Well folks, you keep asking if I’m able to keep a schedule, and my response is usually side-splitting laughter. But, something happened last week to prove to me that I do keep a pretty good schedule, at least where nap-time is concerned (gee, I wonder why I’m the most faithful with that aspect of the day?!). Lil Prince and Bay Bit go down for their afternoon nap about 15-20 minutes after lunch. So, here’s what happens when lunch is about twenty minutes late!
Enjoy!
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I’ll be back sometime in the next few hours to announce exactly who will be pampered by the fabulous Etsy shop, Gum Dropz. I’ll give you almost two more hours (until four-thirty mountain time) to enter…not because I’m that generous, but because it’s going to take me a little while to write everyone’s names out on little slips of paper and make sure the bonus entries are all officially counted.
I have another fabulous giveaway coming your way. But I think I’ll wait to brighten your Monday. And yes, “brighten” is a clue. First to guess exactly what the giveaway entails will receive a bonus entry.
Until then, maybe this will make your day a little brighter…
Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting exactly where I am right now. We’d already finished our school work, lunch, and two or three crafts (we don’t usually do more than one). The kids were grounded from videos, so they were busily destroying their room and listening to Adventures in Odyssey. The room destroying eventually led to a time-out for Tiny Dancer, and I directed her to the downstairs bathroom to sit in silence and ponder.
She was there for approximately thirty-seconds before she shot out like an arrow. Her face was white and panicked causing me to quickly count, and account for the whereabouts of, the other children. “Maaaaamaaaaa!” she shrieked, her eyes wide as saucers dumping buckets of larger than life tears that were clearly the result of a deeply wounding trauma.
Did I want to know the answer? Was it likely that a stranger had wandered in off the streets just to die in our bathtub (I have no idea where my children get their overactive imaginations)?! “Honey, what is it?” I asked quietly as I pulled her close and searched her trembling body for blood and quite possibly missing fingers and toes.
“I saw a criiiiiiiiiicket in the baaaaaaaathroom!!!!” She wailed, releasing a second string of now very annoying tears.
“No. NOOO! Nononononononononononononono! NO! NO!” I insisted, having never before believed that it was actually possibly for someone to be deathly afraid of bugs simply because they were female. “Where did my brave little dirt digger go?!” I asked in absolute desperation.
Then, like a burst of sunlight, piercing her sister’s terror and ripping it to shreds, Cuddle Bug yelled, “A cricket?! Let’s go kill it and feed it to the lizard!”
Tiny Dancer jumped from my lap and wiped her face with both hands. And then she shouted, “OK!” with a carefree giggle as she ran to share the scene of the crime cricket.
We’re kinda like network t.v. around here. We just stop and start our seasons at will. It’s a good thing that no one is counting on these like I count on watching the newest Office episode online while I do my Friday night baking. Cause when there isn’t a new episode of The Office, I’m pretty mad.
Anyway, I hope you’ll find a minute to watch this short impromptu interview inspired by a washed out Buzz Lightyear and a soggy, naked baby. Enjoy!
I am raising four (Baby Bear has recently learned to scream, but I wouldn’t call him strong-willed) extremely strong-willed and painfully closely spaced children. And, it seems, we’ve just entered a new realm of self-assertiveness with the five-year-olds. After the sweat and hidden tears that accompanied wrestling them inside (in front of the neighbors) yesterday when they wanted to be outside, I put a finger-gun to my head and I pulled the trigger. For the record, I’m thinking that’s a sin. But I do think it’s worth sharing just in case I fail to mention my overwhelming, I-am-but-dust revealing, failures in parenting enough.
Confession time: Sometimes, as in at least once a day, this parenting thing kicks my butt bottom, too.
If we could have put in our order for children back before we had any, I definitely wouldn’t have asked God for four children within sixteen months. I wouldn’t have thought I could do it. Of course, I would have been thinking about the whole four in diapers thing and the now infamous, “Do you ever sleep?!” line that has caused me to wonder, for the past five years, just how bad the circles under my eyes have gotten. I would have had no way to realize that the “four babies” stage was the absolute easiest, romancing and even fairy-tale resembling part of my parenting journey (thus far). I wouldn’t have known that teaching my children
respect,
love for God,
hatred for sin,
indifference to materialism,
patience,
kindness,
joy in all circumstances,
discernment,
peace,
love for the truth,
hatred for lies,
love for the world,
hatred for the things of the world,
how to pray,
gratefulness,
quietness,
how to not say ‘yuck’,
how to swallow spinach,
how to witness,
how to not judge,
how to recognize a stranger,
how to compliment,
how to not say ‘fat’,
how to not ask ‘is that a man or a woman?’,
how to share,
how to deal with a bad dream,
how to fight the devil,
how to think about themselves,
how to make positive confessions,
and how to respectfully correct their mother was the part that would drop me to my knees in prayer multiple times a day. I wouldn’t have known, because I simply wouldn’t have thought about it. Before my maternal heart was pricked to the deeply important, spiritually symbolic purpose of parenting, I couldn’t have had any idea.
There are several careers (that I can think of off the top of my head) where training is a constant part of the job. But none so much as with parenting. Even the very best parent is only an expert up to the age, stage and personality of their oldest child. If God gives us spouses to make us holy, He gives us children to keep us humble (as well as to reveal His heart toward us by imparting to us a small portion of His creative ability).
It’s when we embrace that holiness and that humility that we learn the difference between happiness and joy. And there is, I have learned, an enormous difference. Joy in humble parenting allows us to, when faced with whining so high pitched and feverish it can actually melt brain matter, think about God’s hatred for whining and grow little more grateful in that moment. Joy in humble parenting allows us to, when wrestling our children from the PlayPlace or the back yard to a place they would rather not go, give second thought to the excuses we’ve found for not moving or ministering or responding to a call from the Lord. But I think, most importantly, joy in humble parenting allows us to try and fail, try and fail, over and over again, without growing weary of the process.
We ought to try to be perfect while at the same time always acknowledging that our righteous is found only in Christ Jesus. When our children mess up, publicly and blatantly, they’re only proving to us that their job is not to make us look good. Their job is to keep us, humbly and actively, seeking after God. And our job is to return the favor.
Growing up, we didn’t have much money, except for a brief couple of years when we did. But, looking back, I don’t think I ever knew the difference. My mom shopped at dollar stores and garage sales whether we were abase or abound. Either way, she got mad when we roughhoused and knocked over her dusty silk flower arrangement. She really loved that awful thing.
She loved it because she made it with her own two hands. She loved it because it was her way of making a home out of what would otherwise have been just a house. I never understood why she bothered, but I think I get it now.
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