the honey home

five newborn must-haves from a mom of five

The baby gear industry is a huge and profitable one, especially for first-time parents who have no idea what to expect.  But my father’s eldest brother came a month earlier than expected, and my grandmother used to love to tell me that all they had for him was ten diapers and a couple of shirts, and they pulled out a dresser drawer for him to sleep in. Somehow he turned out alright.

The more children we’ve had, the more I’ve found myself becoming a baby stuff minimalist. We bought a swing with Ephraim (which I never turned on) and sold it when I was pregnant with Clive. By the time Elvie and Eldore came along, I wasn’t even using our bouncy seats or baby bath. I’ve never had an exersaucer or jumparoo, and even my trusty Johnny-Jump-Up wasn’t useful for all the kids. We survived!

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Hope and The Home, part one

A friend sent me a text one morning, before the children were up, after my eggs and toast and coffee had been made and eaten but not cleaned up after, with this question: is homemaking archaic, or does it have value?

I answered yes and yes. It’s archaic because we’ve both intentionally and unintentionally made it obsolete (by destroying the two things that make up the term–the home and making–rendering them both disconnected and useless); but it is valuable, whether we as a society will recognize it or not.

Is the home valuable? What is the message of the home? Why does it exist? Why make one? Why make one? Why must it be made? Can’t it make itself?

I want to work through my thoughts on this topic. It will probably take more than one post–and I will try this time (I really will) to finish the posts and thus present a complete and coherent thought. I want to apologize in advance for referencing works while assuming you, my reader, are familiar with them; it would take too much space to explain everything thoroughly.

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ten months (eldore rex)

Eldore Rex turned ten months on the 19th of September.

I missed his nine-month post, partially because I was sick and partially because he started crawling not long after he turned nine months, and there just wasn’t a whole lot interesting to say about the previous month in comparison.

So that’s our biggest news: all of his efforts reaching for things, getting up on one knee or maybe both, and rocking, rocking, rocking back and forth finally paid off in forward motion. Now there is simply no stopping him. He is into everything–I’m sure you’re shocked–he spends his time busily crawling from cabinet to cabinet and drawer to drawer to find all the things he’s not supposed to touch.

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inconvenient babies

The year was 2017, and Eldore Rex upset the whole thing. From the early Spring when I found out I was pregnant, to the garden I was unable to plant for morning sickness and first trimester fatigue, to the summer activities I could hardly participate in for pain, to the Autumn I barely had thought for as I tried to scrape our lives and routine back together in preparation for a new baby, all ending on that lovely November evening, just a few days before Thanksgiving, when he was born.

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