Weekend Links - September 6, 2014

This week felt like it was missing a day. The Labor Day holiday does that to me: Tuesday ends up feeling like Monday. But that's OK. I'm willing to miss a day when it works out for all of my family to be together. Even the Air Force branch of our family made it in.

Now for the links:

Spiritual / Inner Life

• Not the You You Remember by Betsy Childs for TGC.
• Why It Doesn't Matter How You Feel About Your Friends by Shauna Niequist. File under "things that make you go hmm..."
• The Art of Relearning to Read by Shannon McKee. My husband and I have been talking about this a lot lately. (You can put us in the camp that thinks broad reading - while applying discernment - is the best path.) 
• Sometimes Simple Feels Complicated by Allison Vesterfelt at The Art of Simple.
• 4 Things You Don't Have to Do with Your Money by Kara Fleck at The Art of Simple.

Marriage / Parenting

• 7 Habits of Parents Whose Kids Solve Problems by Janel Breitenstein for MomLife Today.
• Not Something You Do, But Someone You Raise by Summer Saldana for The Better Mom.

Homeschooling

• Creating a Circle Time that Works for You by Kendra Fletcher at Preschoolers and Peace.
• Homeschooling in a Different World by Hannah Vanderpool at Simple Homeschool.
• Stuff That's Working by Melissa Wiley. She always mentions great resources.

Writing

• Let it Go by Anna Elliott for Writer UnBoxed.
• One Surprising Way to Write Better by Emily Wenstrom for The Write Practice.
• I'd Know that Voice Anywhere by Katrina Kittle for Writer UnBoxed. This is one thing I will call out every time in a book review: your characters should not all sound the same.
• Blogging Freehand by Melissa Wiley. I've read her blog for a long time. It's always inspiring.

In the News

• One-Third of Americans are Freelancers Now by Elizabeth Nolan Brown for Reason. My husband fits this description, and I guess I will too, when I start making more money blogging. (And that's not considering babysitting or piano lessons) Multiple income streams definitely seems like the best way to navigate our economy.
• Why Britain is Poorer Than Any US State, Other Than Mississippi by Fraser Nelson in The Spectator.
• Harper Mills: Should Marja Mills' Memoir Have Been Published? By Aida Edemariam. This caught my eye because I just finished the book in question. (You can see my review in this post: Books of 2014 - August)
• We Cannot Afford to View Children as Commodities by Allison Kieselowsky for The Federalist.
• Rolling Stone Discovers that Everyone Homeless is Gay by David Harsanyi for The Federalist. Yet more evidence that if Americans could actually do math our country would be a different world.

Just for Fun

• 10 Place Names Brits and Americans Pronounce Differently by Laurence Brown at Mind the Gap.
• 7 British Animal Idioms That Will Baffle Americans by Jon Langford at Mind the Gap. (Note: I've heard Americans use some of these so I doubt most of us would be too baffled.)

So, what caught your eye this week?

Linking up with:

Words on Wednesday - Truth vs. Falsehood

I'm not actually reading Milton right now, but I am reading a book that quoted this. I love this passage. Why are we so afraid of confronting wide and varied ideas? Could it be because we're afraid truth is not actually powerful?

Books of 2014 - August

We lived through a busy month in August, but I managed to finish the following books despite our busy days:

Love and Labor

Know what's fun on Labor Day (or as Polly calls it, "No labor day")? Sharing birth stories.

My two men readers just ran for the hills.

But for those of you left, here are the four birth stories I've shared before:

• Baby Girl #1: The interventions are like falling dominoes but giving birth is about the result, not the path labor.
• Baby Girl #2: The "honey it's time" labor.
• Baby Girl #3: The seriously, get a doctor right this minute labor.
• Baby Girl #4: The NINE? Seriously?! labor.

I've never shared the iBoy's birth story. It's funny to think about now, because it has some similarities to each of the previous 4. He was our earliest, over a week early. I'm pretty sure that was because of our rushing to get out of our house (that we'd sold but didn't have a contract) and into our rental. We only spent one full night in the rental before he was born the next day.

Once again, labor started with my water breaking. I tried to resist going to the hospital since it was the middle of the night, but the midwife (I saw a nurse midwife for this pregnancy) on call was concerned since this was my sixth pregnancy and fifth labor and she thought things might progress quickly.

They didn't.

But we kept interventions to a minimum, we did a lot of hall walking and hot showers. They pretty much left us alone to do our own thing until the very end. (We watched a constant stream of HGTV in between contractions. Property Brothers still gives me a nostalgic feeling when I happen to catch an episode.)

In the end, we had to consent to a few more interventions than I wanted. But having a midwife who actually listened to me made a lot of difference.

Another difference with his birth was we were accepted into a study (remember: I've delivered all our babies at a teaching hospital) on kangaroo care. So we were skin to skin for the first hours of his life, with just a few minutes separation for weighing and such and a quick chance for his daddy to say hello.

I loved this, but other family members are still a little indignant that I "hogged the baby" all that time.

Hey, if you do the work, you get the reward, right?

Happy Labor Day!

P.S.: Don't forget about the Simplified Organization course. The coupon code backtoschool (good for 30% off) will only be good for one more day - it expires September 2.