight finances of many families, that’s a very real concern. Not all of us are fortunate enough to be able to work at home, have a flexible schedule or otherwise be able to cope with these changes, no matter how much we love our children.

One can argue that this is a point in favor of homeschooling, but that’s not a viable solution for all families. And I don’t believe in the bit about only having kids if you can raise them entirely yourself. There’s no need to judge other parents so harshly.

There have been other times I’ve really wondered how working moms do it. Not out of contempt, but admiration for their determination.

When my son had his craniosynostosis surgery, and then helmet therapy, for example. I know I had it far, far easier than parents who worked outside the home. I can’t imagine how one would keep up with the many appointments I had to deal with – sometimes three in one week, all different days.

That’s not to say I don’t admire my fellow at home moms. I do. We cope with tight budgets, lots of criticisms from people who think we’re wasting our talents, and the daily challenges kids love to present. I think I’m lucky to be in that crowd, but I won’t judge those who don’t choose it for one reason or another. We’re all just doing our best for the most part.

I’ve been thinking of new features to add to this blog. With the needs people have right now, I’m going to start featuring various types of work at home jobs and home businesses each week.

The idea, of course, is to give people ideas on things they can do from home. I know so many people who need work right now.

The focus will be more on types of opportunities, rather than specific companies, at least at first. I’ll also be mixing up the classic opportunities with ones you may not know so much about. And of course any scam warning signs that I am aware of. Even the best of fields have scams that look much like the real thing.

My goal is to start this next week, energy levels permitting. I’m still tired too often to be sure of how well I can keep up just now, but it’s getting better bit by bit.

Still recovering from this past weekend. Actually, recovering from Friday, when we celebrated my son’s birthday. Probably should have just delayed things a couple weeks so I’d have more energy, but at least it’s over now.

On the plus side, the party went really well. Got to have some of my kids’ friends over, as well as family. My younger sister works for the state, and so had furlough this Friday. With Fridays as my husband’s regular day off, this worked really well.

But I had forgotten how very tiring parties can be, even when you simplify.

Of course, the grandparents had a great time playing “pass the baby”. Selene slept through most of it. The parents of the other kids had a lot of fun seeing Selene for the first time, and some of the kids were quite intrigued by how newborn babies are fed.

We didn’t plan games or anything like that for the kids. They’re still at the age where running around and playing with unfamiliar or even familiar toys in a different setting is plenty exciting, not to mention the presence of other kids. Sometimes planning games just seems pointless. Too hard to get the kids interested.

And if the party wasn’t tiring enough, dear, sweet Selene has hit a growth spurt. She’s always been a good eater but now… wow! Hopefully we’ll finish that soon. I’d like a good night’s sleep again.

Just talking as a family is a great activity. Sit down and chat about anything. What problems are people dealing with? What’s going well? Whatever.

Sometimes it works best to have each parent go one on one with each child. Kids will often open up best to just one person.

There doesn’t have to be a problem for it to be important to sit and just talk with your kids. It’s a reassurance for kids to know that you’re interested in whatever is on their minds.

So here I am, blogging after having a baby. Shouldn’t I be taking a rest?

Not to worry folks, I am!

As I said before I had Selene, I took time before she was born to prewrite a lot of posts. Most of what you see is the result of that activity. It’s giving me the chance to take things much easier without completely abandoning my site. All I have to do is keep up with comments and the forum, and write if I feel like it.

I’m also taking this time to work on some site updates and such. A little behind the scenes work, if you will, while letting everything else run on a touch of autopilot. It takes the stress away. I have no idea if I’ll finish before I run out of prewritten posts, and I don’t particularly care. This kind of work can wait longer if necessary.

Keeping up with a little work feels good to me. I’m not so good at keeping my focus only on family and home. Working is an outlet for me.

And of course I’m taking time for my older two kids. They certainly need a little extra while their baby sister takes so much time.

Yes, I’m extra tired. And achy. You know the litany of postpartum complaints if you’ve had a child yourself. That’s why I planned things out so much.

Working this way is something of a treat. No goals. No self imposed deadlines. Just doing what I feel up to doing.

It’ll drive me nuts if I keep it up too long. I like having goals and self imposed deadlines. They ensure that I actually accomplish things. But until I have the energy for them I can call it a treat.

You get to feeling like an old hand at these things on a third pregnancy. Been there, done that.

Except for all the little things that are just a bit different every time.

This time around I had most everything I needed to be pregnant without buying much at all. Except maternity pants of any sort and nursing bras, each of those having aged rather badly during past pregnancies.

Maternity Pants

Does the fashion have to have them cut so low?

Most ways this didn’t bother me at first. Maternity shirts are generally long enough that the height of the pants really didn’t matter.

Until my stomach got big enough that the wide elastic started rolling down. And until winter hit, and anything not long enough as a shirt or sweater, or just too loose meant cold air along my stomach.

I now really and truly loathe low cut maternity jeans. They were less comfortable than the ones that always covered my stomach, yet really don’t look all that different. All that ugly fabric should be covered by a maternity top anyhow.

And to make things worse, they are amazingly uncomfortable after a C-section, when regular clothes still don’t fit. That low riding elastic is rough on the incision when it’s healing. I’ve had to resort to my husband’s sweat pants and my Ren Faire elastic waisted skirt to be even slightly comfortable.

Nursing and Maternity Bras

These things are just miserable to shop for. Generally unattractive, and just to be different from maternity tops, they’re often designed to cover rather a lot. Why is this when so many maternity tops seem to take advantage of the more generous cleavage of most pregnant women? It’s kind of a contradiction to be stuck with bras that mostly show up under such tops.

Don’t get me started on the constant presence of underwire when you’re strongly encouraged to avoid underwire when breastfeeding, so as to avoid mastitis. It took some searching for me to get around that one with nursing bras. It’s hard to get good support without that underwire, making things even more challenging.

And whatever you do, don’t get me started on cost of maternity clothes in general. I am so glad that I saved most of my maternity wear from past pregnancies. Saved me a lot of money I’d rather use on clothes that I can keep wearing for years.

At least that’s what my husband said when I pointed out the conversion error from pounds to kilograms on the diapers his mother bought for us from Walmart. It caught my eye because the Pampers Swaddlers we got from the hospital had a completely different answer, despite the number of pounds they say the diapers are good for being the same.

If you’re having trouble reading it, the Walmart ones say 10 lb or 8 kg while the Swaddlers say 10 lb or 4.5 kg, which is the correct answer.

That said, the Walmart ones really are larger. My tiny little girl just swims in them, while the Swaddlers fit beautifully. But 8 kg is more than 17.5 pounds, and I rather doubt they go that big.

In the long run we’re looking at cloth diapering. Just now Selene is much, much too small for the bumGenius diapers we have on hand, so we’re using disposables until she grows a little more. It should save us a lot of money. Then again, how will I find silly packaging mistakes like this?

Building a fort or a tent is fun for both the parents and kids. It can be out of couch cushions, under the table, on a bed, wherever it works for you.

Forts are great because they can be anything. A private place to chat… never mind that anyone outside of it can hear you, it feels private. A castle. An imaginary world. Or, well, a fort.

It’s fun to see what goes on in a child’s head in a fort. My kids are rather fond of playing Narnia in them.

She’s now about a week and a half old, so I figured it was time to post about her birth. For some reason I’ve been too tired to do it before now.

Selene was born on January 30 by C-section. I had an OB appointment that morning, and my doctor did a dilation check on me. 3 cm dilated at that point, but she realized she was feeling something soft and round at my cervix, rather than hard and round.

Yes, breech.

Fortunately, unlike her big brother, she had plenty of fluid around her. That kept things from needing to be done in too much of a rush. On the other hand, 3 cm dilated meant I could go into full labor at any time.

My OB asked when I had last eaten, and scheduled me for a 7:30 p.m. C-section that evening. Got a warning to not eat or drink anything until then. Ugh! I’d only had a small breakfast.

She told me to go in one hour early, and to do some exercises to try to turn the baby. Only trouble is that most take days to work, and we had hours. But we tried our best in the hopes of having a VBAC rather than C-section. We sent the kids to my mother’s

No such luck. Another ultrasound was done at the hospital and she was still breech. But since I’d rather baby and I be safe than go with a particular birth plan, I went with the C-section. Aren’t many doctors willing to do a breech delivery these days and I would want someone experienced in that if I were to risk it.

Almost forgot. We got a call from the hospital at 5:30, asking where we were. Seems the OB got the schedule wrong. She delivers at 3 hospitals in the area, so I can see how that would happen. They wanted me in two hours early, not one. Good thing the kids had already been sent off to my mother’s house!

Still, everything went smoothly at the hospital and I was ready for surgery on time, much to the relief of the various employees. My husband and I did get a smile out of being told that our anesthesiologist would be Dr. Who (actually spelled Hu, but when you hear it and need a little humor, the other sounds better).

Now this next part may gross some people out, but I found it fascinating. Due to the positioning of one of the lights, I could see a reflection of everything that was going on. I didn’t watch the whole thing, and made sure to not tell the doctors so they wouldn’t move the light. That way I got to see Selene being born. The epidural allowed me to treat the rest of what I could see as more abstract, but getting that immediate glimpse of my daughter was worth it to me.

Didn’t pay much attention to the reflection the rest of the time. Blood doesn’t bother me that much, but I didn’t feel a need to see all that once I had seen my new daughter.

Selene was very small at birth for a full term baby. As my OB put it the next day, if she just would have flipped, she practically would have fallen out. My first daughter was 8 lb 10 oz, after all, while Selene was a mere 5 lb 9.7 oz. Just barely above what is considered to be a low birth weight baby. She was 18.5 inches long.

For all that she’s small, she is one alert baby! Took to nursing right off the bat and aware of the world around her.

She’s also my first good sleeper. Up just once a night most nights. With my other two I had to wait until they were 6 months or even a year old for that.

She’s very healthy too. Before her first week was up she had regained most of her birth weight despite losing nearly 10% at first. What can I say except she and I work well together?

Yes, I’m still tired. Still having some pain from the C-section despite wonderful help from family members. I’ve rarely been alone this entire time, and when I have been alone, it’s been because someone took the older kids off for an activity so I could just be with Selene and rest.

I’m starting to work a bit more now, but trying to take it easy yet these first few weeks. I’ll get back to normal as I heal, but since I’d like to get things right the first time and not have long term issues, I won’t be overdoing.

Can you believe Selene slept through this entire blog post? Me neither! I figured I would end up holding her at some point as I typed this!