Category Archives: Family

Here’s what we look like today.

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From an e-mail I recently sent:

At home our current issues are self-control and deciding whether my not-planning-enough-ahead absolves certain poor behaviors, and, if so, how much.

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We’ve started school now, and the kids love it so far.  The challenging thing there is figuring out the right amount of stuff to fill each slot, and denying myself (so completely) to stay on-track with the schedule God game me to balance the children.

They love the regular change of activity and increased interaction with Mama.  I grow weary of my continual-on, but am trying to think less of me.

It’s a slow process, but Lord-willing I’ll mature.

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First day of school

Natasha: I practiced letters. Last year it was very harder to practice letters, but this year I just chomped through it. I felt good about being able to practice my letters easier. I ate a cookie and some milk as a snack.

We expect to do the second half of this “first day” on Monday afternoon.

The children were all three very responsive to the changes in activity as directed by the timers.  I think we all enjoyed having the level of direction and surety of “next thing” it offered.

Started a day early I didn’t yet have a couple worksheets I meant to, so I expect I’ll be biking over to Office Max or Kinkos before Monday, and rectify that.

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A Blessing of Provision

Natasha got her first glasses less than 6 month ago.

Back at that appointment the eye doctor said to watch her and bring her back in 6 months if we noticed her vision deteriorating.

I ranked at this idea for a number of reasons.  First, it just seemed like a way to get extra business, so there was an automatic conflict of interest.  Second I wasn’t sure I could notice “a deterioration of her vision.”

Well, I did.

She started squinting about a month ago, and then sitting on the chair in fron of the movie rather than on the couch.

I called and made a new appointment.

She needs new lenses.

But (and this was the part I didn’t know to expect) our insurance will cover the cost of the new lenses because the replacement/correction is happening less than 6-months later.

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Fussing is Ugly

This morning Melody didn’t want to get dressed right away.  I told her to make her bed and we had a fuss-fest the whole time.

When the bed was done I thanked her and she continued to fuss.  I asked and told her several times to stop and finally reached my fill and snapped at her

“Fussing is Ugly! You are beautiful and precious and don’t need to waste your time on ugly things!”

And she was quiet.

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Elisha’s Trauma, Elisha’s Epiphany

Elisha was stung today: five times.

A group of children were playing outside the church after services today and they ran into a wasp nest. Elisha was stung between fingers on both hands (one each) the thumb and bicep of his right arm.

Natasha was stung too, on her leg under her skirt.  Melody came down with a freaking attack of the I’m-hurt-too-notice-me-mores (she’d scraped her heel somewhere) but Natasha took the wet teabag I gave her and went off out of the way while we worked on Elisha.

The church didn’t have any baking soda (the first thing I was looking for) but I saw a gallon ziplock of Lipton teabags, and wet those to use as poultices on each sting as we found them.

Lots of people hovered (thankfully outside the kitchen), but there weren’t many ways to be useful; we were all a little stuck for “next steps.”

At the beginning of the incident, one child offered me some leaves “to chew up and put on the sting, to draw out the poison.”

I didn’t think about whether or not she knew what she was talking about.

“I have a firm policy of not putting things in my mouth when I don’t know what they are, ” I told her.

I remember trying to be careful with my tone, but feeling disgusted at the idea. Even when an adult confirmed the idea, I couldn’t stand it.  Especially since, by then, the tea had already eliminated the swelling on the first sting we applied it too and the need no longer existed as it had.

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I ended up asking one family to bring Melody home behind us so I could sit in the back in between the needy-wounded.  It wasn’t till later it occurred to me I could have just ignored the under-12 rule and gotten us all home in one car, but I’m thankful no one tried to point this out to me at the time.

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Once home (and only a cheese-stick’s worth of silence later) I asked mom to keep the girls a while and she came to get them.

Elisha moaned and cried through the rest of the afternoon, asking for more water on his teabags when they dried out (the swelling was gone from all the stings, but he kept the last two bags on the stings between his fingers.  He indicated more than once that those were the most painful.

Finally– almost 6 hours after his first dose when we got home, Jay and I decided it was close enough and re-dosed Elisha with the (nurse-suggested) larger dose of Ibuprofen.  Jay took a shift of snuggling him while I ate, and maybe 15-minutes later Elisha perked up in the lap and said distinctly,

“I don’t hurt anymore!”

We all cheered and praised Jesus while I watched him adjusting to this new pain-free state.  Jay talked Elisha into a glass of milk and set the boy at the table across from me.  Elisha sat there, a smile spreading on his face. “I don’t hurt any more!”

Then a connection was made.

“God healed me!”

“Yes!” I answered. “We thank God for healing you!”

“God healed me!” he said again, the delight splitting his face into a grin.

The girls came home, everybody went to bed and to sleep.  I responded to a few calls of concern that came in during bedtime, delighted to tell the story of Elisha’s revelation.

His Sunday school teacher filled in the missing piece for me.

All this month (the 2-3 year-olds do the same story every week for a month) his class has been reviewing the story of Naaman (who asked the prophet Elisha for help), talking about how Naaman was so sick his mama couldn’t help him, his papa couldn’t the doctors couldn’t.  Only God could heal him.

And I just marveled at the perfection of God’s timing– that Elisha would be prepared to praise, and be prepared with the words to use.

If Elisha doesn’t remember this on his own, I know this is a story I’ll be telling him: Even when Mama and Daddy can’t fix it, God can.

The current list of praises:

  • The quick reduction of swelling: the nurse said swelling could last up to 2-3 days
  • No threatening reaction despite the number of stings.
    • The nurse said if something *bad* was going to happen it would happen within the first two hours
  • Elisha was wearing long pants and long sleeves, protecting most of his body.
  • He wasn’t stung more.  The grandma watching everybody when it happened said he was swarmed.  A couple wasps even followed him into the church when he was brought to find me.
  • The nest was found by investigating adults who know what to do about it.
  • The teabags were there and they worked so well.
  • Everyone was so respectful and responsive– helping us manage, but not trying to manage us.
  • All the children were asleep by 9 p.m.

“All praise to God who reigns above.”

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Scheduling

So I’m working out this scheduling effort, and I’m feeling very inspired by it

(Don’t knock it– any diet can be inspiring before you start.  Almost any.)

One of the unique elements of MOTH is the scheduling not only of your own time, but also of each of the children’s.  You don’t just say go-here, do-this, but you also provide what you both want.

For us:

  • One-on-one time with mama
  • One-on-one time with each sibling
  • craft time
  • read-aloud time

And then you work in the necessaries too:

  • School
  • Chores (the author suggests the label diligence rather than chores, and I like that).
  • Meals
  • sleep

I made a schedule for school time, and see myself starting to implement the applicable (non-school) parts on Monday or Tuesday.

This is just a week-day schedule– guiding our time mainly while Jay’s at work.

The neat thing to me in all this was the sense that it was doable.  The authoress’s reminders that God provides the time for what He wants done

And my own mantra of “God does not depend on human exhaustion to accomplish his will”

Made the whole process very peaceful.

I don’t think I’d feel this way if we were already in the middle of school– it would be too many details to think about and process while my brain was full– but the timing now seems just perfect.

My favorite thing about scheduling– and one of the half-dozen new thoughts this book has planted– is that the point is to reduce your load by reducing the number of decisions you have to make at  any given time.

“Decisions take energy,” like Teri Maxwell says, and the fewer (repetitive) decisions one needs to process the less scattered she is likely to feel.

The card-file system I’ve used for repetitive housework is an example of where I’ve seen the truth of this already.  I like *knowing* what to do next instead of constantly trying to figure it out.

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It’s Fun when things Stick

A long time ago I wrote about how I was careful to change the way I told Cinderella to clarify that work is not abuse. (I was not going to train any attitudes to a false martyrdom. Yuck.)

Anyway, when we watched the R&H Cinderella last week I was delighted when one of the girls leaned over to the other and said knowingly, “They are unkind not to help her.”

The other nodded knowingly and I just grinned.

This was the exact message I’d been trying to communicate, and I was very pleased they’d internalized it enough that months later they still remembered.

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Family Quick-Takes (Vol. 2)

Another brain-dump thanks to Jenn’s lovely idea at Conversion Diary.

Enough on my mind I did two this week (another one at UntanglingTales)

~ ~ 1 ~ ~

Elisha broke 3 last month (I had a sprained knee the day of his annual check-up and missed it– still haven’t rescheduled), and he is decidedly no longer a toddler.  He is a little boy, becoming increasingly verbal, and increasingly understandable at that.

He’s stacking blocks right now, and he loves playing in the dirt (right now our trouble is getting him and his sisters to play in the garden and not in what was last year’s dirt-pile and this year’s dog yard.

~ ~ 2 ~ ~

I love being married to an engineer.  I love that he includes me in his world (that he imagines parts of our vastly different worlds to be related enough that inquires for and values my opinion.  And it’s really good for getting me outside myself when he calls in the middle of the day with, say, a question about embroidery hoops.

~ ~ 3 ~ ~

I’ve been playing piano again (in bits) and Natasha said this week she wanted to do a song together (me and her) for the church some day.

She sat next to me for the next half hour as we sang her choice and more, then asked for directions about playing one of the songs herself.  She’s grown since the last time, or gotten stronger, because she can play both the A and D cords now.  Not quickly, but deliberately.

~ ~ 4 ~ ~

How do you be friends with someone you have nothing in common with– other than wanting to be friends?  I keep digging for new things and it only highlights what opposites we are.

And I’m not talking in the “opposites attract” way that some people believe in.

We’re talkin’:

music vs. no music
My movies vs. “scary”
reading and writing (self) vs. “not really interested in that stuff”

She has a very sweet spirit and she’s been homeschooling *years* longer than I… I just have no idea how to build relationship without similarities.

Suggestions? Advice?

~ ~ 5 ~ ~

I pick what parks the kids and I visit based on whether they allow dogs.

I’m sure 10 years ago I would have thought this was weird, but now I feel it’s not really fair to leave the dog indoors while we go play outside– and kind of counter-productive too, since I’d just be needing to exercise her later or deal with wired-dog all evening.

~ ~ 6 ~ ~

Natasha has a tooth coming in behind her lower teeth.  She’s wiggling the one in front, and has hurt herself several times biting wrong, but nothing’s ready yet to come out.

~ ~ 7 ~ ~

Melody is so close to reading.

When we left Forget-me-Not bookstore on Monday each of the kids was reading their own books and Melody looked up and asked, “What’s an enemy?”

And that is one of the words in her new book (a Dinosaur adaptation).

I am *so* thankful for that bookstore.  I love having the chance to own so many neat books.

I try not to be scared or sad about how devastated I’d be to lose them in a fire or something.  So many were unique finds I can’t imagine replacing them all  (certainly not for the amount they were collected originally…).

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NJ’s Cavity

I took Natasha to the dentist this morning to get a cavity filled. She did very well and was only a little sore afterward.
All the kids are brushing more regularly now, though Jay said Melody is not yet cleared to brush unsupervised– whatever that means 😉 .

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Words are so Fun

Got a bunch of books yesterday, and sat a while reading the new ones to the kids.

One really cute one is Lingingstone Mouse where the little critter is searching for China, where he wants to set up his new nest after leaving home.  The first time we read it I had just said the bit from his mother about it being time to leave, and LM was excited and ready to go.

Melody squirmed with anticipation beside me and gushed, “Ooohhh he’s gonna get stepped on!”

Our developing tragedian.   Hmmm.

~ ~ ~

Elisha’s ability to articulate has been increasing.  He is participating in the household rituals with the solemnity of a priest– informing me for the first time that they had become rituals:

M: Elisha!

E: Yes?

M: I love you!

E: I love you too.

He’s also gotten to where he can parrot whole phrases and count in sequence.  The girls have memorized Flint by Christina Rosetti (ask them to recite it for you sometime), but Elisha’s nearly got it too, and will recite bits with them.  Barely understandable unless you know what he’s trying to say, but if you know what you’re listening to you can hear every syllable and all the inflection (which, of course, all the children learn as faithfully as a tune).

Other clear phrases we’ve heard recently:

  • I love you
  • Thanks mom
  • Too much mom

Oh, and every dog is “joule.”  Not just its name, its identification.  Joule is now his word for dog.

Precious.  I enjoy it immensely.