All Things Supercinski

1. Kisses from Katie by Katie Davis – I have been reading Katie’s blog for over a year now, and I was glad to read the book and get more of the back story of how she got to Uganda. Katie is a modern day Amy Charmichael, one of my heroes of the faith, and their similarities are striking. Katie moved to Uganda right out of high school, and in the few years she has been there, she has adopted 14 girls, started a huge ministry to feed, educate, clothe and provide medical care to over 400 children in her village, along with providing care to the poor and other outcasts in her community. This is one of the best books I have read in some time, and I highly recommend it.

2. Nutureshock by Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman – This book is the Freakonomics of parenting. Each chapter examines current research and studies relating to children. Topics such as sleep, lying, how we teach kids about race, speech development, and aggression are just a few that were covered. My favorite chapter was about the inverse power of praise. Many of us fall into the trap of praising our children for every little thing. “Wow, you are so smart!” “That is amazing!” fall off our tongues so easily, but the authors argue (quite well) that this is setting them up for failure and poor performance. Instead, we should praise them for their effort. I have started doing this since I read this chapter earlier this month, and I have seen changes in the ways my kids act in school, housework, and play. I highly recommend this book, just since it makes you rethink a lot of things.

3. Is Everyone Hanging Out without Me? And Other Concerns by Mindy Kaling – Mindy Kaling is a writer and actor on the show, The Office, (Kelly Kapoor, come on!), and just plain hilarious. Her book is a collection of essays about her life. It was very lighthearted and hilarious. I laughed out loud so many times. It also answered the question of her last name being decidedly not-South-Asian.

4. Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother by Amy Chua – one of our Chinese-student-friends recommended this book to me. At first, I thought she recommended it out of a desire to see me buckle down in my parenting, and I wasn’t sure if I really wanted to read it, however, I am glad I did. This book is the author’s memoir on her parenting styles: Chinese Mother vs. Typical Western Parenting. Why are Asian kids always the ones winning national spelling bees, musical prodigies, and so driven? She answers this by showing how she parented her daughters as a “Chinese Mother”. I appreciated the author’s honesty and realize that she is not telling the world that this is how it should be done. It was also a really funny book, if you don’t take her too seriously. I took away some things from this book, mainly not praising our kids for doing nothing (like in NutureShock) and setting high standards for them.

Time seems to be flying with Little Man. He has grown so much this past month. He weighs 16.5 pounds and he has outgrown all his 3-6 month size sleepers and most of his shirts.

Speedy is a very busy baby. His little legs are almost always kicking while he is being held. They kick faster when he sees something he likes, like his big brother. He is very proficient at rolling from his back to his tummy. He can roll from his tummy to back, but why would he need to do that? He loves being on his tummy, kicking his legs and pushing up on his arms. He scoots backward across the floor while playing on his tummy and can turn around in a circle, reaching for toys. He desperately wants to move around, but all in good time. He likes being in the exersaucer, but any other baby containment device elicits fussing within minutes.

Speedy was sleeping fairly well, but has been waking up a lot more at night. I’m not sure what is going on. There were a few nights of excessive (like every hour or hour and half) night wakings, but he is going a little longer these days. At the beginning of the month, his naps lasted 45 minutes, max. Now, he is napping anywhere from 45 minutes to 2.5 hours. He stays awake for 1.5-2 hours before needing to go back to sleep. Our days have a bit more flow with the longer naps.

His hands are working more purposefully, grabbing whatever is in sight with razor sharp nails (no matter how often I clip them!). He grabs burp cloths, faces, shirts, hair, toys, cups, his own feet, etc. with abandon. He laughs very easily and often, little giggles to great big belly laughs. He will laugh while being tickled, tossed around the air, while big brother makes a face at him (he laughed this way the whole way through HEB last week, all Bud had to do was raise his eyebrows and Speedy was busting a gut laughing), if Sugar does a dance for him, he laughs and laughs. He has been laughing since he was two months old, but then it was mostly in his sleep. He is such a smiley, squealing, giggling cutie! We sure love him.

As I mentioned in the last post, I had been working out regularly before getting pregnant. While working out at my gym, one of my friends/gym-mates was pregnant, and I got to see this amazing athlete work out through her whole pregnancy. (Seriously, I couldn’t keep up with her on sprints and she was 34 weeks pregnant! I know I’m slow, but it was a bit demoralizing.) I was inspired by her speed, strength and that she kept with it all the way through.

Watching her made me start thinking about and researching the benefits of exercise during pregnancy, and it made me resolve not to turn into a lump the day I found out I was pregnant. As I mentioned before, my pregnancy with Sugar was not the healthiest. I walked some during the pregnancy, but that was it, and my walking as more like strolling without getting sweaty, so is that really working out? Even people on the Biggest Loser do more than that! Read more »

This is a continuation on the healthy pregnancy posts I wrote during my last weeks of pregnancy with Speedy.

During my pregnancy with Sugar, I was training to be a Bradley instructor. I followed the Brewer Pregnancy Diet completely, often manipulating it to fit my tastes. For instance, I needed to consume four servings of milk/dairy products a day. Since I didn’t always feel like drinking a glass of milk, how about I bake some chocolate chip cookies to go with that milk? Never mind that I would eat several balls of dough and three chocolate chip cookies later to go with that milk. Craving fettucine alfredo? It works! Dairy, protein, fats and whole wheat pasta (not to mention a whole stick of butter). I would eat whatever I felt like and however much I wanted. I baked cookies, muffins, and bread galore. It was wonderful. I swelled up like a balloon, broke out in a horrible pregnancy rash the last few weeks, and my rear end couldn’t fit into any of my maternity pants by the end of my pregnancy. I carried an extra 20 pounds around for over 6 months after she was born until I began working out gradually and I lost it over the next six months or so. Read more »

I finally got the go-ahead to cut off little man’s mullet. It was surprisingly long when I got it all off!

This is what it looked like before the big chop:

And the remnants:

And a most-recent picture of Mr. Wiggle Worm (taken by Bud.)

I was going through some old posts that I drafted a couple weeks before Speedy was born. They did not get posted since we spent that final week in Austin in the hospital and hotel with Sugar, not resting and waiting for a baby at home and posting on the blog.

I wrote this short series of posts out of the amazement that I had in having such a great pregnancy (and now amazing postpartum period, too). My pregnancy with Bud was fairly typical–nausea and vomiting through the first 15ish weeks, aches and pains, etc. With Sugar, I was sick multiple times a day until at least 16 weeks, had terrible aches and pains, gained a ton of weight that took over a year to lose, got a pregnancy rash, and had postpartum depression for five months after she was born. All this as I was doing everything “right” and training as a childbirth educator. You can imagine that the thought of another pregnancy filled me with terror. Thankfully, the Lord had other plans for me, and led me to some great resources that made this experience completely different from the last.

Aug. 2011 – Since I am a full-term pregnant woman, waiting for her baby, I spend a lot of time thinking about pregnancy and birth. Some of you understand completely. I know that each pregnancy is different, but this pregnancy has been so much better than the last, and I want to share some of the things I have learned the hard way with others. Keep in mind that I am not a medical professional, and nothing I say here should be construed as medical advice. Your particular situation should be discussed with your care provider.

Preparing for Pregnancy
After all of the nausea of profuse vomiting I experienced with Sugar, the idea of another pregnancy filled me with dread and terror. I remember crying just thinking about the dark days of throwing up everything I had worked so hard to consume. My midwife suggested that I try a liver cleanse in preparation for pregnancy, and that caused some bells to ring in my mind. I remembered reading somewhere that hyperemesis can be a result of poor liver function, as well as the pregnancy rash PUPPS (which I had around 38 weeks with Sugar). I figured a liver cleanse couldn’t hurt anything, so I picked one up at HEB that was a two-week, gentle cleanse, and I followed it with several weeks of taking milk thistle extract (which contains silymarin, which has been shown to help improve liver function in those with liver issues.)

After I found out I was pregnant, I stopped taking the milk thistle since its effects in pregnancy are not known. I was pleased that this was my easiest pregnancy as far as nausea and vomiting are concerned, and I only actually threw up food a few times, but still experienced mild sickness upon waking until about 20 weeks, compared to all the way until Sugar was born. Will I do a liver cleanse again someday if/when the Lord leads us to add more children to our family? You bet! There were no side effects other than feeling better during the first trimester, and no pregnancy rash either!

This will be a short series, with a few other topics to come, so stay tuned!

It has been ages since I posted a recipe on this blog, but this one is just too good to not share! As you may have gathered, Thomas and I have been following a mostly primal foods diet, while slowly trying to change the kids’ eating, too. For us, this means that we eat as much meat and veggies that we want, some fruit, nuts and seeds. Since Speedy has reflux, I do not eat any dairy as I have read that it can do a lot to help, though the jury is still out on that one. I attribute eating this way to my controlled weight gain during my last pregnancy and the quick return to normal weight shortly after his birth. (At this point after having Sugar I was 20 pounds over, now I am only 4-5 pounds over.)

Anyway, we have been eating so many more veggies since eating this way, and I try to eat about 2 cups of veggies with each meal (though it only happens at breakfast about half the time). I came up with this recipe after combining two different recipes. It is so good that I will eat it with breakfast, lunch or dinner.

Butternut Squash and Kale Goodness
Ingredients:
1 butternut squash, peeled, seeds removed and diced
1 yellow onion, chopped
4-6 pieces of bacon, cut into bits (I use kitchen shears)
1 apple, chopped (I don’t bother peeling it)
6 large leaves of kale, cut into bite-sized pieces

Instructions:
Peel, chop into bite-sized cubes and de-seed your butternut squash. I find this to be the easiest if I microwave it for 2 minutes first. Otherwise, I almost cut my hand off or want to throw the squash out the window because peeling it is so difficult. You can either steam or boil your squash cubes until fork tender, but do not let them get mushy, though I have had that happen and it still tastes great.

While the squash is cooking, start the rest of the dish. In a large skillet, begin cooking your bacon pieces over medium high heat. When your bacon starts rendering some of its fat, add your onion and continue cooking, stirring every minute or so until the onion is very soft. Add in your chopped apple. After a few minutes, add in your cooked squash cubes. Stir everything well, and then stir in your kale. Continue stirring for a few minutes until your kale is softened and wilted. Serve immediately.

Sugar has been cracking us up lately. I had to post some of her funny sayings before I rogot (her way of saying forget and forgot).

During Advent, the kids memorized a lot of the Christmas story though Noel Piper’s children’s advent readings each night. One evening, Sugar recited part of it this way, “the emperor manded (commanded) them to go to their own towns (hometowns) to sign up for paying taxis (taxes).”

I overheard her talking to Josiah about who-knows-what at lunch and saying, “that is dis-sick-able and yuckable!”

Thomas took Sugar on a lunch date this week while he was off of work. As they sat down with their food at her restaurant of choice (Rosa’s), he asked her what she would like to talk about. She replied, “It is not polite to talk with our mouths full. We can talk in the car after we eat.” Nice date!

Last year, I did not have a goal set for the number of books to read in 2011. This is because I found out that I was pregnant right before Christmas and had no idea what that would do to my desire or ability to read. I did read 47 books (17 nonfiction and 30 fiction) during a year of a pregnancy and the first four months of having a newborn and three kids. Not too bad! I did not read some of the longer nonfiction books on my list to read, but I am glad I managed to read much considering how tired I was all year.

Best Nonfiction – Half the Sky by Nicholas Kristof

Best Memoir – Little Princes by Conor Grenan

Best Mothering – Loving the Little Years by Rachel Jankovic (one of the best books I have ever read. So full of wisdom. Short and to the point. I like it so much that I bought 8 copies to give away this year.)

Best Christian Living – Calm My Anxious Heart by Linda Dillow

Best Biography – Unbroken by Laura Hillenbrand

Best Fiction – I don’t think I read anything that I just loved, but I am going to say re-reading the Hunger Games series was my favorite. The first time I read them, I read them so quickly just to see what happened that I missed a lot of details and humor.

Most Hilarious – Heads You Lose by Lisa Lutz

My goals for reading in 2012 include: finishing the three half-read books on my night stand (maybe, they have been chores to read all year) and continuing to read and post reviews. I really appreciate book recommendations from others, and I hope some of you have enjoyed some from me, too.