An Important Job

I joined instagram less than 24 hrs ago, pretty much for the sole purpose of keeping up with a dear friend who left Facebook probably over a year ago.  She left for a lot of reasons, reasons I definitely agreed with, and I got an instagram because I am tired of not keeping up with her life!

I really thought that Instagram was just pictures, but apparently she uses it for so much more.  She has a lot of followers, and she uses her instagram (whether she knows it or not) to speak life and encouragement into others.

This morning I opened my instagram and when I was at a *most frustrating* part of my day I felt encouraged in my role as a mother.  I was reminded of the importance of my position and while laying on the living room floor, bemoaning the effort it was taking to get anything done today.

Sometimes it feels like we work so hard at this mothering gig and our kids don't always get it.  Last week I stood on a beach in Florida with my husbands strong arms wrapped around me as he spoke life back into my tired home-school mother's soul.  I was feeling like a deflated failure coming down from the busy holiday season, where school often fell to the bottom of the list, wondering if all of this - if home schooling was really what we were supposed to be doing.  And then my husband swooped in like a night in shining armor to encourage me, and remind me that all of this - yes, this is the right thing we're doing - and our child is recieving an excellent education.

I can't imagine that I am alone in this.  I can't imagine that I am the only home schooler out there who thinks at times that she is failing her child.  I can't imagine that I am the only mother who wonders if I am really doing this correctly.  I know we all do, and so today as I laid there wondering how we will ever get back on a decent schedule, and how will my house ever look as clean or as organized as it once did - I was reminded that this job I'm doing, day in and day out, early evening, late night, middle of the night, way too early morning -

It is an important job and I am doing a good job.

Don't Forget Your Joy

As I sit here at 4:18, typing quickly before the children decide they are incapable of playing by themselves upstairs and they ambush me with pleas to play on the computer, I'm trying desperate to suck in these few moments of peace.  deep breaths, relax...

only 4 hrs till bed time, well technically only an hr and a half until we leave for church.  I can do this.  Praise God for church tonight (literally, we'll praise God and THANK YOU, GOD, SO MUCH FOR CHURCH NURSERY STAFF!!! Tonight, I may kiss you.)  Of course, our toddler isn't in love with your belly button and her pull up will be on the whole time, so I'm sure you'll tell me she was an angel, just like always - but for me - tonight - you're the angel.

It's been a day that started out so wonderful!  Zemirah pooped in the potty, TWICE! Both times on her own without any prompting from me.  And then we mixed cookie dough together, I even spoke kindly to my children the whole time.  It was 11:30 though and I needed to go pick up potatoes from a friend so that we could have dinner tonight.  So, instead of starting another batch of cookies, we headed over there.

When we got home, I forgot to ask Z to use the potty... and then, her bladder forgot to use the potty.  So her ballet leotard (the most prized of all clothing items) had to go in the wash, and Mommy had to clean up pee..off the couch...off the clean laundry...

Z went down for a nap.  I broke my "no movies before 3pm on school days" rule and let Am watch a movie so I could clean up the kitchen and take a shower.  But then I got sucked into Am's movie, Am went to the library with Grandma, I quick paid a bill and jumped in the shower.  But Z woke up, and joined me in the shower.  So I forgot to wash my body.  Then we cut out our cookies from the dough we made earlier in the day.  But POWDERED SUGAR IS JUST SO MUCH FUN, the kids thought.  So, Amariss would rub her hands in it and clap fervently to make it snow.  And mommy started to lose it.

The cookies are baked, today really hasn't been so awful.  Infact so many people have had worse days than me so far.  I was celebrating our wins; poop in the potty, cookies baked, some cookies broken so we get to eat them!  and then came the cry from upstairs.

MOOOOOMMMMMYYYYY!!!!! ZEMIRAH POOPED ON THE FLOOR!!!!!

I grabbed a pack of wipes and went upstairs and found a toddler squatting on the floor in full on poop position.  "Zizi, we don't poop on the floor, we poop in the potty."  I calmly stated.  I stood her up and guided her out of the way.  She stepped in it (oh no! I panicked inside) she stepped down.  Trying to stay as calm as possible I cleaned off her foot and sent her on her way to clean up the turds staring me in the face.  Before I knew it she sat down, and a messy poo butt smeared across more carpet.  My heart sank.  It's a never ending battle.  Then she said "Mommy, I peed on that blue chair!"  oh, great.

I sit here, calmed down, being fed plastic baby hands by the toddler who commited the above offense.  She's so sweet, so cute.  Asks adorable questions over and over and over again.  She brought me a baby in a box as a present.  If you could hear her sweet voice you would just smile with delight.  She is such a joy to our lives.  I can't let frustrating days, or frustrating moments steal away my joy in my position as a mother.

Sometimes it is so very hard.  I don't like finding myself on my knees cleaning up more pee, more poop, more spilled sugar or flour.  I don't like recleaning a mess because I wanted my oldest to learn how to clean it up the first time.  In a moment of frustration tonight I spouted off to my husband that I was just so jealous of him, getting to leave the house and have someone else clean up the big messes.  (in all honesty, poop really freaks him out, so it's probably for the best that this is usually my job)...

I don't want to lose my joy.  I don't want to lose the ache I felt in my heart during the first few days of this sweet girls life in my womb of pleading "God, please, let me keep her!!"

Toddler twos and threes can be so hard, so trying, so exhausting... but in there somewhere is a sweet kiss (but don't try for two!), a sweet smell, a sweet snuggle.  It might drive me nuts that she loves my bellybutton when I'm trying to run around the kitchen and she's following me with a hand up my shirt.  But, she only wants my bellybutton, and that is a sweet blessing.

She just found her wings that she's been looking for for days.  Her sweet voice "I found my wings! I found my wings!  I'm flying!  It's working! It's working!"  oh sweet Z, I love you.  

Screen Free Time

Screen Free Time is something most people are familiar with.  (and I know I should not end that sentence with a preposition.)  Here in our house SFT usually comes when I just can't take the screens anymore.

Many of you know that we homeschool - if you didn't, now you know - we homeschool.  (Which by the way is one word even though spell check is constantly trying to correct me. click here)  There are so many reasons a family chooses to homeschool, and ours, like many families is a combination of reasons.  I won't go into them right now, but I just wanted to throw that out there.  This post is actually about Screen Free Time.

It seems when we start out the school year I'm usually "super-mom".  I am on top of school.  I am on top of the house.  I am on top of everything.  We follow our schedules.  I prepare things the week before and then the night before, and I feel great!  And then about two weeks in I start to stumble, we let a couple of things slide.  Then three weeks in some more things slide, and by week six - we're in a bad spot.

Well, week six was last week for us and let me tell you, by the end of the week I was about to sign my daughter up for public school.  The problem was not my first grader.  No, she's great!  Doing her assignments, not complaining, enjoying school - the problem was ME!

Our schedule is gone.  My organization is gone.  My house is a mess and climbing back up the ladder of success seems like such a long hard climb.

So, we made a new rule for school days.  All school days are screen free from 8 am - 3 pm unless it is an educational website that has to do with our math, science, or some other assignment.  This eliminates two BIG problems we have - the constant whining and asking to watch a movie or play a computer game and then me losing track of time and letting them watch another movie and play another game... which can wrap into more time than we intended.

Today is our first day screen free.  (I also said that this rule does not apply to me, because much of my other home activities involve some sort of screen) Although, right now this blog writing is just therapy.

Can I be honest though, so far today has been awesome!  I feel like super mom again, even though the house is still a big mess.

Another thing I did today that I'm going to try and keep up with is keeping a bowl of healthy snack food out on the table.  This morning I cut up a melon and left it out with a plastic wrap over it.  Every time the girls whine that they're hungry I send them to the table for a bite of melon.  It has been awesome!  They just go and eat it - and they stop whining.

Today I also mandated that we spend time outside running around.  So we got out the soccer ball and set up some goals and played a rudimentary game of soccer.  And I officially lost.  We ran around and got hot and sweaty and tired for an hour!

After lunch we sat and Amariss read to me while I picked through her hair and then we switched and she picked through mine.  We were pretending we were monkeys looking for bugs.

I know that not all days (infact, most days) will not be like this, but today it feels pretty nice to have a good day and remember that its okay that we had a bad week last week.  It won't be our last one, but it wasn't our first - this is just a part of life.

I'll let you know how we feel at the end of the week.

Any other homeschooling parents have bad weeks?  How do you handle them?

The Garage Sale

Our first adoption fundraiser was last Saturday!  We had a garage sale to help raise funds and it was so exciting.  My very good friends spent Wednesday and Thursday at my mother-in-laws house tagging/organizing/sorting all in preparation for Friday afternoon and Saturday.  And my mother-in-law deserves a medal of honor for watching my kids AND my friends' kids all day Wednesday and Thursday!!

There were so many generous friends who donated so much to this sale!  There is no way we would have done so well without all of you!  We had a full garage and full driveway with everything from nearly every size of children's clothing, to toys, to maternity clothes, to housewares, to a huge toolbox and fencing!

It was amazing.  

Everything did not sell :( but we are going to pack everything back up and try again for the spring city-wide!  We might have a baby by then (who knows?) but even if we do, we will still be paying for this adoption, so all the funds will still go towards our adoption fund.  

Choosing Joy

This morning started out rough.  Actually, no - it didn't.  It started out great!  Tiny slept all night long, which is pretty rare, so I woke up well rested and ready for the day.

But then I lost track of time, and made an unfortunate discovery.  I had made a mistake a few months ago, that I didn't find out about until this morning and it ended up costing us money.  I really hate it when I make mistakes, especially financial ones.  So to say I was in a sour mood would be true.

We were on our way to Noodle's ballet class this morning and all I could think was "What else could happen today?  This day is just going to stink!"

Then I gently reminded myself to choose joy.  It wasn't an easy choice.  I kept reminding myself of all my failures and ways that I was pretty sure I wouldn't measure up today. But I prayed, I hashed it out with Jesus a bit - not wanting to choose joy, more or less forcing myself into it.

 To be honest, I didn't measure up today, I rarely do.

But I decided that at the end of this day, I would choose joy.  I wouldn't sit around and think about how terrible I did at being a great mom, or how my house doesn't look any better than it did when we started the day (and actually it probably looks worse), or that school wasn't as organized as I thought, or that we ended up eating leftovers instead of making a real dinner.

Truth is, today wasn't a stellar day for me and tomorrow probably won't be either.

But I've got joy.  I see love in my children's faces and I delight in their laughter and voices.  I kept calm when my patience was tested today, I let my daughter throw herself on the piles of laundry on the couch, and tried not to think about what I should really be doing with that laundry...

We did school; with jewels that my daughter wanted to use for a craft.  We'll eat dinner; not what was planned and we will enjoy this evening and enjoy each other.

Some days do not go like you plan them to, but that is okay.  At the end of the day I chose joy.  I messed up.  I made mistakes.

But there is a new day coming and today I'm not going to beat myself up over my shortcomings.

Any of you have days when you have to choose to be joyful?

A quick update!

It has to be a quick update because I'm pretty sure if I blink my life will fly past me!

Homeschooling:

My daughter doing a numbers puzzle.

We have been so busy this week with our first week of homeschooling and to top it off I got a cold.  So, in between trying to modify lesson plans or prepare for the next day, I was trying to catch sleep where I could and continue to keep up with our regular activities.  To say this week has been crazy would be an understatement.

But, my 5 year old is really enjoying Kindergarten at home and my 1 year old hates it.  But we'll figure things out with her, it might mean postponing school until her afternoon nap time.  Which is what I'm going to try and do today since yesterday was so awful.

On the reproductive front:  
After a little bit of office mix-up at my midwife's office (really who can blame them they have a ton of patients) and maybe a misunderstanding on my part, after 3 weeks I finally got my blood tests ordered and drawn on Tuesday afternoon.  I haven't heard back yet what the results were.  I called yesterday but something tells me I probably won't know until Monday and even then I'll need to schedule an appointment with my midwife to discuss our options from here.

So that is where we sit right now.  We are still waiting for answers, and I feel like I'm right on the precipice of major decision making.  The outcome of these tests will make a lot of decisions for us right off the top, which is encouraging, but I know that they will also spark more discussion, more planning, and maybe even a little more confusion as we now have to take the next step.

In the meantime I am going to enjoy the weekend coming up.  We finally have very little on our agenda and I'm looking forward to enjoying family time and hopefully cleaning the house.  (Betya never thought you'd hear me say that, eh?)

Happy Friday!

Homeschooling

A few years ago we approached the idea of homeschooling our children.  We tried it for a few weeks when our daughter was just 3 and things didn't go so smoothly.  She didn't enjoy the sitting and working worksheets.  2 years have passed since then, and it seemed that overnight our vision completely changed.  We went from "We can't homeschool"  to  "This is something we might be able to do".

And here we are -

We begin homeschooling Noodle tomorrow!  I can't believe Kindergarten is already here, and as I spend this afternoon cutting out calendars and letters and other activities we have planned for this week I just can't help but think about how 5 years has flown by too fast.  This next year is certainly going to be a busy one, but hopefully a very enjoyable and fruitful year for us too.  Our Noodle Doodle is excited and so am I!


I am no photographer but I hope to be taking regular pictures of our homeschool adventures so that at the end of the year I can put together a little yearbook for Noodle.

Here we goooooooooooooo!!!!!!!!!

Comparisons: The Deadly Trap

Have you ever read a story and thought to yourself "Wow.  That is really powerful!  I wish my story was that impressive."

I was just thinking that.  I play the comparison game way too often with myself; looking at other people's stories, lives, or opportunities as ways to make myself feel less.  

I've realized though, that I'm not the only one.  People have compared themselves to me!  And I think, uh... I wish I could be flattered, instead I find that you are sorely mistaken!!

I keep having to remind myself that we are all just humans.  She's human, I'm human, you're human.  And God did not create all humans to have the same stories, they are all different for special reasons and purposes.  Sometimes we choose the path our lives take, sometimes we don't - either way my story is not supposed to look like hers, your story is not supposed to look like mine.

If I keep this perspective in mind, it helps me from playing the comparison game.  It helps me from getting jealous that her story sounds cooler than mine, or more exciting, or like she is a better multi-tasker, or that she is more capable than me.  No, none of those things are true - today she might be cooler than me, but that's because we had a different day.  Tomorrow my day might be more exciting, and for goodness sake, next week her balls in the air might come tumbling down while I'm juggling with ease.  I might have PMS today, and she might be at her peak hormonal performance.

Lysa Turkhurst says in her book Unglued:  "Comparison steals celebration."  She goes on to say "We stop celebrating our own good and have a really hard time celebrating others' good."

What a profound statement and truth.  How often have I done that?  I stop seeing all the good God is doing in and through me and I get angry about all the good God is doing in and through someone else!  That is so backward and contrary to what God has called us as believers to do.

Just some conviction for myself tonight as I jealously began to think that someone else's story might be more powerful than mine.

Not what I thought it would be....

PAIL Post

When I first started out on this parenting journey, just like many newbies, I had a lot of grand ideas of how awesome I was going to be (cue laughter)... 

I quickly, and I mean quickly, learned just how little I know about parenting, and even - dare I say - judgemental I had been towards other parents (ouch!). 

I thought Attachment Parenters (AP) were crazy, and I had several friends who used Babywise and I totally disagreed with a lot of it.  So, I didn't know which school of thought to follow. 

What I found out though, was that God equips us exactly as we need to be equiped.  Oh, I make mistakes, a lot of them, daily - but my daughter knows the truth about Jesus, she is full of love, and quick to share, and that strong-will she was blessed with? - its still there, and being shaped for God's purposes. 

Some of the things that make me the craziest about my daughter and parenting, are not wrong at all - they're just different than me.  Where I am introverted, my daughter knows no stranger... (seriously, we have the stranger talk all the time).  Where I am quiet, my daughter is boisterous.  Where I want to fit in, my daughter just wants to be herself.  *If you know my husband, you know where my daughter has inherited all of these, oh so wonderful traits.*

Sometimes, its not a matter of changing those traits in her, its a matter of changing those traits in me.  We've taught her to love, and love she does! 

And parenting?  It is HARD WORK.  This kid is no angel, just like the rest of them.  She tests the boundaries and makes me wonder if I really knew what I was getting into.  No, I didn't. 

I didn't know what it would feel like to get up in the middle of the night, 3 times - because she's thirsty, hungry, or has to pee.  (When they're 4 and you're pregnant, you have a lot less patience for these shenanigans.) 

I didn't know what it would be like to still have to give a consequence to the most adorable little face I've ever seen, that's crying becuase I looked at her sternly. 

I didn't know how much I would love this kid. 

And that love only grows every. single. day.

So parenting philosophy?

I lean more towards Attachment Parenting and I still disagree with Babywise.

But just like anything, I don't follow that perfectly either :)


*On that strong-willed child though - If you have one, I can tell you right now.  One of the BEST books out there is You Can't Make Me, But I Can Be Pursuaded by Cynthia Tobias. 

Go buy it.  now.  for real.  It will change your life and the way you parent.  It made a world of difference in our home and our daughter was just turning 4 when I read it.  I wish I'd read it when she was 2 though!