Joanna, of Jo-with-it’s Portfolio has tagged me. Here are the rules for her tag. I must list six things I’ve learned this month and then tag six friends. Everyone I’m tagging this time is someone who has played “tag” before, either by tagging me, or by passing along a tag of mine. As always, this is just for fun, and no one should feel obligated in any way to play along.

Here’s my list (this is all recent stuff, although, some of it may have been from last month–everything kind of runs together sometimes in my foggy brain).

1. I have learned that sometimes, if I just keep going, I can still do most of my work even when I’m feeling a bit on the yucky side. In previous pregnancies, I got a lot more rest, but the house was always a disaster. The dishes were never done, the laundry was never folded, and meals were shoddy and sometimes hit and miss. This time, by the Lord’s grace, when I think about how much I’d like to go rest, I just don’t sit down. As long as I’m already standing, I can put the dishes in the dishwasher and wipe the counters, and it isn’t so bad. Inertia is on my side. I’m almost through the first trimester, and there has not once been disgusting piles of food encrusted plates breeding bacteria on my counter top when I wake up in the morning. Not only that, but not one of my three older children has starved in the entire 12 weeks that I have been pregnant with number four. I will admit that the laundry is still a disaster, but there has to be room for improvement and growth in every person’s life, don’t you think?

2. I have learned (a little) about how to use a Mac. This is really scary to me, to be honest. I’ve used PC’s my whole life. Everything is just a bit different on a Mac, and I don’t like not knowing how to do things. But my husband, being an audio-visual type guy, bought a Mac recently because they’re so much better for media uses. And, remarkably, just after he bought it, our other desktop died, so there the Mac sits in our living room, and I’m learning (slowly) to live in the world of the one-button mouse.

3. I’ve learned how to make skirts out of pants–super useful for maternity wear since most clothing manufacturers apparently assume that all expectant mothers ever want to do is hang out watching TV in casual pants, or else go to cocktail parties in little black dresses, and never do anything else (certainly never homeschool in ankle lenth skirts!). There are actually a lot of places on line with directions, but here’s the page I used.

4. Some of you are going to be shocked that I’m writing this down in my fourth pregnancy. I’m a bit shocked myself considering all the reading I do, but this month I’ve learned that women have suppressed immune systems when they’re expecting, which gives them the illustrious distinction of being susceptible to things like toxoplasmosis and listeriosis, which usually only affect people with AIDS, and newborns, etc. This suppressed immune system is actually a good thing, though, because without it our immune systems would kill our babies! (Thankfully, I learned this by reading, and not because I actually got toxoplasmosis or anything.)

5. I have (re)learned my addition facts. Of course, I already knew my addition facts, but since I’ve been working with my kindergartner on them, I once again have them on the tip of my tongue. Go ahead, test me. 6+7? 13. 4+8? 12. See? This is yet another reason why homeschooling is great. I didn’t do so well at math the first time around, but this way I get to go through it all again, and maybe get a deeper understanding.

6. I’ve learned that some babies get a diaper rash when they’re teething. I’d been working to track down the reason for my one-year-old’s mysterious rash troubles. It seemed like it flared up when she was teething, and I remembered years ago, a friend telling me that she always knew when her children were teething because they would get a diaper rash. So the other night I looked it up on-line, and sure enough, the extra saliva from teething can cause runnier stools, which can cause skin irritation.

And now, I tag:
Kathryn Armstrong
Botanyhead
The Organizing Mommy
Kim from Canada
Mrs. Meghann Jones
Sammybunny

This entry was posted on Monday, October 20th, 2008 at 5:05 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.