Everyday Life

Categories Homeschool

First Day of Prairie Elms Preschool 2018-2019

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Since there’s no time like the present, Prairie Elms preschool reconvened for the 2018-2019 school year on Monday.

Our preschool class 2018-2019

I planned for two students, expecting that we’d do preschool while the little girls were napping –

The rest of our preschool class 2018-2019

but, so far, neither girl has cooperated with anything more than cursory morning naps – so four students it is!

Tirzah Mae first day of school 2018-2019

We do action songs and fingerplays and rhythm sticks and singing lessons. We check the weather and sing the days of the week. We sing the alphabet song and count a little. We read and read and read some more. We do ice cream cone math. And when we’re all done with “school”, we scrub potatoes (sensory win!) and fold laundry (life skills and fine motor). We decorate papa’s birthday cake (Happy birthday, Beloved!) We watch the garden spider on our door. We explore the leaf mould in the herb garden. We harvest basil and dry it. We watch caterpillars and birds and rolly pollies and all sorts of things mama later discovers are pests that she should have killed :-P

Louis first day of school 2018-2019

And when the day is done, we snuggle on the couch with papa and do our family worship.

It’s not much different than regular life, really.

But whatever it is, we’ve declared the preschool year to have commenced!

Categories Everyday Life

Sick days pre- and post- kids

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Pre-kid sick day

Snuggle up in bed with a book. Sip and nibble whatever you can keep down. Sleep whenever you feel tired. Take the occasional trip to the bathroom to vomit.

Post-kid sick day

Vomit into toilet. Wash hands thoroughly. Pick up baby who wants to breastfeed.

Baby vomits all over your front.

Hold baby at arms length so she’s not steeping in her own vomit while trying to remove her clothes and yours so you can shower.

Shower baby and hand her off to husband. Rinse yourself the rest of the way off and dress.

Grab baby back because, of course, she still wants to breastfeed.

Baby vomits on you again.

…

When it’s clear that the entire family is down for the count and you’ve already cleaned vomit off the floor in three rooms of the house, sweep everything out of the living room and roll up the rug.

Lay down vinyl covered toddler matresses and settle in to sleep between two preschoolers.

Wake up to one or the other child whimpering. Hold them in your lap while holding a bucket under their mouth to catch vomit.

Clean it all up, rearrange the children in the bed so you can attempt to lie between them, drop off to sleep.

Half an hour later, awaken to … a child whimpering for mama, a baby crying to breastfeed, or a baby crying for a bottle.

…

Once the family has been vomit-free for 12 hours, get out the bleach and bleach every surface in the house, including the twenty dozen toys that were on the floor when the vomit started to fly.

…

Spend next several days changing children’s clothes when their diarrhea diapers blow out, worrying that you should be bleaching everything again, and thanking God that your diarrhea phase is miraculously not urgent.

Get sleep in half-hour segments for next several nights, as the seven-month-olds are switching off waking you up and the foster baby is NOT happy with Daniel giving her a bottle.

…

Your husband goes back to work Monday morning.

You turn on worship music , decide that laughing is better than crying, and write a blog post.

Categories Parenting

Will it mess up my kids?

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As we’ve added to our family and as our family has grown older, I’ve discovered that my parenting toolbox is pretty limited. I’ve tried to add to that toolbox by doing some reading on parenting.

Many of the resources I’ve read have offered helpful tools to add to my toolbox. For that, I am grateful. But almost all have come with a healthy unhealthy helping of guilt.

Do it our way, they say, or you’ll mess up your kids.

You’ll mess up your kids if you spank. You’ll mess up your kids if you spare the rod. You’ll mess up your kids if you do time-outs. You’ll mess up your kids if you do star charts. You’ll mess up your kids if you don’t teach them to sleep on their own. You’ll mess up your kids if you let them cry it out.

And every time I read these books, I wonder if I’ve been doing it all wrong. In particular, they make me wonder if the specific parenting choices I’ve made at one time or another are wrong.

Are my children going to struggle for the rest of their lives because I sleep-trained them?

Are they going to struggle to connect with others because I sent them to their room to be punished instead of bringing them close for a cuddle instead?

Are they going to internalize the idea that they’re bad people because I’ve spanked them?

The doubts rise and then I push back. Yes, there is a such thing as abusive parenting. There are better parenting techniques and worse ones. But I reject the premise that every problem in our adult lives is a result of our parents’ doing (or not doing) x.

And then I realize that the real problem with the guilt the books are giving rise to, the real problem with feeling guilty over sleep training or time-outs or spanking – the real problem is that I’m letting the debate over technique distract me from the real issue in parenting.

The real issue, nine times out of ten, is my own heart.

The issue is that I am unloving, impatient, lacking in self-control. It is that I am vengeful, irritable, and selfish. It is that I am ungrateful and unforgiving.

And this issue cannot be solved by just snuggling my kids more or by resolving to not put my kids in time-out. This problem cannot be solved by healing the hurts of my past or by psychoanalyzing my parents.

This issue can only be resolved through repentance and reliance upon God to change my heart.

Rachel Jancovich’s Loving the Little Years is serving as a helpful tool to pull me away from these side issues and to bring me back to my own heart.

“As you deal with your children,” she writes, “deal with yourself always and first.”

I’ve summarized her thought in a single word that I’m reminding myself of frequently (and attempting to put into practice):

Repent.

Because the issue isn’t whether I’m going to mess my children up. The issue is my heart.

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 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 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.