A Few Ups and Downs of Parenting

A funny tidbit:
Last month, I was battling a small cold. After a sneezing attack, Ruby advised me to take a cough drop: “Mom, you can get that thing what Daddy does to make your throat smell better.”

My children aren’t synchronized on their nap schedules: a thing I find slightly vexing. Some days, I may have ½ hour where they are all asleep—uh—in bed. (Ruby doesn’t take a nap most of the time. She has never been a fan of sleep and has boycotted naptime most days for over a year now.)

Even so, I find that I am a much better mama if I have had a break. Therefore, Ruby is not required to sleep, just be quiet in her bed. So, in this break (Haley fussing in the bassinet—hope she’ll succumb to sleep soon, R & C nearly to the end of supposed “naptime”) I’ll quickly post.

This morning, Ruby was playing with her doll. She kept getting it in and out of the crib, rocking on her rocking chair and talking to it about how it needed to go to sleep. I inquired as to what she was doing. She very calmly replied, “I have a baby and she’s 20 months old and she drives me nuts.”

When I watch my girls play “Mommy,” I am often amazed that they are so patient and kind to their dolls, and I wonder where they get that. Their babies are almost always naughty (what fun is it when your baby isn’t?), and I’ve overheard Claire sweetly say, “If you get out of your crib again, you will lose a privilege.”

It really convicts me to see them play with their dolls and set expectations, boundaries and consequences with their “children,” without getting riled up or short of temper. I’m sure I don’t look like that most of the time. Sometimes I watch them mimic me—cringing, one eye closed—afraid of what I look or sound like to them throughout the day. And when they do this with their dolls, I am almost certain that they don’t get it from watching me.

Yes, this parenting role has been challenging, to say the least. Like my dear friend E. and I were discussing a few weeks ago, sanctification is not an elective. I think one of the verses that I find most comforting at this time of extreme testing is Philippians 1:6 “being confident of this, that He who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.” God saves to sanctify—and eventually perfect—His children. Even though some days I see so much sin in my life that upon reflecting on the day I would almost swear I am more sinful than I was 10...5…2 years ago, I can know from God’s Word that if I am His child, the truth is that He is exposing more of my sin and working out His promise to finish what He started. From God’s perspective, I’m not getting worse; I’ve always been this sinful, and am more sinful than I can imagine—I’m glad I don’t know all He knows. I’m so grateful He doesn’t expose all my sin at once!

My friend Josanna was able to stay with us last night, on her way from CA to TX. My girls have such fun with her. I remember when I used to be fun with children, too.

Okay. Naptime’s over. Let the good times begin

Arizona (Almost) and a Little Hammer

Yesterday morning, hanging out at home, Casey said he wanted to go on a drive, so I hopped in the shower and we took off. About an hour into it, the girls contented and quiet, He turned to me and asked "Wanna go to Arizona?" I was taken by surprise, and immediately thought of all the reasons it was an absolutely impossible thing: we were "fish-sitting," we had no extra diapers, clothes, or toothbrushes, we'd left the air conditioning on in our house, Casey was supposed to read the Bible at Church tomorrow, and where exactly would we go, and where would we stay? For every reason I gave, he gave a solution. That was when I realized he had been completely serious, after we had already turned onto a road that would bring us back around; had I said "yes," he would've done it. I felt really badly that I'd killed his idea, and kept saying, "Well, then, let's go ahead and do it."

While stopping for lunch at a 50's diner, I said once again that we should do it. Casey said it wouldn't be spontaneous if we did it now--we'd been talking about it for over 1/2 an hour. I told him that it would still count as spontaneous, because we left home not planning on being gone overnight. He said, "Yeah, but it's a little overanalyzed now." What?!?! Me?!?! Overanalyze?!?!

So, we decided to come back home and I'd say yes next time he suggested such a ridiculous idea. I kept thinking how much more "doable" it is to be spontaneous when it's just the two of you. There aren't really the same concerns or difficulties to encounter when only adults are involved. A couple we know at church told us they had gone to AZ spontaneously this weekend, and she didn't even have shoes! That's spontaneous!

On the way home, Ruby got a headache. She told us her head hurt and that God was hammering in her head with a little hammer.

Dinner Helper

Ruby loves to help me in the kitchen. She's always asking to help make dinner, wash dishes, etc. I always tell her she can help with the things that aren't on the stove. So today, when Casey got home from work, she informed him, "Mommy says after she's finished burning the chicken, I can help her." Lovely.

Nesting?

Having company over sometimes is my only safeguard against absolute, out-of-control chaos in my home. As difficult as it can be at times to get my home in shape for company, I am always glad for the forced blitz cleaning/decluttering.

Today, my house magically became more and more box-free, thanks to a friend who has a great balance of keeping me company while helping me accomplish things. Whenever she helps me, I can look around and see a huge difference in my home, yet I am not exhausted. I love that. It was getting a little discouraging sinking deeper and deeper into chaos in my home, being away at least 2 days out of the week (doing laundry and cleaning our other house in ABQ) and having Casey gone for a week. Our washer and dryer were delivered on Thursday, and I can't believe what a difference it has made to be able to once again do laundry while working on other house stuff.

We are finally entering the homestretch with our ABQ house. The plan is to finish up cleaning and whatever projects are left tomorrow after church. After the carpets are cleaned and the bug man sprays, our tenants are free to start moving in, probably next weekend. Yay! We're so close!

(Here's how our cleaning expedition went. Lots of help from the girls and we got alot done.)

And I also am walking daily w/the girls as of a few weeks ago. Nothing aerobic, but I am exercising ON PURPOSE again. Now I just need to step-it-up on the protein and I'll be doing better about the upcoming labor. Thankfully, my body is getting me VERY ready in the contraction/relaxation department. Lots of strong ones coming on now at 33 weeks. I'm trying to figure out what I should plan for labor day, though. The fact is that I really don't feel confident that I'll do well during the really hard work if I have observers besides the very few people who need to be there. Ruby talks alot about the baby coming and wanting to "hold it on my shoulder," even though it will be "slippy" and "have bwood." She is so into this birth thing, and I really think it could be great to have her there. I have no doubt that I can do pre- and early-labor with the two of them close by, as many of my contractions are already strong enough to warrant cessation of activity (or at the very least, "going easy") for at least 1/2 a minute or more, and I'm dealing with them anywhere from 20 minutes apart to 3 min. apart, all the while caring for my children and home. However, I can see that it would be good to have a back-up plan at least for Claire, and maybe even Ruby, should they cause more distraction than is okay during my really hard work. More for Casey's and the midwive's sake than mine. I don't want them having to go off and deal with the girls instead of attending to what needs to be done. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to focus like I did last time no matter what naughtiness might go on, but I don't want to put my helpers in that situation. Something will have to be done.

I'm quite excited about this upcoming labor, and really feel the pressure of only a few weeks left to prepare. This baby will be here in about 7 weeks! Wow! I need to get going!