My sweetie, and natural parenting

I must expound briefly on how much I love this little lady. :)

Some of the things I love about her (I loved this stuff about the boys also I believe):
*I love her squishy cheeks
*I love to kiss that spot right where the corner of her mouth meets her cheek
*I can't describe it fully but I seriously LOVE the smell of her breath. I think it's a breastfed baby thing. I love it, a lot. Except not the pukey smell, of course.
*I love breastfeeding. I love the bond and all the things that make it so special.
*I love her blue eyes
*I love that she sleeps about 8 hours straight at night, then eats, and goes back to sleep. I am a happier mama.
*I like that she's big. At six weeks she is 13 pounds. (Not that she started small either) Of course that is following in true Jacobson style. (Although if we did have seven kids or something that would put the last one at something like 13 pounds, that may not be so nice after all)
*She's so beautiful! (I'd love her if she were sort of awkward and weird looking too - but she's so pretty)

I love more things, but those were the ones on my mind.

I have been reading some blogs on "natural parenting". You can fall in many places on the continuum it seems.

I think I'm more of a natural parent than I realize and I wouldn't have thought I'd be here when I envisioned my life 10 years ago. So what makes me land on this continuum of natural parenting?
*I love natural childbirth and find it amazing (but understand many of the reasons people don't do it)
*I breastfeed my babies -and love it
*I use cloth diapers (75% of the time I'd say)
*I wear my baby in a wrap (mostly away from home)
*I want to homeschool my kids (I don't know if this actually counts)
*I desire to use more holistic routes of medicine and eating more natural and traditional foods

What doesn't make me a "natural parent"? The reasons are purely personal and I am not anti most of these things at all, they just don't work for me, and that's ok.
*I don't co-sleep with my kids.
     Two reasons: Number one, we have a queen size bed and we're not little people. We are 6'5" and 5'11" and my kids are big. I also like to keep the marriage bed something we call our own (but the wee ones do come in in the early morning too). Number two: I just can't handle the noises of the baby. Don't get me wrong, I love the noises, I just can't sleep through them very well. My boys seem none the worse for having been in their cribs. But if sleeping with your kids floats your boat - go for it.
*I discipline and train my kids a particular way and believe it's biblical. This could be a post on its own so I'll leave it at that. Some of it is like the natural parenting and others not.
*I "go green" if possible, but it's not my goal to leave less of an eco footprint for humanistic reasons, it's just to save on money and waste. The whole going green thing is a topic for another day too.
*I sort of put my kids on a schedule. Not strictly, but some, and I don't nurse on demand. Not because I'm against it, but my babies seem to get fussier and gassier in their tummies if they have milk all the time any time. And based on the fact that my babes chunk up like the milk is going out of style says to me they are doing ok.

Additionally, I believe in Christ centered living and there is a divine order God created for the home and it's not humanistic, which is where some philosophies of natural parenting are rooted. But most of the bloggers I have read are not obviously Christians either, but just trying to do their best.

What I love about natural parenting is that at IHOP, it seems like some of this stuff is part of the culture, like breastfeeding and homeschooling and natural foods and herbs and cloth diapers too. Not everyone, but much more of a group of them than what I knew of back in MN. So it feels "natural" to do some of these things even though it may be counter culture in other places.

I didn't really intend on this post turning out the way it did, but hey, now you know I am not afraid of a little poo. Cloth diapers change your 'gross out' factor quickly.