Joyful Juggling

Eli's Stitches

2011-05-09T21:22:00.000-05:00

I almost titled this "Eli's First Stitches", based on what other parents have told me about their kids, but I refuse to give up hope this is the last time we have to go through this!

It's been a week and one day since the incident, and I wanted to write it here for posterity (which really just means for me so I can go back and read it in the future -- who else will read my old blog entries but me?).

Last month, Jonny was taking care of all the kids by himself while I was at the womens' retreat for my church at Alasso Ranch in Hawkins, Texas, which has no cell service except when you get to high ground, stand on your tip toes, and tilt your head to the side so the phone is as high up in the air as you can get it. (I only slightly exaggerate.)

When I managed to get a call out at about 4:00 to tell Jonny we may be later than I had anticiated, he said, "Well, Eli and I just got home from the hospital." And then the call got dropped. Not cool.

I quickly went through some physical gyrations akin to gymnastics in order to find exactly the right spot to get another call out. This time, the connection was solid and I was able to get the whole story.

Jonny and the kids were outside washing the truck, and all three kids were in their bathing suits "helping." At one point, Jonny called to Eli to come to him, and Eli came running. Just as he came up to my row of flower pots, he tripped over his own feet (it wasn't even wet), and his head slammed into a pot. This one, to be exact:

He hit the pot right on the bridge of his nose, causing a deep gash about an inch long. Eli cried. Blood gushed. Jonny scooped him up and ran into the garage, searching for something to grab and cover the wound to get the bleeding to slow. He found an old bassinet sheet, and applied pressure to the wound. Eli started fighting him, and then he realized that he was also applying pressure over his nose and mouth so that Eli couldn't breathe.

Olivia ran in the house to call me, and when Jonny came in, he told her to hang up, that there was nothing Mamma could do right now to help. (He thought that my voicemail had picked up and that would be all I would hear was him yelling that Mamma can't help right now, but fortunately it hadn't connected to voicemail yet.)

His mind was racing, trying to figure out what to do with 2 girls in dripping wet bathing suits and a bleeding son who clearly needed medical attention. He sent Olivia across the street to her friend's house and told her to tell the dad that he needs him NOW. By this time, Olivia is crying, and so she and Amelia run across the street to get the dad. I'm so glad no cars were coming because even though she's usually pretty good about looking both ways, I imagine she wasn't focusing on anything but getting help.

Our neighbor told me later that when Olivia came to the door, he was watching TV and he thought Olivia was there to ask his daughter to play. But then he heard Olivia say to his daughter, "My dad needs your dad NOW!" He said he jumped up and came across the street to see Eli bleeding and crying, and Jonny sitting in the garage holding him. Jonny asked him if he could take the two girls for a little while, and of course, he said it was no problem. (So thankful for good neighbors!)

Once the girls were taken care of, Jonny had to make a choice about how to get to the hospital: the Jeep, which is a stick shift, or his work truck, which he's not supposed to drive except for work purposes. He didn't want to have to stop applying pressure to the wound, so he decided on the truck, and he held Eli all the way to the hospital while he drove like a maniac to get there.

By the time they arrived, Eli had calmed down somewhat and wasn't crying near as hard. At the ER, they rushed them back immediately, and amazingly, a plastic surgeon happened to be there (he wasn't even on duty, and was there with his son) and the ER doctor grabbed him to stitch up Eli. Even more amazingly, the plastic surgeon was in-network for insurance purposes.

From what I hear, the stitching process was traumatic for all involved. Three adults couldn't hold Eli still as he fought them with all he had. Eventually, the surgeon got 4 stitches in, and the trauma was over. At least for Eli. For Jonny, I think it will live on for quite a while.

Here's the best picture I have of him with his stitches, though at this point he had already managed to pull one of them out:

And here he is at Easter, post stitch-removal:

As you can see, it doesn't lessen his appeal any. He's still quite the dapper young man. ;-)

This weekend, I'm going on a trip to New York and leaving the kids with Jonny. He says he's worried about breaking another kid -- here's to hoping he doesn't.

Awkward Love

2011-04-25T14:15:00.002-05:00

Over the past 6 months, I've begun working with the elderly in our church, as well as some other outreach efforts for single parents. Unfortunately, a lot of praise has been heaped on me for this work, both privately and publicly at church. Just last week, someone told me I was amazing (or something like that) for doing this.

The truth is SO far from that statement that I felt compelled to set the record straight, to tell the pure, unvarnished truth. (And yes, I have an ulterior motive for sharing, so stick with me.)

At Christmas, we delivered homemade baked goods to our elders. I spent countless hours coordinating the baking and the delivery of goodies to almost 50 seniors all around the suburban perimeter of the nation's 16th largest city, from almost-to-Lake Worth, to North Richland Hills, over to east Arlington, down to Alvarado and all the way over to Cleburne. If you measure point to point, it's an almost 135-mile perimeter.

It was a major undertaking. But, relatively speaking, it was easy. Give me a spreadsheet, Google maps, and willing volunteers, and I'll coordinate all day.

But give me a pan of brownies and ask me to deliver it to someone I don't know, and you'll find me sitting in the passenger seat of my car across the street from the elder's house, doubled over from anxiety with my head resting on the dashboard, moaning that I don't want to do this, until my husband finally runs out of patience and says, "Are you going to do it, or not?" You'll then hear me try to talk my husband into doing it for me, to which you'll hear him reply, "No, this is YOUR thing." (Not that he was mean about it – it was a much-needed tough love moment.)

You'll then see me walk across the street (dropping my phone in the street unknowingly so we'd have to come back for it later – serves me right), knock on the door timidly, and almost rejoice when no one comes to the door (despite hearing someone inside) and I have to leave the brownies on the doorstep. Score one for a completely unamazing me. Or maybe that one is worth two.

Later, if you heard the phone call to an elder that I DO know, you would hear the most miserable attempt at small talk you have ever heard spring forth from anyone's mouth. Or not spring forth, which was the problem. Although I hate it, I'm usually halfway decent at small talk – I practically do it for a living, having to engage in it preceding every single meeting that I attend. But this was just pathetic. The elder wasn't the talkative sort, and in small talk,, you gotta have give and take in the conversation. There was no giving on their part, and really bad giving on my part. Come to think of it, that's usually my trick – get the other person talking and then I don't have to. But it didn't work this time. And it made for the most uncomfortable conversation I've had in a very long while. Score another one for a completely unamazing me.

Another time, if you watched me deliver food to a sick, housebound elder, you would see me drop it off and do a horrible job at ministering to her because as I'm getting in the car, I realize, "Gee, I probably should have prayed for her, since she's sick and all." But praying with people isn't my thing so I get in the car and drive off without going back in. Yeah, you got it -- give me another point. Or two or four or six. Not praying with someone who's sick might even be worth twenty.

But in my defense, let me say this: I'm getting better. A week or so ago, you could have watched as I drove up to the apartment of an elder I had never met. No doubling over this time, no hiding in the car for prolonged periods of time, no wailing and nashing of teeth. I took a deep breath, said to my daughter, "Well, I'm nervous about this, but the Lord will be with us." We then walked up to the apartment, went in, delivered the cupcakes, had a lovely conversation, prayed with the elder that she would have a blessed day on her birthday, and we left. Flawlessly executed. And SO far from where I was in December.

Why share my most embarrassing moments in this fledgling ministry? Two reasons:

One, just because you're too scared to do something doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. Joyce Meyer says, "Do it scared." And she's right. When we went back to the elder's house in December where I dropped my phone, the brownies were no longer on the porch. They reached their intended destination, and they were a blessing. If I hadn't gotten out of the car, no blessing would have been received.

Two, just because you're not good at something doesn't mean you shouldn’t do it. Despite being really sorry at this gig, there HAVE been people blessed because of my involvement, even the people who I didn't do a great job with. Before she took a turn for the worse and had to leave her home, the elder I visited and didn't pray for (who is also the same elder I called and had the less-than-stellar conversation with) began perking up and showing less signs of depression because of the increased contact.

Here's the deal: Love doesn't have to be shown in a flawless manner in order to be felt. Awkwardly-shown love is still love. And it will still bring forth fruit.

You may not be an expert at whatever it is that the Lord is asking you to do. In fact, I can almost guarantee you're not because that's the way He works – He pushes us out of our comfort zone into an area where we have to rely on Him and not our own strength. But He'll be with you every step of the way, blessing your efforts despite the faltering, sometimes downright messed-up execution. He doesn't need us to be good, He just needs us to be willing and He'll take care of the rest. (Think Moses and Gideon as examples, if I'm too unbiblical of an example for you.)

So, no more excuses. If I can do this, you can do whatever you're supposed to be doing. Get out there, and do it scared, and watch what He can do with it!

A Sheep, a Coin, and a Son

2011-04-20T11:00:00.002-05:00

Here's a statistic floating around Facebook this week preceding Easter, especially on the statuses of the pastors with whom I'm friends: 82% of "unchurched" people are willing to come to church with a friend if asked.

Being the cynic that I am, I can't help but wonder about the source of this statistic, and their methodology, and, of course, whether or not it's actually true. (I also hate the term "unchurched", but that's for another blog.) Since I'm a cynic, let's deduct a 16% margin of error. That's a big margin, but it still means 66%, or 2/3, of the people who don't attend church are willing to come if asked. That's a pretty high percentage.

It made me think about something new I saw in the parables of the lost things Jesus told in Luke 15, the parables of the lost coin, the lost sheep, and the lost son.

Just in case you are one of the "unchurched" (there HAS to be a better way to say that), or a "churched" who doesn't read their Bible, let me give you the run down on these 3 stories:

(1) Lost Sheep: Man has a hundred sheep, loses one of them, leaves the 99 in the open country and goes searching for the lost sheep until he finds it. He carries it home on his shoulders, calls his friends and neighbors together, and they all rejoice over the found sheep.

(2) Lost Coin: Woman has ten coins, loses one, then lights a lamp, sweeps the house, and searches until she finds it, calling all her friends and neighbors together to rejoice. (As an aside, if I called my friends and neighbors every time we found something that was lost at our house, I would need a cell phone plan with WAY more minutes. At least until the friends and neighbors stopped taking my calls, which would probably be after the 10th call in the first hour. Hey, I have 3 kids – don't judge.)

(3) Lost Son: Younger son demands his inheritance, goes off, squanders it, is in dire straights because a famine hits the land, gets a job as a pig feeder, is so hungry he starts eying the pig slop but wasn't allowed to eat even that, then comes to his senses and returns home to a rejoicing father and a jealous brother and a feast with a fatted calf.

How did these three things get lost?

The sheep was in the open country so he probably wandered off unintentionally. He wasn't paying attention like he should and looked up a few hours after grazing and realized he was too far from the rest of the herd and didn't know how to get back.

How does a coin get lost? In our house, it's because someone neglected to take care of it, and it ended up where it shouldn't be because of someone's actions (like dropping it in the tiny space between the washer and dryer) or inactions (like not putting it in their piggy bank). It's not the coin's fault, given that it's an inanimate object and all, and the coin couldn't exactly return itself without assistance.

These two losses are very different from the loss of the son. The son made a conscious decision to leave. And no amount of going after him to find him would have made him come back. He had to make his own decision to return. The father was there with open arms, ready to accept him, but the father did not leave to go looking for him.

I think as Christians, we assume that all "unchurched", and especially those who went to church at some time in their lives and no longer do, are in the category of the prodigal. We figure that they know where we, the church, are, and if they make the decision to return, then they know where to find us. We'll welcome them if they come (or be jealous & judgmental, but I hope we're all more likely to be like the father and not the older brother). But we're not going to go out and ask if they'll come with us because we know they have to come to their senses before they come back.

But the story of the lost son isn't the only one Jesus told. He told two others. In the two other stories, the sheep and the coin COULD NOT have made it to where they needed to be if someone didn't go find them.

Those who are like the sheep and the coin aren't "unchurched" because they decided to blow the joint and never return. Some of them, like sheep, may have wandered off, then looked up and didn't know how to get back to where they really want to be. Others, like coins, may have been lost due to someone else's actions (like a fallen pastor or unchurched parents who never took them), and they can't get back unless someone helps them.

Unfortunately, you can't tell by looking which category people fall into. You have to ask and get an answer before you know. And you may have to go searching for those in the first two categories before you find them.

Look at the 3 stories. They represent 3 categories of people who are lost. And 2 out of 3 of those categories are people who are willing to be found, or, put another way, willing to come to church when asked.

That's a majority. That's 66%, who are willing to come if asked.

Who will you ask to church this Easter, now that you know you can't tell by looking whether they're a sheep or a coin or a son? And now that you know you have a greater statistical chance of asking a coin or a sheep?

On Sorrow upon the Loss of a Place

2011-03-27T21:31:00.002-05:00

Sorrow is a funny thing. When the triggering event happens, it's like a constant companion, never leaving your side. Slowly, you start to notice it leave your side for brief moments, and usually you're actually surprised when you realize it was gone for a moment. As time passes, those brief moments become longer and longer, until finally sorrow turns into something like a stomach virus -- it has the potential to come on you at any time, without warning, and mess with you, but you live most days without it.

Today was a stomach virus day.

For the last time, I visited the house that my grandfather built, and where he and my grandmother lived for most of my life. A house filled with lots of good memories, but, several years after her death, now standing empty and waiting for a closing so the new purchasers can move in.

I took the kids through the house, showing them where everything used to be: the table where all the adults sat for countless family meals (where I always aspired to sit), the bedroom I slept in when I got to spend the night, the corner where the Christmas tree was put up each year.

I had been afraid I would cry, but I was doing so good that I thought I'd get out of there without shedding a tear in front of everyone.

But then Grandpa came over and said, "We had lots of good Easter egg hunts and lots of Christmases here."

And the tears flowed.

It's silly, because there haven't been any good memories made there for over 10 years, not since Grandma began exhibiting signs of Alzheimer's. And it's silly, to feel such sorrow at the loss of a place.

But it's not just a place. It's the loss of a part of who I am and who I was. This safe place where I spent so many hours of my childhood, sprawled in front of the console TV on Sunday afternoons after family dinners, watching westerns on Channel 39; where I helped Grandma and Grandpa in the garden; where I celebrated every Christmas for over 20 years; where I ate the best homemade rolls, homegrown tomatoes, and home canned green beans that a person will ever eat... that safe place is gone to our family forever.

My encourager husband said that we should think of it this way: now it's our turn to build a life and, eventually, a house, that will become that safe place for our family and our grandchildren.

He's right. It's the natural progression of things -- an older generation passes on and eventually YOU become that older generation, holding up your baby while Elton John belts out "It's the CCIIIIRRRCCCLLEE of LIIIIIIIIIIIIIIFE" in the background.

OK, not quite, but you get the point.

We left the house today, and Grandpa and his new wife stood and waived where Grandpa and Grandma always stood and waived. And I drove down the driveway, barely able to see through the tears.

You know something funny? Grandpa and his wife (who also lost her long-time spouse to Alzheimer's) live in the exact same model of house Jonny and I live in, built by the same builder. It's our starter house, and it's their downsized house.

Two couples on opposite ends of the spectrum, but yet both in a similar place -- a further symbol of how circular this life is.

Happy Birthday, Elijah!

2011-03-20T07:19:00.001-05:00

About 2 1/2 years ago, on a Sunday, my husband was gone hunting and I stood in church alone. The next day, we had an appointment with a doctor to start the process of becoming medically ensured to not have any more children. Why?

1. I was so tired. Amelia was about 8 months old and not a good sleeper, and I don't handle lack of sleep very well. Just the thought of going through the newborn phase EVER AGAIN made my eyes fill with tears and made me want to go lie down in bed. I couldn't do it. I just couldn't do it.

2. Some women love being pregnant, but I'm not one of them. I guess I'm too much of a control freak -- you CANNOT SEE WHAT'S GOING ON IN THERE! Not that I could do anything about it if I COULD see that something was going wrong, but still. It's just too much of the unknown for me to enjoy.

3. I have never forgotten a woman telling me when I was just 19 that every time a woman has a child she risks her life and could die. Nice. Thanks for that.

4. Our marriage struggled after each child. That's pretty intimate stuff to be sharing here, but maybe someone needs to read it so they don't feel alone. It gets better, or at least it did for us, but those first few months of adjusting to increased responsibility and another person in the dynamic of our home were hard. If we could avoid another episode of struggle, then I was all for that.

5. We didn't have room for another kid. Our house that seemed so massive when we moved in as a childless couple had shrunk to fairy-sized proportions now that 2 girls were in it, along with all their stuff.

6. I had always wanted to be done having kids by age 33. It's arbitrary, I know, but it's always been my cut off. On that point, I was 31 and didn't want to have another kid as close in age to Amelia as it would have to be in order to give birth in time. We never wanted to have 2 kids in diapers at the same time -- could you imagine how expensive that would be?

But that Sunday I stood there during church, and knew, more certainly than I've known anything else in my walk with the Lord, that the appointment the next day was not God's will. We were meant to have another child, despite all my reasons to the contrary. I began weeping. This was NOT what I wanted. But if there's one thing I've learned over my years as a Christian, it's that God's plan always brings more contentment, and if you step outside of it, you WILL regret it.

And so, I submitted. I told the Lord that if He wanted me to have another child, I would. (I knew Jonny wouldn't object.) And He spoke to me that if I went through with it, this child would bring us much joy.

When Jonny called me on his way home from the ranch, I told him those four little words every husband dreads: "We need to talk." :-) When he heard about my experience in church, just as I predicted, he didn't have a problem with it at all.

And so, about 3 months later (and about a year ahead of schedule), we became pregnant with Elijah. It's likely not too coincidental that we became unexpectedly pregnant after Amelia FINALLY started sleeping through the night at 11 months of age. But let's not delve too deeply into that. ;-)

And nine months later, I had Elijah a month-and-a-half shy of my 33rd birthday. Is God good or what?!

Everything about Elijah has been easy. My pregnancy was relatively easy (as easy as a living being expanding your midsection to 200x it's normal size can ever be), my delivery was SUPER fast and easy, the adjustment to another person in the family has been the easiest of all three kids, he slept through the night quickly, is so much less dramatic than his sisters, and has been just an absolute joy to all of us.

I read another mom's blog where she said their last child (their 4th) brought so much joy to their family that they consider him the cherry on the top. That's a great description of Elijah.

Happy second birthday to my big fella! I can't imagine life without you!

Faith-filled Friday: Unity

2011-03-04T06:00:00.006-06:00

My heart is so heavy as I write this. The father of one of Olivia's good friends told us early in the week that he and his wife were getting divorced. At that time, they hadn't told the kids, but were going to tell them in a couple of days once some details were worked out.

That night, I cried for this little girl who spends time with our family. A train wreck was coming her way, and there was nothing I could do. My husband, who is practically a professional at counseling people in relationship difficulty, had already talked to the father and it was pretty much a done deal. I am not close to the mother, and plus, (unlike Jonny) I'm not the type of person who's shoulder people seek out to cry upon. (This used to make me feel like a bad person, or at least like I should give up my woman card, but I've made my peace with it. Besides, I gave up my woman card a long time ago when I said I didn't think Matthew McConaughy was all that. Maybe I never had a woman card, given my failure to develop an appreciation for movies that make me cry. Oh well, I've gotten along fine without it!)

Anyway, I just hate that this is happening with Olivia's friend. And that reminded me about the scripture that says God hates divorce. People use that as a weapon against Christians who are thinking about it, like God will somehow hate them if they do it. But I'm pretty sure that's not the take away point.

The point is that divorce, both in Biblical times and now, results in a destruction of unity. Unity is what God's all about in the new covenant. He sent Jesus so that sin wouldn't separate us from Him and He could have unity with us. The metaphor of believers as members of a body that functions together in I Corinthians 12 is based on unity. And the joining together of a man and woman in marriage to make one flesh is the very picture of unity. Principle upon principle in the Bible promotes unity, from "live at peace with everyone as far as it depends on you," to "turn the other cheek," to "love your neighbor as yourself" to many, many more examples.

So, God likes unity. And it would make sense that He hates the opposite of unity. It breaks His heart like it breaks ours.

Even though it breaks our hearts to have marriages end and relationships broken beyond repair, unity doesn't come naturally to our sinful flesh. And it is certainly high on the priority list of things that the enemy of our soul would like to destroy. Disharmony and strife in relationships are his chief tools to create a wedge between God and the believer, and to discourage the unbeliever from wanting a relationship with Christ.

Think how differently the world would be if everyone who professed to be a Christian would follow just the three things I listed above: live at peace, turn the other cheek, and love your neighbor as yourself. We would be world changers, just like we were called to be! But on a smaller scale, it would change our relationships. It would save marriages. It would mend fragile friendships.

I can hear you saying, "But you have NO idea how hard that would be in my situation." You're right. And you know what? We can't do it of our own power anyway. We HAVE to rely on the Lord to help us, and to let His love flow through us when we have no love of our own to flow.

With my heavy heart tonight, I'll just say, examine whether you're contributing to discord in your relationships. Do what you can to live at peace, as far as it depends on you. It may not result in world peace, or even of peace in your particular relationship situation. But I can virtually guarantee that others will notice, giving you a powerful witness, and it will improve your relationship with the Lord.

^{John 13:22} [Jesus prayed to the Father] "I have given them the glory that you gave me, that they may be one as we are one— ²³ I in them and you in me—so that they may be brought to complete unity. Then the world will know that you sent me and have loved them even as you have loved me."

Faith-Filled Friday: Slllooooowwwwlllyyyy Answered Prayers

2011-02-25T05:39:00.009-06:00

When I was a teenager, we moved from a bustling, fully-developed suburb to a sleepy, mostly rural suburb. Our new house was in a little enclave neighborhood with streets that made a "P", so that there was only one street on which to enter and exit. The people in the neighborhood all had huge lots, and many of them kept animals on their property. Not like dogs and cats, like I was used to in our old neighborhood. I'm talking horses, cows, pigs, goats... and peacocks.

The worst was a stupid peacock that gave this city-born girl a heart attack because the first time I heard it I was home alone and I swore someone was screaming, "Help! Help!" And that morphed into what I would have sworn was, "Leann! Leann!" I never did like that peacock. Have you ever looked at a peacock up close? Don't be distracted by their pretty feathers -- look at them right in the face. They look mean.

I bet it WAS screaming, "Help, Leann, help!" just to freak me out. Stupid bird.

ANYWAY, this suburb extended all the way to the interstate, although all the houses and most of the business weren't close to the freeway. What WAS close to the freeway was a gas station, a junk yard, a liquor store, and at least six SOBs (which, in the land use business, stands for sexually-oriented businesses).

One Sunday, a visiting minister came to our church. He told how, in his city in a different part of the country, they had walked up and down the streets outside their SOBs, praying that God would shut them down. Every time any member of their congretation drove by, they would say a prayer that God would shut down the businesses. Within a matter of about a year, they were all gone.

My family and I decided that we would do the same. Not the walking around outside part (not exactly a great place for a teenage girl to hang out), but the praying every time we drove by part.

And so we did. It felt like we were up against a lost cause. We prayed; an SOB would close; we would rejoice; and another one would pop up in its place. Over and over this happened. So many times, I just wanted to quit praying. It felt like every prayer hit a wall. It was like you could FEEL the resistance when you drove through. But I never could get a release from feeling like this was what I was supposed to be praying for. So I kept praying.

And then we moved. And I didn't think about the SOBs anymore.

Fast forward to the present, which is SEVENTEEN years later. I had cause to drive through my old suburb not too long ago, coming in from the back way to get to the interstate. So much had changed. The grocery store where I had worked for 2 years (and where everyone used to tease me that I had a second job "down by the freeway", which they all thought was hilarious because they knew I was a good Christian girl) wasn't a grocery store anymore. The library wasn't where it used to be. The cemetary hadn't moved, though. ;-) When I got to the freeway, I saw the biggest change of all. Almost all the SOBs were gone! Only a few remained.

Then, in the paper the other day, an article caught my eye. Apparently, this suburb had been in a legal battle with the SOBs for 10 years, and the lawsuit had finally settled.

As part of the settlement, the last three SOBs had agreed to move out of the city.

This will leave my old suburb completely SOB-free.

And this will mean that our prayers have finally been answered. Seventeen years later.

God has his own timing. He has his own purpose. He is sovereign, and he does not forget the prayers that have gone up. For some, the prayers may be answered quickly, like the visiting minister's. For others, the prayers may be answered slowly, like ours.

Not to channel Journey or anything, but don't stop believing.

One more piece of advice: watch out for the peacocks.

Faith -Filled Friday: Danger Unknown

2011-02-18T06:00:00.008-06:00

(If I were to put my blog high on my priority list, I would have a cool posting schedule like other bloggers who are more consistent than I am, and I would make Fridays my day to post about faith-related matters, and Tuesdays would be Tasty Tuesdays about cooking. I like alliteration, can you tell? But, I'm not consistent. So, just consider this one in an occasional series of faith-filled posts on Fridays.)

We've been enjoying some VERY nice weather here in North Texas, with highs in the mid-70s. It's given us an opportunity to heal from the deep psychic wounds caused by being at below-freezing temperatures for five consecutive days. (You Northerners, don't judge us. We just can't handle winter.)

So, earlier this week, one fine afternoon I had a yard full of kids, with my 3 plus 3 neighbor kids. Some additional neighborhood kids came to the gate in the fence and called to Olivia, who went running around the corner with her sidekick/sister, Amelia. I got both of their attention, made sure I had eye contact (so they later can't claim they didn't hear me), and told both of them that they could go talk to the kids at the gate, but COULD. NOT. LEAVE. THE. YARD. (And couldn't let them in, either -- I was at the maximum capacity for children I wanted in my yard.)

Yeah, you know what's coming next. Olivia came back, but Amelia didn't. Let me remind all of you that Amelia is only 3. Just as I'm standing up, saying with slight panic, "WHERE IS AMELIA?!", I hear the doorbell ringing. How I heard it in the backyard with the house closed up, I'm not sure. (This makes me worried about what else people can hear coming from our house when it's all shut up. Some of the loud singing sessions we have in our family of non-musically-talented people could be misconstrued as 5 cats in heat or even someone being tortured. Oh well, none of the neighbors have complained. Yet.)

I went tearing into the house and jerked the front door open, and there's Amelia, standing there with a smile on her face, which quickly vanished when she saw my expression.

"You're in BIG trouble, young lady!" My stern voice made her instantly start crying with repentance. I took her into my bedroom and talked to her about how she CANNOT go out of the yard without me because something dangerous might happen to her and I wouldn't be there to help her. Of course, I'm thinking of kidnappings by people who do terrible things to children, or her getting hit by a car and killed or maimed.

She, on the other hand, in her innocence, looks up at me with big, fearful eyes and wails with all seriousness,"Yeah, like a spider could get on me!"

I really hate it when you're getting on to your children and they do or say something funny. How can I get my point across when I'm working so hard not to smile?

This innocent comment made me think about the protection we have when we're under the care of the Lord. When we're walking in His ways and following His paths, He provides protection.

That protection doesn't mean that nothing bad will ever happen to us. After all, Amelia staying in the backyard with me doesn't mean she's guaranteed not to get hurt. Good lord, we have a trampoline, a swing set, a slide, and all manner of other opportunities for injury. Olivia once got a chunk of the fence stuck in her arm when her father was standing right next to her. But if they get injured inside the boundaries of the fence, I am able to provide instant and immediate comfort. I am able to begin the healing process by cleansing any wounds, or putting Neosporin and bandaids where needed. (Of course, if she fights me, and doesn't let me close to her, then I can't help her. And it's the same with God and us - if we fight against Him and try to blame Him, He can't help us, but that's not really where I was going with this. So consider that a freebie.)

I don't want this to be misread so that it appears I'm advocating a fear-based walk with God -- "Live for Him or bad things will happen." More often than not, it's not the horrible thing that happens to us when we're out of His will, it's the awesome thing that we miss out on. When we're in His will, He's free to bless us in ways that He simply can't when we're living outside of His will. And I've discovered, His blessings are often not at all what I expected or even had on my list of "wants", but once received, I realize it's EXACTLY what I wanted. Why is it so surprising that our Creator would know us better than we know ourselves?

Just remember, the boundaries set out by the Lord in His Word are there for a reason. He has blessings for us and protection to provide for us that we can't obtain on our own. So when He speaks to your heart and tells you not to go outside the fence... listen. After all, He might be planning to serve some popscicles, and if you're not in the backyard, you'll miss it.

TV-Free for Three

2011-01-26T13:17:00.002-06:00

"I think I should fast from TV, Mamma. I feel like that's what the Lord wants me to do," Olivia said a couple of weeks ago, while I had a small heart attack from my visions (is day-mare a word?) of what a TV fast would do to our family.

Our church has been fasting together on Wednesdays, and this had given me the opportunity to explain to Olivia what a fast was, and its purpose. Originally, she wanted to join in and fast from food, but I told her to find something else since kids need their nutrition. (Not that her food is always nutritious. But that's a whole other issue.)

So, she decided on TV. I told her that I would do it with her, so as not to tempt her to break her fast, and we decided together that her fast would be 3 days, after I explained that her original request to do it for 3 months was a bit too ambitious and that you should start small. Not that 3 days sounded small. If she started the next day, which was Friday, this fast would extend into the weekend, which is our prime TV-watching time. Jonny was going hunting on Saturday, which would leave me alone with the kids without my one trick to keep the kids distracted while I (a) get stuff done and/or (b) experience a bit of peace.

The whole prospect of having no TV to keep them quiet made me feel almost scared, which was followed by tremendous guilt that things had gotten this way. I grew up without a TV, and though I hated it at the time, I now realize it was one of the best things about my childhood. So, before I had kids and even until I had my second kid, I said, "I'm not going to let my kids watch hardly any TV!" Now, I even turn on the DVD for the 3 minute drive to the daycare, just because it keeps the sibling rivalry at a minimum and the cranky non-morning kids quiet. Like a drug. Geez, how did I get so willing to drug my children?

In a move of self-preservation, I decided to make lots of plans to keep the kids busy, and for the most part it worked. Here are some of the things we did instead of TV that we wouldn't normally have done:

Friday: We went to the library and read books together. That this is an unusual event hurts the part of my heart that hasn't already died from watching too much TV. I'm a book-lover, for Pete's sake! How can I not be doing more to foster this in my children?!

Saturday: We went to breakfast with my parents, which required a 25 minute car ride one way. And without the precious DVD player. But on Saturday mornings, a local Christian station has a kids' radio show, and the girls (Olivia especially) really enjoyed it, so we discovered something new that the kids like that's a positive influence. Yay!

Later, we went to the Fort Worth Stock Show Parade. If I'm utterly and completely honest, I would have to say that if we weren't going TV-free, I probably wouldn't have taken all 3 kids to a parade by myself. But wow, was I ever glad I did! It was so much fun!

During Eli's naptime, I was very concerned as to how the girls would stay quiet without TV. But I set up the card table in my room and the girls played quietly with their art supplies. It all went SO well!

In the afternoon, though, things started to disentegrate. I really began feeling the lack of TV when the girls would. not. stop. fighting. Grr! It ended up that I decided to take Eli to the doctor because he seemed to be getting worse and worse (and sure enough, he had an ear infection). And no, I didn't decide to take him just so my mom would come and watch the girls while I got out of the house alone with Eli. Buuuttttt, it was an awfully nice perk.

Somehow, we made it to the end of the evening with both girls still loving each other, though the evening ended early when I put them to bed at 7:45. Don't judge. I was done. I went back to my room, got ready for bed, terribly missing my TV the whole time, and cracked open my library book.  At 8:30, I could no longer keep my eyes open. So I went to bed. Would I have EVER done that if the TV was available? No! And I proceeded to sleep for 10 hours, so apparently I needed the sleep.

Sunday, Jonny was back at home, and he decided to honor what Olivia was doing by also going without TV. Yes, even on an NFL play off week. Have I mentioned lately what an awesome husband I have?!

Cooking is another time when I use the TV to keep the kids out of my hair and off my hip and leg, but this time, I put them to work. Jonny helped Olivia make some cornbread and Amelia helped me make some New England Corn Chowder. (Eli was already taking a nap, but he had helped me at breakfast by stirring anything that needed to be stirred. He LOVED helping.) It was really nice to have us all in the kitchen working together.

Later, we took the kids to my in-laws for them to watch them, and that's another prime TV-watching time.  Before we took them over, I asked Olivia if she thought she could go without TV at Memaw's house because if she couldn't, I didn't want to take her over there. She had come this far (with hardly ANY complaining, just 2-3 moans about, "I'm not going to make it until Monday"), and I didn't want to put her in such a tempting situation that she broke her fast. But she assured me she could do it, so we went. We let Amelia go back and watch TV, since this had been the hardest on her - SHE hadn't signed up for a fast, but she experienced one de facto.

If we get an evening alone, we typically go to see a movie or come home and watch a movie we have DVR'ed that we haven't had time to watch. But this time, we went to finally get a new phone for me (if you play WordFeud, let me know!), and then went to eat together before picking up the kids.

When we got back, I was afraid we would find she had weakened. But nope, she was sitting on the couch texting her cousin on her Memaw's phone. When we got there, we started playing games and working on a 500 piece black and white photo puzzle they had spread out on a table. It was such a good time. Except that black and white puzzles are stupid. I mean, really. All the pieces are shades of gray!

ANYway, bottom line, what did we learn? (1) Olivia has an amazing amount of character to have pulled this off. She remained consistent in her desire to accomplish it, and determined to make it through. I'm so proud of her. (2) I can survive the children without using the TV as a babysitter. (3) I would get more sleep and read more if I didn't watch TV. (4) I would be more willing to take the kids fun places that will make memories, even if it requires a lot of work. (5) We would have more positive interactions as a family (cooking together, playing games together) if we didn't watch TV. Well, except for when the kids are fighting.

Monday morning upon waking, Olivia immediately grabbed the remote and frantically pushed at the buttons like her life depended on it. I can't judge her... Monday night upon getting the children to bed, I immediately grabbed the remote and frantically pushed at the buttons because Fringe had been DVR'ed since Friday night.

Yeah... we may need to do these TV fasts more often.

Higher and Deeper

2011-01-02T16:27:00.000-06:00

One of my favorite moments in all of the Chronicles of Narnia books is at the end of The Last Battle, when the children enter Aslan's country (which I've always viewed as allegorical of heaven), and as they enter the country, they run faster and faster, crying, "Further up and further in!"

Further up and further in.

Higher and deeper.

A greater anointing.

That's what I want for 2011.

It's become so easy for me to live life on the surface, to become mired by daily life, with all of its worries both big and small. (And how many times do we make small worries bigger than they need to be?)

It's become so easy to have my prayer life be something akin to a series of text messages or Tweets to God, all in 140 characters or less:

"God, protect my kids today. Thx."

"God, help this mtg to go well @ work. Thx."

"Thx for this day & all your blessings. U r awesome."

But if I'm to go higher and deeper, or further up and further in, my prayer life must become more substantial. Charles Stanley, in his19th century devotional Morning and Evening, talks about the importance of prayer:

"As it is necessary to repair the waste of the body by the frequent meal, so we must repair the waste of the soul by feeding upon the Book of God, or by listening to the preached Word, or by the soul-fattening table of the ordinances.... What poor starvelings some saints are who live without the diligent use of the Word of God and secret prayer! If our piety can live without God it is not of divine creating; it is but a dream.... Without constant restoration we are not ready for the perpetual assaults of hell, or the stern afflictions of heaven, or even for the strifes within."

I love the imagery of the soul wasting away without prayer like a body would waste away without food. Think of the pictures of starving people you've seen in the news or in history books -- that's what happens to our spirit when we don't nourish it like we should.

And there's certainly not enough strength in a starved spirit to run faster and faster, crying "Further up and further in!"

And what's wonderful is that however deep I want to go, the Lord is ready to reveal more of himself to me. His work on the cross assures me of that. When He died on the cross, the veil separating the Holy of Holies was torn in two, and no more separation was meant to be between God and His people. He doesn't want separation from me or you, and paid the ultimate price for our ability to be in direct relationship with Him.

Further up and further in. No more poor starveling. I want a greater anointing.

Where Did I Put Those Goals?

2010-12-30T12:24:00.000-06:00

A few months ago, a man who is the head of his organization and I were talking about interviews and hiring employees. He said, "I always ask, 'Where do you see yourself in 5 years?' If they can't answer, then that shows they don't have any goals, and they don't get hired."

Since that conversation, I've thought so much about this statement. What's my answer to that question? If I were in an interview for a job I really wanted, would I have a good answer if they asked about my 5 year plan? (And by the way, this is all purely hypothetical -- I'm not job hunting, in case anyone from work reads this.)

Once I began thinking about it, I realized that I have no 5 year plan. At least not one to speak of.

When I think of life in five years, I get excited that all my children will finally be potty trained and old enough to fix their own drinks. That's really not a very lofty plan.

And somehow, I don't think a prospective employer would be wow-ed if I said, "Well, in 5 years I see myself as a lawyer who is 5 years more experienced (and none of the people who asked me for advice were arrested for following it!), a mother of children who are 5 years older (yay, I kept them alive!), and a wife who's been married 5 years longer (woo hoo, he put up with me a little longer!)."

My life is so full right now that about the only goals I have are (1) staying sane and (2) making sure nothing falls through the cracks. And not necessarily in that order.

As a busy mother of young children, I'm not alone. In a series of blog posts on Jane Friedman's blog by daughters who interview their mothers called, "When Mom Was My Age," several of the mothers voiced the same thing.

From Bobbie:

What did you think the future held for you?

I don’t know. I just tried to live a good life.

From Irene:

Looking back, what did you think the future held?

At the time I don’t think I thought about the future too much as my life seemed very busy.

From (a different) Bobbi:

What did you think the future held for you?

I was very busy during this phase of my life, and I don’t know if I actually thought much about the future. However, looking back, I am sure I believed that life would continue in much the same way as it previously had.

From Elizabeth:

What did you think the future held for you?

I didn’t have a lot of time to think forward, honestly.

It made me feel better when I read this because I realized that goals can be a casualty of the time-intense period of motherhood.

Or maybe I'm just guilty of goal stagnation because I haven't made a new list in a while. So many of the things I wanted to achieve when I was 21 have been done: Finish college (check), find and marry amazing man (check), finish law school (check), pass bar (check), find job as attorney that I don't hate (took a while, but check), buy house (check), have children (check, check, check).

But the more I've thought about it, the more I've realized that I want some goals. I want to do more than just manage not to drown where I am. I want to swim forward toward a place I want to be.

So, my goal for right now is to establish some long-term goals other than teaching my kids to make their own breakfast so I can sleep in on a weekend morning (though that's on the list). As a woman of faith, it's critical to me for these goals to have the Lord's stamp of approval, so prayer will be step one. And I guess step two will depend on what the goals end up being.

Professionally-speaking, I think I'll keep "not having any clients arrested" as one of my goals. I may even bump it up to "not having any clients indicted." Reach for the stars! :-)

Faith's Tacos

2010-11-30T13:07:00.001-06:00

My husband said he's detected a pattern in my blog postings, so I'm blogging 2 days in a row to break the pattern. Don't want to be too predictable -- it's good to have some spice in your marriage. (Hmmm... when altering your blogging pattern qualifies as "spice", it might be time to re-evaluate. But that's a different post.)

Some bloggers around the web participate in what the originator calls Tasty Tuesday. They take professional-quality photos of their food, upload it to their blog, blog about the food, then go to the originator's blog and leave a link to their blog (complete with food photo in the link). Yeeeaaahhhh.... I'm doing this on my lunch time, so none of that's happening. Sorry.

But, here's my contribution to Tasty Tuesday. I got this healthy, frugal, quick, one dish recipe from my friend, Faith, who served it when I came over for a very enjoyable girls' night. In truth, I doubt I would have ever tried the recipe if I hadn't tasted it first because on paper it doesn't look that great, but I can assure you it's quite good.

Although Faith isn't a busy mother of three who wants to spend very little time in the kitchen while still producing tasty, healthy food for her family, she has struggled with some health problems that make her want to spend little time in the kitchen but still producing tasty & healthy food. In honor of her, I have named the dish after her.

Faith's Tacos

1 pound ground turkey or beef
2 garlic cloves, minced (optional)
1/2 cup onion (optional)
1/2 cup bell pepper (optional)
1/2 cup frozen mixed vegetables (or more, if you like)
1/2 of a 16 oz can of black beans (or more, if you like)
Optional seasonings, in amounts to taste: Cumin (about 1 tsp), cayenne pepper, salt, and onion powder if you're too lazy to cut up an onion like I was last night. You could also omit the minced garlic cloves and use garlic powder or salt instead.

Flour and/or corn tortillas
Shredded cheese
Picante sauce
Jarred jalapenos

Begin browning meat, onion & bell pepper (if you're using them) in a skillet. When the meat is about half done, add the garlic cloves, frozen mixed vegetables, and black beans. Season the mixture with whatever spices you like. Warm the tortillas in a skillet or the microwave.

Serve with cheese, picante sauce, jalapenos (and whatever other taco fixins you and your family like) and tortillas. Faith butters her tortillas before filling them, and it's quite good, but you could avoid this step if you want to cut out a little fat.

This is a one dish meal that all my kids love. The first time we had it, Olivia didn't like the look of it because the vegetables are all mixed in with the meat, but once we made her try it, she was hooked. As you can see, the basics of this recipe is the meat, beans and vegetables, but beyond that, it's quite flexible. You can add in whatever ingredients your family likes, or use whatever you have on hand. I like that the black beans & vegetables stretch the meat, and make it a frugal meal.

I freeze the remainder of the can of beans until we're ready to have this dish again. You can also use the leftover beans and vegetables in a soup, if you want.

Hope your family enjoys this as much as mine does! Happy eating!

The Great Mall Adventure

2010-11-29T13:03:00.000-06:00

Why I became temporarily insane enough to take my three kids to the mall yesterday by myself is still a mystery. I don't even like the mall, much less with three kids in tow.

One of those kids (the 7 y.o.) is learning the value (or lack thereof) of her recently granted allowance of $7/week (she only gets to keep $5, with $1 going to the bank and $1 going to the church), and wants to go in every store like Claires and Justice to see what her $10 will buy. (Nothing but crap, by the way.)

One of those kids (the 3 y.o.) doesn't get an allowance like her sister, and can't understand why she can't get the same things her sister is buying. She then proceeds to ... well, I wouldn't call it a tantrum, as much as just an ill-timed lie-down-on-the-floor-and-have-a-good-"life-isn't-fair"-cry in the middle of Claires.

One of those kids (the 1 y.o.) doesn't like the stroller. So while Kid #1 is trying to decide on what piece of crap her $10 will buy, and Kid #2 is "resting" on the floor, this kid is climbing out of the stroller and wanting to run around. I valiantly tried to contain him because the outcome of letting him roam free could replace that bull/china store saying: "Like a 20 month old in a trinkets store."

But despite the challenges, the mall presented some opportunities to watch my kids' personalities in action. Santa was there, and only one of them wanted to have anything go do with him. Elijah, who was on my hip, took one look at Santa and spun around and turned his back so he couldn't see him anymore, in what his father calls his "You're now dead to me" pose. I think it's more, "If I pretend you aren't there, then maybe you'll disappear." Olivia, who is WAY too much like a teenager already, sat in Santa's lap only because I told her to go do it so maybe her siblings would go, too, so she sat there with this fake frozen smile, while staring at me with eyes that said, "I can't believe you're making me do this." She was so frozen that I had to remind her what she wanted for Christmas so she could answer Santa's question.

Amelia, on the other hand, who's idea this was in the first place, marched right up to him and told him she wanted "a present" for Christmas, and then later, after seeing something in a store she wanted, started to turn around to leave: "I need to go tell Santa this is want I want for Christmas!" No fear of strangers in that girl. In fact, at breakfast Saturday morning, she wanted to show the waitress a picture, spotted the waitress at a nearby table, and raised her hand to get her attention in a perfect immitation of how Jonny and I
do it. Oh, it was priceless.

Throw in (1) an emergency trip to the bathroom right in the middle of a purchase (Me to patient saleswoman: "Can you hold this please? I'll be RIGHT back," with background chorus from child, "I need to go poottttyyyy"), which required a dead run to get there in time; (2) wailing and nashing of teeth in the pet store over the fact that, "We are NOT getting another dog!" punctuated with smiles and squeals of delight over the animals they saw there, and (3) supreme disappointment that we couldn't ride the escalator since we had the stroller, and you have a good summary of why I didn't have the energy to go to the grocery store after the mall as previously planned.

Just writing all this makes me want to go take a nap. No more trips to the mall for me+3kids anytime soon.

Depression - A Physical Ailment

2010-11-23T07:26:00.000-06:00

If you were around my great-grandparents back in the early part of the last century, you might would have thought that my great-grandfather was a bit crazy. He was a brilliant thinker, and his notebooks contained drawings and descriptions of things that wouldn't be invented for years to come. He probably suffered bouts of depression, and his wife had him committed to a "facility".

BUT, family lore has it that Great-Grandpa was not the one who should have been in the "facility". His wife was a cruel and abusive woman, and somehow managed to get her husband committed before he could have her committed. It's really quite tragic, but also (in a way that the passing of time allows it to be) kind of funny. The moral of the story: If you live in the early 20th century and you're crazy, and in you're in a relationship with someone else who's also crazy, make sure you get them committed first so you can roam free and inflict your crazy on the world!

Not surprisingly, my grandfather left this love fest of a home when he was 12. He made his way in the world thanks to a preacher and his wife who took him in, and he grew up and built a home and a family and worked hard to provide for his wife and three kids, including my father. He wasn't perfect as a father (though he WAS perfect as a grandfather), but he was sure WAY better than the home he came from.

The science and treatment of mental illness has come a long way since the early 1900s. Doctors and scientists have learned that clinical depression is a physical ailment. The chemistry in the brain is not at the appropriate ratios, and as a result, the person cannot function normally. It is really no different than the insulin levels of a diabetic not being at the appropriate levels. The emotional manifestation of depression doesn't make it any less the result of what's happening in your physical body.

And yet there still persists, particularly among conservative Christians (it seems to me), a belief that depression is nothing more than "a stronghold of the devil" that just needs to be prayed away. Can it be a stronghold? Sure, just like any other physical ailment can tempt a person to become angry at God or impatient with the people around them or bitter that this ailment has happened to them. (And by the way, chronic pain also alters a person's brain chemistry, which is why people with things like fybromyalgia end up depressed.)

The very Christians who claim that depression needs to be "prayed away" run to the doctor at the first sign of any other sickness. To return to my earlier example, you don't see these same Christians who blame the devil for depression refusing to get insulin for their diabetic parents, kids or selves. (Some religions DO refuse to go to the doctor, but that's not who I'm talking about.) DEPRESSION IS THE SAME THING. Taking a prescription for depression is NOT some sort of acquiescence to Satan. If you think it is, then I challenge you to stop taking prescribed medicines altogether.

And don't get me started on people who think that counseling is ridiculous. Depression changes your brain chemistry, but, like many other illnesses, there are triggers that set off the change in the chemistry. Many of those triggers can be dealt with in counseling, so that they aren't so powerful. Taking the prescription for depression treats the symptom, and the counseling can treat the trigger. They should go hand-in-hand.

And lest anyone think I'm writing this to justify my own behavior, I have not, nor have I ever, had to take anti-depressants. The closest I came was upon returning to work after the birth of my third child. Everything was so overwhelming -- three kids, a full-time job, housework and laundry out the whazoo -- that I, as the old people say, "took to my bed" for three days. Every day after work, I would come home, abandon the kids to Jonny, turn out the lights in my room, and crawl into bed. Jonny, who isn't afflicted by the aforementioned belief that it's the devil's fault, told me that if I didn't feel better SOON, I was going to the doctor for some help. I agreed. But, then, I looked around the house, which had truly gone to hell in a handbasket without me. And I realized, hey, I might not can do EVERYTHING, but good lord, without me my house will eventually be condemned and my children will go to school naked because there's no clean clothes. I went through the motions for a few days, and eventually, the depression receded on its own. (As I re-read this, I realize this sounds like an indictment against my husband, but he kept the kids fed, bathed, played with, and put to bed on time every evening, and laid their clothes out for the next day, all while worrying a lot about me. He did a great job! But three kids is a two-person job. Or, really, a three-person job. ;-) Once the adults are outnumbered, it's all downhill!)

This "getting over it" doesn't generally happen for people who have chronic/clinical depression. And there is no more shame in taking anti-depressants than there is in taking insulin.

I ask that if you need help, you do so because it's what you need to do to get well. It's what your loved ones need you to do. And besides, you need to stay at least slightly more with it than your spouse, lest you end up like Great-Grandpa. ;-)

(Pity) Party Girl

2010-11-10T17:45:00.000-06:00

I'm sitting outside right now, enjoying watching the kids play before the early darkness sets in. I really don't like Daylight Savings Time. But I really like that I get to be home before dark now that I get off work earlier.

Many people have asked how I like working part time, and I've responded with how much I love it, and how it's the best of both worlds: I still work and earn some money, but get more time with the kids than I did before.

But after the last two weeks, I see that at times, it may also be the worst of both worlds: not enough time to do what needs to get done at work, and not enough time to do what needs to get done at home. Add in two family members with a stomach virus, one 19 month old with an ear infection because the tubes we put in 6 months ago have already fallen out, and you have one stressed out Mamma.

But then today I talk to two of my domino-playing lunch buddies, and find out that one has a Down's syndrome brother for whom he is the guardian and who's heart stopped on Monday and although he was revived, he isn't expected to live long. Another buddy had a doctor's appointment this afternoon to see if the tumors on his lymph nodes are cancerous.

And, I was reminded yet again that your ability to enjoy your life is directly related to your ability to put things in perspective and have a good attitude. Stomach viruses and ear infections and heavy work loads can all be irritating and even frustrating, but they aren't life threatening. They aren't anything akin to making the decision to fill out a DNR for your brother you've cared for for years. They aren't anything like going to the doctor to see if you have cancer.

There are always people who are worse off than you. That doesn't mean that your feelings are invalid, or there isn't good reason for getting upset or stressed out about life's irritants, but it does serve as a reminder about what's really important.

For all my starting FB groups to encourage people in our church to give to others and all my reaching out to people who are house bound or infirm or in need, in the past week or so I've gotten way too focused on myself. If pity parties counted toward party girl status, I'd be one. (And as most of you know, that's the only way I'll ever earn the party girl label.)

And so, I'm reminded to stop navel gazing, as one person put it, and start looking outward again at others who's needs are so much greater than mine are today. If you're a fellow party girl (or guy), maybe you can join me in looking for others to help and while making a difference for someone else, we just might change our perspective, and make a difference in our own lives in the process.

Life Lessons in Defensive Driving

2010-10-24T11:03:00.002-05:00

"You drive like you live."

That's what the instructor at the defensive driving class I attended Friday said. (Side note: I didn't get a ticket; it's required by my employer every three years.) At first I thought, "That's ridiculous, I don't drive like I live. I'm calm in real life, and in the car, not so much."

But, as I analyzed it a bit more, I realized how true the statement was.

I drive cautiously and carefully and think people who don't drive the same are stupid (as if I've never been a bit careless behind the wheel). Example: If you pull out in front of me and make me slam on my brakes, I will likely loudly proclaim your mental deficiencies while blaring my horn at you.

I'm nice to other drivers, and get angry when others don't act the same. Example: If I let you in the lane in front of me, and you don't waive to thank me, I have to resist the temptation to ram the back of your vehicle. I have visions of channeling Kathy Bates in Steel Magnolias: "I'm older than you and have better insurance!"

I live the same way: I've never been a risk taker, and when people act recklessly, I struggle with judging them for their own stupidity (as if I've never done anything stupid); and, as much as possible, I am nice to others; and when other people aren't nice to me, I get very angry.

All of this was quite the revelation, especially since I've been praying lately for God to help me with what has become an increasing problem with anger. Who knew the Lord could convict you in defensive driving?!

As I was analyzing my own shortcomings as revealed by my driving habits, he said something else that I thought was fascinating: the people who have the most wrecks are people who tend to not look far enough down the road, but instead, only look within a few feet in front of them.

Add this fact to the statement that we drive like we live, and you have a powerful lesson. People who end up with train wrecks for lives are people who live for the short term.

Some people look at my life and think that I've been extraordinarily blessed, and they're right: awesome husband of 12 years, 3 wonderful kids, a good job, debt-free except for student loans and mortgage, etc., etc., etc. But you know what each one of those things took? Consistency. And you know what it takes to be consistent? The ability to look down the road and see the future, and not live for the short term rewards.

I have an awesome husband because I didn't marry the person I originally wanted to marry because although he and I are great people, we were horrible together. I don't think Jonny and I have had as many fights in 12 years as this person and I did in 2.5. It still ranks as one of the hardest decisions I've ever made in my life, although on this side of it, it seems so obvious. In the moment, though, it wasn't easy.

We've been married 12 years, not because I need someone to open jars and kill bugs, like Jonny always tells people, but because I decided not to walk when I really wanted to in year 7 of marriage. If I had walked away then, I would only have 1 wonderful kid and not 3. I didn't walk because I had a dream of having 3 grown kids coming home for Thanksgiving with their kids, and that included having their father there, too. (He would have to tell you why he's stayed with me for 12 years -- that's a mystery to me.)

I have a good job because I haven't walked away like I have wanted to numerous times. I don't quit because I see that, despite how good it would feel in the short term on some days, in the long term, (1) this job is a tremendous blessing, especially now that I'm part-time; (2) we need the money; and (3) few other jobs will afford me such a good retirement (as long as the pension doesn't go bankrupt, but that's a whole other issue). (I also have this job because I didn't quit college in my junior year like I wanted to, or quit law school after my first year like I wanted to. But that wasn't because of a vision of the future -- that was because of a vision of my mom killing me for quitting college, and a vision of people thinking I was a failure for quitting law school. Hey, sometimes you gotta find inspiration for not quitting from wherever you can get it.)

I am debt-free except for student loans and mortgage because Jonny and I have had a goal that still feels like it is SO. VERY. FAR. in the future of being completely debt free. We wouldn't own our cars outright and have no credit card debt if we weren't consistent in trying to meet that future goal, no matter the pain we feel for living frugally.

I say none of this to pat myself on the back. Instead, I feel like someone may need to hear all of this who is feeling like quiting, someone who is weary in well-doing. Goodness knows, I've gotten weary in well-doing SO many times. Although the word "I" appears 8,000 times in this post, the REAL truth is that I wouldn't be where I am if it weren't for God's grace, mercy, guidance, and reminders of what the future can hold if you just stay on the right path. Maybe this is a reminder to you. Or maybe I'm writing this so I'll read it again when I need to hear it, so I don't make some stupid decision just for the short-term return.

So, the moral of this story is, if you need to hear from the Lord, maybe you should go take a defensive driving class. Well... it worked for me, anyway.

Kidlet Update Part 3: Elijah

2010-10-05T18:54:00.000-05:00

Elijah is a man of few (understandable) words, so maybe the update on Eli is best told with few words.

Darth Vader with Sippy Cup:

Enjoying the circus:

British Bobby with Sippy Cup:

Obligatory naked pictures with which torture him as a teenager:

Viking with Sippy Cup:

Budding ~~couch~~ ottoman potato:

Enjoying spaghetti with sippy cup:

Making mud pies with Amelia:

UT Fan with Sippy Cup (do you see a theme?):

I love my Big Fella!!

Kidlet Update Part 2: Amelia

2010-10-05T16:48:00.001-05:00

If you want to have a good laugh, spend a few minutes around my middle child. The girl is hilarious, sometimes meaning to be but most of the time not. In fact, her teacher told me just today that she has so much fun with Amelia. "She comes up with some of the craziest things!" I agreed wholeheartedly.

Here's an example:

Olivia and Jonny like to play Slug Bug in the car, but with a dearth of VW Bugs in our area, it has now evolved into a game of who can spot P.T. Cruisers first. Well, Amelia doesn't know a P.T. Cruiser from a Slug Bug, and she didn't want to be left out, so she announced, "Mamma, let's play porcupine!" Apparently, porcupine is a game where you pretend to see porcupines on the side of the road and shout out, "Porcupine!"

It's hilarious. You should try it some time. Drive down the road and randomly shout out, "Porcupine!" Guaranteed to make you laugh.

She has discovered that despite all the things a 3 year old doesn't have control over, her birthday party is all hers to control. On one of my first days to pick her up at the earlier time due to my new part-time schedule, she was so happy to see me that she declared, "Mamma, you're invited to my birthday party!" Good thing, since I pay for it.

Periodically, when she's really happy about something, she reminds me that I get to come to her party. Olivia, on the other hand, gets disinvited from Amelia's birthday party pretty much on a daily basis. ;-) I remind her that she got to go to Olivia's party, so Olivia gets to come to hers. In fact, here's a pic of her at said party, after Pawpaw did face painting for all the girls:

Like I said, she comes up with the craziest stuff. Just now, she asked if I have a baby in my belly. Um, no.

And now I will stop blogging and go work out.

Kidlet Update Part 1: Olivia

2010-10-02T12:51:00.000-05:00

The masses are clamoring for another blog update. Well, ok, so it's just Jonny, and he asked once. But that's enough for me.

It's been so long since I updated that I thought I'd start by giving updates on each kid, one entry at a time.

Olivia is doing simply fantastic in school, bringing home all A's, and only getting in trouble one time for talking too much. This is a vast improvement over last year, when she was getting in trouble almost daily for talking. (Her 3 year old daycare class teacher told me that Olivia would probably get in trouble the rest of her life for talking too much in class. The woman was a prophet.)

She is enjoying reading Junie B Jones books, and choses a new one each week at the school library. She is also learning to write much more clearly. Let me share with you a couple of examples.

First, here is a picture of the first recipe she ever wrote down, and since I love to cook, I hope this is the first of many recipes for her. She wrote this in June after watching her grandmother make some cinnamon toast. I am appalled that my daughter did not know about cinnamon toast until she spent the night with her grandmother -- I'm clearly failing as a mother! How can we not have ever made cinnamon toast, which is one of my all time favorites?! Anyway, if you're wondering how to make cinnamon toast, here you go. Excuse the crumpled paper, since little brother got a hold of the recipe, much to big sister's frustration.

She also likes to write us notes, and does it often. They are usually very sweet notes, like thanking me for being the best mom in the world (she doesn't realize my screw up on the cinnamon toast yet). But, when she's mad, she also likes to write notes. Like the other day, when she caught a moth and wanted to put it in one of my food jars. (Despite her supreme girly-ness, she is one really good bug catcher.) To which I replied, "Um, no, I do not want a moth in my food containers, and I don't want one in the house."

She may not hold the cinnamon toast against me, but apparently she will always remember the moth thing. Here's the note I got, which was handed to me in silence before she turned and walked away sadly:

In case you can't read it, it says,
"I loved that moth
I will Never frget this
Day I rilly want to
keep that moth"

Nice. Good times. Put another dollar in the Therapy Fund.

Especially since I laughed out loud when I read the note.

DeCluttering Food from Your Diet

2010-09-16T11:55:00.001-05:00

I love how Leanne Ely put this, so I'm reprinting her email in its entirety below. I've been considering cutting out most of the sugar I eat because of how it affects me, and viewing it as "decluttering" is a great concept! Plus, the recipe at the end is definitely going in my "to try" pile.

Decluttering Food

By Leanne Ely, C.N.C.

Trying to declutter your house can be a daunting task. Trying to get your daughter to declutter her room is a major act of God. As we went through her overstuffed and massively cluttered room I volunteered numerous things for the declutter bag. Each time, she plaintively whined, "But I like it!" and I would counter, "But you outgrew this outfit a year ago!" or "We have no room for that furniture anymore." Finally, I took her out for a hot chocolate to defuse the situation and explained to her that eventhough she likes something, there comes a point when it's time to let it go and move on.

The same point can be made with food. Just because you like something doesn't mean it serves a worthy purpose. Take potato chips for example--the perfect analogy to nutritional clutter. Their purpose isn't to feedyour body, but just crunchy entertainment for your mouth. They leave their clutter however, on your hips, well-being and appetite. Youwant more and you have no room for it. Potato chips (or another equally unworthy junk food) is robbing your body of its peace. When you eat junk, you feel like junk.

We need to learn that eating good healthy food is the equivalent of pampering yourself. Like a bubble bath or massage, even. When you feed yourself and your body food that is worthy of your time and effort, you are giving tender loving care to yourself. The good, nutritious food that you need for bodily function (not entertainment) will cause your moods to change for the better, your energy to soar and make your skin glow!

Eating healthy can be a delicious experience, I promise! And because I try to live up to my promises as best I can, I have a healthy recipe for you that your entire family will love.

A quick note: To cut back on the carbs, you can cut the pasta in half and stir in a 10 ounce bag of baby spinach when you add the chicken mixture at the end of the recipe. The heat from the ingredients will cause the spinach to wilt perfectly.

Barbecued Chicken Pasta

Serves 6

16 ounces Rigatoni, Mostaccioli or other medium pasta shape - uncooked

1 tablespoon vegetable oil

4 ounces boneless, skinless chicken breast -- cut into

1/2-inch cubes

1/4 cup green bell pepper, sliced thin

/4 cup red onion, sliced thin

1 clove garlic, pressed

1/2 cup spaghetti sauce (your favorite)

1/4 cup hickory-smoked barbecue sauce

1/2 cup grated Provolone cheese

1/2 cup grated Mozzarella

3 green onions-- trimmed and sliced thin

1/4 cup cilantro, chopped

Prepare pasta according to package directions. Meanwhile, heat oil in a large skillet over medium heat. Add chicken and saute, stirring occasionally, until browned on all sides, about 3 minutes. Add bell pepper, onion and garlic and cook until pepper turns bright green, about 1 minute. Add Marinara sauce and barbecue sauce and heat just to boiling. Remove from heat.

Drain pasta, reserving 1/4 cup of water and return pasta to the pot. Add chicken mixture and cheese to the pot. Stir over low heat until pasta is coated with sauce. Add enough of reserved cooking liquid, if necessary, to make the sauce lightly coat the pasta. Transfer pasta to serving bowls and top with scallions and cilantro.

Per Serving: 464 Calories; 9g Fat (15% calories from fat); 24g Protein; 60g Carbohydrate; 3g Dietary Fiber; 44mg Cholesterol; 601mg Sodium. Exchanges: 3 1/2 Grain(Starch); 2 Lean Meat; 1 Vegetable; 2 Fat; 0 Other Carbohydrates.

SERVING SUGGESTIONS: A spinach salad would be perfect!

VEGETARIANS: Skip the chicken and add a can (15 oz.) of drained white beans.

Copyright (C) 2010 www.savingdinner.com Leanne Ely, CNC All rights reserved.

The Sleepover

2010-09-06T17:29:00.000-05:00

I've debated on whether to even blog about the sleepover we hosted for Olivia's 7th birthday party. I feel a tiny bit like a war veteran who doesn't want to talk specifics about the horrific things they've endured. It's just too painful.

Also, I like to have funny posts on my blog as much as possible, and I'm still trying to find the humor.

To sum it up, as Olivia's best friend (and our across-the-street neighbor) said the next day, "THAT was a DISASTER!"

In reality, it was great until 10:30pm. Before 10:30, we (8 girls, plus me and Amelia) had face painting, played freeze tag, played on the trampoline and swing set, did a craft (during which one girl declared this "The BEST party... SO much better than MY last party!"), opened presents, ate pizza, cake and cookies, played in-the-dark hide-and-seek in the house, and had a talent show complete with microphone and stage.

But at 10:30, hell began breaking lose one girl at a time. I was supposed to be able to have the girls spread out their blankets and sleeping bags, turn on a movie, and then magically they would fall asleep one by one.

Ha!

Some of the girls were ready to do just that, and one was even falling asleep, when it all started falling apart. I don't remember the order of what happened when, but one girl got scared at the movie and we had to change the movie. Then some of the girls were hungry, even though they'd been at my house for five hours at this point, some of them snacking the entire time. Then some of the girls didn't like the second movie and complained bitterly. Then some of the girls couldn't sleep on my hardwood floor because "I have back issues." Then one girl started crying because she felt sick, and that set off a chain reaction so that half of the girls were ALL crying. I seriously considered joining them.

I tried to get them to calm down, and thankfully, one of the most rambunctious and disobedient girls was finally good for something and got all but two of the girls cheered up with a "don't let the balloons hit the ground" game. The two continued to cry, one because she was sick and the other because she wanted to go home, so at 11:30pm I started calling parents. I could only get ahold of one mother, who promptly came over, and probably seeing my desperation, took her daughter AND the other girl.

After that, I let the remaining 6 play for a while, and then we had to go through "I don't want to sleep THERE" drama for a good 30 minutes until I finally lost it. I am ashamed to say that I got stern/mean with other people's children. And, actually, it worked, and FINALLY, it got quiet at 12:30, with me and Amelia on the couch (having been desperate enough to give my bed up to try to keep the peace), one girl (the aforementioned rambunctious one, who was removed from her original place by me because she wouldn't stop getting up) in our recliner, another girl in our oversized chair, three in my bed, and one on the floor beside my bed.

I suppose, in retrospect, it was only 2 hours of misery, compared to 4 hours of a really good time. But, wow, those 2 hours managed to cast a shadow over the entire experience.

I have already gotten an offer from my MIL to come help next time, and Olivia and I have agreed that next time, she will be limited to inviting only 4 girls. Maybe 3. 2 would be just fine.

In fact, can you call it a sleepover party with just one other girl... who's also your sister?

Grace from a Lawyer's Perspective

2010-08-26T14:50:00.002-05:00

From Day 1, we have an enemy and His name is God.

When we are born into sin (which is a result of the rejection of God by humans so long ago), we are immediately placed at enmity with God. I've always heard that term "at enmity with God" but never fully realized the position that puts us in.

Sin separates us from God. It is the same as perpetrating multiple crimes against Him. If someone commits habitual or frequent crimes against you, it pretty much destroys your ability to be in relationship with that person. In the same way, we are placed at odds with Him. And if you're not for Him, you're against Him. Therefore, while you are in sin, you and God are enemies.

And yet, He's like no other enemy you've ever encountered.

He doesn't want to be the enemy. So he executed a plan to allow us to be "friends of God", as Paul put it. He sent His Son so that the Son's righteousness could be imputed (transferred) to us. But what does that mean?

He has, to use a legal analogy, sent us an innocent public defender. But the public defender didn't just defend us, he pleaded guilty for our crimes, both those we committed in the past, and those we will commit in the future. The only requirement on our part is for us to agree that the public defender was sent by God and that he is, in fact, accepting the guilt for our crimes.

So, after we sign off on our acceptance of the deal, God accepts the public defender's guilty plea, and (here's the REALLY cool part), He transfers the public defender's innocence to us on a permanent basis. And from that moment on, God will not find us guilty for our crimes because He has already tried and punished the public defender for them. (Even with ample DNA evidence, He will not pursue a conviction!) (And, unlike the American legal system, we aren't just "not guilty" in God's eyes, we are "innocent".)

Because He views us as innocent, we can then be in relationship with Him. And because the public defender pleaded guilty even for our future crimes, when we slip up and commit a new crime against Him, His view of us as innocent does not change. And, therefore, our relationship with Him does not (or SHOULD not) change.

Unfortunately, we usually feel so guilty for our crimes that, even though someone else already pleaded guilty and even though we have a permanently-transferred innocence, we change our relationship with Him. The change didn't come from Him, it came from the condemnation that we heap on ourselves. HE heaped all of HIS condemnation for our sins on our public defender, so HE has no reason to condemn us. It's like He has no condemnation left, like it's all spent, all used up. There's no reason why our crimes against Him should separate us from Him ("nothing can separate us" from Him, right?), or why we should stop talking to Him, or why we should think He will punish us for those crimes. The punishment already happened! You can't be punished anymore for those crimes (like a different kind of double jeopardy)!

Now, that's not to say that the consequences for your crimes will be erased. If your crime was to kill someone, just because your public defender plead guilty of the crime doesn't mean the crime is undone and that the person is no longer dead or that the family no longer feels grief or that the cost of the funeral is suddenly free. All the consequences are still there. But the punishment is not yours to bear. It's the public defender's!

When it finally sinks in what this public defender has done for you, and what God has done by sending the public defender for you in the first place, your entire world view will change. Your ability to forgive will grow by leaps and bounds. Your desire to help others, even the undeserving, will explode. Your longing for an even closer relationship with God will intensify. Your desire to live a life that is pleasing in His eyes will increase.

I know, because I've just recently come to a better understanding of this whole thing called grace. And it really is amazing grace.

***EDIT*** I think maybe my analogy would be more accurate to say that God sent us a high-priced defense attorney, who also happens to be God's son, instead of a public defender. Contemplate that for a moment -- He sent His son to plead guilty for our crimes, all because He wants relationship with us. Amazing!

Q&A Day

2010-08-11T08:29:00.001-05:00

Famous bloggers often have a day when they answer their readers' questions. I'm not famous, and I don't have any readers' questions, but why should that stop me?

Dear Joyful Juggler:

How did a recent meal for your family cost almost $100 when it was just leftover veggies sauted and mixed with cooked noodles?

The noodles and veggies were part of a frugal menu plan that probably cost $8 for the entire family. But somehow, Elijah managed to get some noodle inside the part of the cord that plugs into the laptop because the laptop had been left on the table. Yes, I said noodle, as in pasta. When I tried to dig the noodle out, I damaged the male end that plugs into the laptop, and now it won't work anymore. Apparently, power cords cost $91. So, that's how our meal ended up costing $99. I can think of a few better ways to spend $100 on a meal than this particular method, so I do not recommend it to my readers.

Dear Joyful Juggler:

Have you ever had one of those days where your middle child wakes you up at 4 am and you can't go back to sleep; and a family member posts something on his blog that makes you less than happy; and you're late to work; and you end up spending the entire day doing someone else's job that they refuse to do; and you miss out on half of your lunch "appointment" with your domino-playing buddies because of said work; and you find out that as part of the budget cuts several people that you work with almost daily will be laid off come November; and you leave work late so that you get stuck in the parking garage, having to pay 4 times what you normally pay because the attendant has already left; and you get home and one of your kids is sick?

Yes. That was yesterday.

Dear Joyful Juggler:

You lost sleep the other night worrying about something. Was it about the terrible state of the economy and the fear of a total collapse of the American way of life? Was it about the salvation of your children's souls? Was it about some other weighty issue that perhaps I should be worried about, too?

Let's just say that sometimes in the middle of the night, the brain isn't too rational. Jonny had seen a large mouse/small rat in the backyard right before we went to bed, and when I woke up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom, I was scared that somehow the rat had gotten in the house and was between me and the toilet. I lied awake for a while, finally convincing myself that this thought was ridiculous. Then, after using the restroom, as I was returning to bed, my dog made a funny noise and I almost had a heart attack thinking it was the rat. Laugh if you will, but if you thought a rat was in your bathroom you wouldn't be able to go back to sleep, either. Jonny says those mice/rats have probably lived in and around our yard for years, but I was much happier being ignorant of their existence. I would be even happier if they weren't in existence at all. And if they try to move their existence into my house, they will seal their fate.

Dear Joyful Juggler:

Are you getting old?

Well, in the space of one week, I (1) found a gray hair, (2) called some teenagers "punk kids" for playing basketball in the street and impeding traffic, (3) felt achy in my knees when I woke up, with no strenuous activity precipitating it, unless you consider sleep a strenuous activity; and (4) got extremely excited about getting a new refridgerator. So..... yeah.

That's all the time we have for Q&A Day today. I'll try to answer more questions as they arise. Thanks for reading!

Kidlet Update

2010-08-03T17:21:00.002-05:00

Ah, the kids have been so much fun and, of course, so much work, but it's all worth it.

Firstborn

Last week was Olivia's first week at a day camp. Every day, she went with our neighbor girl and another friend to the camp, and came home absolutely exhausted every afternoon. They did zip lines, went swimming twice a day, climbed rock walls, made crafts, sang songs, watched skits, played games, did archery, shot BB guns, made new friends, and probably some other stuff I've missed. It seemed like she grew up a little bit over the course of the week.
I'm so proud of her that she passed her swimming test at camp, since we put her in Saturday swim classes back in March just so she would know how to swim for camp. I thought she wasn't going to make it, but then, the week before camp was going to start, she swam 1/2 of the width of the pool by herself. The Saturday before camp, she swam even more. Then, on Monday, she passed her test by swimming by herself from the 4 ft to the 9 ft section of the pool. This non-swimming mamma was SO proud, and glad that she knows a life skill that should help keep her alive!
We're planning our very first multi-girl sleepover for her birthday party. Unfortunately, my daughter has four sets of friends (school, daycare, church, neighborhood) and has a list of 13 girls that all must be invited. And yes, I've looked at her list and she's right -- she can't leave any of them out. Let's just say... I'z a-skurrd. I'm REALLY hoping in that rule of thumb that says only 1/3 of the people you invite to a party actually come. Oh God, please let that be true.

Second Born

Amelia has been going through a stage of testing the boundaries. It gets tiring having to reaffirm our authority and boundaries over and over and over and over. But with Olivia, we are finally starting to see it pay off, so it gives me hope that if we stick with it, the same will happen with the other two. It's funny, though, because she has such a different personality than Olivia. Olivia would be flat out defiant and tell you, "I don't want to!" Amelia, though, says, "I caaannnn'ttt. I need heeellllppp." Or, she'll cry like she has a broken heart and almost manage to make you feel bad that you have told her to do something she doesn't want to do. Fun times.
She is also highly logical and can already find the loopholes in our rules. For example, she knows she's not supposed to stick her tongue out at her sister, so she poked her tongue into the side of her cheek and did it that way, which resulted in an angry tattletale from her sister, "She's sticking her tongue out at me inside her mouth!" After I stopped dying laughing, I had to amend the rule.
She eats like a bird and although she shot up in height over the last year, she only gained about a pound. She would probably eat more if we let her go straight to dessert, since she looovvveess her sweet stuff. But, she has the same rule as everyone else... no dessert unless you eat your dinner. And since she's beginning to walk in her older sister's picky-eater shoes, the dinner eating doesn't always go so well. So, here's a recent exchange: "Mamma, can I have a banana?" Me: "No, you didn't eat your dinner." A, sounding so sweet and innocent: "Is a banana dessert?" Me: Sigh. "No, I guess not." Hands her a banana. Dang it. I need to change that rule so that you have to eat your dinner before you can eat ANYTHING else. Stupid loophole.
But on a positive note, she is incredibly smart and sweet, and I'm excited to see how much she learns when they start their Abeka program in the fall at daycare. I've been teaching Olivia the 23rd Psalm and Amelia is learning it right along with her. She has a great memory. Of course, it COULD be my awesome teaching skills, particularly how I have set the 23rd Psalm to rap, which the kids love when it's their turn to spit into their hands to make the appropriate pathetically white kid rap noises while their mother makes even more pathetically white woman attempts at rapping Scripture... but that's another post for another day.

Baby

Elijah is pretty much pure joy at this stage. There are a few fits here and there, but mostly he's learning new words ("diaper change" is his new phrase) and discovering new things ("buh" a.k.a. bugs on the sidewalk are a particular fascination).
Even though he doesn't have a huge vocabulary, he's quite well aware of what's going on and what everyone else is saying. A couple of Sundays ago we were talking about going over to the in-law's house and as soon as we said the word "Memaw" he dropped his toy, started saying "Mawmaw", marched over to the front door, and started trying to reach the door knob while whimpering to leave. He was ready to go see his Memaw.
His favorite activity at home is brushing his teeth because he has learned from his sisters that you should spit into the sink when it's time to brush your teeth, and although he doesn't have fluoride toothpaste yet (since his second favorite activity is eating the training toothpaste), he stands on his stool and spits over and over and over into the sink. Sometimes, the spitting continues when he's made to finally leave the bathroom, but fortunately nothing much is left in his mouth at that point.
He loves books and reading and will sit in your lap for as long as you will read to him. It makes me a little sad for him that he's the baby in a busy family so that the time we have to read together is not nearly long enough.
My goal is to keep him as injury free as possible since he's in to everything and likes to climb on whatever is around to get to where he thinks he needs to be. His sisters' bunk beds are the kind with stairs that double as drawers, and he climbs up the stairs to the top bunk and then hollers until someone comes to save him, since he doesn't know how to get back down. I'm so thankful he doesn't try to get down by himself, but it's just a matter of time.

So that's the update on the kidlets. Thanks for indulging me... if I don't write this stuff down, I won't remember.

The Existence of God

2010-07-30T06:39:00.000-05:00

Increasingly over the years I have come to believe that the only proof of God that really matters is the internal proof that a person experiences when they exercise their faith in Him.

You can look around the vast and varied world full of physical laws and mathematic equations and think that it happened by chance.

You can look at a book that has guided the lives of millions on its timeless principles and call it flawed and contradictory;

You can look at people who have claimed to believe said book's principles and although they commit atrocities under the guise of it, you can say that it's because of them that the book isn't true;

You can say that miracles are simply anomolies or are the result of a person's mind (which evolved by chance) having the power to control their body;

You can say that if the person that book is written about really exists, then he's terrible at what you perceive his job to be; and

You can say that there is no external proof that that person exists anywhere.

But you cannot doubt that I have faith because if you know me, you have seen me exercise it. If you know me really well, you have seen me act on that faith time and time again and you have seen the positive outcomes every single time.

You cannot argue that I believe that I've had a personal experience with the person of that book.

You can think I'm wrong about that experience, you can think I'm crazy, and you can think I'm stupid for believing. But the wonderful thing about it is, what you think does not change my experience. It does not change the person of that book. It does not change what that person's function is in my life. It does not change how my life course has been changed over and over again due to my beliefs.

My prayer is that your eyes would be opened just a little by this entry, and that your mind would be open to see that another possibility exists other than what you may staunchly believe.

I've looked at the alternatives to my beliefs. I've examined and researched what I've been taught, and although I've come down a bit differently on some of what I was taught, the bottom line is that I believe that the person does exist. I believe that person is beyond our comprehension and that we will never understand all of his reasons in this life. I believe that person reveals things to us about other people that we had no prior knowledge of so that we can pray for them because he has revealed things to me about others. I believe that person has the power to change my life because he has. I believe that person has the power to give peace in situations where peace is completely illogical because he did it for me when it was unsure whether my baby was going to live. I believe he answers my prayers when I pray them according to his will because he has done it for me. I believe that he has the power to bring us out of our misery because he has done it for me. I believe he has the power to save marriages, if you are willing for it to be saved, because he has done it for me.

I believe that my life is better for knowing him. And I believe your's would be, too.

Vacation Thoughts

2010-07-21T12:40:00.000-05:00

Today I opened an email from a colleague and it had these thoughts on vacation, which I've expounded on below each one.

1. No man needs a vacation so much as the person who has just had one. ~Elbert Hubbard.

Wow, is this true when traveling with children, or what?! I've decided after our last two trips with kids that we will have two categories of trips: (1) relaxing vacations and (2) fun vacations. These categories could also be subtitled, (1) trips without kids and (2) trips with kids.

2. A good vacation is over when you begin to yearn for your work. ~Morris Fishbein.

I don't think I've ever had a vacation that makes me yearn for work, but I have had those that make me start to yearn for some order and schedule to my day. What can I say, but that I love routine?

3. The alternative to a vacation is to stay home and tip every third person you see. ~Author Unknown

Cruises are like this. Tip your waiter, tip your cabin steward, tip your guides, tip, tip, tip!

4. We hit the sunny beaches where we occupy ourselves keeping the sun off our skin, the saltwater off our bodies and the sand out of our belongings. ~Erma Bombeck

I don't think I've ever succeeded in keeping the sand out of my belongings, or off my body, for that matter!

5. Those who say you can't take it with you never saw a car packed for a vacation trip. ~Author Unknown

This is doubly true for those who must travel with babies. Good lord, I could not believe how much stuff it took when I first traveled with Olivia when she was a baby. Diapers, wipes, bottles, extra clothes, burp cloths, play pen, stroller, and on and on it goes. Once they're out of diapers, it's so much easier (though still no walk in the park).

6. No vacation goes unpunished. ~Karl Hakkarainen

Karl Hakkerainen must come back to an email inbox of 200+ emails like I have before. It's just depressing, and makes number 1 on this list feel absolutely true.

7. Vacation: a period of travel and relaxation when you take twice the clothes and half the money you need. ~Author Unknown

See #3 above for why this is true!

All this vacation talk has me wanting to take one. Unfortunately, I'll have to settle for my reggae station on Pandora for now. Maybe if I listen to it at work and close my eyes REALLY tight, it will feel like I'm in the islands.

Never mind. It didn't work.

Eating at Home

2010-07-17T20:02:00.000-05:00

If I were a good writer, I would be able to craft a really great way to write about how the rhythms of family life ebb and flow around meals and food. About how feeding our children is such a primal way of meeting one of their most basic needs. About how it is a sacred responsibility to meet those basic needs of our family. And about how you can find meaning in meeting those basic needs for them.

But instead, all I can think to say is (in a Forrest Gump voice), we've been eatin' at home a lot 'round here. And it's been fun. And I'm surprised it's been fun.

I signed up to Leanne Ely's Saving Dinner Menu Mailer, and every week she sends her subscribers three different dinner menus, daytime eating suggestions, and a shopping list. Since signing up for her list, we've enjoyed getting out of the rut (or more like chasm) that we were in with our meals. And not only that, but for the first time since I've been keeping track of our expenses, which is well over a year, our grocery bill is outpacing our eating out bill. It's amazing.

But what's surprised me the most is how much I have enjoyed feeding my family. Having new things to try helps me to look forward to cooking, and having everyone around the table together is almost healing to the soul after a day where we all spend our hours apart from each other.

And it's not just been the weekdays. Really, it's always been the weekends that have been the bane of our food budget. We're always so busy on the weekends, and on the go so much, that I never would even plan a menu for the weekends. It was two days of play-it-by-ear, and IF we did eat at home, it was just a pantry grab kind of meal, where I created something out of what we had.

But now, I take a little more time to plan my weekend menu, and if we're going to be on the go, I make sure we either have things we can eat at a park somewhere, or I make sure something is put in the crock pot in earlier in the day. The crock pot especially works well on Sundays, so that we can come home immediately after church and eat right away.

The only draw back is that we are not socializing as much as we used to, since eating out was our time to be with friends. And with the family at home on weekends, the house is so messy the entire two days, so it's hard to invite friends over. It's a challenge I'm going to have to figure a way around.

The family time spent together around the table has been wonderful, and, back to the Forrest Gump voice, I like it a lot.

God's Grace

2010-07-12T12:36:00.002-05:00

This past Friday night, I spent some much-needed time with great friends of mine who have been the iron that sharpens my iron. They have walked with me to great spiritual depths, and know way more about me than I would want the average person to know. With the birth of my three children, we've not had the chance to get together much, so Friday was a night for catching up, but also for discussing our latest Biblical revelations. For my friend, she has recently come into a deeper revelation of God's grace, about the true meaning of what Romans means when it says "there is no condemnation for those who are in Christ." Her enthusiasm on the topic was infectious, and all weekend I've been thinking about God's grace.

Yesterday, I watched this video about the tragedy in the life of the author of the hymn, "It is Well with My Soul", and it's pretty much a modern day Job story, except without the ultra-happy ending. As you may already know, he lost virtually everything in the Chicago fire, lost a son to scarlet fever, then lost all four of his remaining children at sea (and later, after he wrote this song, he and his wife had 3 more children, 1 of which died at age 4). I looked up the lyrics because I can only ever remember parts of the song. This verse, which he wrote as his ship passed the place where his 4 daughters died, jumped out at me, after our talks on grace Friday night:

My sin, oh, the bliss of this glorious thought!
My sin, not in part but the whole,
Is nailed to the cross, and I bear it no more,
Praise the Lord, praise the Lord, O my soul!

I wondered if Mr. Spafford stood there thinking it was something he had done that caused God to take his fortune and his children. I wonder if he thought of sins he'd committed, and felt, for a moment, condemnation for those sins and felt that his losses were retribution.

How many of us have done the same, thinking that things that have happened to us are because of something that we have done? How many of us, due to a lack of a true understanding of God's grace, wonders, "Why me?" when things happen? Isn't it true that at the root of the "Why me?" is a belief that if He had been paying attention, He would have seen that we were being "good" and weren't deserving of what's happened? Isn't that a "works will save us" mentality that makes God's grace moot?

Spafford, if he had those thoughts, must have come to the same conclusion. The circumstances of a child of God are not because of a god sitting up in heaven waiting for an opportunity to mete out judgment for our sins. The judgment for those sins already happened at the cross. Therefore, Spafford's tragic loss could not possibly have been because of his sins. He bore those sins no more, and neither do we bear our sins anymore, thanks to God's grace. It was not his "fault" for what happened because God doesn't see our faults after we come to the cross. And what relief (or, as he calls it, bliss) he felt at that thought!

One fascinating footnote: Can you guess what he named his youngest child, born after the tragedy at sea? Yep, she was named Grace.

Another fascinating footnote: After Grace was born, the Spaffords moved to Jerusalem and started a ministry that helped people regardless of their religion or nationality. It was a ministry that continued many years, outlasting Spafford's own life. It's so metaphorical, isn't it? After Grace came, a ministry that helped tens of thousands was born. The same can happen for us and through us, if we get a revelation of God's grace.

Personalities Changing in Marriage: A Case Study

2010-06-29T13:54:00.000-05:00

My husband and I have discovered something quite interesting: after 12 years of being together, we're becoming more alike.

OK, so maybe that's not the interesting part. The interesting thing is the proof we have of it.

A couple of weeks ago, I had Jonny take a Myers-Briggs personality test online. It's just a quick little test, and not the "official" testing, but it gives you a pretty good idea of which of the sixteen personality types you are.

And as we went down the test, and I read the questions aloud to him, I could predict his answers to most of the questions (because that's what happens after 12 years). But another thing caught my attention. Some of his answers to the questions, while true of him now, were not true of him when we first got married. In the end, he tested out to be an ESFJ, or, as this website calls it, a Caregiver. Here's the quick blurb about him:

"Warm-hearted, popular, and conscientious. Tend to put the needs of others over their own needs. Feel strong sense of responsibility and duty. Value traditions and security. Interested in serving others. Need positive reinforcement to feel good about themselves. Well-developed sense of space and function."

And now, if you didn't already, you know Jonny.

Later, I took the same test, just to see how I tested out. I have, in the past, tested out to be an INTJ, or, the Scientist. The blurb about INTJ states that they are independent, original, analytical, and determined; that they highly value knowledge, competence, and structure; and that they have very high standards for their performance, and the performance of others.

And now you know me 10 years ago.

But now, after 12 years of being with Jonny, my "T", which stands for "Thinking" is turning to his "F", which stands for "Feeling."

Maybe I can't blame Jonny entirely for this loss of my love of logic over feelings. Having children, which one parenting expert said is akin to watching your heart walk around outside of your chest, may have had something to do with it, too. Plus, my former favorite character in all of fiction, Spock (yes, that Spock), has been off of TV and movies for a while, and I haven't had my Vulcan logic fix until last year's Star Trek movie.

Thanks to all that, I'm now a INFJ, the Protector, which is the rarest of personalities.

Great. Now here's proof I'm weird. ;-).

My blurb says I'm quietly forceful, original, and sensitive; tend to stick to things until they are done, extremely intuitive about people, and concerned for their feelings; have a well-developed value system which they strictly adhere to; am well-respected for my perserverence in doing the right thing; likely to be individualistic, rather than leading or following.

So, to recap, just so no one is lost, I blame Jonny, my children, and Spock for my personality change.

After I thought about how Jonny has affected my personality over the years, and how his answers to the questions on the test would have been different several years ago, I looked up the description of the ESFP. The questions he answered differently were for determining the last letter, the "J" (Judging) or "P" (Perceiving). Of course, J is my letter and it has always been my letter. That hasn't changed about me and probably never will.

Here's what it says abut the ESFP: "People-oriented and fun-loving, they make things more fun for others by their enjoyment. Living for the moment, they love new experiences. They dislike theory and impersonal analysis. Interested in serving others. Likely to be the center of attention in social situations. Well-developed common sense and practical ability."

And now you know Jonny from 10 years ago.

So, to interpret all this data like a good scientist would do (see, I haven't lost it all): Jonny has made me more sensitive to feelings, and I have made him like schedules and organization more. And although the testing isn't showing it, I think the reverse is also true: he has made me become a more "go with the flow" person so that I don't have to have a minute-by-minute plan for our lives and I have made him a little more logical so that people's feelings aren't the main consideration in decisions.

Basically, we have improved each other's personalities over the years. And isn't that a picture of what a good marriage should accomplish?

Barbies for Donuts

2010-06-11T12:02:00.000-05:00

The other day, after running out of milk (ergo no cereal) and not having enough frozen waffles for everyone, I gave the girls options for breakfast: the donut shop or McDonalds. And what did they choose? Of course, they didn't choose the same place: Olivia chose donuts and Amelia chose McDonalds. And neither one would budge from their choice

I told the girls to get in the car, while I put Eli in his car seat and tried to think of a way out of having to choose who's place to go to without making the other one upset. Then, as they're climbing in the car, Olivia announces, "We agreed! Donut shop."

I looked to Amelia, and she's nodding. "You want to go to the donut shop?"

She was still nodding, so I asked them suspiciously, "How did y'all decide?" Olivia, as the oldest, tends to be able to bend her sister's will in ways that is not fair to Amelia.

"I told her I would give her any one of my Barbies if she would go to the donut shop," she announced proudly. They were both smiling, both of them obviously pleased with the outcome.

At first, I thought of Esau, and how he traded his birthright for a pot of stew. He's generally not been too well thought of throughout history for this choice (though I've always felt sorry for the guy, who was really hungry and who had a conniving little brother).

But this isn't the same as that. This was negotiation at its finest: Olivia came up with a win-win for both parties. Or maybe it was even a win-win-win; "giving" the Barbie to Amelia doesn't come with any real consequences, since sharing a room means sharing toys. Hmmm, now that I think about it, in this situation it may in fact be the oldest who was conniving rather than the youngest. Although, it's not as if Amelia doesn't like donuts, and she came out of this deal with donuts AND a Barbie.

It's hard to tell who won the most out of this deal. But overall, I was proud of Olivia and Amelia for working out their difference of opinion through good, solid (and calm!) negotiation. And that's more than most adults can do.

Makes this lawyer mamma so proud!!

I'm Not Dying Tomorrow

2010-06-09T12:51:00.001-05:00

I don't like using my blog as a soap box, but since it's rare, I hope you'll indulge me.

If I hear the phrase, "Live like today's your last," or any variation thereof, I swear I'm going to blow a gasket. Or maybe I already have.

Here are reasons why I should not live like today is my last:

(1) I have a job. If I knew I would die tomorrow, I would not come to work. Therefore, if I live every day like it's my last, and skip work, I will get fired. If I get fired, my family will not have enough money to meet it's needs. Therefore, I think I'll just go on in into work, ok?

(2) My family has other things to do. If I were dying tomorrow, I would want my kids and my husband to spend every waking moment with me (and maybe even skip sleeping tonight). But if I do that every day, we would never spend any time apart and we'd be awfully tired. That's not healthy. In fact, that would just be weird.

(3) I may be thin, but not that thin. If it were my last day, there would be no counting of Weight Watcher points or holding back on getting another helping or refusing to eat a pastry some evil person has brought to work. Oh no, I would eat anything and everything I wanted to, and then I'd get a second and third helping of it all. Heck, I may even purge so I could do it a fourth and fifth time, since who needs to worry about the effects of purging if you're about to die? Somehow, I don't think it's wise to eat like that every day.

(4) I'd never get to read another book or movie. If I lived like I were dying, then I'd call everyone who has read the books I never got around to, and who has seen the movies I never got to see, and I'd find out what happened. If I did this on a daily basis, then that would ruin all the fun, right?

(5) My house would be horrible. Do you think I'm going to do any housework on my last day alive? Um, no. If I lived every day like this -- well, truthfully, I already live too many days like this, so maybe I should just move on to the next topic.

(6) I don't want to be depressed. If tomorrow was the big day, I'd probably get pretty upset about it. And so would my children. And my husband. And my mother. So I don't think I want those people (or me!) going around assuming that I'm dying tomorrow. Kind of a downer.

Obviously, the reason everyone is going around saying, "Live like you're not promised tomorrow" is because we're not. I get that. The point is to live your priorities, tell people you love them and how much they mean to you, think twice about letting conflict between you and loved ones remain unresolved, get right with God, and all that kind of stuff.

But if you already live that way, it gets really old hearing people yammer on about dying tomorrow.

Of course, it occurs to me, if I die tomorrow, won't I look silly?! Maybe if someone could just tell me how this series I'm reading ends, just in case....

Things I Learned Camping

2010-06-03T22:08:00.000-05:00

Last weekend, we ventured out on our first camping trip in the trailer my grandfather gave to us, and we made some great (and not-so-great) memories. I also learned a lot, and I list some of those things below, in no particular order:

Scorpions are scared of screaming mothers. I saw a scorpion in person, in the wild, for the first time ever. It was in the bathroom by the pool in the RV park, near a drain and between me and my girls. I would like to say I calmly directed my daughters to walk around it to get to me, but I sort of freaked out. I mean, really, have you seen the tail on those things?! Then, I realized the poor scorpion was injured and was trying to get to the drain so it could get away from us. Apparently, scorpions do not like screaming mothers.
Kids who have never been in a pool before don't know how deep they are. Amelia didn't know how pools work, apparently, and she walked right off the step and into the shallow end, but even that was over her head. She didn't make that mistake twice.
I love ice cream. OK, that's not something I learned, but I did find a new kind I like. We toured the Blue Bell Ice Cream factory, and Jonny, Olivia and I all discovered ice cream flavors we had never tried but love. Jonny likes Summer Berry and Olivia and I like Krazy Kookie Dough. Mmmm, wish I had some right now!

Miniature horses are apparently not as mean as I have always heard. We visited a monastery where they raise miniature horses, and they all seemed docile, and even shy. Just look at how easy-going these two horses were in the gift shop:

Babies don't think 3 a.m. is too early to explore a new place. Elijah woke up in the middle of the night and decided it would be a great time to check out the trailer. I, on the other hand, decided it was a good time for some Benadryl.
People live in RV parks. I knew this already, but seeing it in action is something entirely different. This topic deserves its own blog because after this trip, I have enough material to write quite a bit. Let's just say we met some interesting people.
If you own a farm in the country, you can get city folk to pay to come do what farmers consider work. We had an incredibly awesome time at the Jersey Barnyard, where we got to feed goats, ducks, rabbits, chickens, turkeys, doves, sheep, and cows.

5 month old baby cows can drain a bottle in half a minute. This is not an exaggeration.

A 3 year old can milk a cow, call it "milking" a cow, and still think that it was water that came out of the cow. Amelia loved milking this cow. She liked it more than anyone else on the tour. She asked over and over to be able to do it again, and they let her do it about 4 different times before we had to continue the tour. Later, she told her grandmother that she "milked the cow and water came out!" Hmmmm....

Olivia isn't wild about 600 pound pigs named Ethel. I tried to get her to touch Ethel, to see what she felt like. This was her reaction:

Hamburgers on a tiny propane grill are pretty darn good. And the man who grilled them is pretty darn good, too. He even got up in the middle of the night to go out and check on a busted water house that was leaking. He's handsome, he's handy, and he grills well. What more can you ask for?

I love my family. There's another one I knew already. But seriously, how could you not? Look at those faces!

Multitasking Toddler

2010-05-24T19:26:00.001-05:00

Well, it had to happen some time, I suppose. My dear, sweet, cuddly, laid-back baby boy has begun the transformation into opinionated, finicky, fit-throwing toddler.

The metamorphasis became apparent the other night when he demonstrated budding multi-tasking (and gymnastic) ability by showing me he could arch his spine, throw back his head, and scream, all at the same time. He multitasked several times that night, and I feared we were entering into a really horrible stage. It turned out he was just extra cranky from not getting his nap out during the day, and he hasn't multitasked quite so many times in one night since then.

I don't know if it's because he's a boy, or because he's the last born, or a combination of the above, but he is simply not as advanced verbally as the girls were at this age. When they began showing off their multitasking skills at his age, I would tell them, "Use your words." And they would. They would tell me what they wanted, and I would say yes or no, and then we would go from there. It drastically reduced their fits because they learned to communicate in a different, more socially acceptable way (though I know several adults who still haven't learned this skill).

But with Elijah, I haven't been able to use the same tactic. He doesn't have all the words he needs to tell me what he wants. This leads to exchanges like this one, from yesterday:

E, multiasking (deep, throaty scream, accompanied by plopping down on the ground.)

Me: "Use your words, Elijah"

E, multitasking (deeper, throatier, louder scream, accompanied by pointing at his drink.)

Me, trying again: "Use your words, Elijah"

E, no change.

Me, lowering my standards: "Ok, say 'num num' (his word for his cup)."

E, still no change.

Me, practically giving up: "Ok, just say any word, any word other than screaming, and you can have your drink."

I would like to say that I held firm on principle, but actually I think I got distracted by one of the other kids, only to tune in moments later to see him get up, walk over to the counter, point at his drink and say calmly, "Num num, num num, num num."

Multitasking Training Score: E: 0 Me: 1

Go me!

Eli's Ears

2010-05-21T17:26:00.000-05:00

So today was the big day, when Eli had tubes put in his little ears while Mamma tried not to think about her son being the potential 1 in 1,000,000 who has problems waking up from general anesthesia.

One of those things went well and one didn't. I'll let you guess which one. ;-)

I think the thing I want to record for posterity is the conversation of a woman in the waiting room filled with other kids getting the same procedure as Eli. While on the phone, the woman called her son's school because she had forgotten to let them know he wouldn't be there because, as she put it, they were "here at the hospital to get my son's tubes tied." Lets hope that's not what they tried to do to the kid!

After the procedure, we got to go back to see our groggy son, who was drinking a bottle for the first time in two months. The poor little guy hadn't been able to eat or drink anything all day, and it was about 10:30 at this point. He was downing his apple juice and let me hold him like a baby while he drank his bottle. It was a sweet moment, since he never lets me hold him like that anymore.

When the bottle was drained, he became like Jack-Jack in The Incredibles, almost bursting into flames as his whole face and neck turned almost purple from screaming for more. I'm pretty sure the message he was trying to get across was: DO NOT DEPRIVE A GROWING BOY FROM HIS FOOD AND DRINK FOR 15 HOURS!! Everyone in the recovery room got the message, and a nurse hurried to get him some more.

He downed that, turned back into Jack-Jack, and so they brought him a popsicle. He was so ravenous, he grabbed at it, broke it in half, and one thing led to another until we had to throw it away. Back to Jack-Jack.

The only thing that saved us was that this was a children's hospital that has cool stuff, in this case, a little motorized plastic Elmo that lowers his arm, dips a little bubble stick in some bubble soap, puts it up to his mouth, and blows bubbles. It's a really cute little toy, and it distracted Eli enough to make him forget about his popsicle getting thrown away.

Before they left, they told us not to let him walk or crawl all day (whatever.) and to not feed him anything until he was able to hold liquids down for 1 hour (whatever.) When we got home, he drank some water, held it down for 30 minutes, and started saying, "nack! nack!" (snack). I caved and gave him some plain toast, hoping it wasn't going to mean that in a few minutes he would puke all his apple juice, popsicle, water and toast all over me. Fortunately, all went well, and he held it down without a problem.

He's currently crawling and walking all over the house and is now trying to shake the crap out of the doors that cover our fireplace. Overall, everything has turned out just great!

Now, if we can just avoid having anymore Jack-Jack episodes, we'll be fantastic!

Oh, What a Day!

2010-05-18T10:34:00.002-05:00

Yesterday, I...

lost my dog, when he escaped from the yard and was picked up by Animal Control;
found out that, contrary to what I had been told, my insurance would not cover the cost of O's x-ray for the stick in her arm, and I now owe $238;
stepped foot inside a children's hospital for the first time in my 34 years of life to take Elijah for his pre-op appointment for his ear tube procedure on Friday;
had to unexpectedly pay $500 up front for Elijah's procedure;
discovered that I don't have near what I thought I had left in my flex plan for medical expenses, and I will have to pay the majority of all these medical expenses out of pocket; and
received a tax valuation showing that we will owe taxes this year on our mineral interest for which we have yet to receive one dime of royalties.

Oh, and my husband is gone on a week-long training where he is unreachable, my mother and grandmother are gone on a cruise, and my great-aunt died over the weekend.

I have to say, it's almost comical when I read back over this. Seriously? When it rains it pours, right?!

Despite all of that, I really couldn't feel too badly. While at the children's hospital, I saw a group of kids sitting in the atrium working on a craft. Some kids were in wheel chairs, some were bald, and I hugged Elijah a little closer, grateful that we were only there because he has chronic ear infections and not something worse. It did not escape me that this was a place where my biggest and deepest fears were coming true for other families.

While in the elevator of the parking garage, another woman, who looked younger than me, was there talking on her phone and her side of the conversation was, "We don't know, they say every case is different and they can't tell us for sure. (Pause.) Yeah, I have to make a list because they will only let five people back to see him, and I don't know what I'm going to do about that." Infer what you will about "him" from this conversation, but it doesn't sound good.

So, when I got home and had all three of my children with me, healthy, happy, and energetic, it was hard to feel too sorry for myself about all the other stuff that happened.

And it reminded me once more that perspective is everything when it comes to attitude. Sometimes we want to wallow in self-pity and get upset when people don't validate our feelings by saying, "It could always be worse." But the truth is, it COULD. And it isn't. And for that I'm grateful.

The Day that Changed My Life

2010-04-30T17:32:00.000-05:00

Yesterday, my life changed drastically.

Or, more accurately, yesterday something happened that will cause my life to change drastically on October 1, 2010. And not just my life, but the lives of all five of our family members.

Yesterday, against all odds, and against the predictions of everyone in the office (including me), my boss agreed to let me reduce my hours to 32 per week.

This is historic. It's monumental. It's life changing in ways I'm still processing.

(1) I'll be able to pick up my daughter from school when it lets out.
(2) We will have time to do homework.
(3) We can read together.
(4) We can have a library day.
(5) We can have a park day.
(7) We can have a "watch TV while Mamma lays down on the bed for a minute" day.
(8) We can eat things for dinner that need to cook in the oven for longer than 15 minutes.
(9) We can attend things in the evening without having to eat in the car.
(10) We can plan things for the evening because we can actually make it there on time.
(11) I will be happier, therefore everyone else will be happier.

This arrangement is what I've always wanted -- to work during school hours, and then be able to pick my kids up from school. And it will be even better when all three kids are actually in school and we won't have to pay for child care at all. That's a concept I never thought was possible for us.

Of course, for a reduction in hours, you must take a proportional cut in pay. But I'm all for it, if it gives me what I've always wanted.

I'm still a little in shock, I think.

October 1 can't get here fast enough.

Amelia is Three!

2010-04-28T06:48:00.000-05:00

It's cliche, but true -- it's hard to believe that my sweet Millie is turning three today. As per our tradition, I am taking the day off to celebrate with her, while the other two are at school and daycare. One-on-one time is rare for any of my kids, so it's one of my gifts to them to spend the entire day with them on their birthday. Not sure what we'll do today, but it'll be her choice all the way. We will definitely make rainbow cupcakes, since that has been her one request for what she wants on her special day. The other requests were for colors and magnets (not sure what kind she's thinking of), and so maybe we'll color together, too.

I like to try to write tributes to my kids on their birthdays, and Millie makes it easy. She is sweet, tenderhearted, loving, independent, outgoing, funny, and so very special.

She loves to laugh and to make people laugh, and I will never forget how her daddy took her to the store to let her buy anything she wanted, and she chose the Groucho Marx glasses/rubber nose/mustache toy over anything else. If she does something she thinks is funny and I don't respond, she insists, "Laugh, Mamma!"

She is a good big sister to her brother, and tries to help him whenever he needs it. She's a typical little sister to her big sister by alternately worshiping her and envying her.

She is so tenderhearted and responds well to correction. In fact, I have to watch my tone of voice with her because if it gets too stern or the slightest bit angry-sounding, she dissolves into tears. The mere threat of being in trouble usually makes her cry and gains her compliance.

She's quite the ham, and at her sister's school talent show she begged to go up on stage. Since we obviously couldn't allow that, she got out into the aisle and danced, entertaining everyone around us.

She is like me and has so much trouble falling asleep at night. She can take or leave a nap, though if she doesn't take one it's easier for her to go to sleep at night.

She is finally potty-trained, a year and a half after telling me for the first time that she had to go potty and then actually going in the potty. I thought I had it made, but it turns out not so much.

She is so linguistically advanced that I sometimes forget how young she is. She still does not know all of her ABCs by sight, but the vocabulary the girl has is astounding. It makes it hard to remember that I should be working with her on her letters. She can do A, B, C, D, E, L, M, and O right now, though D is a little if-y. We have flash cards for the letters, and she would much rather hold the flash cards herself and quiz me than the other way around.

Her independence is both a postive and a negative trait, as it is with anyone. I had to introduce the concept of teamwork to her so that she would let me help her with the things that she thinks she can do herself, but can't. Now, if we do something together (which I have assured her is not the same as me helping her), she and I say simultaneously, "Teamwork!" and give each other a high five. It works most of the time, though not always.

At daycare, she likes to greet the parents of the other kids and inform them on how their kid did that day. That's the big sister in her. But apparently, the report is not always a good one. And that's the little sister in her.

She is a bit of a daredevil, and we have to keep an eye on her. Even as a baby, she loved it when her daddy would throw her up in the air. She wants to go as high as possible on the swings, and doesn't seem to have enough of a healthy fear of things, at least enough for my taste as a protective mother. On the other hand, she is terrified of dogs, although she's getting a little better about it lately.

She loves her daddy so much and I anticipate that she will be a daddy's girl all of her life. She wants to go everywhere with him and always asks where he is if he's not home.

She brings us so much joy and laughter, and I love her so much. Happy Birthday, Millie!

How Olivia Got Her Scar

2010-04-26T10:44:00.001-05:00

After not having blogged in for-freakin'-ever, I have to start with something that happened a month ago, so I can record for posterity how Olivia got a scar on Easter weekend.

The story actually starts the weekend before Easter, when my husband was standing on top of the dog house so he could talk to the next-door-neighbor over the fence about, ironically, the need to replace the fence. (You'll see the irony momentarily.) These particular neighbors have kids our age (plus a few more), so Olivia had climbed up on top of the horizontal bar on the wood fence so she could talk to the kids while the men talked fences.

I was in the front of the house painting the trim when she came bursting out of the front door. "Mamma, I hurt my arm on the fence, and a big stick was poking out of my arm, but I got it out." No tears, no crying, no drama, as one might expect from my eldest child, but rather merely a breathlessly delivered piece of information.

I took a look at her arm, which was all scraped up, with a little hole where a piece of fence had stuck in her arm. "Oooo, that looks like it hurt. Did you get all of the stick out?"

She said she did, and we went inside, put medicine and a bandaid on her, and went about our day.

Over the course of the next week, the small scrapes around the opening began to heal, and what was left was a long raised bump that started about an 1/8 of an inch from the injury, and it looked like something was still in her arm. It was so far from the initial opening that I had a hard time believing that it was actually a piece of the fence still stuck in there. Surely she would know. I asked her several times toward the end of the week, "Does it feel like something's in there?" She would say no, that it just felt bruised when I touched it.

Then, on Easter day, we went to my Mom's for lunch, and I consulted the experts: my mom and my brother-in-law, who is studying to be a nurse. My BIL felt around on it gingerly, and then gently but firmly pushed on the very end of the bump. At that point, you could clearly see that there WAS still a piece of the fence in her arm, when the other end of the "stick" as we've come to call it, protruded up against the skin.

At that point, I let out a huge gasp, my hands flew to my mouth, and in general I just did not display a calm demeanor. This, in turn, caused a chain reaction by making my daughter get scared, which resulted in me feeling terrible.

My husband and BIL took her to the bathroom and messed around with it for a moment, but it was so far up into her arm and away from the original opening that there was no way we would be able to get it out ourselves.

So, we all loaded up, met my in-laws at our house so they could watch the two younger kids, and then Jonny and I went up to the hospital with Olivia.

When the doctor first saw us, he warned us that with it being week-old wood, it could disintegrate when he started to pull it out, and if that happened, he would have to stop and send us to a surgeon. "It won't be any big deal, it's just that we aren't equipped to handle it if it starts falling apart." OK, buddy, maybe not a big deal to you, but it's a huge deal to me to have to take my daughter to a surgeon for ANY reason!

Jonny and I both said silent prayers that it would come out ok without having to do any further visits. The doctor had to deaden the area with local anesthesia, which, if you've ever had it, you know how much it stings to get those shots. He gave her about 6 or 7 shots around the area, and she screamed in pain. I thought I was going to throw up right there, but I held it together as my penance for freaking out at mom's house and making her scared.

It took a while, but after making the initial opening a little larger, he managed to pull the entire stick out at once. X-rays ordered by her pediatrician two days later confirmed that it all came out in one piece. It was about 3/4 of an inch long, which sounds small, but is pretty big when it's a stick that's stuck in your arm.

(As an aside, I have to say, it was the best E.R. experience I have ever had. We were ushered right in, saw the doctor almost immediately, and were walking out of the hospital within an hour. So, the moral of the story is, if you're going to have an emergency, do it on Easter afternoon.)

Fortunately, Olivia is young enough to think it is really cool to have a scar. The entire area has healed quite nicely, and is not in a noticeable place. And, we got to keep all three of the medical instruments he used on her (and I have no idea what to do with them now), plus he put the stick in a clear plastic container for her, which she took to school to show off.

Overall, it turned out well, and I'm hoping that's the last Easter ever that I have to spend at the E.R.! And, by the way, we're scheduled to get a new fence this week.

Low Down on Kids' Cereal

2010-04-05T15:12:00.000-05:00

Boy, do I have a good story about this weekend. But since I don't have time to tell it right now, here's something I found very interesting: ratings on popular children's cereals by Consumer Reports. Some of these were shocking to me, since I have heretofore banned several of these "Very Good" and "Good" from our house. Looks like I'm about to make a couple of kiddos (or as I call them, "kiddettes") very happy when I buy them some Lucky Charms. It also looks like one of their favorites, Cinnamon Toast Crunch (or as they call it, "Crunch") would fall somewhere in one of the top two categories, with 1.1 gram of fiber and 9.9 grams of sugar. (Gotta love it that they don't round up to 10.)

SOME OF CONSUMER REPORTS' RATINGS

Ranks are in parentheses next to the cereal's name.

Very Good

Cheerios (1)
Fiber: 3 grams
Sugar: 1 gram

Kix (2)
Fiber: 3 grams
Sugar: 3 grams

Frosted Mini-Wheats (5)
Fiber: 6 grams
Sugar: 12 grams

Lucky Charms (9)
Fiber: 1 gram
Sugar: 11 grams

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -

Rating: Good

Fiber Sugar

Cookie Crisp (7) 1 grams 11 grams

Cocoa Puffs (10) 1 grams 12 grams

Trix (12) 1 grams 13 grams

Cocoa Pebbles (14) 3 grams 11 grams

- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Rating: Fair

Sugar Sodium

Froot Loops (24) 12 grams 135 mgs

Golden Crisp (25) 14 grams 25 mgs

Honey Smacks (26) 15 grams 50 mgs

Corn Pops (27) 12 grams 110 mgs

Can't Live If Living is Without You

2010-03-30T12:40:00.000-05:00

Sunday night, Jonny pulled up some retro songs for us, staring with Ice, Ice Baby by Vanilla Ice, since I was shocked and appalled that my husband can actually remember all the words to that song. Of course, I use the word "song" quite loosely.

Anyway, one of the songs that he pulled up was Mariah Carey's version of I Can't Live If Living is Without You. We sang it to each other in ridiculous fashion across the table as the kids watched, too young to realize just how embarrassed and horrified they should be.

After it was over, I said to Jonny, "Speaking of not living if living is without you, I have two things to tell you."

First, I told him how the husband of an elderly couple we know of but don't know personally passed away last week. At his side on his deathbed, his wife leaned over and said to him, "Let's go together." He died, and two days later, so she got her wish and she also died. The family had a double funeral last Friday. Terribly sad and amazingly sweet all at the same time.

Second, I told him how when I was at Family Dollar earlier in the day, an elderly man dressed in a suit was at the counter as I approached. I didn't see what he was buying because they already had it bagged, but he was counting out his money. "How much was it?" They told him, and he said, "Well, I don't have enough." He started to put his money away as if to leave, but the sweet women behind the counter asked him how much he had, and told him they would make up the .75 difference. He walked out with his purchase, and one of the women told the other one that the man had lost his wife about a month ago, and now he seems so lost. He will come into the store, and look around as if he's not entirely sure what he needs to buy, and just seems to not know what to do with himself. It was heartbreaking.

As a teenager, although I liked Mariah Carrey's song, I thought it was ridiculous to say that if you can't be with someone you would die. And for a teenager, it IS ridiculous. But for couples who have been married almost their entire lives, it's not so far-fetched. Two lives really do become one, and you come to depend on the other person in ways you don't even realize until they aren't there. When you've walked the same path with the same person for so many years, it's just not the same path when they aren't along side you anymore.

Companionship, love, friendship, inside jokes, shared memories... that's what mature love brings to the table, and it's worth far, far more than all the giddy excitement of new love. Seventeen days ago was the 12th anniversary of when my husband asked me to marry him. We've long since become one, and depend on each other in ways we don't even realize, and in ways we fully understand, too. I'm not so much on the "Let's go together" thing right now, but in about another 58 years, absolutely. Let's go together.

Jumpin' Jeepers!

2010-03-29T09:30:00.002-05:00

OK, that's probably the lamest title I've ever come up with, and I've had some lame ones. But hey, it's got alliteration, and the word "Jeep" buried in there, which is the whole point of this post.

My husband is now the proud owner of a Jeep that looks a lot like this one, only with a little more tan in the "roof".

Me? I'm more of a reluctant owner. I mean, it's cool and all, and kinda fun to ride in, with the wind blowing through your hair, and the crazy-loud subwoofer blasting the beat, but SO not practical. Our entire family won't fit in it (hence the reason I was the 1,257th person to ride in the Jeep, because someone has to stay home with at least one of our kids in order to ride in it, and Jonny kept saying "go ahead, take it for a drive", but it's a standard and I haven't driven a standard in about 100 years, and I really didn't want to lurch down the street in front of all of our neighbors while I get the hang of it again). Plus, it's not exactly my idea of safe, what with all that open space and no metal between the kiddos and, say, an 18 wheeler.

But, alas, I have kept my mouth mostly shut (previous paragraph and a few thinly veiled comments excepted), and gone along with it. Jonny, to his credit, did a ton of research, waited until he found just the right one, and drove a hard bargain to get a great deal. He paid cash, and he now has a much-needed second car for the family, since he was slated to get a new work truck with a GPS monitor installed to enforce the restrictions of only driving the work truck for work purposes. Although he had permission from his boss to pick up the kids and to do small errands on the weekend, now that the GPS monitor is there, his boss can't permit such exceptions to the rule.

And it worked out really well because he bought the Jeep, and the very next day, he got the call that his new work truck was ready. Thank the Lord! The timing couldn't have been more perfect. Also, although the Jeep was advertised through a dealership, it turned out to be owned by the dealer himself, so we did not have to pay sales tax, saving us about $1,000. Woo hoo!

Jonny has cleaned out the garage so he can park the Jeep inside. It's been a long time since the garage was clean enough to park in it, so long, apparently, that Amelia does not remember it. After a trip to the store with Daddy, and parking the Jeep in the garage for the first time, Amelia came in the house, wide-eyed, and said, "Daddy drove the Jeep right into our house!" LOL!!

Our friend and pastor said jokingly, upon hearing about the Jeep, "Yeah, I read that mid-life crisis is coming earlier and earlier these days." But if that's all he does for a mid-life crisis is to buy a Jeep, I can handle that. And, the sweet thing is, if it becomes a serious mid life crisis, and he gets insane and leaves me, he will never be able to fit all of his children AND his girlfriend in his Jeep. Bwahahahahahaaha!!! ;-)

Elijah's Bloody Adventure

2010-03-25T18:37:00.001-05:00

Apparently, I missed taking Elijah to the doctor for his 9 month check up. So, instead of only getting three shots today, he had to get four, plus the finger prick/blood draw they are supposed to do at 9 months to check for anemia. Oops.

Around here, there's always something happening to make me feel like a completely incompetent mother. And I'm not even referring to the missed doctor's appointment. No, I'm talking about the incident after the blood draw that left Elijah and I both in a bloody mess, looking more like we should be coming in to the doctor's office than going out.

After the lab tech drew the blood from the finger prick, she put a bandaid on it and said, "Leave it on for five minutes and then be sure and take it off so he doesn't get it off his finger and choke." Yeah, sure, I'm willing to leave it on for five minutes. Elijah, not so much. He immediately put the finger with the bandaid in his mouth and went to work trying to get it off his finger.

We walked around the corner from the lab to the checkout counter, and just as I'm signing out, Elijah manages to get the bandaid off with his mouth. So, I drop the pen, and dig the bandaid out of his mouth. Elijah, like most babies -- heck, like most PEOPLE -- isn't particularly fond of having someone else's finger stuck in his mouth. So, he proceeds to fight me, waiving his arms back and forth, pushing at my hand, bumping his own face because that's where my hand is, and swatting at the papers from the doctor in the process because they were in my other hand, which was trying to fend him off while I dug the bandaid out of his mouth.

Obviously, this was not five minutes after the bandaid had been put on. It wasn't even one minute. However long it had been, it wasn't long enough for his finger to have stopped or even slowed down bleeding. So, in the process of touching my hand and his face and the papers from the doctor, he had gotten blood ALL. OVER. EVERYTHING.

I should stop here and mention that it was about 4:30 at the doctor's office, with no patients in the waiting room, and it gave all the girls behind the counter a great little show to watch, with he and I both flailing around and getting covered in blood.

So, I say, as calmly and as un-embarrassed as I can muster, "OK, we're going to have to go back and get another bandaid." Just as I say that, one of the girls behind the counter stuck one out for me (clearly someone was having pity on me). But then, I had to try to put it on his finger with one hand, since my other arm was occuppied with trying to hold him and hold down his flailing, blood-squirting finger. I was struggling mightly, and one of the girls said doubtfully, "Maybe she (the lab tech) COULD help you get it back on." But just then, I got the bandaid on, sort of, at least enough where he wasn't able to pull it right back off. Because, yeah, he was trying.

One of the girls said, "Aw, he got it all on his face." Me, trying to use humor to mask my pain: "We're going to look like we need to go to the emergency room by the time we're done here!"

So, yeah, it wasn't my most competent of moments. But mothering is filled with those, isn't it? That's why we should celebrate like crazy those times when we really pulled off something awesome. Even if that something is just getting a bandaid on without needing someone else's help.

Kid Sayings and Other Updates

2010-03-25T12:42:00.002-05:00

I'm going to try to do these more often because the other day I looked back at my old blog that I had when Olivia was about 2-3, and it was so much fun reading about her at that age. I'll forget these things if I don't write them down! Of course, back then I was a respectable blogger, updating almost daily. It's been hard lately to maintain this blog because work is so busy, and I haven't even been taking much of a lunch. And once I get home, getting back in front of a computer after being in front of one all day isn't exactly my idea of fun. But I really want to do better, says the perfection-achieving first born.

Olivia
Olivia is 6 and she isn't very cute anymore. That isn't an insult at all, but simply a statement of fact. She is maturing into an incredibly wonderful, caring, giving, school-aged kid where sweet little misconceptions, mis-pronounced words, and mis-spoken sayings are rare. So, when I get an opportunity to secretly laugh at something she's done, I want to write it down. Like this one:

She found a turquouise headband in the garage and asked, "Is this our neighbor's?" She and her neighbor friend, now that it gets darker later, play together in the front yard almost every evening, and so it would be no surprise that her headband would be in our garage, where all the stuff gets thrown at the end of the playtime so we can get inside and get ready for bed. I told her I thought it was, but then she remembered it wasn't: "No, it's not hers. I just brought it to her to let her wear it because I told her the red headband she had on didn't match her clothes, and this one did. But she didn't want to wear it." Uh huh, leave it to my little clothes-horse fashion maven to tell her friend that her accessories don't match her outfit. Fortunately, they're still too young for Olivia to have been being malicious (she really thought she was being helpful to her friend) or for her friend to have taken offense. And they're still young enough for this to be ok to laugh about!

Amelia
Amelia, at almost 3, is in the middle of the cute stage. If I took the time to write down everything cute she did, I'd be writing all the time. The most recent thing that she did was last night, at our kids' church, she was on stage "helping" sing a song and do the motions. Of course, she was getting neither the words nor the motions quite right, but it was adorable. When we got to the car, the catchy song was stuck in her head. The song says, in a pumped up, fast-paced way, "take, take, take it all, take, take, take it all". Amelia, though, had the words a little wrong and she was singing: "shake, shake, shake it all, shake, shake, shake it all." That's right, baby, shake it all for Jesus. ;-) And by the way, Olivia had the words wrong, too. She insisted the song said, "tick, tick, tick it all." I first argued with her that she had it wrong (a bad habit that I MUST break before she's a teenager), and didn't win her over until I asked her how that would make sense. Fortunately, she appreciates logic. (Unfortunately, she expects everything to be logical, including any reason I have for telling her no.) The people who sing this song are from an Australian church, so I'll just chalk it up to accent as to why my children can't understand the words!

Elijah
Elijah is entering into toddlerhood, complete with fits and throwing things. Nice. The week before his birthday, he went an entire week without a bottle. Then he got sick and refused to drink anything, making me get worried he would get dehydrated and we'd end up in the hospital like my sister did when she was a toddler. Not. fun. at. all. So, it was with a mixture of relief (90%) and disappointment (10%) that I watched him gulp down two bottles right in a row, after going almost all day without fluids. Now that he's no longer sick, he's decided the cup is not for him and he's sticking with the bottle. At daycare, when he even sees his bottle, he starts screaming and if they dare put it close enough to him for him to reach it, he throws it across the room. . He'll get weaned soon enough, I suppose. As I told my friend last night, with three kids it feels like I've been in the baby stage for a REALLY LONG TIME and I'm ready to bid it farewell forever, but it's not fair to Eli to rush him too much when he's not quite ready. In other positive news, he's doing a little better with being willing to walk while holding my hand instead of just flat refusing to walk and wanting me to carry him everywhere. So, hey, we're making progress!

I have an appointment with our pediatrician today for his regular one-year check up, and I'm going to discuss the possibility of tubes for his ears. They worked well for Olivia (though now they're causing problems, but that's a whole other post), and I just want my baby to stop suffering through these monthly ear infections.

That's all for now, folks. I have so many more posts I want to write about other topics, so maybe I can get to those this week. And let's hope that if I DO get time, I don't sit down, stare at the blank posting screen and say, "Now what was it I wanted to write about?" It happens. At least to me!

My Baby Boy is One

2010-03-23T08:54:00.001-05:00

Just a few days late, but I wanted to post about my baby boy's first birthday. Elijah turned one on the first day of spring, March 20. I love the symbolism of his birthday being the first day of spring, since the season represents new life and new beginnings.

It's hard to believe he's just been apart of the family for one year because it seems like so much longer. Elijah completed our family, and I'm so glad he's with us.

His birthday party had to be postponed from his birthday (Saturday) to the next day because he's been so sick with a nasty ear infection, and we wanted him to be feeling as well as possible for his party.  He was still feeling a little sick on Sunday, the day of his party, but he was finally improving, after having to go back to the doctor on his birthday to get a new antibiotic. I hope it's the last time he ever has to go to the doctor on his birthday!

He's still young, so it's hard to tell what his personality will be, but I'm starting to see it emerge a little more as he becomes more vocal about telling us what he wants. For the most part, he's laid back, willing to let his sisters entertain him, and not (yet) a go-getter personality.  He still doesn't walk, unlike his sisters, who were both walking by age one. This is partly because he wants to be carried everywhere, which I have just come to realize that his sister and I have been too willing to accomodate. (Olivia LOVES to carry him around.) I try to make him walk by holding on to his hands, but he grunts loudly, pulls down hard on my hands to lower them, then lets go and reaches his arms up for me to pick him up. He's perfectly content to sit on my hip and go around everywhere with me, and rarely kicks to get down.

He enjoys unloading anything with stuff in it -- my purse, drawers, cabinets -- and isn't so much interested in playing with the objects as he is the act of unpacking.

He, like his sisters before him, is a great eater, and isn't too picky (yet).

He waves bye-bye with his entire arm (and almost his whole body) not just by opening and closing his hand.

He loves Go, Diego, Go and one of his first words was "backpack" (which Diego carries around, if you've never seen the show). He can also say Diego pretty well. I'm not sure whether to be proud or embarrassed that his so many of his first words center around a tv show! But it's one of the DVDs we watch in the car, and since he's still in a rear-facing seat, he cranes his neck around so he can watch it, too.

He is a great sleeper, going to bed anywhere between 7 and 8, and sleeping (or at least staying in his bed without complaint) until about 7 the next morning.

In some ways, I think he's a lot like his oldest sister, Olivia, who was also a great sleeper and eater, and who also wanted to be carried around everywhere, and who, like him, had constant ear infections. But her personality was all first-born, not laid back AT ALL, whereas, like Elijah, Amelia has been fairly easy going, though she's coming into her own opinions now that she's almost 3.

Elijah, right now, is definitely a mamma's girl. But with boys, it's different. He won't always be on my hip. He'll get older, and he'll start identifying more with his dad, and will need me less and less and less. I cherish these days when he's so close to me because, unlike his sisters, who I feel like will always be close to me without being damaging to their marriages, a boy needs to grow up and have some separation from his mother in order to fully become a man, and especially once he gets married, when the main woman in his life needs to be his wife, not his mother. In fact, some things I've read say this separation begins happening at about 12, so I feel like I have very little time with him as my baby boy.

So, I think I'll stop being impatient that he isn't walking yet, and just be happy that he's content to sit on my hip for a little while longer. He'll have plenty of time to grow up and be manly, so for now, he can be my baby boy.

To the Third and Fourth Generation....

2010-03-12T06:00:00.000-06:00

The other night, I woke up and in the haze of half-sleep and half-wakefulness, I felt like I had an epiphany. Or maybe it was more than a feeling because it's stuck with me ever since and has really impacted the way I think about things.

In my near dream-like state, I had the vision that the decisions we were making now (to stay in our small house until all our debt is paid off) would pay off not only for our children, but would help to set up our family two to three generations down the line.

Staying in our house has not been easy. It's small for a family of five, at least by American standards, and quite frankly, we could afford more. But it's not just the size, it's the location. Though I LOVE living where we live in terms of our community and proximity to church and friends, it's a horrible commute for my husband. If we moved 30 minutes north, it would give him an entire hour more with the family every day. And that's not chump change in terms of quality of life.

But it doesn't take a... um... what's the equivalent of a rocket scientist in accounting terms? A CFO of a Fortune 500 company? Let's go with that. But it doesn't take a CFO of a Fortune 500 company to know that if we didn't have monthly debt payments, we could afford not just more, but MUCH more. We could get exactly what we want in a house. We would have more room in our budget for not just a house, but other things as well. And we're only looking at 2 years before we're debt free, if all goes well. So it's not like it's that long in the scheme of things.

Delayed gratification isn't something our society is good at. We aren't good at waiting for what we want, and often think we "deserve" certain things that are actually luxuries. I will never forget being shocked when, in my late twenties, I found out that my grandmother and grandfather didn't buy one single new piece of furniture for TWELVE YEARS after they were married. Of course, they paid cash when they finally bought it. We, on the other hand, charged our entire bedroom suite within 2 years of marriage. Bad, bad decision.

This epiphany made me realize that our decisions about our finances aren't just about where we are right now. It's about setting our children up for a better future, which will set THEIR children up for a better future. Thinking multi-generationally is not something I'm used to. But it makes me feel more patient, because setting up my family for the third and fourth generation is something that sounds like it should take some time. When I think about doing something that will help my grandchildren have a better life, it makes 2 years sound much, much shorter than it feels sometimes.

About three years ago, or maybe more, two other couples and Jonny and I all started praying for a new house. Every day at noon, we all prayed that God would provide us with bigger, better houses. Within about a year, one couple got their new house in an amazing way that only the One with resources we can't predict could bring about.

We haven't gotten our house, yet. The wife of the couple who got their house said the other day, "Y'all never did get your house... maybe we should still be praying at noon." I told her that I believe God is answering our prayers, just on a different timetable than we wanted. We are well on the way to getting our house. He wants us to pay off our debt first, and then I know He'll answer our prayers and bless us with an awesome place. And His plan isn't just going to bless us for the years we will live in the house, but somehow He will make it so that this debt-free living will bless our family for generations to come.

This multi-generational thinking is something that a now-deceased Xanga friend of mine told me about a several years ago. I was worrying about my children being teenagers, and what angst those years would bring, and he gave some great advice: Teach your kids to think multi-generationally. Teenagers will be extremely self-centered unless you teach them otherwise; if you can give them a vision that they need to think about how their actions now will affect their children and their grandchildren, then you will give them a purpose outside of themselves that will help them succeed. I had forgotten about his advice until my epiphany; now, I want to implement his advice and start teaching my kids to think beyond themselves and their own generation.

It's hard to have patience, but when you have a vision, and that vision includes something positive not only in the short term, but great effects in the long term, it gives you purpose and makes the wait a little easier.

Multi-generational thinking... it's changing my perspective.

Obstacle 4: Fast Food Veggies?

2010-03-11T06:00:00.001-06:00

We've arrived at the last obstacle to eating more vegetables, and it's a doozy. How do you eat veggie-centric when you're eating out, especially at a fast food restaurant?

Well, friends, I'm afraid I'm not much help on this one. If it's a "regular" restaurant, I often choose the veggie plate. If it's our new favorite burger joint, I choose the veggie burger. But fast food? I gotta say, I love my french fries too much to choose a salad or a baked potato instead.

So, given that I eat so many vegetables the rest of the time, I will allow myself to splurge when we hit the fast food places (which is about once a week), and I don't have to feel too terrible about it given my eating habits the rest of the time.

And maybe that's a great way to end this series: to make the point that I haven't become a vegetarian, but rather have made the effort to change the way I eat the majority of the time to improve the quality of my health. But that doesn't mean that I will never eat things I enjoy, like french fries. And I don't think anyone else should do that, either (unless there's a medical reason).

So, I hope this series has helped you to think about how you eat, and to give you ideas to make it easier to incorporate more vegetables into your meals. It's all about having a healthier lifestyle so we can enjoy life to the fullest -- including the occasional order of french fries! ;-)

Church

2010-03-10T12:16:00.000-06:00

Not sure if I'll hit publish on this one once I'm done, but writing this out is something I need to do. So, time-out on the food series.

Our church has undergone many, many changes over the 29 years I've been a member. The vast majority of those changes have been positive, and I have a tremendous amount of respect for my senior pastor. He loves people, he has been open to change, he has led us through change at great personal cost, and he's just an all around awesome guy. I also love my church family, which contains a group of people who have been there the entire 29 years I've been there; it is my home, it is where our best friends in the world attend, and it is where my parents attend. We have freedom of worship and depth of the Word, which is an absolute critical combination for me.

But... You sensed that coming, right? I wish with all my heart there wasn't a "but." But there is. And I can no longer ignore it. And I'm not sure if I'm supposed to work through these issues and come to a place of peace and acceptance, or if it's God's way of beginning to point us in a different direction. Unless Jonny starts feeling the pointing, then it looks like it's the former of the two.

I'm not going to go into what triggered these reflections because it's not about the trigger; the trigger just caused me to start paying attention to the nagging feelings that have been growing for a while. It's hard to face these feelings, though, because they feel almost like a betrayal of people I love deeply -- to admit there are things I'm not happy about in our church feels like I'm saying I don't like the people themselves. But that is just not true. My respect and love for our leadership and members are the same as before. Like with my real family, though, I can love them and still disagree with their decisions.

So, after all those disclaimers, and with the angst of guilt over feeling these feelings at all, I believe my feelings come down to two points:
(1) Over the years, my vision of what a church should do and be has changed, and I have become doubtful that my church as it currently exists comports with my vision.
(2) My church is ever-growing, and has a desire to be bigger and bigger (with the quite understandable goal of reaching as many people as possible), but I'm not sure I'm cut out to be a mega-church member.

You know what kind of church I'd like to be apart of right now, today, as I write this? It would be much like our church now, with pastors who are people-loving, prudent with finances, and who allow a bit of room for some small differences in opinion on Biblical issues; there would be freedom of worship and depth of Word; and it would have awesome, friendly members. But the differences would be that it would be smaller, perhaps even a new church plant, that has a big focus on community service and outreach (not outreach as in door-knocking-witnessing, but outreach as in literally reaching out to help others), that has the feeling of a close-knit family rather than a large disparate family. And it would be in the northeastern part of the county, where we want to move in 2 years.

As I re-read this, I realize that what I'd like to be apart of could very well be a daughter work of our own church. We had several daughter churches, but that was before we left the denomination of which we were apart, and those daughter churches are still members of the denomination. We do not have a daughter church that has teachings similar to our own present beliefs. And maybe as I write this, God is beginning to move in His mysterious ways to set in motion the things that need to happen to start a daughter work in the northeast part of the county where we want to move, and is beginning to lay it on our hearts to be apart of it.

The fact is, there are no perfect churches because a church is comprised of people, and there are no perfect people. The best church for you is one where you can grow spiritually, feel like you're apart of a family, and use your God-given gifts to minister to others. I'm thankful that I've had that in my church for so many years, and hope that God continues to lead me and my family so that we continue to have those opportunities. I'm not sure where that will be, but I know that He'll lead us in the right direction, and with a husband who leads our family spiritually and who is sensitive to God, I know we'll either stay if we're supposed to, or go if we're supposed to. And that's good to know.

Obstacle 3: In a Veggie Rut

2010-03-09T15:51:00.001-06:00

Oh, hello, blog! I almost forgot about you, which is why I'll never be a famous blogger. Oh well, I'm fine with that. So, let's continue my series, which took an almost 2 week break. (And btw, after this series is over, I'll start posting a few of the recipes I've mentioned in these posts.)

I don't know about you, but I know which veggies are my favorites, and which ones my kids will eat without complaining, and I tend to make those. And only those. And it gets really old.

One way I've tried to combat that is to scope out the produce section for vegetables and fruits that I either have never cooked or have rarely eaten. Then, over the next week, I try to find a recipe that sounds decent for that vegetable and then will try to incorporate it into the next week's menu planning.

This last week, I made a good eggplant parmesan, and surprisingly, the kids actually ate it! All three of them! It felt like a Christmas miracle, except that it's nowhere near Christmas. Maybe it's a form of March Madness? Anyway, it felt like a huge success.

Also, this last week, I bought some mystery fruit that I've never even heard of, so we're going to try that this week, too. It's kind of fun, and the kids are a little more willing to try new things if it's new to all of us and not just to them.

One other note: I've noticed that just because I don't like a vegetable made a certain way doesn't mean that I don't like that vegetable at all. For example, I like carrots raw, and I like carrots cooked in roast, but that's it. Spinach is great raw, or in small amounts in soup, but canned spinach is just disgusting. On the other hand, canned artichokes taste good in some things, but I don't like any other kind of artichoke. So, sometimes it's worth it to try to find other ways to make a vegetable to see if you can find a way that you and your family like to eat it. Plus, if you can find more than one way to make a vegetable, it will help to break that rut and feel like you're eating something different than usual.

What vegetable or fruit are you going to try soon?

Next up, I'm going to bite the bullet and start trying some of those greens that I have no idea what to do with. Kale, here we come!

Obstacles to Veggies #2: Carnivorous Hubby

2010-02-24T13:00:00.002-06:00

Dinner plates at our house have always followed the usual American model: Large piece of meat, small portions of veggies on the side. Of course, with small, picky eaters around the table, the proportions of what actually gets eaten always varies, but that's a different story. I knew this had to change if I was going to be veggie-centric.

Whenever I broached with my husband the idea of having one weeknight dinner be strictly vegetarian, I tried to appeal to his frugal side: "They say it saves you LOTS of money to cut out meat, even from just one meal!" While this admittedly manipulative tactic succeeded in not getting me outright rejected, I was still met with a half-hearted, "I guess we can do that."

But then I had a brilliant idea. HE could eat meat, but I don't have to! Ok, it doesn't sound nearly as brilliant when I write it out as when I felt when I had the idea. ;-)

As someone who ALWAYS has a weekly menu, I changed the way we do our dinners. On Tuesdays, I put some big hunk of meat in the crockpot (beef or pork roast, chicken pieces, etc.), and we enjoy it for dinner that night. Then, on Thursday, I have my vegetarian night, but Jonny gets whatever leftovers we have from crockpot night, with the kids getting tiny portions of meat (if they want it).

This means my Thursday night dinners need to be flexible, so I've devised a list of things that can either have meat or not, and we are rotating through them now:

(1) Veggie Stir fry (I add his meat last)
(2) Pasta primavera (meat goes in last)
(3) Veggie pizza (his slices get meat)
(4) Veggie empenadas (these are canned biscuits flattened, veggies put down the middle, biscuits folded over to make a half moon, then baked in the oven til they're done-looking; his empenadas get meat)
(5) Veggie quesadillas or enchiladas (his get meat)
(6) Open-faced veggie sandwiches (this is whole wheat english muffins or bread, topped with the veggies du jour - usually tomatoes, mushrooms, spinach leaves & avocado - then topped with garlic salt and cheese, put under the broiler until the cheese melts; his gets meat)
(7) Veggie omelets
(8) Veggie calzones

Mmmm, looking at this list, I may need to increase this to more than one night a week! With our schedule right now, though, the Tuesday Crockpot/Thursday Vegetarian plan works really well.

For other nights of the week, I try to fix my plate and the kids' plates in a reverse-American manner: a LOT of veggies, and a small portion of meat. I also try to throw in extra veggies in whatever I'm cooking, especially with spaghetti, and I'm thinking of experimenting with veggie purees. I also recently discovered powders made from dried veggies, which could also be added to meals. I'd love to hear from anyone else who has tried these with success.

So, that's how I've handled my carnivorous husband. He's thanked me for adding so many vegetable options to the menu, and has told me he's proud of me for eating more vegetables. Can't beat that!

Obstacles to Veggies: Lunchtime at Work

2010-02-23T13:00:00.009-06:00

As I mentioned yesterday, I'm really trying to be more healthy in my eating by being what I call "Veggie-Centric." In fact, last week at Kroger the sacker complimented me that, "You're order is the healthiest one I've seen all day!" Woo hoo!

But once I started down this road, I realized there are certain times and particular meals that I find are difficult to fit in vegetables. Yesterday I identified four obstacles, and today I'm going to share how I tackled the first one, lunch time at work.

Most days, I try to bring my lunch to work because (a) it's cheaper, (b) I'm too lazy to leave the building for food and (c) it CAN be healthier. Even before my quest to eat more vegetables, whatever I brought for lunch was typically better for me than what I would eat if I went out for lunch.

But it seemed like what I was eating for lunches weren't very veggie-centric. Typically, I would eat whatever main dish we had leftover from the night before plus maybe a banana, or I would eat a sandwich with a granola bar on the side. Not a lot of veggies in the mix.

So, I decided to start making a big pot of vegetable soup on Sunday nights, which would be good for lunches through about Thursday. What's great about soup is that it can be different every week, you don't have to follow any kind of recipe, and it's so easy to make.

I generally always start with a can of chicken broth, add one or two cans of water, and go from there. (I tried beef broth one week, but I discovered it wasn't my thing. You may like it, though, so give it a shot.) From there, I just start throwing in the vegetables. When I buy groceries on Saturday or Sunday, I buy a few vegetables with my soup in mind, though I also try to use up what I have on hand. Because I love tomatoes, and I love spice, most of my soups so far have had a can of tomatoes (or fresh, if that's what I had) and either jalapenos or a sprinkle of cayenne pepper. I usually use fresh veggies, but have also used some frozen and some canned, depending on what I have on hand. My favorite soups so far have included corn, carrots, tomatoes, squash, zucchini, green beans, bell pepper, sweet pepper, onion, garlic, and spinach. Once, at the suggestion of Leanne Ely of Saving Dinner, I added a can of pumpkin, which is a super food. It was great, and no, it did not taste like pumpkin pie, nor did it taste overly pumpkin-y. Try to add veggies you wouldn't typically eat -- soup is a great way to eat veggies you're not wild about because the flavor of individual vegetables is tempered by the combination of all of them. For me, this is a great way to get my peas! (Blech.)

I like my soups to be hearty, almost like a stew, so I add lots of veggies. After I cut up the veggies to bite size, I throw them in the broth, boil for about 20-25 minutes until they're soft. After that, I throw in a handful (or two or three) of fresh spinach leaves (another super food!), and let it cool enough to put in containers. By the way, I have been using the disposable Ziploc and Hefty containers to tote the soup to work, and they've not leaked on me so far.

In addition to soup, here are a few other ideas for veggie-centric lunches:

Make extra veggies for dinner so there's leftovers for the next day at lunch. For instance, last night we had sweet potatoes, so I baked an extra one. I also cooked an extra package of frozen green beans and brought the leftovers today.
Make a huge, awesome salad, like you would make at a salad bar. Make it such a good salad that you look forward to eating it when lunch rolls around. You can start with packaged salad, then start adding: spinach, tomatoes, sprouts, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots, radishes, and even avocado (though wait til you're at work to slice so it's not icky brown). And don't forget that fruits are good in salads, too; strawberries, grapes, and apples are all good in salads.
Buy dried veggies and bring to work for snacking. My favorite is the dried sweet corn I buy my son on the baby aisle, but I also just bought some Just Veggies which are halfway decent. I'm going to keep trying brands and types to see what's best.

What are some ways you incorporate veggies at lunch? I like the idea mentioned yesterday by Katie to eat veggie dips. I tried one at our local health food store made from eggplant and it was really good. Any other tips? I'm still learning, too!

Obstacles to Veggie-Centric Eating

2010-02-22T15:24:00.001-06:00

A few weeks ago, I purposed to change the way I eat by eating a limited amount of meat, and heaping piles of vegetables. It's been quite an adjustment, and I don't always have the willpower to execute it -- last night's steak dinner at the in-law's being Exhibit A.

It's not that I have anything against meat, it's just that I think eating a diet high in vegetables and low in meat is a healthier way to live. And healthier is good!

Once I decided to try to eat more vegetables than meat, I realized that there were several instances when eating vegetables seemed more difficult. After I identified these barriers to being veggie-centric, I tried to devise ways to overcome them. (Obviously, I've yet to devise a way around steak night at the in-laws, and I'm not so sure I want to! Mmmmm, steak.......)

Obstacles:

(1) Lunches at work, where if I bring my own, it rarely includes very much in the veggie department.
(2) A husband who eschews vegetarianism and thinks no meal is complete without meat, thus making any sort of "vegetarian night" at our house a problem.
(3) The rut of our same-ol' same-ol' three vegetables: broccoli, green beans, and corn.
(4) Eating out, especially fast food, where vegetables aren't my first choice, if they're even available as a choice.

Over the next few days, I'll blog about what I did to overcome these obstacles.

What are your obstacles in eating more veggies?

No Terrible Twos 'Round Here

2010-02-09T17:57:00.002-06:00

So far (knock on wood) we've not had to deal with the Terrible Twos. Both Miss O and Miss A have been great as two-year-olds. Now age four... don't get me started. At 4, Miss O developed a mouth and an attitude, and I thought we were in the teenage years rather than only in the fourth year of life. But at 2, wow was she cute! And her sister is so far following in her footsteps. Though I sincerely hope Miss A skips the Fearsome Fours.

I want to record here a few adorable things Miss A has done lately. Thanks for indulging me, as this is the only place I record my kids' sayings. Baby books... well, they have birth info and family trees, and that's about it.

CUTIE #1: On the way to daycare, Miss A asks, "Is Daddy at work?" I said yes, he was. Her little mind was working, thinking about what Daddy must do at work.
She said, "Is he cutting paper?"
I envisioned Jonny using a paper cutter for some sort of task and thought it was a safe bet that he could potentially be cutting paper, so I said, "Yeah, he's probably cutting paper."
"Is he putting salt on it?" (That's her term for glitter, because they shake it on the paper like salt at her school.)
That's when I finally realized that she was envisioning him doing at work what she does at school -- arts and crafts. So I played along. Why not? "Sure, Daddy is probaby putting glitter on his paper."
"And gluing?"
"Yeah, probably so."
So, now Miss A knows what Daddy does for a living -- cutting paper that he glues and adorns with glitter. Not a bad gig if you can get it.

CUTIE #2: Miss A stayed home with me this past Friday night while Miss O went with Jonny to go hunting for coyotes and hogs at the ranch. She wasn't too thrilled with having to stay home, so Jonny took her to the store with him for a couple of necessities before they left, and he took her to the toy aisle and gave her a choice of several toys. Of the choices she was given, what should she choose, but the Groucho Marx glasses/fake nose/bushy eyebrows/mustache combo. She knew it would be something we would laugh at, and boy, did we ever!! I love that about her -- her sense of humor is amazing for her age. Her sister would have chosen whatever toy jewelry option was available (which most likely would have been toxic, but that's a different post), but she chooses the funny option. LOVE IT!

CUTIE #3: After Jonny and Miss O left, I told her how glad I was that she was staying with me so I didn't have to be lonely. (Of course, Mr. E was at home, too, but I was making the point that I was glad SHE was there.) She took my face in both of her little hands and said, "You're so precious." Talk about melting my heart.

CUTIE #4: The next night, I was putting her to bed and getting settled on her bed so I could start reading her the huge stack of books that she had chosen, and she snuggled up next to me (which is rare for her) and declared, "You're my BEST friend!" My heart melted again, but then I thought it was so cute that she continued on, "And Daddy's my best friend and Livie's my best friend!" Well, I may not be the only best, but at least I'm in good company.

CUTIE #5: In the back seat, Miss A says to Miss O, "We're good girls, aren't we, Olivia?" Miss O replies, "Yep, we are." And please stay that way forever, 'k? Thanks.

This one isn't a heart melting story as much as it's a heartbreaking one. For the Super Bowl, we went to our church's watch party and the kids sort of just ran wild throughout the building. Miss A ran off with Miss O along with some other girls, and after a few moments of not seeing them, I had that feeling that mothers get when you know it's been too long and you MUST lay your eyes on your children ASAP. I went looking for the two girls, and started following the hallway that makes the large loop around the perimeter of the building.

As I got away from the crowd, it was very quiet, but as I rounded one of the corners, I could hear Miss A's muted, scared cry. I started running toward the sound, and followed her cries to one of the ladies' restrooms. I burst in, to find her standing in there all alone, with her pants and Pull Up down around her knees, tears streaming down her face. She had gone in there with another little girl, who is a little older than her, and who had left her in the bathroom by herself.

Miss A had needed to go potty, but ended up getting stuck in the bathroom when the other little girl left her alone. Seeing her like that made me start crying right along with her. She told me, "It was lonely in here." I told her I was with her now, so she didn't have to be lonely, and that if she EVER needed to use the restroom, come get me and I would go with her so she wouldn't be lonely. She is SO independent, and wants to do everything by herself, but that one didn't work out so well. I also told her to "stay with the people" and not go off by herself. It was Miss O who told me that the other little girl had gone with her, which made sense because I had wondered how Miss A had known which bathroom was the girls', since she isn't used to that part of the building.

When I was 3, another little girl shut me up in a Sunday school classroom away from everyone, and I couldn't get out. It absolutely terrified me and I remember it so vividly. I still remember screaming for my mother, and thinking that the devil was going to come in the small window and get me. My mother finally found me, and I can remember being so relieved when I saw her. This incident with Miss A brought back that memory, and I still feel SO horrible that it happened to her, given how scared I know I was in a similar situation.

On the brighter note, she is finally doing so much better with potty training. I think this box of Pull Ups will be our last. Oh, Happy Day!!

Thanks for letting me share my adorable Miss A!

Real Life

2010-02-05T16:41:00.000-06:00

This week has been a tough one in several ways, but perhaps the most difficult thing has been all the bad news I've heard lately about friends.

A colleague of mine was diagnosed with cancer that's spread throughout his body. He has 6 months to live. To make matters worse, he lost his job a few months ago and has no health insurance.
A coworker, one of the older guys that I have played dominos for years with at lunchtime, lost his 36 year old son due to a massive heart attack. The son leaves behind an 8 year old boy, and a mother (my coworker's wife) who is completely devastated.
A friend is having family issues that threaten to tear apart the entire extended family.

Real life is hard. It's painful and messy and makes me want to cry or scream with rage or maybe both at the same time.

Then I came across this today, thanks to my friend, Jennifer. It's about real life. It's about how it can completely throw you for a loop, destroy all your plans, and make you hurt more than you ever thought you would or should. But then..., or, as the King James version of the Bible says, "nevertheless".... there's unexpected joy and deepest love just beyond the tears.

Just a warning -- don't click that link unless you have a Kleenex nearby.

My Sister is Married!

2010-01-30T21:23:00.000-06:00

This past week, I was out of town for training, and didn't have access to a computer like I thought I would. Soooo, I feel so far behind in blogging! I guess I'll start with last weekend, which was my sister's wedding.

Friday Jonny and I took off work and helped decorate the church and the reception hall, and it turned out beautiful. None of us in our family are the type of people who can walk into a room, tell you exactly what to do to it to make it beautiful, and then execute the plan. It takes us a while, and we have to try different things, step back, decide if we like it or not, and fix it if we don't. But in the end, we put out a pretty good product!

The day of the wedding, I took Sarah to my hair stylist to get her hair done. It sort of ticked me off that I had already told him that she wanted an updo, and then when we get there he says, "I don't do updos very well." Ummm.. okkkaaayyyy. So they ask another lady if she can do it, but she's booked. They go off to find another guy to see if he can do it, and I start feeling a little panicky. I immediately started trying to come up with a Plan B, and decided that if they didn't have anyone who could do it, maybe we could call some friends of ours who are traditional Pentecostals and good at putting hair up. I was raised traditional Pentecostal, complete with uncut hair down to my waist, but I was never good at updos, so I was completely useless.

Fortunately, the second guy was available and he did her hair. The cons: he was condescending and thought he was hot stuff. The pros: He did a great job and gave us something to laugh at (after we left, of course). As he's fixing her hair, he turns her around to face the mirror and is looking at her hair in the mirror. Then, his eyes drift upward, and he's standing there looking at himself. A few minutes later, he puts product on his hands to put in my sister's hair, but before he touches her head, he puts a little product on his beard, and THEN puts it in her hair. It was pretty humorous!

After getting our hair done, we went back to the church to meet the makeup lady. Isn't it sad when it takes like half a day to get beautiful? My friend, Cathy, says if you're more than 30 minutes ugly, you should just give it up. Of course, she's talking about getting ready in the mornings for work, but it still kept crossing my mind that it was taking WAY too long to get pretty.

Here's a picture of the bridal party before the ceremony. I'm on the left, my sister's friend is next to me, Miss O is down front, and my sister's other friend is on the far right (and that's my dad in a chair back behind):

Finally, the moment came. Miss O was the flower girl, and right before we had to walk into the back of the church to start down the aisle, she gets a bad attack of nerves. She was freaking out a little bit, so I told her something I'd been saving for this moment, in case it happened. I said, "You know what some people do so they're not so nervous in front of a crowd? They imagine everyone out there is naked."

At this idea, she let out such a loud laugh that I worried everyone inside had heard it. It worked to snap her out of her freak out, and I walked down the aisle ahead of her, went up onto the platform, and turned around to see her coming out right before my sister. I see her lips moving all the way down the aisle, but she did great. She walked to where she was supposed to walk, and once my sister came down the aisle, all attention was off of her, so she was ok.

Later, at the reception, I asked, "Olivia, I noticed your lips were moving when you were walking down the aisle. What were you saying?" She said, "I was saying, 'It's okay, Olivia, everyone is naked. It's okay, Olivia, everyone is naked.'" Then, it was my turn to let out a huge laugh, and it makes me chuckle even now.

The other great memory of the day was my 10-month-old nephew, who had a tuxedo for his parents' wedding. OMG, it was absolutely adorable. I wish I could find a picture of him, but I didn't get one, and haven't gotten access to everyone else's photos yet.

Well, that's about it for my most favorite wedding memories. It was a beautiful ceremony, and I can't believe my baby sister is now an old married lady like me (well, not quite as old, but still).

Organizing Rocks!

2010-01-20T12:52:00.000-06:00

The last two days I've been home from work with Miss A, who had what I call the Mystery Illness. If you're a parent, your kids have probably had it, too. They run fever, have no appetite and look absolutely miserable, but don't have any symptoms to tell you what they have. Then, 1-2 days later, the fever breaks, the appetite returns, and all is well.

For a working mom, staying home with a sick child is sometimes a blessing. Don't get me wrong -- I HATE to see my kids miserable and sick. But, as with everything, there's a silver lining. In this case, it's that I have extra time at home to get things done. In times past, having a day or two off to take care of a sick child has kept me from falling into the abyss of insanity... or at least it felt like it at the time. Just when it felt like I could not stand the mountains of laundry or the chaotic mess at home, one of the kids comes down sick and I get to stay home. While the sick child is lounging on the couch turning their brains to mush by watching movie after movie, I can get laundry done, the house picked up, just veg with them, or any combination of the above. It's simply wonderful! Except for the sick kid part, especially if puke is involved. But you get what I'm saying, right?

This time, over the past two days I've organized two closets and all the kids' toys, and hung family pictures in the hallway, which I've been meaning to do for about 7 years. Yeah, I said 7 years; it hasn't been a high priority. But getting the kids' things organized WAS a priority. For me, getting organized feels like healing for the soul. It puts things right with the house, which makes things feel right with the world.

It's embarrassing to say, but I've filled 2 trash bags about 3/4 of the way full while cleaning stuff out. It's amazing to me how their rooms can accumulate so much trash without looking like it. And the stuffed animals... well, let's just say I think they procreate in the night. Seriously, I have no idea how we have so many. It feels like I just cleaned them out and pared down to their very favorite 10 animals, and now we have about 50 AGAIN. Geez!

Since the girls' room has never been properly decorated since they moved in together about 10 months ago, Miss O and I decided we were going to do a circle/polka dot theme in turquise, purple and yellow (which matches their comforter sets). I ordered some vinyl decals for the walls, which I really hope work on our walls. I also ordered a Chinese paper latern to hang in the corner, and will be on the lookout for what to do with the rest of the walls so that their room can finally be finished and CUTE. I'm so excited, more than they are, I think!

Well, it's time to go take care of my little Miss A and get her some lunch. She woke up fever free today, but can't go back to daycare until she's fever free for 24 hours, so today we get the best of it all -- a Mamma who gets to stay home with a kid who ISN'T sick!

Randomness

2010-01-15T16:42:00.000-06:00

I'm so happy that this is a 3 day weekend.
Tomorrow night is my sister's non-bachelorette bachelorette party. It's at an arcade. But I can't play video games. This is when I really FEEL the almost-11 year age difference between my sister and I. But I will go and have fun, and not care that I'm the aging woman in her mid-thirties among the young, spry, hip kids in their early twenties.
I got a new phone. It's pretty cool, plus I'm proud of the fact that I didn't get a really expensive phone, but instead did the Dave Ramsey thing and got one that only cost me $40. Gazelle Intensity!
I'm enjoying my exercise class very much. I can already feel myself getting stronger.
I wish Miss A would start caring about being potty trained. Or that I would stop caring that she doesn't care. Either one of those would be fine.
In one week and three days I have to leave my family for a week for an out-of-town training. I keep hoping maybe it will be cancelled, though it's highly unlikely. I don't know what I'll do in the evenings without dinner to cook, baths to give, homework to do, laundry and dishes to wash, kids to yell at, and a husband to watch TV with. I don't mind the occasional overnight trip, but a whole week is way too long.
Jonny has arranged a date for us for tomorrow before the bachelorette party, and we're going to go see Avatar in 3D. Yay!
Every time Jonny has a rough commute (longer than the usual hour - poor guy!) he talks about moving closer to his work, which is closer to my parents, but farther from our church. Every once in a while, I forget my Dave Ramsey Gazelle Intensity, get on the bandwagon, and waste time and energy looking at houses and wanting to move. Like yesterday and today. Minor detail: we can't afford to move right now. Well, we could, if we could sell our house. Anyone want to buy it? Because I sure don't want to have to suffer through having to keep our house show-ready with three small kids!
I set goals for myself in basically every area of life for the month of February, thanks to a new component to the online Dave Ramsey budgeting software we use. For "Intellectual", the goal is to read a non-fiction book on a topic I'm interested in. Do you think perusing a cookbook counts?
Did I say I'm happy this is a 3 day weekend? Yeah, thought so! Hope you have a good one!

"If I Knew Then...": Advice to Teenage Me

2010-01-12T17:49:00.000-06:00

Not too long ago, someone was talking about when they were a teenager, and said the familiar line, "If I knew then what I know now...." It made me wonder, if I could go back and give my teenage self some advice, what would I say?

After thinking about it, I decided the best advice I could give teenage me is this: "It's all going to work out."

When I was a teenager, I was bright, young, innocent, and felt like the opportunities for what the world held for me were wide open. It felt so wide open that much of my time was spent worrying and obsessing over what I was going to be, who I was going to be with, and how things were going to be in the future. I struggled with the feeling of being inert, of not going anywhere, of time standing still, when I just wanted to GO and BE and DO something wonderful and amazing and important, even if all that meant was being an adult out on my own. I knew God had a Plan (with a capital P) for my life, which I envisioned as a list of things I would become (Example: 1. Wife, 2. Lawyer, 3. Mother) and I wanted it to happen RIGHT NOW.

Eventually, I became that adult. I married. I finished my education. We bought a house. We had children (3!). I got a great job. God blessed me richly. It all happened for me, eventually.

But now that I think about it, my teenage self wouldn't care if someone from the future told her that it would all work out someday. Because she wanted it THEN. She didn't want to wait. She was impatient for the future to become the present.

What she didn't know (and I wouldn't tell her) is that although it all works out in the end, the path is littered with potholes and bumps. It turns out I worried and obsessed over the wrong things. Deaths of family members, near financial ruin, job losses, marital issues, and the near loss of a child were all things I never thought to worry about. And they all happened.

And yet, even with all the bad things that have happened, it STILL all works out. I think that's what life teaches you eventually. "This too shall pass" is a true statement. Even though there are storms, they will pass, and there is always a silver lining. Always. You just have to look really hard to find it sometimes. Things all work out in the end, and if you can learn to concentrate on the good, the bad doesn't seem quite so bad.

Being happy in life is all about perspective and attitude, isn't it? There's always a silver lining to every bad thing. God has taken the circumstances of my life and weaved them together to be something good, and they have molded and shaped me into a different person than teenage me. And maybe that was God's Plan all along -- a list of characteristics I would develop (1. More patient; 2. Less selfish; 3. Lives in the present), not things I would be.

So I guess the point is, there's no point in telling teenage me anything. It wouldn't do any good. She needs to go through those bumps and potholes in the pathway of life in order to get her to where I am now. Not that I'm done or that God is done with me. I have a long way to go, still. But I don't think I want any advice from 50 year-old me. I think I'll have to walk the path as is and see where it leads me.

Drama, Drama, Everywhere

2010-01-08T16:48:00.001-06:00

I'm not one for drama. If it pops up, I run the other way, or, like one fairly recent extended-family incident, gracefully scoop my children up, announce that "I don't do drama" and calmly walk out the door, then mess up my gracefullness by getting completely tangled in the party streamers that are hanging from the entrance. But that's another story for another day.

Here lately, though, there hasn't been much place to turn from the drama. Fortunately, none of it has been too horrible, but it's more the fact that it's all happened this week.

Monday: A FB friend of mine messaged me that his car was supposed to be towed to one repair place, but since it was closed, another shop managed to get it towed to them, where the unscrupulous guy repaired his car and called him (which was the first my friend even knew the car was there), telling him that his car was fixed and he now owed the jerk over $1,000. I've been working with them all week trying to get this resolved, so far unsuccessfully. I'm hopeful, though, that soon it will be resolved since now I'm going about it the back door way, using people and contacts I know to talk to the DA and the Police Chief of this town. It's pathetic that sometimes you gotta know the right people to get results. And I feel so sorry for my FB friend, who has so little money and three kids to support.
Tuesday: My Dad was put back in the hospital on Tuesday for chest pains and pneumonia. He's responding well to antibiotics, but the doctors are saying he can't go home until they are absolutely sure he's over the pneumonia, since he was just in the hospital about a month or so ago with it.
Wednesday: The only movement that didn't hurt was typing, thanks to Tuesday's exercise class, which was my first exercise class in, like, 15 years. I thought the instructer was full of excrement when she said in her annoyingly perky and loud voice on Thursday, "Now we're going to work out all that soreness!" No, I thought, you're just going to finish me off, put the final nail in the coffin. But, lo and behold, she was right! I'm not sore at all today! And I feel great.
Thursday: My sister's bridesmaid dresses for her wedding (which is in 2 weeks) turned out horribly, so we (really she and Mom) have scrambled to find replacements. I didn't like the dress, but, as a dutiful bridesmaid and sister, was going to wear it anyway. But after I picked mine up from the seamstress, I decided I just couldn't imagine that she would like these dresses, found out she hadn't seen the completed product, delivered it to my mom so she could show my sister, who promptly burst into tears when she saw it. Not only was it unattractive, the seamstress had done a poor job. My poor sister! And my poor mother, who paid for it! I wish I had taken a picture of the dress, though. Some day my sister will laugh about this whole thing because it really is really bad (yes, even worthy of the dual use of the word "really").
Also Thursday: The smoke detectors in our house keep going off without cause. Well, I guess something is causing it, but it's definitely not smoke. I got several suggestions on what might be the problem, one of which is dust accumulation in the detector. This made me laugh... dust? Knowing my housekeeping skills, this is highly likely. And my poor dog, who was inside due to the extreme cold spell, had been cooped up all day with the screaming alarms. As soon as we opened the door to the house, he came tearing outside (which he never does). Can you imagine what those alarms had done to his poor, sensitive dog ears? They almost made me deaf during the 5 minutes it took me to unhook them all!
Today: The secretarial assignments at work are being changed, and I'm being reassigned to someone else. You just wouldn't believe the drama that has ensued from these reassignments. I'm trying to stay out of it, but may be contributing to it by not fighting to keep my secretary. Ugh, office politics are detestable.
Today: OK, this one shouldn't even be on this list, but my team lost the college football National Championship last night, due to a heartbreaking freak injury to my QB, and despite the valiant effort of a scared freshman backup QB. And today, I've been reading the press on both Colt McCoy and Garrett Gilbert, and I just feel so sorry for both of those guys!

In any event, I'm glad the week is over. I'm torn between (a) wanting to ditch the kids and go out for a relaxing evening with my husband, and (b) going to bed as soon as possible tonight. Given that no planning has gone into making (a) happen, I'm thinking (b) is the winner!

Ski Trip 2009

2010-01-07T09:11:00.002-06:00

So, over the Christmas holiday, we went with my husband's family on a ski trip to Angel Fire, NM. Only one of us had ever skied, and she had only skied once, so you can imagine that we knew absolutely nothing about what we were doing! The trip was not my idea because I have never thought the concept of flying down a mountain in below-freezing temperatures sounded like anything I would EVER want to do. (a) I don't like heights and those ski lifts freaked me out. (b) I HATE to be cold. Absolutely hate it. I'd rather it be 102 degrees outside than for it to be 30. What can I say? I'm a Texas girl through and through.

But, shock of all shocks, I liked skiing! Out of 8 adults, I was one of only three who enjoyed it. We're already talking about going back in 2011 with some of our friends (two other couples and their kids), and I'm looking forward to it.

Other than skiing, here are some of the "firsts" that I experienced on this trip:

(1) Being out in sub-zero weather. I've never seen the external temperature reading on my car have a negative sign until this trip.

(2) Uttering the sentence, "Oh, it's only 23 outside? That's not bad!" Turns out, if you put enough layers on, you don't feel like you're dying of hypothermia.

(3) Sledding down a hill as an adult. It's been YEARS since I sledded down a hill, mostly because we never get enough snow or ice where we live to be able to sled. This activity was totally free (we just found a hill in a public park), and it was probably the most fun the entire family had on the whole trip. Yay for free!

(4) Taking a long car trip with three kids. It wasn't near as bad as I envisioned, since my last long car trip with a child was with Miss O when she was about 3 months old, still nursing every two hours, and she screamed the entire 8 hour car ride. I guess I thought all three of my kids would scream the entire time, just like an infant, but, of course, they are not infants, and they did quite well. The DVD player, coloring books, small toys, an empty plastic water bottle for Mr. E., and nap time got us through just fine.

(5) Giving my children Benadryl just to make them sleep (though they did have runny noses, so I could assuage my guilt by saying they also had allergies). The car rides went fine. The nights did not. Until the Benadryl.

(6) Taking a sick child to a mountain doctor. Yep, that's what her parking space said. "Mountain Doctor." Mr. E had an ear infection, which is probably one reason he wasn't sleeping at night. She was great, but her assistant seemed like he might have been smoking some mountain herbs, if you know what I mean. At first I thought he was the doctor, so imagine my relief when he said, "The doctor will be in shortly."

(7) Having a doctor dispense medicine because there is no pharmacy in town. Oh, how I wish all doctors did this! We saved so much time by not having to go drop off the prescription at Walgreens, go do something else for 20 minutes, and then go back and get it, then drive home. It was great!

(8) Going tubing. This is like sledding, but on a big round inflatable thing that hurdles you down a hill at super-fast speeds. It was a lot of fun!

(9) Having Christmas away from home. Since the kids had presents to open, and we were with family, it wasn't too bad. But I don't want to do it again for a long time. I'm such a traditionalist (thanks, Mom), and family traditions are extremely important to me (thanks, Mom), and I want to carry out our own family traditions in as much the same way every year at Christmas that I can for many years to come (thanks, Mom). (I come by all this honestly, in case you can't tell.)

(10) Seeing a herd of elk in the wild. On the way back home, we took a scenic route, and saw some beautiful mountains, along with the wildlife to which they are home. It was a georgeous drive.

Overall, we had a lot of fun. It was our first vacation in 5.5 years, and it made me realize we need to go on vacation more often. Getting away refreshes you in a way that a staycation just can't.

For 2010, we've been told to plan for a possible destination wedding on a beach somewhere (for my brother-in-law), and it can't happen too soon for me!

Left Out

2010-01-05T13:36:00.000-06:00

Today Miss A was looking out the window as we dropped Miss O off at school, and saw a group of boys standing there.

"I don't like boys," she said.

"Why? Because they're mean?" I don't know what made me say that. I'm not one of those women who bashes men, or thinks their stupid or gross... well, wait. I DO think they're gross, but definitely not stupid. ANYway, I just took a stab in the dark as to what she was talking about.

"Yeah, they tell me, 'Go AWAY, Amelia!" She was talking about some boys at her daycare, boys that I now had an irrational (and likely illegal) urge to go pummel.

This conversation followed an evening with dear friends on Sunday night, where Miss A was completely left out of all the play groups that formed with our kids. Between the three couples there, we have three girls ages 6 & 7, a boy and a girl age 3, Miss A who's 2, and Mr. E, who at 9 months is just happy banging a block on the floor. The 3 year olds know each other pretty well, and didn't have much to do with Miss A. So, she kept trying to go in the room with the older girls where her sister was, but, of course, they didn't want any "little kids" in there. It broke my heart for her.

And on top of these two incidents, her older sister has a good friend from school who lives across the street, and so Miss O gets to go over to her house all the time, leaving Miss A behind.

She's only 2, and I know things will change as she gets older and she won't always be the one left out. But it's really hard to see her in these situations.

I asked her, after she said the boys were mean because they tell her to go away (and after agreeing with her emphatically that they were VERY mean), "So did you go play with someone else?"

"Yeah, I play with Lauren, and she maked a mouse and pretend that it get everyone!" She dissolved into giggles, and it made me glad that she found another friend. And it also made me hope that the mouse went and got those mean boys.

New Year, New Lifestyle

2010-01-04T17:15:00.000-06:00

Starting today, I'm changing my lifestyle to incorporate physical activity. I hesitate to tie this lifestyle change to the New Year, as one who used to hate the idea of New Year's resolutions. But in the last couple of years I've come to appreciate the feeling of a new beginning that a new calendar can bring, even if it's only illusory. It's really only coincidence that my exercise class starts today, the first work day of a new year, but it's a nice coincidence.

As a working mother, I have found it almost impossible to include physical activity into my life on a consistent basis. Any time that I'm not at work, I want to spend with my children. If I'm not spending my off-duty hours with my children, then I want to spend it with my husband, or family, or friends. And if I'm not getting to be with any of them, it's because I'm doing all the multitude of chores that must be done when I'm not at work. There's just no time to work out.

But, mid-December an email was sent out that my employer offers almost-on-site exercise classes (it's just two blocks away at another building) for free and they are offered at a variety of times. Technically, you can go to these classes and it can be counted as work time, but my boss doesn't allow that, so I chose a lunch hour class on Mondays and Wednesdays and started attending today.

As I said before, this isn't tied to any kind of New Year's resolution. It's just that our Christmas ski trip (about which I'll post soon) gave me such a wakeup call about my lack of strength and stamina. I've been blessed with a high metabolism, and have been in my pre-pregnancy clothes for months, so it's not about weight loss. It's about how I can't do hardly any physical activity without getting exhausted. It's about how sore my legs were and how utterly exhausted I was from just an hour of skiing. It's about how I want to take my kids to Disney World in a few years, plus lots and lots of other places in the years to come, and not be the Debby Downer who says, "I'm too tired to go on. Let's go back to the hotel."

One of my Facebook friends posted not too long ago that researchers have found that the greatest period of physical degeneration occurs between ages 31 and 34. And I'm 33 and feeling it. Let's be honest -- nothing about my body is going to get better as I age, unless I WORK at it. It's sort of all downhill from here, unless I bust my butt to make it at least level out. Jonny kept saying on the trip, "We're just old." But I said, "No we're not! I know plenty of people older than we are who are in much better shape than us." And that's because they work at it. Consistently.

And that's how I've come to the realization that my quality of life is going to be severly impaired from this time forward if I don't do something to change it. And this exercise class is the first step. A step toward better health. A step toward greater strength. And, most importantly, a step toward making great memories with my children.

Vacation Madness

2009-12-21T16:21:00.000-06:00

Well, everyone else is doing last minute Christmas preparations, but my Christmas is basically over. We celebrated early this year because we're going on a ski vacation with my husband's family over Christmas. We are all beginner skiers, so this is going to be interesting.

Trying to get Christmas and vacation planned and executed at about the same time is not something I'd recommend to anyone. It's been exhausting, and I'm anticipating the vacation to be equally as exhausting, though I hope not. I'll say this: I couldn't have done it without my husband. He has been amazingly industrious. I almost used the word "helpful", but that would imply he is helping with something that's not his job, and that would be inaccurate. I read once to not tell your husband you want "help", which implies all the duties are yours, but to say you want them to do their part. And he has. He has taken on certain jobs and has stepped up and completed them with gusto. Thursday night he baked six dozen cookies for daycare teachers, and over the weekend I think he did six dozen loads of laundry, plus ran to the store for me twice when I realized I was out of some baking supplies. He's been amazing.

For our trip from D/FW to Angel Fire, NM, we'll be traveling in a car for 13 hours and 45 minutes, if Google Maps is right on the travel time, and I doubt they are since they don't normally calcuate in frequent bathroom stops and feeding times for babies. They should have options on their calculator for how many kids you have traveling with you, their ages, and bladder sizes, and then adjust their travel time accordingly, along with suggested places to stop for using the restroom or feeding a baby. Wouldn't that be helpful?!

Skiing is not something I have ever wanted to do (I REALLY hate being cold, and I'm not a risk taker at all, plus I'm out of shape), but my husband wants me to try it. And, after watching that stupid movie Yes Man, I decided to live a little and say YES! to skiing. I'm still regretting it. Stupid movie.

But mostly I'm dreading taking the trip with three young children. It will be our first family vacation with 3 kids, and our first long car ride since we had children. We'll have lots of help, but I still worry how it will go. So, I'm trying to use the advice I read about Halloween as a mantra for this vacation: "It will be a lot of work, but it will be fun, and you will make memories."

I just hope the memories will be good ones.

What I Want in a Working Mom Blog

2009-12-15T14:00:00.000-06:00

If I were a working mother (which I am), looking for other working mothers' blogs (which I did yesterday), I would want to see entries about:

(1) How sometimes they let things fall through the cracks because they have so much on their minds. Example: Yesterday, I left my purse at home, complete with wallet and badge (which was a real PITA because I work in a secured area and can't get in without a badge), and forgot to leave the car seat at the daycare (which was a real PITA because my husband was picking up the kids due to me working late and kinda sorta needed it). Then, I got home and discovered that I had forgotten over the weekend to freeze the chicken no one ate that I cooked in the Crockpot one night when I had to work late, thus letting about 4 lbs of chicken go to waste. Ugh!

(2) How they handle it when things fall through the cracks. Example: Last night, I felt like crying, but I ended up just trying to keep it all in perspective. No one died or was injured in the course of my bad day. All the children were snug in their beds, healthy, safe and strong. My husband was understanding and loving, and basically all was well.

(3) How they stay organized to reduce the number of times things fall through the cracks. Example: You should see the lists I have just for our holiday trip. We have eight lists, I believe, at last count. One packing list for each person in the family, a shopping list, a to-do list, and a menu of what we're going to eat while we're there. Now, if I can just keep up with the lists, we'll do fine.

(4) How they handle the juggle of it all. For me, that means constantly thinking ahead, and doing what I can when I have the time to do it, which may be a week or two in advance or it may be an hour or two in advance. I prefer the former over the latter, but sometimes our lives are what they are and things get done when they get done.

(5) How they take care of themselves despite spending so much time on work and family. I'm working on this one, still. My quality time with my husband (i.e., watching TV after the kids go to bed) is something that I do for myself. Setting small goals like learning to bake with yeast is another thing that's just for me.

(6) How their kids don't eat amazing, homemade-from-scratch, healthy, frugal dinners every night of the week, either. Self-explanatory.

(7) How they kick butt at work, even despite all the distractions. Example: I aced my televised presentation today and looked good doing it. Now, it's time to end the lunch hour and get off the blog, so the "ace-ing" can continue!

Overall, I love being a working mom. And I'm looking forward to enjoying the tales of other working moms around the blogosphere.

2010: An Early Look Ahead

2009-12-14T12:48:00.001-06:00

Every early December when media outlets start trotting out their annual lists covering the current calendar year, I feel insulted on behalf of the last three weeks of December. I mean, really, can we say with absolute certainty that nothing interesting will happen in the last three weeks of a year? Why can't we just save our "Best of" and "Top" and "Most Interesting" lists for 2009 until January 1, 2010, so that we're covering 12 months instead of 11?!

However, in my own way, I, too, am already finishing out the year in my mind, even though it's only December 14. 2010 is looming, and I am thinking about what I want to accomplish in the next 12 months (or maybe 11, if I start on 2011 early).

In some ways, I feel like I'm just awakening from a three year slumber. Over the last three years, I've conceived, carried, and given birth to two children, and it's made me tired. Really tired. During my pregnancy with Miss A, I was tired on a level I've never felt before. (My pregnancy with Miss O made me feel tired, too, but I wasn't working full time and took 2 hour naps during the day.) I didn't get any rest until Miss A started sleeping through the night at 11 months old, and then the next month Mr. E was conceived (let's all pretend we don't see the cause and effect there, and just keep right on reading), and another tiring pregnancy began, culminating, as they almost always do, with an infant who doesn't sleep through the night. It's been an exhausting three years.

As a result, I operated in many areas of my life on auto-pilot, especially my work life, doing the bare minimum to stay afloat. Other areas, in particular my social life, were dropped almost entirely because the time and energy it took to maintain it was simply nonexistant.

Three months ago, Mr. E started sleeping through the night. And now, I feel like I'm awakening from a sort of stupor, with the realization that some areas of my life need some attention.

So, looking forward to 2010, my two goals are as follows:
(1) Step up my approach to my career and become more educated about my niche, and excel in a way I haven't (had the energy to) before.
(2) Begin socializing as a couple with other couples, and actually have people over to our house.

I'm excited about these goals, and can't wait until the holidays are over so it's easier to focus on them. I should note that I also plan to work on these goals earlier in the year than I did my goal for 2009, which was to overcome my fear of baking with yeast, which didn't happen until November. Late November. Like Thanksgiving. But hey, I did it!

Got any goals for 2010?

Men Hunt, Women Nest

2009-12-10T12:48:00.000-06:00

The next time I have to fill out one of those memes that ask what I think I'm good at, I'm going to say denial. I've been married to a hunter for 11 years, and it has taken me this long to realize that he is not going to stop hunting.

The epiphany that ended my denial came this past Sunday, when my brother-in-law's girlfriend posted this sentence on Facebook, "Men hunt and women nest."  It hit me in that moment that Jonny's desire to hunt is equal to my desire to have a clean, organized house. So intense is my desire to have a clean house that I pay someone else to make it happen, but that's a whole separate post. These desires reflect some sort of deep, biologically programmed needs that we have not escaped through education or scaling the socio-economic ladder. He hunts, I nest. It's just the way it is.

When I look around at other couples we know, each man has his own version of hunting, of going forth and conquering something, whether it's conquering their career, or the golf ball, or the video game, or the person/party who doesn't agree with their political or religious views.  Books I've read on boys lately comport with this observation: Boys need activity, and they need activities with winners, no frou-frou baseball games where everyone's a winner. (Please don't read this as any sexist, anti-feminist indictment on women -- trust me, I like to play games and I play to win. Men can be different from women, and different doesn't have to mean better or worse.)

Jonny's contribution to my denial is that the year we started dating, he did not go hunting. He said he didn't want to hunt because he would rather spend time with me. Of course, that only lasted one hunting season, and it has hurt my feelings in some measure every year since then that he has hunted (which has been every year but one, and that was because we couldn't afford it.) It has made me feel that he no longer has the desire to spend time with me, since that was his reason for not going that first year. But now I realize that he didn't need to go hunting because I was the object of the hunt. That sentence sounds ridiculously primitive and it is overly simplistic, but on a subconscious level for him, I believe it to be true.

Eleven years ago, he successfully concluded his hunt for a wife. (I cannot use the metaphor of conquering here because using the word "conquering" in reference to our relationship is repugnant to me, not to mention inaccurate.) Now he has moved on to other methods of metaphorical hunting, which includes actual hunting, amont other things.

It's the same with most of the other husbands in our circle of friends (though flipped in at least one relationship where the wife is more the hunter and the husband is more the nester, but I freely admit to stereotyping in this post, so no need to accuse me of doing so in the comments because I've already admitted to it). I see a constant tug of war between the husband's need for hunting and the wife's need for nesting because the husband's need for hunting requires him to be away and the wife's need for nesting requires him to stay. So often one spouse ends up demanding fulfillment of his/her need to the detriment of the other's need, and balance and compromise, though sometimes seemingly elusive, are the key to getting both spouse's needs met.

After my epiphany on Sunday, Jonny texted me that he had killed a deer, the biggest he's ever gotten.

In addition to the aforementioned hurt feelings, in general I'm not a fan of hunting, or guns, or deer meat, or dead deer, or killing, or my husband being gone over the weekends during the holidays (seriously, does deer season HAVE to be during November and December?), but given my newly experienced epiphany, I was finally able to feel a sense of pride on his behalf. So much pride did I feel that I went to our freezer in the garage, dug out some venison backstrap, and proceeded to prepare it similar to chicken fried steak. (Here's the recipe, though I omitted the hot sauce, since Miss O can't stand anything spicy. Consider this your early Fantastic Food Friday.)

The hunter and the nester. While we are not stereotypical in many other ways -- e.g., I'm the one who can't find things right in front of my face, and he's the one who likes to shop for clothes -- it is true that Jonny is the hunter and I am the nester. Understanding this truth, along with finding a good venison recipe, makes the whole hunting thing, both metaphorical and actual, so much more palatable.

Flu Shots

2009-12-08T20:25:00.000-06:00

We took the plunge today and got all three kids vaccinated against H1N1, and the two little ones against seasonal flu.

My mother-in-law went with me this morning as reinforcement, since I was afraid I would have all three kids crying at once and wouldn't be able to comfort them all. And that DID happen, but not in the way I expected.

Miss O had already received her flu vaccine, via nasal mist, and so she only had to get the swine flu vaccine, which she also got via nasal mist. No tears, just a couple of big sniffs, and she was done.

Miss A needed both seasonal and H1N1 vaccines, and she was only able to get one via nasal mist and had to get one shot. She cried after her shot, and she was just starting to calm down when I passed her off to Memaw.

Mr. E then got both vaccines via shots because he's too little for nasal mists. He cried after his shots, and I picked him up to hold him.

Miss A was basically done crying, Mr. E was calming down, but then I looked over at Miss O, and she was sitting there sobbing, with her hands over her ears. She was crying because the other two were crying, and it took longer to get her calmed down than it did the two who actually got shots!

I kept saying, "Look! Neither one of them are crying anymore! It's ok now!"

She started calming down, but said tearfully, "I don't like my sister crying because she's hurt!"

Finally, we got her calmed down and then all three were fine, and I took them for shakes as a treat for being brave. Well, not Mr. E. He's too little for shakes, too. I think he really got the short end of the stick in this whole trip: 2 shots and 0 shakes. Poor little guy.

I informed the children that since they are now vaccinated, there is no excuse for illness. We'll see if that works. Now, if they could just come up with a vaccine for stomach viruses, I think we'd be set for the winter.

Thanksgiving Memories

2009-11-30T15:09:00.001-06:00

There are no pictures to memorialize my Thanksgiving -- not a single one. And we never did get to the store to buy the supplies for our craft we were going to do. But, we had an abolutely wonderful Thanksgiving, and here are some memories we made that want to make sure are lasting memories, ergo this post.

1. Yeast Rolls. About 11 months ago, I made a New Year's goal to get over my fear of baking with yeast and so for Thanksgiving I finally quit procrastinating and tried my hand at Patti LaBelle's Sunday Rolls. They weren't perfect, but they were really good. Miss A (the 2 year old) helped me make them and she made the whole experience worth every sticky-fingered minute. For some reason the dough was way too sticky when I first started trying to shape it into a ball, and my fingers and hands were covered in dough. She kept saying, "Oh, no! Oh, no!" about my hands being "dirty". At one point, I had about decided I had done something horribly wrong, and said, "I may have to call Nana (my mom)." Miss A, still worried about the mess on my hands, said, "Yeah, she has a Kleenex in her purse!"

2. Immediate Family Dinner. The table was set like a fancy dinner, complete with white tablecloth, gold-rimmed white dinner plates, bread plates, and dessert plates, and the food was about to be served, including steaks, baked sweet potatoes, steamed broccoli, macaroni & cheese, homemade yeast rolls. Miss O, who apparently was really hungry, came in and examined the pantry, and asked, "Can I have a Pop Tart with dinner?" Really. A Pop Tart. With our fancy dinner. Um, that would be a "No." To her credit, though, she was so impressed that our table could look so pretty.

3. Verbal Children. Mr. E has become quite the Mamma's boy, and he seems like he will continue my record of extremely verbal children. I was feeding him, trying to teach him the sign for "more", and was signing it over and over while saying "More. More. More." He looks at me, looks at the babyfood jar, and says emphatically, "MO!" Hmmmm, we're supposed to be signing because you can't talk yet, but clearly you don't need sign language! He also says "Mamma", "Dada" and "Did-duh" (sister). He is just an absolute sweetheart, even if he does crawl like Steve Martin's character in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels. And speaking of verbal children, Miss A, who cannot seem to keep straight the terms relating to the two versions of pottying (which is in keeping with the fact that she is STILL not potty trained), can accurately use "dangerous" in a sentence, and used "apparently" the other day. Three-syllable and four-syllable words she's got down -- pee and poop, not so much.

4. No TV. On Wednesday, my children did not watch one minute of television. I record this here because I think it's a record. I used to say my kids would hardly ever watch TV. Then I had my second child. And then a third. And the TV is such a good hypnotizer when you need to get something done, which, you know, is daily. So, I'm very proud of this feat. And I'm also proud of the girls, because they didn't even ASK to watch TV until close to noon, which is also a record.

5. Football. Jonny tried to start a new tradition of playing football with his family, but it didn't really work out. But before everyone else arrived at his parents' house, the girls and I teamed up against him and played a little game of our own. He still beat us, 3 against 1, but it was a lot of fun. Miss A didn't ever run the right direction, but that made it all the more fun!

That's all I can think of for now. It was a simply wonderful holiday, and our children made each day so full of joy and fun. Can't wait until Christmas!

Menu Planning

2009-11-23T16:38:00.000-06:00

Menu planning is a skill that my mother taught me and which I have used from the first time I ever had to buy my own groceries. It's Flylady's Habit of the Month, and some of the testimonials have just amazed me -- how did these people function without knowing how to plan a menu for the week?! And I mean, really, how can you not know how to plan a menu?! It's not a difficult thing to do.

In honor of Flylady, I have posted my menu plan starting with last Friday, and continuing through the coming weekend. Hope it helps someone out there to learn about menu planning.

Last Friday: Office Thanksgiving luncheon
Saturday: Angel Food Volunteer Thanksgiving luncheon
Sunday: Brother-in-law's birthday dinner at steakhouse
Today: Leftover pie from office Thanksgiving luncheon
Tomorrow: More leftover pie
Wednesday: Immediate family Thanksgiving dinner
Thursday: Aunt's Thanksgiving dinner
Friday: In-law's Thanksgiving dinner
Saturday: Mom's Thanksgiving dinner
Sunday: Grandma's Thanksgiving dinner

And that's how you plan a menu! Next post: How I plan to lose the 20 lbs I gained in a week.

The Grandparents Next Door

2009-11-17T12:10:00.001-06:00

This past weekend, the fam loaded up in the car and drove to meet some wonderful old friends of ours at the halfway mark between our house and theirs. It's been such a long time since we got together that I don't think any of us had kids the last time. And now here we all are, 5 kids later!

We had a great time catching up, as much as you can catch up on about 8 years worth of life in 2 hours. As part of the catching up, we learned that our friends have recently moved in next door to her parents.

If you had told me that 8 years ago, I would have thought you were a little crazy. The thought of permanently living that close to any of my family, blood or in-law, would have made me ... I can't even think of a good descriptive term here. Cringe; make me want to hide in my room; faint -- they all come to mind.

BUT, now I have three kids. I like to have family around. They help. They keep us from being outnumbered by our children. They increase the odds of someone catching one of the kids doing a life-endangering, limb-threatening, furniture-destroying or sibling-injuring activity. So, the thought of living next door to a family member sounds quite appealing now.

My mom recently mentioned some people she knew who had gone a step further -- grandmother and parents all moved in together. This situation wasn't one where the parents moved in the grandmother in lieu of sending her to an assisted living facility; this was a case where grandmother was still young and spry, but they all decided to make the move due to economic reasons. Someone lost their job, someone was needed to help out with childcare, and so they made the move and now grandmother watches the kids while the parents work.

In another take on this, my kids' former babysitter recently moved her whole family into a large house with her brother and his family because they all needed to save money and a large house was cheaper than two smaller houses would be.

And finally, I know of another attorney who moved her mother into her house, providing room and board so that her mother would take care of her children while she and her husband were at work.

It made me wonder if the poor economy combined with the dual income family may begin to change some of our culture's aversion to multi-generational or multi-family living arrangements. One of my friends who is black and from Louisiana tells me that there is no such aversion in her culture, and I would venture to say that in several other ethnic and minority cultures, there is no such aversion, either. One hispanic family I know takes up almost an entire neighborhood, with the grandparents and several siblings all living within houses of each other. So certainly not all are averse to living close to family. But, at least the culture in which I was raised (I know it should be "reared," but I hate that word), such arrangements were uncommon, unless it was an elderly relative who was moving in to be cared for.

In any event, it was a revelation to me this weekend that I suddenly realized it would be a welcome thing for me to live close to family. So, it is with that statement that I say to my Mom and my MIL, both of whom read this, that the house across the street just went up for sale. :-)

Fantastic Food Friday - Holiday Baking

2009-11-13T10:50:00.000-06:00

In my old blog on another site, I used to do Fantastic Food Friday and would post recipes that my family enjoyed. The problem with trying to restart that tradition is that I have basically stopped cooking, so my Fantastic Food Fridays would consist of reviews of the best frozen skillet dinners (my fave brand is Bertolli, by the way, but buy two bags if it's for more than one person because "2 servings" is a big fat lie).

But, since I am SO in the holiday spirit already (annoyingly so, I'm afraid), I thought today I'd post my baking list for Christmas, and invite you to tell me what sweets you look forward to either eating, baking, or both.

Here is my tenatative baking list, which might change if one of you leaves an awesome idea in the comments. These goodies will be given as gifts to a total of 15 people, each of whom will likely receive a variety of the below.

Oreo Truffles - I made these last year and they were such a hit that I now will be making dozens and dozens for my sister's wedding.
Struesel Topped Blueberry Muffins
Peanut Butter Candy Bars
Cheesecake Topped Brownies
Cookies from Miss O's fundraiser (hey, they may be pre-made, but they're good!)

What do you think -- sound good?

Thanksgiving Excitement

2009-11-11T13:17:00.001-06:00

Thanksgiving is almost upon us and I am so stoked! (Does anyone use that word anymore? I don't use it in daily conversation, so I have no idea why I just wrote it, but somehow it seemed appropriate.)

My favorite holiday of the year is Thanksgiving because there is a lot of wonderful food, no presents to buy, quality family time, and as much or as little decorating as you want to do. In other words, you get to reap most of the benefits of Christmas without all the work!

Now that I have a few holidays with kids under my belt, I have learned that it is best not to plan everything without their input or else you run the high risk that they will not want to do or eat what you planned. In previous years, I've tried to plan out all types of activities and menus, with varied success as to implementation. But this year, it's all about input from the family. And implementation success may still vary, but I'm ok with that.

And so, Miss O helped me plan the menu for our immediate family dinner, which will be on Wednesday before Thanksgiving, and she was so cute doing it. I planned on the main dish being steaks, since we'll have turkey and ham elsewhere, but then I second guessed myself. "Should we have steaks?" I asked aloud. She said, "Yes, because we all like them. And we could have macaroni and cheese with it, and a salad with the crusonts that I don't like but that you like." (It took me a while to figure out she meant croutons rather than croissants.) And so, the T-Day menu is planned, thanks to Miss O. Jonny has asked another green veggie, and I have added rolls. Mmmmm, I CANNOT WAIT! And I just realized I haven't planned for dessert, so I'll need to poll the family on what they want.

We have also chosen to make Turkey Luminaries as our T-Day activity, which we found in Family Fun Magazine. I hope it looks like the picture:

We still haven't ironed out where we will spend Thanksgiving Day, since both Jonny's and my extended families have planned dinners. But Friday we'll be with his parents and Saturday will be with mine.

I look forward to four days of eating, drinking, and being merry. What are your plans for Thanksgiving?

Life Changing Lesson

2009-11-09T09:40:00.004-06:00

Just before Halloween, I read an advice piece by one of the Flylady staff members (Flylady Kelly, I think) relating to taking your kids trick or treating. And she said something simple, something along the lines of, "It may be hard, and it may be really difficult at times, but it will be fun and you will make memories that will last a lifetime."

What a simple statement, and yet it was exactly what I needed to read. Almost everything with my kids qualifies under that statement at this stage.

Miss A is 2, with all the rambunctious curiousity of a 2 year old, and she needs to be contained and managed and preferably held when out in public to keep her from running off. But unfortunately, I also have Big E, who is 7 months old and MUST be held because obviously he can't get himself anywhere otherwise. Even with a stroller it's hard because the stroller may hold Big E, but Miss A still has to be watched like a hawk. And let's not forget that Miss O is there, and while she's easy in a lot of respects and helps out often, she's not an adult and she's still another responsibility to watch over.

And so, I have avoided doing a lot of things beyond the walls of our home with them because I have said Flylady Kelly's sentence often in my head, except I have stopped the sentence after the word "difficult."

But I have thought so much about what she said next. It will be fun. And we will make memories. It's doubtful Big E or even Miss A will remember much of what we do at this stage, but heck, making my OWN memories is worthwhile endeavor, too!

This Saturday, while Jonny was gone hunting, I decided to not stay home, but to get out and make some memories. We went and had brunch with my mom, and later we went to the park and had a picnic and played. That may not sound like a big deal to most moms, but I have never taken all three kids to the park by myself. It was too scary of a prospect. It sounded hard and difficult.

While we were there, Big E got to swing for the first time, and he laughed and kicked his legs the entire time he was in the swing. It was precious! Miss A really didn't have much of a picnic and had to eat her food in the car after we left because she kept people watching and picking out kids she wanted to go play with. Finally I released her and Miss O from the picnic table to go play.

And you know what? It was hard, and difficult at times with all three by myself, but it was FUN and we made wonderful memories, if for no one else then for me. I learned that in spite of the difficulty, it was worth it, and that's a lesson learned that just may change our lives.

5 Minute Post

2009-11-04T16:55:00.002-06:00

What can I blog about in 5 minutes? Let's see...

1. Miss O is having a recurring ear infection that won't go away. We're on the 3rd round of antibiotics, plus we've added Flonase to try to control the allergies that cause the fluid in the ears. This morning was the first time to give her all her meds at once, and it was highly dramatic. Tears, wailing, nashing of teeth, and bribery with candy ensued. Dear Lord, help me get through this 10 day course of antibiotics!

2. It has finally hit me that I am going on a ski trip in less than 2 months, and I'd better start planning!

3. It has finally hit me that Christmas is in less than 2 months, and I'd better start planning!

4. It has finally hit me that Thanksgiving is in about 3 weeks, and I'd better start planning!

5. We've hired a cleaning lady, and she's going to start coming in weekly beginning next Monday. I absolutely cannot wait. We cleaned house for hours and hours on Saturday before she came to survey the house. I had no idea it had gotten that bad, but once she starts coming I think we'll be able to maintain and to contain the chaos.

6. I'm in the mood to start socializing again, just in the nick of time for the holidays. We've almost stopped socializing as a couple, and I realized how much I've missed it when we went to a charity event a couple of weeks ago with some old friends, one of whom sang at our wedding, and it was so much fun to laugh as hard as we did! I want more! So we're going to meet up with some other old friends in November (thank you, Facebook) and hopefully more good times will ensue.

OK, 5 minutes are up. (Good thing I type fast.) Maybe there'll be more time tomorrow!

Happy Halloween!

2009-10-30T14:01:00.005-05:00

It's not very conservative-Christian of me, but I love Halloween. I love helping the kids pick out their costumes, I love getting them dressed up, I love the sense of community that comes from all the neighbors coming out and trick or treating, and, well, I love candy (and yes, I steal the chocolate from my kids when they're not looking).

Miss A has been so adorable about the whole costume experience. Usually she copies everything Miss O does, so I was surprised that when asked what she wanted to be for Halloween, she piped right up and said, "A butterfly!"

And so, thanks to Nana, she has a pink butterfly costume, complete with glittery wings (which have bestowed their glitter on my house, my car, the daycare floor, my clothes, her clothes, etc., etc.,), a wand, and an antennae headband.

The first time she put her wings on, she ran around a minute, then stopped and said in a perplexed tone, "I not fly in the sky." I think she thought that once she dressed up like a butterfly, she would be able to fly like one, too. Not to worry, thanks to Daddy and Mamma, she has "flown" through the air, arms extended, giggling like she was flying for real. There's nothing better than listening to the carefree, completely un-self-conscious, pure laughter of a child!

She got to wear her costume to daycare today, and to everyone she met she announced proudly, "I'm a butterfly!"

Miss O is dressed up as Hannah Montana this year, although she won't leave her wig on and without it she just looks like she's dressed trendily. She looks completely wrong as a blonde, anyway! Mr. E is an octopus, complete with four extra legs, which we did not realize at the time we bought it that it would not work to allow him to wear his costume and be in his car seat at the same time. Duh! Jonny is a gangster, and won a costume party at work today with it. I am Supermom, complete with '50s style housewife dress, pink cape, and toolbelt filled with every conceivable thing a mom might need, including a bottle and a sippy cup in the two hammer holders. I think my costume is brilliant, but I suspect I'm the only one who does. And I'm ok with that!

If I were a blogger worth my salt, I'd have photos for this post, since we all dressed up for my niece's costume birthday party last week. Oh well, guess I'm not salty. I'll try to capture the family at some point this weekend and post them later. (Yeah, you really believe that I'll EVER get around to posting it?)

Hope everyone has a great weekend! (And thanks for letting me know you're reading!)

Update

2009-10-27T11:17:00.002-05:00

Here's a general update so that if anyone other than my friend, Hairlinefracture, is still reading this you will know I am, in fact, still alive! For perhaps the first time since I started blogging four years ago, I forgot I even had a blog. It's just been a crazy-busy time.

Miss O (age 6)
Miss O has recently stopped gymnastics so that she could start piano lessons, and she seems to be really enjoying it. Although I don't think she has any particular musical talent (because no one else in the family does and that would make her some kind of genetic anomoly), I believe music instruction operates to improve a part of the brain that nothing else does. The daycare where she goes after school is apart of a church that also has a church school, and the piano instructor teaches the school kids during school hours, and then daycare kids after school. The teacher comes and gets her out of her daycare class at the appointed class time, which is AWESOME because I don't have to worry about setting aside an hour of my time to take her to a class at some other point in the extremely slim portion of the week I'm not at work. Of course, we are still working on building in practice time to our daily routine, which is a challenge. It's like being in piano lessons myself all over again, feeling guilty for not practicing!

Miss A (age 2)
Oh, what can I say about Miss A except that she's just adorable! I just love how she pops out with such funny things. She still hasn't clicked with the whole potty training thing, and I'm trying to be patient. Getting frustrated with her for not being potty trained is like being frustrated with Mr. E that he can't crawl yet -- it's just a developmental thing that will happen when it happens. But when she's completely dressed for school, and has just gone potty, and STILL manages to have an accident before we even get in the car, it's really hard not to get frustrated. So, c'mon, development, I'm SO ready!!

Mr. E (age 7 months)
Mr. E has not realized that his legs can assist him in his crawling endeavors. He crawls like he is trying to go under a barbed wire fence. He uses his elbows to drag himself along, his legs extended straight behind him, though sometimes he kicks his legs like he's swimming. It's a hoot to watch! And believe me, he gets where he wants to go. I suspect if we had carpet instead of hardwood floors, he wouldn't be able to use this method quite as easily.

Well, that's my update for the day. Hope everyone (or at least you, my faithful friend and reader, Hairlinefracture) has a great day!

The Dark Month

2009-10-13T09:35:00.003-05:00

The last month (give or take a few days) has been a pretty dark place for me, and it's not somewhere I'd like to go ever again. It started when I made up a list of all the responsibilities I had, and when I looked at the completed two columned list, with one column simply containing the daily requirements to keep all the children alive and the house standing, I was shocked. This list was not humanly possible. No wonder I had been unable to keep up with everything.

And I got depressed. Truly, seriously depressed, and for two days I went straight to bed after work and cried. They say post-partum can happen up to a year after a baby is born, so maybe that was part of it, but I don't think this had a lot to do with hormones. The pressure of being a working mother of 3 became too much and, well, I cracked.

If you know me, I'm not one to get depressed. It just doesn't seem to be a part of my nature, for which I'm so grateful to my Maker. Most of the time I hum along at a fairly low key, not getting too excited or too down, and I like it that way. But this was different and a little scary because it didn't go away after a day or so like any other down time I've had in my life.

It didn't help that during this month-long period, as I wrote a few days ago, that I felt I had a crisis of faith, plus we were having some issues with Miss O AND Miss A at school/daycare, plus this crack revealed some issues between Jonny and I that need attention. It felt like my typical safe havens in God and family were gone when I needed them most.

Interestingly, the circumstances haven't changed all that much. The list of duties is still as long as it was before, the pressure is still great, Miss O and Miss A still have their off days, Jonny and I still need to work some things out, and my faith is still a bit shaky.

But the fog has lifted and I have energy and good vibes again. I've gone from feeling like I was drowning, to feeling like I was treading water, to feeling like I'm once again able to swim, even if it IS against the tide and I'm getting nowhere fast.

This post is intensely personal, and I've hesitated posting anything about my situation because of it's nature. But I've learned as I've written on different websites over the years that writing about the personal things are what helps others the most, because they realize they aren't alone. I've learned to keep up a pretty good show, so hardly anyone knew what was going on this last month. From the outside you probably would have thought that I had it together, so maybe it will help someone to know that even when it looks like someone is handling things well, that isn't always the case.

Sometimes life, especially motherhood, is overwhelming and I think everyone should realize that it's ok to feel overwhelmed, and it's not an indictment against you that you feel that you can't do it all. The truth is, we can't do it all, at least not all the time. Too many life circumstances come up unexpectedly for us to be able to sustain those levels constantly. The most we can do is to do our best, and to make peace with the fact that sometimes even our best won't make our lives or our children's lives perfect. Perfection isn't possible, anyway, and I think what we should all shoot for is just an aggragate of good experiences over our life and the lifetimes of our children. Each moment doesn't need to be perfect, and likely our children will learn more from us in how we handle the down times than in how hard we work to try to keep things perfect. Yep, that's my story, and I'm sticking to it.

Chaos

2009-10-11T17:22:00.003-05:00

It's been a long time since I've had the chance to write a proper blog, and have had to settle for composing them in my head. But now that I sit down to write, the kids are running around and interrupting me constantly, making it impossible to think of any of the head-composed blogs. I vaguely remember wanting to write about my opinions on healthcare, the new understanding I have about God and faith, my thoughts on being a working mother, and my recent research on education in America.

But right now, I can't put together a coherent blog amid the chaos. I tried to write a couple of funny things Miss A has done lately, but they don't translate well to writing -- it needs to be told in person.

So, as I fight off Big E as he tries to grab the laptop, I'll have to settle for just updating the world by saying that as to my last post, I'm doing better.

And now, if I can win this fight with E, I'm going to go research Trunk or Treat ideas for my SUV.

Overwhelmed

2009-10-03T16:40:00.004-05:00

I've been avoiding blogging, in case you all couldn't tell.

Things have been a struggle, lately, and I'm not one to enjoy writing or reading downer posts, ergo the avoidance.

What things have been a struggle? Everything but work, where I'm on a list of four to get a promotion. Work has almost become a haven, a place to completely forget about the overwhelming responsibilities of trying to be a good wife and mother. It's a place where I receive praise and rewards for doing a good job, a place where I see the fruits of my labor, a place where it's easy to do a good job. Home, specifically in the area of parenting, is not a place where I see or feel any of those things.

Throw in the mix a completely inconvenient crisis of faith, and you can see that I've encountered what feels like the perfect storm.

Things will get better, I know they will. But usually they get better after a few days at the most -- this time it has dragged on for almost a month.

Please keep me in your prayers, if you are one who prays. I would appreciate it.

It's Been a While

2009-09-21T09:44:00.005-05:00

Here's what's happened since last I posted, oh so long ago:

Big E started sleeping through the night;
Big E got his first tooth;
Miss A is potty training in earnest;
Miss O is now treated as the most responsible in her first grade class (what a difference a year makes, and thank goodness for new teachers and new school years!) and she is also reading the best in the class;
Jonny and I celebrated our 11th anniversary by going to the Taste of Burleson, which took all of 30 minutes because there's apparently not much to taste in Burleson, so since our friends were expecting to keep the kids for another 2.5 hours, we rented a $1 movie from the Redbox that was NOT a kids' movie and watched it at home, with the volume up loud since no kids were sleeping, for what was likely our cheapest anniversary date EVER;
my driver's side window was busted out, and someone stole my GPS and a little bag they thought was a purse (it had three 2T dresses and 3 pairs of 2T panties for Miss A's potty training -- hope they enjoy their little panties) and it happened IN THE PARKING LOT OF THE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL while I was at a PTA meeting;
the next day, Livie's school was on lockdown due to a bank robbery nearby -- apparently my little town is having a crime wave, which is not cool -- and it really upset her;
I got second degree burns on my arm from being too careless around the bag that steam-cleans baby items in the microwave;
I induced a freak-out by writing out all of my responsibilities;
We've decided to hire a housekeeper due to aforementioned freak-out and my husband, after seeing the list, took on a bunch of responsibilities himself (he said he didn't know what all I did, stuff just always got done, like fairies made it happen, but this fairy is fresh out of magic, let me tell you);
I've decided I don't want to be a stay at home mom, and I'm not ready or in the mood to defend myself to you right now (yes, I'm overly sensitive and defensive, and let's just leave it there -- let's put a tack in it, as the agent in Bolt would say, and come back to it later);
I got down into my smallest pre-pregnancy clothes, but then this past weekend happened and I need to get back on the wagon or they won't fit anymore;
I finished the Twilight series, and I'm simultaneously relieved it's over and sad to see it go;
I have written an outline for a suspense novel which I would be proud to put my name on (not like the cheesy romances I seem to have no problem coming up with); and
We had our Grandparent's Day celebration at our house, with both sets of the kids' grandparents -- I think they had fun, reminiscing about their days as kids.

I think that's the gist of our lives over the last two weeks. I'll try not to let another 2 go by before posting again.

Working v. Not

2009-09-07T10:10:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I sat down with the laptop, and did something I've never been able to do before: I drafted a budget that would work for me to stay home. It's a bit idealistic, it's tight, and it requires sacrifice. But it's still a middle class budget -- we can keep our satellite (though less channels), our cell phones, and our internet. And all that without me having to bring in a dime.

Now that I've proved it's feasible, we're faced with a decision, one that I always thought I would make in a heartbeat if it were only possible: Do I quit my job and stay home?

For five and a half years, I've wanted to stay home with the kids. But now that I know I could, I'm waffling.

A few of the pros (and this is not all-inclusive) are that the kids would have more time with me and vice versa, they wouldn't have to be in daycare and could be in their own home more often, I could be more involved in their schooling, I would not have as many responsibilities and therefore would have less stress which makes everyone happier, and I could have more of a social life because I wouldn't feel guilty going to girls' night out after having already been gone from the kids all day.

A few of the cons (and this is not all-inclusive, either) are that we would not be able to save much money and therefore wouldn't be able to fund college like we want to, we wouldn't be able to give as much to charity, we would live in this house for a very long time, and we would not be able to live as comfortably as we do now. And Jonny would have to give up golf, HD channels, ESPN, and eating out for lunch every day. Frankly, I'm surprised he's considering it!

Even though the budget allows for me not making any money, I would still work on the side. But that's more of a con than a pro. Having your own office, even if it's a home-based virutal office, is not something I really want. But my side income would bring in enough to pay for extra-cirricular activities for the kids, vacations, and a few other extras (maybe golf?). And the pro is that I would keep current in my career, even if not in a full-time capacity so that if I ever want to go back full-time, it won't be so hard.

Jonny and I are both really scared at the prospect of having only one steady income, especially in this economy. I'm scared I'll go crazy being at home that much. I'm scared we'd be trading their future (funded college education) for their present (no daycare). I'm scared to be dependent on my husband for support. I'm scared it's not right and I'm scared that it is right.

Obviously we're praying for God's will, and praying for peace. We are going ahead and cutting some of the expenses that we'd have to cut if we did this because even if I don't quit, it doesn't hurt to save some money. There are several things we'd like to do first before I would quit, so we've said we won't make any changes until the end of the school year (unless March brings some good news). We need to get a new fence, we need to bank a little more in savings, we need to buy a second car, and I need a bit of money to set up my home office like I want it. Oh, and I want a side of beef in the freezer before I quit.

Another consideration in this is that I actually enjoy my job and I like the people I work with. That is a rare combination, and one that's not easy to walk away from.

And now that I've ended the last two sentences with a preposition, I'm gonna get off of here and take advantage of my three day weekend. As long as I'm working full-time, these are priceless!

My Problem with Twilight

2009-09-02T17:01:00.004-05:00

So I've finally joined the Twilight bandwagon, and am immensely enjoying the escapism of teenage vampires (and, I understand, werewolves in Book 2, which I badly want to go buy so I don't have to wait for it at the library).

But being a wannabe writer, I can't help but analyze these books from a writing perspective. And through this analysis, I've come to a realization about why I am so clearly unable to write fiction -- I have no ability to just overlook certain details to make the story work. I'm just too much lawyer and not enough creator.

Here's what I mean: If I had been the one to have the idea for Twilight, it never would have made it to paper because I would have gotten completely hung up on how these vampires, some of whom can just barely suppress their desire for human blood, manage to be around women when they're on their period. Seriously. I kid you not, I would not have been able to get around it.

And actually, truth be told, it bothers me that (at least so far) it hasn't been mentioned in the story. Not that there would be any possible way to bring it up without being gross, but still.

So, I guess for now I'll stick to writing contracts and other legal documents, and leave the fiction to those who aren't so detail-oriented.

September's School Supplement

2009-08-28T10:00:00.001-05:00

I'm coining a new term: School Supplementing. It's what a parent does at home to supplement their children's education when their children attend school outside of the home. Yep, I think I'll send it in to Dictionary.com. Feel free to use it, as long as you attribute it to me. ;-)

On Sunday, one of my best friends told me that she planned to start homeschooling her daughter. And it got me to wishing (a little bit) that I could homeschool, too, because I would love to do some creative yet educational things with my kids. After that moment of brief insanity passed (I would seriously be a TERRIBLE homeschooling mother), I realized that I can do fun, educational things with my children even though they go to school/daycare and even though I work, especially now that I have made their education one of my Top 5 Priorities.

So, I pretended I was a homeschooling mother and made up a list of all the subjects a first grader should learn. And then I planned a September activity for each subject, with some overlap (like between science and art). Whether we do all of these activities remains to be seen, but just having a list gives me direction and makes me excited.

Here's my list:

Art: Grandparents Day Project (something to give each grandparent), Creation Days poster

Bible: Weekly memory verses, Do a "sin" object lesson

Health: Indoor Gardening Day (Sept 1 - we will set up our Aerogrow garden again, and talk about all the health benefits of each herb we are going to grow, but may have to be done on a night other than September 1 because I have to work late that night -- like they'll know the difference!)

Math: Value and counting of money -- already been working on this and making progress!

Reading: Work on weekly words from school; Get books to read from library regarding jobs/careers Miss O is interested in (to celebrate Labor Day)

Science: Nature Scavenger Hunt at the Jonny's family ranch, where we are going on first weekend of September; learn the order of creation

Social Studies: Labor Day (read books regarding different kinds of work Miss O is interested in), Grandparents Day (September 13, will have all grandparents over for dinner and will interview them about their childhood which will have a history component, too)

Character Trait: Diligence, to go with Labor Day (will read the story of the Ant and the Grasshopper)

Computer: Found a great website called http://www.abcya.com/ that has some educational games, and will encourage her to use the computer. She doesn't use it much now.

All of the above is for Miss O. For Miss A, who is only 2 y.o., we are daily working on color recognition, and I have ordered some letter flashcards to work with her on letter recognition. If those babies on TV can freakin' read, then my smart little Miss A can figure out how to recognize an "A", dad-gumit! Plus, the flashcards I ordered have site words that Miss O can practice, plus numbers when Miss A is ready for that. Here are the flashcards I ordered:

I've also ordered a book about creative homeschooling activities that got rave reviews, even from non-homeschooling parents who just want to do fun things with their kids. Here it is:

I'm excited about what we're doing at home, and I'll keep you posted on it as we go!

My Priorities

2009-08-27T15:51:00.004-05:00

After my mini-meltdown this past weekend after our Medical Week, a.k.a. Week of Hell, I determined that something had to change.

So, after pulling myself together, I made a list of my top 5 priorites, and decided to spend my time proving that they were, in fact, my top 5 priorities. Here they are:

1. My spiritual wellbeing
2. My marriage
3. My children's spiritual wellbeing
4. My children's physical wellbeing
5. My children's education

Glaringly absent in the Top 5 Priorities is my own physical wellbeing and also my children's emotional wellbeing. I think the latter will come if Priorities 3-5 are going well, and the former... well... I'm not sure how to fit in exercise right now, but I did finally go see the dentist after 2+ years (which I can count toward Priority 1, since I said quite a few prayers while in her office).

Also absent in the Top 5 is anything to do with my house. But since cooking decent meals and clothing the children falls pretty heavilty under Priority 2, I put on my list, under my Top 5, the following:

House -- AFTER Top 5 Priorities
1. Laundry
2. Dishes
3. Everything else

In order to ensure that I live my priorities, I have set goals for each priority for the month of September, which I've actually already started working on. (People who have heard of FranklinCovey know that I'm not doing anything original here, but wow, it's effective!)

Not surprisingly, I've discovered that in order to live like these are my top priorities, I've had to change the way I spend my time fairly significantly. In fact, I haven't watched TV at all since I've made this list. I don't log on to Facebook or Twitter or anything else until I have read my daily Bible reading. And since making my children's education a top priority, I am finally planning and doing all those creative, fun, and educational things I've always wanted to do with the kids. (More on that tomorrow.)

It's eye-opening, this process of changing how I spend my time. Focusing in on what I care about the most is helping me put aside the things that don't or shouldn't matter as much (like a pristine house).

I encourage you to think about your top 5 priorities. Does how you spend your time match your list?

Tasty Tuesday - Healthful School Lunch Ideas

2009-08-25T09:06:00.004-05:00

Today my big girl, Miss O, started first grade. Wow! Where did the time go?!

Since school has started again, that means we have to get back in the habit of packing lunches nightly for the next day. My goal with her lunches is to (a) send her foods she will actually eat and not trade away and (b) make sure those foods are good for her, at least as much as possible.

Since she cannot heat anything up in the microwave, I bought her a small thermos so that I can pack her warm pasta. If you are lucky enough to have a child who likes soup, you could also pack soup in the thermos. My daughter would rather go hungry than eat soup, so that's out.

I also like to send her Tortilla Pinwheels: Spread cream cheese on a flour tortilla, top with ham or turkey, roll up, and cut into small slices. She loves these and begs for them.

For sides, I like to try to send her a fruit and a vegetable. The fruit is easy -- she likes almost every kind. The vegetable is more of a challenge, but she will eat carrots dipped in ranch and salad topped with ranch, as well as tomatoes (which are technically fruit, but I count them as a vegetable because they are not sweet). We also buy dried sweet corn on the baby aisle, and I will pack that for her. She likes it and so do I, for that matter. In fact, we both have some in our lunch today!

Of course, sometimes I will also pack her a non-healthful lunch. Like today. In her lunchbox, she will find two corn dogs, heated this morning and wrapped in foil to try to keep them warm until lunch. Hey, it's the first day of school, what can I say?!

Those are my ideas. What do you pack for healthy lunches?

Medical Week at Our House

2009-08-24T16:48:00.005-05:00

Last week was an emotionally exhausting week for this mamma, considering that I was the only one in the entire house that did not have some sort of medical issue. Of course, I'm very thankful I didn't have one, since the rest of the family needed me. And in case you're wondering, the below IS the short version of this story of our Medical Week.

Miss O: Medical Week started out on Monday night/Tuesday morning, when, at 4:00 a.m. while I was feeding Big E, I heard Miss O start coughing in the next room, and then heard her start calling, "Mamma!" Not good. I put Big E in his crib (much to his consternation) and went to check, and sure enough, she had thrown up in her bed. Not a huge amount, but still, this meant I wasn't going to work on Tuesday. So, Tuesday, we enjoyed a nice day at home, just me and the three kids. Miss O didn't feel terrible and played and acted normally, but still had diarrhea issues all day.

Miss A: Tuesday evening, I went to my PTA Board meeting. While there, I get a text from Jonny saying that he needed to talk to me. Usually he says "no emergency" but this time he didn't say that. My stomach got a knot, and I stepped out of the meeting to call him. When he answered, I could hear Miss A crying in the background, a pathetic, "I'm not well" sort of cry. He said that her arm was hurt and he was worried it was broken. He had been rough-housing with the girls, in no different manner than usual. But this time after he had been holding Miss A's bicep while she was trying to pull away from him, she had run from the room after finally escaping, then came back in, sat down, and started crying that her arm hurt. At her age, she couldn't tell us exactly where the pain was coming from. He felt absolutely horrible, and moped around for a good three days over his role in the injury.

I will spare you all the boring details, but suffice it to say that the urgent care clinic sent us for x-rays the next morning. But before that, during the night, she cried out in her sleep every time she moved, and while she slept on the couch (because we didn't want to move her any more than necessary), I slept beside her on the ottoman. Yes, the ottoman, with my knees up to my chest, all. night. long. I do not recommend this to anyone!

The x-rays came back showing no fracture, but she was still in excruciating pain.

Big E: Although he turned five months old on Thursday, we had an appointment for his four month checkup on Thursday so that we could have it at the same time as Miss O's 6 year check up. Big E had to get five immunizations, including a tetanus shot. Poor little man.

Back to Miss O: While we were there for Miss O's checkup, we discovered that she had an ear infection for which she had exhibited no symptoms. We also had to have two vials of blood drawn so that she can be tested for food allergies. We should get the results of that tomorrow, and I'll be so glad to finally know something on that front. The blood draw was tramautic, though, and this mamma did what any self-respecting mother without weight issues would do -- she took her daughter out to Sonic afterward for a shake to comfort her.

Back to Miss A: (Are you getting tired of all this back and forth? Yeah, well, welcome to my week of hell.) While we were at the doctor's office, I told the doctor about Miss A and wondered if they wanted anything for their records so that her file indicated the injury. The doctor asked me a few questions, and immediately was able to determine that this arm injury was likely Nurse Maid's Elbow, which is simply an elbow that pops out of place. It's very common in children ages 2-3. The next morning, the pediatrician sent us for more x-rays to make sure there was no break before she started trying to pop it back in place. After these x-rays showed no break, the doctor popped it back in place (traumatic for Miss A and me both) and then she showed me how to do it if it pops out again. Thank the Lord it was something that simple, and now Miss A uses the arm as if nothing ever happened to it!

Jonny: After all this, on Friday night, Jonny came down with a stomach virus. All day Saturday he was sick, and even yesterday didn't feel quite right.

All together, I only worked about 20 hours last week, which means I've exhausted virtually all the leave I had built up since coming back from maternity leave, not to mention the work that piled up while I was out. Also, the house was a complete wreck, so not surprisingly, I had a little emotional meltdown on Sunday. After a cathartic cry, a showdown with the staff at McDonald's, and a mini-shopping trip at CVS, I felt better. It was a rough week, but out of it has come some good. I'll post later in the week about some of that good, but for now, I'm getting tired just re-living this week again for you!

Cook-Once-Eat-Twice Crock Pot Roast/Beef Enchiladas

2009-08-18T11:04:00.007-05:00

It's been a long time since I've posted a recipe, as readers who have followed me here from my other blog know all too well. Having a baby has severely hampered my desire to cook much of anything, but slowly I feel the itch returning to try new things.

The following combines two of my favorite types of cooking -- slow cooking and cook-once-eat-twice. Hope you enjoy!

DAY ONE:

Crock Pot Roast with Tomato Sauce

1 beef roast

1 can tomoto soup

Put roast large enough to feed your family and have a decent amount of leftovers in the crock pot. Pour a can of tomato soup over the top and cook on low for 8 hours (give or take an hour, depending on your crock pot).

When you're ready to eat, you can either eat it alone, or serve it over egg noodles, and then serve whatever sides you like -- we had baked potato and broccoli. Oh, and I thought it would also be good in a stuffed baked potato.

When you store leftovers, be sure to put any leftover sauce in with the meat. If you don't have any, that's ok, too.

DAY TWO:

This sounds complicated, but I was amazed at how quickly and easily this came together. Total time for prep and cooking was 20-25 minutes.

Beef Enchiladas

1 package of 20 fajita size flour tortillas

1 jar enchilada sauce

1 container spreadable cream cheese (won't need all of it)

1 bag of shredded cheddar cheese (will need about 1 cup)

Preheat oven to 350.

Shred remaining beef and put in a small saucepan the shredded beef, whatever sauce you had left, about 1/4-1/2 cup of cream cheese (I used spreadable garden vegetable because that's what I had on hand), and about 1/2 cup or so of bottled enchilada sauce, and two handfuls of shredded cheddar cheese. (Sorry, I didn't measure, so I'm kind of guessing. You'll need to eyeball it since the amount of beef you have left over may not be the same amount I had.)

Heat through.

Heat fajita size flour tortillas in microwave just enough to soften them a bit, and then spoon mixture down the middle, roll up, and place in a greased 11x14 pan. Repeat until all the mixture is gone or all your tortillas or gone, whichever is first. This made about 12 enchiladas with the amount of beef I had leftover.

Once all enchiladas are in the pan, pour the remaining bottle of enchilada sauce over the top, and cover all tortillas with shredded cheese.

Bake in the oven until the cheese is melted, which was about 10 for me.

I made these on Sunday, and they were delicious. In fact, I'm eating leftover enchiladas today, so really, this cook once-eat-several-times!

Go check out the other Tasty Tuesday posts on Balancing Beauty and Bedlam!

Two Things About The Weekend

2009-08-17T10:58:00.003-05:00

1. Couponing Madness. This past Saturday the Kroger stores in my area had an awesome deal: any coupon with a face value up to $1.00 was doubled. With this deal, many items were free or almost free, and I spent about 45 minutes Saturday afternoon figuring out what I wanted to go buy.

I should have known better. I should have learned by now that when there is a possibility of getting anything free with coupons, you have to be first in line in my town to get the deals. One morning I was at CVS at 10:00 a.m. on the first day of the sale, and all the good stuff was already gone. And this last Christmas, it was our Wal Mart that was on the news for the day-after-Thanksgiving insanity But still, I hoped that I might score at least a few of the deals on my list.

Because we went to the circus at 4:30, I didn't get to the store until about 9:00 p.m. At that point, the place was still packed with people, but the shelves were completely cleaned out of all of the good deals I had identified, save two: I scored two bottles of very cheap nail polish, each of which were the last decent color of the brand I had the coupon for.

I was feeling bad, thinking I should have gotten my crap together sooner, so that I could have gotten up early Saturday morning and gone shopping. But then, while I was waiting in the checkout line, I overheard one of the workers telling another customer that at 12:01 a.m. Friday night/Saturday morning, the store was swarmed by crazy couponers. At one point in the middle of the night, the line snaked around to the back of the store, due to the store being completely unprepared for the insanity of the frugal brigade. There was one lone cashier, and she is used to working the self-check out lanes. Instead, she was forced into working a register, and the worker said that by the time this girl left her shift, she was crying because of how awful it was.

At this point, I no longer felt bad. Yes, there were quite a few awesome deals, but there is no way that I would be at Kroger at 12:01 a.m. in order to score a few free bottles of salad dressing. And even if I would stay up to go shopping, there is no way I would stand in line for that long. Craziness, just craziness, I say. However, even with all the good deals gone, I still saved over $7.00 on my groceries with my coupons, even if I didn't get anything free. And I'm happy with that.

2. Kid Conversation. I have to record this conversation for posterity because it's just too funny to me. Sunday morning I stayed home while Jonny took the three kids to church by himself. (I'll explain why later in the week in another post.) He has not had to go on very many outings with all of the kids by himself -- in fact, he purposely tries to plan it so that he doesn't have to, and who can blame him? And apparently Miss O has noticed.

As soon as they get in the car, Miss O says, in a tone reminiscent of an evil genius revealing some well-thought out plot: "Now you're gonna know what it's like to have all three kids by yourself."

"Mamma knows. It's hard," she told him.

He was laughing at this point and said, "Why is it hard?"

"Because I'm in a bad mood [at this point she hadn't been in one yet], and then A aggravates me, and I complain, and then A cries, and E usually cries, too."

And that's about how it goes much of the time when I have the three of them by myself. And I think it's hilarious how observant she's been.

If I Die, Don't Go to My House

2009-08-13T13:58:00.008-05:00

The juggle has been a little insane lately. In the past two weeks, I've worked late five out of seven weekdays (highly unusual for me) and Jonny has worked late about the same number of nights, plus he worked from sun-up to way past sun down on Saturday. Add the fact that I took a Sabbath last Saturday, and you can only imagine what my house must look like. Actually, please don't imagine -- it's just too embarrassing.

I had lunch with a coworker last week who is also a working mom, and we laughed about how we each have the same fear when our house is bad: what if we die and people come to the house and see how bad we let it get? It made me feel a little better to hear that I'm not the only one who thinks that way! No joke: If I had to choose between having on clean underwear or having a clean house when I die, I'd choose the house. I'm just neurotic that way.

Soooo, now that I don't have any more public meetings at night for at least two weeks, it feels a little bit like how you feel after you've been sick, but now you feel better and there's so much to do around the house to make up for the time when you were down and out.

It's time to get everything back to normal, and get back to my Flylady routines. And, most importantly, get the house back to a place where if I die, I won't be embarrassed. (Don't ask how that would work, just go with it.)

Kids' Artwork

2009-08-11T14:57:00.004-05:00

With two art-producing kids in the household, and another budding artist just waiting for bigger fingers and better muscle control, I have GOT to come up with a system for saving artwork that works for us. Between the two girls, they bring home up to and sometimes exceeding 20 pieces of artwork per week, which is just an insane amount of papers!

Right now, I just stack them all up in my hotspot (as Flylady calls any surface that collects stuff like a magnet), and when the kids aren't looking I throw almost all of it away, making sure to hide it under other trash so they can't see I've thrown it away.

The other day, Miss A (the 2 year old) saw some of the artwork that I hadn't hidden well enough, and declared, "This not go here!" and took it back out of the trash. Oops. Lesson learned.

Other than not hiding it well enough when I get rid of it, disposing of artwork isn't a major problem. About 90% of what comes home gets thrown away. It's what to do with the ones I save, plus knowing for sure which ones to save.

Right now, I'm a sucker for any artwork that comes home with their handprints on it. If their little hand has been dipped in paint and pressed to paper, my heart just melts and I determine I want to save it for all eternity so I can always remember how small their little hands were at ____ (fill in the blank) years old. I have noticed that this does not carry over into fingerprints -- it must be the entire hand before I go, "Awwwwwww." Ridiculous, I know, but what can I say? I also want to save any rendering Miss O makes of our family because I think it's just precious to see how she draws all of us. (Miss A is too little yet to make family drawings.) Pictures of trees, which are simply a personal favorite of mine even in professional artwork, are also hard for me to throw away. Oh, and anything that says, "I love you Mamma" usually doesn't make it to the trash can.

So what do I do with it? I can't scan it into the computer, though I like the idea, because our scanner isn't hooked up and there's no room to put it to keep it hooked up. And I don't have a lot of time (or desire) to scrapbook.

Is there anything you do that works for you to save special artwork? What artwork do you have a hard time throwing away? If you're kids are older, what are you glad you saved and what do you look at now and think, "Why did I save THAT?"

Revocation of Easy Baby Status

2009-08-06T15:06:00.006-05:00

I thought Big E was going to be my Easy Baby, the one who would sleep through the night faster than 6 months (for Miss O) and 11 months (for Miss A).

For a while he was sleeping 6-7 hours per night, even up to 8 hours one night, which only required one night feeding. And I thought, "What an easy baby he is!"

Now he is back down to sleeping only 3-4 hours at a time, and so Jonny and I are taking turns and each getting up once at night (though I wake up both times because the monitor is on my side of the bed).

When he stopped sleeping well, I thought maybe it was because he was sleeping too much during the day. But even on days when my MIL says he's only taken one nap, he STILL wakes up twice at night.

So then I thought maybe it's because he isn't getting enough calories during the day, since he weighs at 4 months what Miss O weighed at 6 months (we don't call him Big E for nothin'). So, we started him on solids. The first couple of rice cereal feedings went splendidly, with Big E slurping down his cereal like he had just been waiting for the opportunity. Again, I thought, "What an easy baby he is!"

But then he stopped. And now he refuses to eat rice cereal. And oatmeal cereal. And bananas. And sweet potatoes. He makes the most horrible face, as if I were feeding him something putrid, and spits it out.

Neither of the girls had this issue. Once they started eating, they ate with gusto and didn't stop. And I thought we were on track to do the same with Big E, but now, we aren't just stalled out, we're off the track completely.

So, to summarize, he won't sleep and he won't eat.

And I am officially revoking his Easy Baby status.

In the event The Baby Formerly Known As Easy allows me to sleep consistently longer than a 5 hour period again, his status may be reinstated as Easy Baby. But until that time, I respectfully request that no one refer to him as an Easy Baby.

His laid back nature and sweet smiles and adorable coos may influence you to use that moniker for him, but do not be lulled into any false beliefs -- not unless you're willing to be a night nanny for a solid week!

It's my sincere hope that his status may be reinstated next week, when he goes to daycare and they start putting him on a consistent schedule. But if not, he's stuck with his FKA Easy status. And that's all there is to it.

A Home, Not a House

2009-08-04T15:18:00.003-05:00

From Sunday afternoon to Monday night, I thought we might move. As is par for the course with me, if anything is even a remote possibility my brain automatically moves into Planning Mode, and begins making detailed plans ad infinitum (or, to those non-Latin-speaking moms, to infinity and beyond).

Someone approached my husband at church on Sunday about the possibility of house swapping with them because they are empty-nesters and don't need their four bedroom house anymore. Their house, which is located in the next little town over, isn't exactly what we wanted because when we move we want to make a BIG step up, not a wee little porch-size step up. But with 400 more square feet than our house, it would have given us more elbow room over the next few years as we work to pay off my student loan debt.

So, in the middle of the night on Sunday and during the day on Monday, I made mental lists of how to approach packing the house, developed plans of attack for getting the house whipped into shape to show the couple the inside, and even made some phone calls to see if our child care situation would work out.

But in the midst of all the Making Big Plans, I had an attack of sudden immense love for my little house.

It's the house that we brought all three babies home to.

It's the place where we have grown from a couple of young people in love into a boisterous family of five.

It's small enough that I can hear the kids when they cry or cough or throw up in the night, and there's only a limited number of places I have to look for them when they've gotten way too quiet during the day.

We like the elementary school where Miss O attends, and I'm even on the PTA board there.

And the physical location of our house is awesome -- two minutes from the elementary school if you drive and ten to fifteen minutes if you walk (depending on the length of time to get a 5 year old and a 2 year old to quit dilly-dallying and MOVE IT), two minutes from two grocery stores and a CVS, and seven minutes if you walk (and yes, I HAVE walked to all these stores), and five minutes to drive to our daycare. We've even walked to the donut shop from our house (which made me feel like I deserved an extra donut).

And there's our neighbors... we have the most awesome group of neighbors.

And so, when I found out this morning that the house swap wasn't a go, I was surprised to discover that I wasn't disappointed at all. In fact, I was relieved. And then, I was relieved that I was relieved.

The relief I feel shows that the work I've done on the heart issue of ungratefulness has worked. After being so sick of my house being too small, I began to focus on what I like about our house, and now I've actually changed the way I view it. Now I'm more than happy to stay there until we're financially ready to make the big step up and if that never happens, then I'm perfectly ok with that!

It's more than just a house anyway. It's our home and I love it!

Ah, Sweet Childhood

2009-08-02T16:20:00.005-05:00

Now don't get me wrong -- I wouldn't go back to my childhood for any amount of money. I'm not quite sure how the whole time travel thing would work in the first place, but if it meant there was ANY possibility of having to relive adolescence (a.k.a., my 10 year awkward period), then count me out.

BUT...

You know what I miss about childhood? The feeling of being done.

Your mom would tell you to go clean your room, and do a few chores, and once you did them, well, you were done. Finished. No more responsibilities for the day.

Adulthood, on the other hand, and motherhood especially, has brought with it the feeling of never being done. If the house is actually clean (bwahahahahaha!!!), then laundry needs to be done. If laundry is actually done (whatever.), then the car needs to be voided of its bits of hardened french fries and collection of daycare art masterpieces and half empty water bottles. If that's done, then the kids have suddenly outgrown their clothes overnight, and closets and drawers need to be cleaned out. Or there's my purse that has grown a strange collection of items that would never be found together in any other circumstance. Or the backyard has toys and dog poop and strange things thrown over the fence by the little neighbor boy. Or there's weekly dinner menus to plan, or grocery shopping to be done, or the refrigerator needs to be cleaned out or..... (running out of breath).

So, today, after a weekend of ignoring all the stuff to be done, and just enjoying my family, I'm reminiscing about a time long ago when I cleaned my room, swept and dusted and vaccuumed, and I felt done.

But you know what? Back then I didn't have a beautiful house that was mine, or a husband to love and play fight with, or three beautiful children who bring more joy than I ever thought possible.

So, I guess I'll count my blessings, and try not to count all the things that still need to be done because the to-do list will never be completely finished anyway!

Hello, Blogger!

2009-07-30T10:14:00.001-05:00

A completely new blog. A fresh start. A new place to record my memories, pour out my heart, stay connected with friends, and, hopefully, make some new friends.

I used to say it was a "struggle to juggle" all my responsibilities -- and everyone who has ever dropped a ball or two from your multitude of duties, say "Amen!" But now I see that even in the struggles of juggling my three kids under six, my marriage, my full-time job, my friends, my family, my church duties, my spirituality, and all of my other responsibilities, there are so many joys, too!

Life is full of opportunities to find happiness in the smaller things, and so, with three "smaller things" at my house, a.k.a children, I'll have lots to share.

My husband and I have been married for 10 years, and are still going strong. He is an awesome, incredible man, and a wonderful father to our three kids. I can't imagine being with anyone else. Or actually, I can't imagine anyone else putting up with me for 10+ years.

My oldest child, O, is 5, and she's full of compassion, a sense of justice, and a desire to love and be loved. She is currently in gymnastics and practices her cartwheels, handstands and round offs at EVERY opportunity and in EVERY location large enough to do so (and some not large enough).

My second child, A, is 2, and she's the spokesman for her daycare class, fascinated by how things work, and is extremely independent. She is currently very upset that she is not allowed to wear big girl underwear, which I sincerely hope means that we will soon only have one child in diapers.

My third child, E, is 4 months old, and he's just absolutely precious. The perfect third child, he's laid back, quiet (how can he NOT be with two talkative sisters?!), and a very good eater. He is my little chunky monkey.

And no, there will not be a fourth and fifth child to round out our vowel names. Our family is officially and medically-ensured to be complete!

I can't wait to start sharing our lives with you on this blog and chronicling my Joyful Juggling!!