bekahcubed

Categories Homemaking

What I Spent this Week (2018.08.03)

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I’ve been doing a rather terrible job of keeping my grocery budget under control of late (only in part because we’ve added children to the family since the last time we increased the grocery budget). So, inspired by Kristen’s “What I Spent, What We Ate” feature, I’m going to try a little bit of this online accountability thing.

We’ve upped my grocery budget significantly this year (for our new fiscal year of July to June!), and I’m now at $123 per week

Tuesday July 31
I got grocery pickup from Sam’s Club and Walmart.

Sam's Club purchases

$22.58 from Sam’s Club – all grocery.

Walmart pickup

$35.71 from Walmart – including Vitamin D for the little ones ($9.33) and a couple of spray bottles ($2.10), bringing the grocery total down to $24.28.

That leaves me $64.71 for ALDI on Thursday…

Can I do it?

Thursday August 2

I kept $64 in mind as I shopped, adding the cost of items (always rounded up) as I added them to my cart.

Our ALDI haul

My mental math told me I was buying $57 worth of groceries. The check out total said $56.18

My mental math wasn't bad

Not shabby (as far as keeping to the budget AND as far as mental math goes.)

What was left after lunch

I hadn’t made and packed a lunch for us for after our ALDI and library trip – so I picked up lunch stuff for us at ALDI. This is what was left after we were done :-)

Categories Homeschool, Parenting

You have to have something for you

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In our recent conversation about homeschooling, my mom stated that “you have to have something for you”.

Then she elaborated. “Intercessory prayer was that for me. And when you all were very young, Agape Handmaidens.”

That was about the extent of that bit of advice. But don’t let the brevity distract you from the wisdom.

Mom was telling me not to forget self-care. This is good. This was good for me to hear from my mother. Because self-care is a buzzword in today’s mommy-world and I’m often quick to dismiss it (out of distrust for anything popular in the parenting world).

But Mom’s elaboration also emphasized the difference between the popular conception of self-care and Mom’s conception of it.

Popular self-care involves manicures and pedicures, massages and spa days, hotel stays. Lots of money. Lots of time. Lots more money for babysitters.

Mom’s self-care was intercessory prayer: spending a couple hours a week praying for others with others, while we kids were babysat (when we were very young) or played independently in our pastor’s basement. Agape Handmaidens? One morning a month the ladies of the church got together to work on hand-work while the children were babysat. Mom often brought laundry to fold while she chatted with the other ladies.

That’s it. That was her self-care.

For this time-starved, uber-frugal mama, that’s exactly what I need to hear.

I do need to have something for me. Taking the time to prepare for and go to Tuesday Connection, our ladies’ Bible study at church, is important. Having that conversation with adults? That’s important.

But I don’t need to feel guilty that I’m not spending lots of money and lots of time doing those things that seem to me like pointless indulgences.

Categories Everyday Life, Parenting

More what?

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We were having plums for lunch, so it was perfectly reasonable that Tirzah Mae started to chant “More nectarines!”

I gave her a slice of plum. “Here is some plum.”

Then Louis began the chant. “More Macarena!”

I sighed. “Yes, you can have more plums.”

And then Tirzah Mae began again. “More macaroni and cheese.”

I give up. The silliness index is off the charts.

Categories Homemaking

Picking up more thoroughly, less frequently

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Homemaking does not at all come naturally to me.

I am a messy, if ever a messy was. I’m a piler, a clutterbug, a have-everything-spread-out-in-front-of-you person. I lose myself in projects and forget to budget energy to finish all the way to clean-up.

Which means that my house has perpetually been a mess.

I hate it.

The living room BEFORE

**The living room before naptime**

I hate walking in to a messy room. Hate looking at piles of stuff. Hate not being able to find what I’m looking for. Hate tripping over junk or having grit all over my feet from unswept floors.

But for years and years I’ve felt powerless against it.

Before I had kids, I figured that the messiness was a matter of discipline and once I applied myself to fix the problem I’d manage to get and keep things clean.

Then I had kids and I tried. I really tried. But I never managed to get things even picked up.

I was picking things up all. day. long. and never making headway.

I was tripping over things, banging into things. I had bruises all over from falls caused by the clutter.

And I was anxious about anyone coming over because the floor was perpetually covered with junk.

It was terrible.

The dining room BEFORE

**The dining room before naptime**

Worst of all, I felt so defeated.

I had always assumed that if I tried, if I just applied myself, I could keep a clean house (or at least a non-messy one). But I was trying and I couldn’t do it.

Then I was either reading Mystie Winkler’s blog or listening to her podcast and she said something that I decided to implement. She encouraged mothers to not clean up amidst their children’s play. Don’t try to clean up the Legos while the children are playing with them. Choose a time, before lunch or whatever, that you clean up and do the clean up then – not all through the day.

I figured I had nothing to lose. It was worth a try. What I was doing was clearly not working.

The living room AFTER

**The living room after naptime cleaning (20 minutes for the whole house)**

I chose naptime. Getting a handle on things for my own sanity was more important for right now than teaching the kids how to pick up after themselves.

So I stopped picking up while the kids were awake. Once they were asleep, I picked up the living areas.

I quickly realized that picking up wasn’t all I needed. I made a point to sweep the living room, the dining room, and the kitchen each day. That way, all the little scraps of paper and crumbs of food and broken pieces of crayon would be dealt with daily.

And, wonder of wonders, my house started being picked up.

Even at its messiest, it could still be picked up and presentable within a half an hour’s time.

No more four hour cleaning sessions just so I could feel comfortable letting someone sit in my living room (yes, that’s how bad it was!)

The dining room AFTER

**The dining room after naptime cleaning (20 minutes for the whole house)**

Picking up more thoroughly, less frequently is definitely working for me!

Categories Homeschool, Parenting

Separating “I wish I could have” from “I wish I had”

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When I was in Lincoln last month, I asked my mother about homeschooling. Specifically, I asked her what advice she would have given twenty-seven-year-old her as she embarked on her homeschool journey.

She had a hard time coming up with an answer because, she told me, “There are things I wish I could have done, but they just weren’t possible.”

She wishes she could have taken more field trips with us. But she had seven children in ten years – and taking those field trips just wasn’t possible.

She wishes she could have provided more opportunities for certain of my siblings to follow their interests more. But those things just weren’t possible in the circumstances she and we were in.

So she did what she could.

Even though that statement wasn’t advice, per se, I found in it a useful principle.

It’s valuable to separate the “I wish I could have” from the “I wish I had”.

Maybe I wish I could do x, y, or z but time, money, or energy makes it impossible.

I wish I could have taken my older littles to baby storytime at the library – but they were NICU babies and needed to avoid other kids.

That’s a clear cut one. Others aren’t so obvious, but they’re there anyway.

I wish I could do more outings with the children period – but I’m a homebody and I get really crabby at my children if I’m running all day. In this season of intensive mothering, limiting our time outside the house to two days during the week keeps me sane and enables me to manage myself and treat my children with compassion (most of the time).

Sometimes, I need to let go of the things I wish I could have done. I need to let go of the dreams I had of being this or that sort of mother.

I need to do what I can, not be forever regretting what I can’t (or being a terrible mother in the now because I’m doing something I really shouldn’t).

Side note: Lest you get the wrong impression, 27 is what my mother would have been (give or take) when she was in my situation child-wise. I got started quite a bit later and am definitely *not* in my 20s any more :-)

Categories Everyday Life

Miscellaneous Mother-ish Musings

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The nice thing about coffee stains is that they smell good, unlike pee stains. The nice thing about pee stains is that they’re colorless, unlike coffee stains.

“You never know, with the way people name their children these days.”

And then I realize the absurdity of that comment from a woman who gave her first child two first names, her second two middle names, and her third a hyphenated first name.

Pot, meet kettle.

For years now, I’ve been faithfully rotating my belongings using the first in, first out (FIFO) rule.

I’ve been putting recently used washcloths, tea towels, bath towels, sheets, underwear all at the bottom of the stack or the back of the row so that everything wears evenly.

I just realized that, at least theoretically, this means that all my linens will wear out at the same time and I’ll have to replace them in one fell swoop instead of bit by bit.

Is this really what I want?

Is it worth the work of rotation?

Hmm…

Categories Family, Following Christ

To the mothers who called me superwoman

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You saw me juggling my four little ones at the library and you were in awe. “I could never do it,” you said. “You’re superwoman.” And when I acted embarrassed, you doubled down. “No, really.”

I’m pretty sure that you intended it as encouragement. You see how obviously hard parenting lots of littles is and you’re trying to tell me I’m doing great. (At least, I hope that’s what you’re saying.)

But to call me superwoman implies that somehow I have innate, superhuman powers that enable me to live with the circus that is our little family.

I don’t.

Far from it.

When I had one child, newly home from the NICU who screamed and screamed and screamed, that ear-splitting Nazgul scream many times larger than her body…I could never do it. When she only slept lying on top of me but never relaxed into my arms. When the sleepless nights stretched month after month throughout the whole first year…I could never do it.

Yet somehow I did, by the grace of God.

And then I had two children. Another infant fresh from the NICU, this time with a toddler as well. They tag-teamed sleeping, except when neither would sleep. I learned the definition of touched out…I could never do it. Now that I had a toddler, I couldn’t keep the infant away from colds. So we got one after another after another, stretching my body to what was surely its limit with lack of sleep…I could never do it.

Yet somehow I did, by the grace of God.

And then I had a third child and my pelvic floor collapsed. The prolapse came with unrelenting pain when I sat, stood, or lifted – tasks a mother of three cannot avoid. Therapy was long and hard and took time I didn’t have….I could never do it.

Yet somehow I did, by the grace of God.

And then child number 4 arrived with a schedule to make home-loving me flinch. And my grandpa died so we took an emergency trip to Nebraska. And then the kids got sick. And then… And then… And then… I could never do it.

But somehow I am, by the grace of God.

You see, I don’t have any innate special abilities that enable me to do this task you think you could never do. In reality, I’ve cried out in desperation with every stage. “Lord, I can’t do this.”

But this, at each stage, is the task God set before me. Refusing to do the task is not an option. My only hope is to trust God.

And that, I think is what you miss.

Unbelieving woman, you think I’m superwoman because you recognize this task requires superhuman strength. It definitely does. But that strength could never come from me.

Sister-in-Christ, you may think I’m superwoman because you are terrified that God might call you to such a task – and you want to believe that only the specially gifted or the especially patient (let me tell you what, that’s NOT me) can handle such a task. But God gives grace for the tasks he gives during the task, not before.

Sister, this task of mothering, of fostering, is not for superwomen. It’s for women who could never do it, but somehow do, only by the grace of God.

Categories Everyday Life

“Helping” in the “Kitchen”

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The children always want to help when I’m in the kitchen – and I love that they do.

But I struggle finding things they can do to help.

More often than not, they want to help when I’m standing over a hot stove, when I’m chopping with my chef’s knife, or when I’m trying to get something clean (I cringe when they stick their grubby little hands in my rinse water!)

It just isn’t very easy to work in the kitchen with three preschoolers crowded around.

But I had some inspiration while I was getting ready for dinner tonight. I was serving mashed potatoes, which meant I needed to scrub and cut and boil and mash potatoes.

The kids "scrubbing" potatoes

And I realized that scrubbing potatoes is the PERFECT activity for my little ones to “help” with. I scrub with my Norwex Veggie and Fruit Scrub cloth – and the kids will barely notice the difference between that and a clean dishcloth.

Off to the lawn with a bag of potatoes, a dishpan of water, a pan, my veggie cloth, and three dishcloths. Oh, and three preschoolers (the baby enjoyed watching from a nearby blanket!)

More "scrubbing" potatoes

The kids “scrubbed” the potatoes and then handed them to me to finish. When all the potatoes were done, I dumped the extra water on the tomato plant and brought the potatoes inside.

Then the kids (two relatively dry, one sopping wet) headed to the front porch with papa to hammer nails while I gave the potatoes a quick rinse and got them ready for the stove.

Parenting win!

Categories Foster care

This is normal

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Exhausted. Overwhelmed. Wondering what on earth I’ve gotten myself into.

These are the feelings that have been my regular companions over the past week.

In my lowest times, I’m wishing I could just be done. I want to dissolve onto the floor in tears. I want to shut the door and just be alone.

This wasn’t supposed to be this hard this soon, I think.

And then I remember.

I remember postpartum life, adjusting to a new member of the household.

The tears, the exhaustion, the overwhelmingness of it all. The “what have I done?” The “can’t I just quit?”

It has taken me months to settle in to new routines each time I’ve welcomed another baby into the family.

Why should this be any different?

Yes, I’m not dealing with postpartum hormones (although, seriously folks, breastfeeding can mean some weird and whacked hormones too!) Yes, I’m not dealing with recovering incisions or tears. But I am adjusting to a new child’s routines. A new child’s cries. I’m adjusting my “old” children to the new child. Adjusting the new child to the “old” ones.

And unlike my postpartum experiences, this time I’m doing it without outside help. This time, I’m putting the meals on the table three or four times a day. I’m running to this appointment or that every day of the week. And all that with my husband’s car in the shop.

Calm down, I tell myself. This is normal. Don’t catastrophize. You will settle in. It just takes time.

And meanwhile, when the house is messy and my hair doesn’t get brushed and I’m throwing yet another round of sandwiches on the table, I can remind myself that God’s grace is sufficient for this season.

His power is made perfect in weakness.

When I dissolve on the floor in tears, he lifts my head and gives strength to go on.

And one day, four children will be easier and there will be a new challenge to remind me to lean on his grace.

For now, though, this is normal and this is right.

Desperately dependent on him.

Categories Foster care, Parenting

Learning to say “Please”

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Tirzah Mae and I just happen to be learning the same lesson these days. Now that she is three, and now that I have three children, we’re learning to say “please”.

Tirzah Mae is learning to say “please” as an alternative to making demands. I’m learning to say “please” as an alternative to “No, I’ve got this.”

For Tirzah Mae, learning to say please is about reorienting her natural ego-centrism that thinks the world should jump at her beck and call. Instead of “give me some water”, she’s learning to say “May I have some water, please?”

For me, learning to say please is about reorienting my natural pride that thinks I should be able to be self-sufficient. Instead of, “No, thanks, I can handle everything myself”, I’m learning to say, “Yes, please, I can’t do it on my own.”

So, when the nurse offers to push the stroller when I’m rounding up the children for our doctor’s appointment?

Yes, please.

When the library assistant offers to continue checking out my books while I take a newly potty-trained little one to the bathroom?

Yes, please.

When a fellow library patron offers to put my books in the bag so I can soothe the baby that’s beginning to fuss in her sling?

Yes, please.

When the lady at the grocery store offers a hand when I’m juggling kids and groceries and a phone call?

Yes, please.

It’s a lesson I think I’m learning just in time – because three is becoming four. We’ll soon have a little guy joining our family, for as long as he needs us.

Which means I need to step up my “please” game and ask for help instead of just accepting it.

Please pray for us as we open our home and our hearts to this precious little one. Please pray that the gospel would grow deep in our hearts and in his as we seek to practically minister the gospel to him.