Last week was a lot of prep for the SD Birth Matters Conference that was held on Saturday. If you didn't make it out for it, you missed out on a great day!! We had one of my most favorite women in the birth-world as the keynote speaker (Vonda Gates...you can check out her site here), and also a fun baby wearing style show put together by Jessica Tebben and some of her baby-wearing-mama-friends. It was great! I took some video of the baby wearing style show, and since I want to do some baby wearing features here this month, I am going to do my best to splice and dice what I have and get some of it posted so you all can gain some of the knowledge shared...we'll see if I can figure out the editing software I have. Wish me luck! ;)
And this week I've been helping my mom do an acid-stain finish on one of her floors (a cement floor in a cabin they built behind their new garage). The only thing I can say about that is that it might be worth the money to hire a contractor to do it if you are thinking of it. What a friggin' headache! It took us all of one day and a chunk of the following day just to get it all prepped, then we got it sprayed...keep in mind this is *acid* treatment, so of course we had to be super careful with protecting ourselves - luckily my dad and brother were combining in a field near their house so we got to ship the kiddos off to ride in the combine while we did it. Thank goodness.
But that's not all...then there's the cleanup. I didn't go for the third day to help neutralize the acid and help her clean it up because, well, frankly, I can't do *everything* ;)...I do have things that need to get done here at home, too - ha!
Anyway, the time and effort is definitely going to show...what a gorgeous finish! This picture is what it looked like after we sprayed (the white spot is just a reflection from the window - you can kind of see the rest of it)...it's not the finished product, though I'm sure it will look something similar...after it set for 4-24 hours it needed to be neutralized and washed off, then a sealant sprayed on. I haven't seen how it looks now that it's finished, but mom said it's really pretty.
I do love doing things like that, but should know by now that reading instructions well in advance is a good idea so that we can be as efficient as possible and not take a full three days to get it done - ha!
A well thought out plan, this was not. However, I guess it just makes it better when plans do come together and everything goes super-smoothly!
I think all of life and birth/breastfeeding/parenting can be compared to doing this floor. We got the job done, but would have been much more efficient at it with the information well ahead of time instead of half-way through the first day. What we had been doing hadn't been hurting anything, but it didn't get us where we needed to be with it, so we had to change and update our course.
I see and hear about this all the time, especially in pregnancy and birth. So often mamas are just "coasting" along, without researching their options (or even knowing that there are options - aka: me with my first birth), or exploring themselves to know what they really want out of their birth, let alone having all the information to make an informed choice on anything. So, I guess what I'm saying is that having all the information ahead of time makes things SO much easier! Even if things don't always go according to plan, at least you have an idea of where it should be and what you can do to reach your final goals.
So, my point is this: YAY for well thought out plans!
~Evie
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