Amazing how you can go from feeling beat down and discouraged in your parenting one day, to having a great day the next. I'm sure that I'm not unique in this, but I struggle a lot with feeling guilty about who I am or how I'm doing as a parent. Not present enough, easily distracted, frustrated easily with Aspen, not spending enough one on one time loving or snuggling with each of the kids (well, the older ones), don't lay in bed talking with Aspen often enough, too focused on keeping/getting the house clean, don't read enough to the kids, never help them build puzzles and rarely play games with them, don't spend regular or enough time with God, spend too much time online, have a tough time remaining emotionally engaged with the kids and my husband, and on and on it goes. I was having one of those days yesterday. And I've been wrestling with where to put Journey in Kindergarten for the past couple months - our local public school or Portland Christian with Aspen...
With only 2 weeks left before school starts, I'm really trying to enjoy each laid back morning of summer left. Teague woke me up at 7am this morning. Mom and Dad stopped by just after I woke up to drop Winston off. Aspen is babysitting him for the next three days :) I made some coffee, and got to spend the first 15 minutes of my day with Teague. Aspen, then the girls woke up a while later, we had a simple breakfast of toast and yogurt, and after some cartoons the kids were happy to go outside and play with Winston in the bright morning sunshine (something we haven't seen much of here in August).
After Teague's first nap, I took the kids to the sandhill. I tried to get some group pictures... not the easiest thing to do with 4 kids who would rather run up the sand hill! They all climbed to the top, Aspen multiple times and made friends with other kids there. We stopped at a Mexican food cart, and brought tamales home for lunch. Fun to try something new, and honestly, I wasn't feeling like making another mess of the kitchen!
One of Aspen's "chores" of the day was burning.... He LOVES that chore :) When I went outside to take some pics, he was in the middle of explaining heaven to the girls. "Heaven is where there are all the blankies you could ever think of....." They would ask him if there was a red one, grey one, etc. He told me to watch Willow, she was getting so excited about heaven that he said he was worried she was going to jump in the fire and kill herself, haha (where does he get these things?).
After the fire was almost out, we packed up and headed to the beach. I surprised the kids once we got there by telling them to change into their swim suits that I had packed. They rarely get to play in the ocean for two reasons - 1. mess 2. safety. It makes me pretty nervous to let them play in the ocean when it's just me to watch all three of them in the water. Today the ocean was fairly calm, and the beach was just beautiful.
They had a blast!
We ended our day watching Beetoven while eating dinner. The kids crashed by 8pm, and I still need to clean up the kitchen and make cinnamon rolls for Willow's birthday tomorrow.... Every single birthday I ask myself why in the heck I started this tradition. But then I make them, and am glad I did the next morning. Mark went home to work yesterday, and will be back late tonight in time for Willow's birthday tomorrow. A busy, but typical day in our life right now.
Tuesday, August 21, 2012
Saturday, August 18, 2012
Teague - 9 months & eczema update
Teague is 9 months old now.... I hate how fast time flies! I wish he could stay a small baby longer. He's sitting up really well, and become our little monkey - always reaching for something just out of his grasp! At around 7-8 months, he went down to 2 naps a day. Generally, his schedule is up around 7am, nap #1 at 9am, up around 10am, then another nap around 12:30 or 1pm till 2 or 2:30pm, and then bedtime is around 6:30 or 7pm. I started him out on a eat/wake/sleep type schedule, but he has transitioned to wanting to be nursed to sleep at naps and bedtimes. I've adjusted to that, and honestly, really love this routine. He is so active that his nursing is really interrupted and distracted otherwise. I love having him cuddled into me, content and sleepy.
His eczema has been WAY better lately. I hate to even say or write anything about it, because it seems like just when you things change, but right now he is really good.
Here's the thing about it. I still have no idea what actually causes/triggers it in him. I feel about as clueless and helpless reguarding it now as I did when we started down this road with him 8 months ago. I went through the whole diet, cut everything I possibly could out, and it sort of made things better, but I wouldn't say drastically, and it was definitely a day to day (or really hour to hour) thing. With the short amount of time I have to look back on, there was a definite change in him in May. At the very beginning of May he had 3 teeth come through, and we started juicing everyday. I've noticed a big difference in the way I feel from juicing (it's like a detox for me - way increased regularity and less bloat), and I wonder if that also helped Teague's body rid itself of the toxins that were building up. I was able to add back a lot of foods that I had completely cut out. It was a huge stress relief for me to see him looking so much better and to be able to eat a little more normally (yay, no more rice bread!).
In June, the eczema seemed to reappear which was very discouraging and disappointing for me! June was also a month where everyone in the family took turns being sick with what turns out was strep throat. Teague was also teething with tooth #4. Once his tooth came through, and the family got over being sick, his skin improved. Could it be that his body "super reacts" to stresses that the rest of us aren't bothered that much by?
One day in June, as I was going about my normal day cleaning and putting laundry away upstairs, I was praying about Teague and his eczema. I had this totally random thought that stopped me in my tracks.... "what if this is his 'hedge of thorns'?" These were my exact next thoughts... Wow. That was weird. And Lord, I hope that wasn't you...!
The kids have a book on tape called The Hedge of Thorns. It's an incredible story written in the 1600's. It's basically about how God puts up hedges around us for our protection to keep us on The Path. These hedges can come in the form of hardship, poverty, sickness, protective parents, etc., and when/if we choose to cross the hedge that God has put up we end up hurting ourselves or those around us. The first time we listened to it, I totally cried, and it really made me think a lot...but we hadn't listened to it in months. It was just a totally random thought that crossed my mind, and I haven't been able to shake.
As a parent, naturally I never want to see any of my kids hurting or suffering in any way. While eczema isn't life threatening, it is something that could cause him a lot of stress and pain down the road. Hello, it's on his face! Or how sucky it would be if he isn't able to eat normal foods that everyone else is? But in thinking about all this over the last couple months, I've also come to see that if it is part of God's plan as his 'hedge of thorns' for him, I accept it.
Mark has an extreme personality. In some ways this has been great. He isn't afraid of failure or of trying new things, and this has been part of what has made him so successful. But there is a bad side to an extreme personality where you want to do/try all the bad stuff out (his therory that people are either naturally good or naturally bad may explain what I'm talking about). He also has a body that is very reative, and he has spent a lot of his life not feeling well. As hard as this has been for him, and as terrible as this may sound, I've often thanked God for it. For years I've seen it as a protection for him and me - a hedge of thorns, if you will. For example, where most people could go out and get drunk, be sick for a couple hours the next day, then be fine he would be sick for days. For him, the consequences of doing things like that that could be super damaging to him and our marriage and family are just too high for him to want to do them.
Not sure if I'm making sense here or not, but only God knows Teague - his personality and his future struggles. More than anything, my desire is that he love and serve God. If it takes the struggles of a super sensitive, reactive body to things that other people don't have a problem with to keep him on the path God has for him, then I accept that.
So that's where things are with that. He's looking really good right now, and I've been experimenting with adding a small amount of dairy and nuts back into my diet. I'm also starting to let him try 'people food'. Just going slow, and seeing how he responds to each new thing.
His eczema has been WAY better lately. I hate to even say or write anything about it, because it seems like just when you things change, but right now he is really good.
Here's the thing about it. I still have no idea what actually causes/triggers it in him. I feel about as clueless and helpless reguarding it now as I did when we started down this road with him 8 months ago. I went through the whole diet, cut everything I possibly could out, and it sort of made things better, but I wouldn't say drastically, and it was definitely a day to day (or really hour to hour) thing. With the short amount of time I have to look back on, there was a definite change in him in May. At the very beginning of May he had 3 teeth come through, and we started juicing everyday. I've noticed a big difference in the way I feel from juicing (it's like a detox for me - way increased regularity and less bloat), and I wonder if that also helped Teague's body rid itself of the toxins that were building up. I was able to add back a lot of foods that I had completely cut out. It was a huge stress relief for me to see him looking so much better and to be able to eat a little more normally (yay, no more rice bread!).
In June, the eczema seemed to reappear which was very discouraging and disappointing for me! June was also a month where everyone in the family took turns being sick with what turns out was strep throat. Teague was also teething with tooth #4. Once his tooth came through, and the family got over being sick, his skin improved. Could it be that his body "super reacts" to stresses that the rest of us aren't bothered that much by?
One day in June, as I was going about my normal day cleaning and putting laundry away upstairs, I was praying about Teague and his eczema. I had this totally random thought that stopped me in my tracks.... "what if this is his 'hedge of thorns'?" These were my exact next thoughts... Wow. That was weird. And Lord, I hope that wasn't you...!
The kids have a book on tape called The Hedge of Thorns. It's an incredible story written in the 1600's. It's basically about how God puts up hedges around us for our protection to keep us on The Path. These hedges can come in the form of hardship, poverty, sickness, protective parents, etc., and when/if we choose to cross the hedge that God has put up we end up hurting ourselves or those around us. The first time we listened to it, I totally cried, and it really made me think a lot...but we hadn't listened to it in months. It was just a totally random thought that crossed my mind, and I haven't been able to shake.
As a parent, naturally I never want to see any of my kids hurting or suffering in any way. While eczema isn't life threatening, it is something that could cause him a lot of stress and pain down the road. Hello, it's on his face! Or how sucky it would be if he isn't able to eat normal foods that everyone else is? But in thinking about all this over the last couple months, I've also come to see that if it is part of God's plan as his 'hedge of thorns' for him, I accept it.
Mark has an extreme personality. In some ways this has been great. He isn't afraid of failure or of trying new things, and this has been part of what has made him so successful. But there is a bad side to an extreme personality where you want to do/try all the bad stuff out (his therory that people are either naturally good or naturally bad may explain what I'm talking about). He also has a body that is very reative, and he has spent a lot of his life not feeling well. As hard as this has been for him, and as terrible as this may sound, I've often thanked God for it. For years I've seen it as a protection for him and me - a hedge of thorns, if you will. For example, where most people could go out and get drunk, be sick for a couple hours the next day, then be fine he would be sick for days. For him, the consequences of doing things like that that could be super damaging to him and our marriage and family are just too high for him to want to do them.
Not sure if I'm making sense here or not, but only God knows Teague - his personality and his future struggles. More than anything, my desire is that he love and serve God. If it takes the struggles of a super sensitive, reactive body to things that other people don't have a problem with to keep him on the path God has for him, then I accept that.
So that's where things are with that. He's looking really good right now, and I've been experimenting with adding a small amount of dairy and nuts back into my diet. I'm also starting to let him try 'people food'. Just going slow, and seeing how he responds to each new thing.
Tuesday, August 7, 2012
Whew....what a night. Feeling very humbled..
Before I start, I must note that Mark left last night to go fishing today.
Most of today was actually a great day with the kids. Teague slept all night from 6:30pm - 6am. I fed him then he went back to sleep till 7:30. I forced myself to stay up after feeding him, made coffee and read my bible until Journey joined me around 7. I made her some tea and we had sometime together until 7:30 when then rest of the kids woke up. I made some amazing scones (something I haven't done in a LONG time), and Michelle came over for the morning. The kids played really well together. After naps we went to the library, and the kids again played really well while I talked to Christina while getting dinner together.
Things went downhill with Aspen when we started eating dinner. There was some major drama with where he wanted to sit which, long story short, ended in him going to bed just after 6pm. Drama for sure, but I didn't really think much of it. Seems normal to have at least one kid have some kind of a problem per night, I guess, although maybe not quite this big. As I started cleaning up, the neighbors came out for their dinner and commented on the drama that had unfolded minutes earlier. Umm yeah, embarrassing! But I still didn't think too much and acknowledged it and said that Aspen was already in bed as a consequence... Rest of the evening normal, actually pretty good now that I only had 3 kids to deal with, haha
Things went downhill with Aspen when we started eating dinner. There was some major drama with where he wanted to sit which, long story short, ended in him going to bed just after 6pm. Drama for sure, but I didn't really think much of it. Seems normal to have at least one kid have some kind of a problem per night, I guess, although maybe not quite this big. As I started cleaning up, the neighbors came out for their dinner and commented on the drama that had unfolded minutes earlier. Umm yeah, embarrassing! But I still didn't think too much and acknowledged it and said that Aspen was already in bed as a consequence... Rest of the evening normal, actually pretty good now that I only had 3 kids to deal with, haha
Well, fast forward a couple hours. I'm at the store, Amelia is babysitting, and I get a call from Katie (our next door neighbor). She was wondering if Mark was out of town....umm, yes....? Well, they were wondering if they could have us over tomorrow night for dinner... We could get take out.... The kids could play, and we could relax...
SO nice. And SO humiliating, embarrassing at the same time.
Oh gosh, They heard the whole thing! The entire, drawn out, 2 year old style fit he had thrown, complete with crying, screaming, begging, more crying and screaming....
Oh gosh, they hear everything...!
On this hill, there is no privacy...
There is no front because they hear you at your worst. Like, literally, they ONLY hear you at your worst...
Dear God, I'm so embarrassed and ashamed. They have invited us over because they feel sorry for me! They want to take some burden off of me for dinner time. I am that person! I am that haggard, over whelmed mom in their eyes!!
Can you say humbled?? Cause I am. They see that Mark has been gone for a few nights, and they feel bad for me....
There are no words. Just freaking embarrassed and humbled.
Thankfully, I had scheduled Amelia to babysit after Teague went to bed. I had planned on going to the mall and doing some shopping, and then maybe stopping somewhere for a drink if I had time. After getting the call from Katie, I was so embarrassed about the whole night, that I was not in the mood for shopping anymore, haha. I ended up at Caldera House to have a beer, and they happended to be having live Irish music going on. It was a great way to unwind, write this, and reflect on the night. I didn't want to go home!
Thankfully, I had scheduled Amelia to babysit after Teague went to bed. I had planned on going to the mall and doing some shopping, and then maybe stopping somewhere for a drink if I had time. After getting the call from Katie, I was so embarrassed about the whole night, that I was not in the mood for shopping anymore, haha. I ended up at Caldera House to have a beer, and they happended to be having live Irish music going on. It was a great way to unwind, write this, and reflect on the night. I didn't want to go home!
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