Wanting to Escape, but the Enemy is Within...:-)

As I mentioned in previous posts, we weathered a stomach bug here the week before Christmas, and we were happy to have put it to rest in time for an enjoyable holiday. Imagine my umpleasant surprise, then, when Drew woke me in the wee hours of Wednesday this week, calmly announcing that he had been sick His stomach was upset a few hours into the morning after that, but then we went to the health food store and bought some yogurt and acidophilus (Dave had just left for Charleston, so I had no choice but to take everyone out). My hope was that Drew had just irritated his sensitive and still recovering stomach when he had loaded up on chocolate and other treats on Christmas, and that restoring the balance in everyone's stomachs would prevent any future incidents. But very early this morning, I heard suspicious sounds in the bathroom....no, it couldn't be!!! Alas, it was Aimee succumbing yet again. The good news for me is that she is so mature and collected in this situation (which, incidentally, I think is very strange - she can't tolerate the feeling of construction paper or having her hair brushed, but she can handle being sick, one of the worst feelings in the world, I think), so there's no cleaning up after her. The bad news is that this looks like something new we're dealing with, and Ryan never experienced the first one. Can he dodge the bullet twice? It wouldn't be quite so bad if Dave weren't out of town...wait, it almost would! I simply loathe this kind of thing! :-) Besides, it seems like we've been sick almost continually since we moved, despite my efforts at boosting immuine systems and disinfecting everything. It's my great hope that the little boys will escape this time, though, since both are nursing and I'm working so hard to finally kill these nasty little bugs!

Seeking Peace

We did in fact travel up to my Mom's Sunday, after it appeared everyone was well, and the visit was a good one overall. We went to church at BCCC (the one my Dad pastored until this year) first as per my Mom's request, and that was a little uncomfortable - they have a new pastor (whom, ironically enough, we met first at the church we're attending here!), and seeing him behind the pulpit gave me the strange and unhappy feeling that the past 20 years of my life, the ones spent growing up in that church and living that reality of being the pastor's daughter, have just been a passing breeze, gone now and irretrievable. Amazing - and unsettling - that time behaves that way. But once that was over, we went to my Mom's apartment, and then to my sister's house, and it was a pleasant day. The following day, Christmas Eve, was terrible, I'm afraid, and the Christmas spirit was far, far from me, but Christmas yesterday was better, and we enjoyed staying home and just enjoying time together as a family. Now that all the craziness is over, I'm looking ahead to restoring some order in my life, and in our household. I read The Hidden Feelings of Motherhood (by Kathleen Kendall-Tackett) last week, and identified completely with the symptoms of burnout she decribes in one section, which I think helped me gain a clearer perspective on why my coping abilities have dwindled to almost nil lately. The major upheavals that have taken place this year and the strain of dealing with some high-need children (Aimee and Ryan in particular right now) have combined to make just the ordinary, daily challenges of mothering four young children feel overwhelming. Hannah's Ship of Doom (someone in the know please tell me how to create links - you know, where the word or phrase is highlighted!) really struck a chord with me - that was such a fitting way to describe how I, too, feel so often, but I don't think I should want to escape all the time. So I've been working on a list of problems, in order to try to identify things I (or we) could change in order to help gain some control over the chaos on the outside, and the feelings of despair and frustration on the inside. For instance, every morning begins with Ryan waking up literally kicking and screaming as he asks to nurse. If I am already nursing Chase and ahve to ask him to wait, this turns really ugly and is just not a happy way to start the day. In fact, most of the morning is spent dealing in various ways with Ryan, who is obviously not a morning person! When school is part of the equation, the frustration is compounded, as he often begins screaming or in other ways demanding things as soon as I begin reading or helping someone. I have worked on trying to give him extra atention first, etc.- he just seems to need so much more of everything, as a classic spirited child. And if, speaking of school, Aimee also decides to dig in her heels, it makes for lethal combination. So much of my time is spent working on behavioral issues with these two that I feel I am not able to create the happy learning environment I would like. I confess I wish I felt peace about sending Aimee and Drew to school for a time, because I fantasize sometimes about what I could do if I didn't have homeschooling looming over my head all the time. I don't have that peace yet, BUT I feel I can't continue on the current path. For too long this year we have ben in survival mode, especially concerning school, and I want us to thrive peacefully instead. Part of this solution has to be getting some help for Aimee again, but that's it's own issue that I don't have time to discuss at the moment :-) So anyway - Aimee and Ryan, while not the problems themselves, have issues that contribute to the major stressors of my daily life. I need to address those issues. Other major problems concern daily household chores - nothing is simple right now. It takes us thirty minues jsut to find clothes for everyone to wear because of laundry problems, I spend a disproportionate amount of time sweeping and mopping the floors, we can't move around the house easily because things aren't really organized for this new set-up, we can't deal with trash properly because we don't have an outside trash can yet (Dave has to take to to work every morning, but what to do I do with it in the meantime!?), my vaccum cleaner broke, et. etc. I haven't even unpacked all the way, so often there are still things (like the pencil sharpener!) that we can't find. In short, there's so much time wasted looking for things and cleaning up the same things over an over, and that's a continual source of frustration. I need to be able to go through at least the minutae of my day with some smoothness, and so I need to re-organize as necessary for this house. I need to finish unpacking! But I need time to do that, and with Dave going out of town and working long hours, that's hard to find. In the meantime, I need to be able to cope better, so I am working on my inner peace first and praying that the Lord will also help me restore some peace in everyone and everything else. Ryan's awake, so that's it for now!

Quick Update

Well, we surived Ryan's croup (without a trip to the ER or the doctor), although the rest of us weathered colds afterwards. Shortly after a long battle with that virus, Chase woke me early on my birthday morning earlier this week with his first stomach virus. *sigh* That virus has now run through everyone but Ryan - the odds are steadily rising that he'll escape unscathed, although we're prepared tonight just in case. :-) If tonight goes well, we're going up to my mom's tomorrow for a Christmas get-together with family. We'll be back the same day, though, and plan to spend Christmas completely at home for the first time...well, ever! I had planned to write more, but I still have some things to do before crashing tonight - and I'm so tired! More later.

Croup

Ryan and Chase, affectionately known as my little boys (but don't tell Ryan, who strongly objects to being called a "little boy"!), both have colds this week, and last night we were awake most of the night dealing with Ryan's croup, which he has in varying degrees every time he has a cold. This time his croup symptoms have been rather bad, and while he played happily today, tonight his cough is scary again, and twice already we've been in the bathroom with the shower running. I dread the thought of going to the ER tonight and am praying that he will improve as he sleeps. So why am I up and blogging at 11:30 after one night of almost no sleep and possibly facing another? :-) Signing off, but hopefully I'll be posting a good report tomorrow.

Of Cabbages and Kings...and a Close Call!

First the close call - last night as Dave and I were putting dinner on the table, Aimee was carrying around something a friend had let her borrow, something Ryan very desperately wanted. We asked Aimee to put it away in a a safe place, and just as she was coming back into the kitchen from doing this, we heard a series of crashes, followed immediately by a tremendous, and thus very ominous, crash, along with Ryan's screams. I was at Aimee's door in seconds, Dave at my heels, and for a split second I was completely paralyzed with terror at the sight of Aimee's dresser on the ground. I could hear Ryan but did not immediately see him, and I just knew he was pinned underneath; it was absolutely the worst feeling. I screamed something to Dave about getting the dresser up (this was all happening in a matter of seconds), and just then a little blonde head appeared on the other side. Dave and I both exhaled in utter relief, scooped him up and tried to examine him for any injury as we comforted him. He had, as you can guess, been attempting to climb up to the top dresser drawer, where Aimee had (perhaps not so discreetly!) hidden the coveted object; amazingly, he must have just been knocked aside as the dresser fell, so he was almost unscathed, though completely terrified. He had some odd little bumps on his head that we still can't quite figure out, but he recovered relatively quickly, ate dinner, and slept the whole night, so I think he's okay. Will he learn anything from this? Time will tell - although his short history so far tells us probably not! - but in any case we will anchor all the tall furniture from now on!

On a far more amusing note, I have been meaning for some time to write down this priceless gem: Aimee apparently has been educating Drew on matters of the environment and animal preservation, and once last week when Dave said he was going to cut some wood for a fire, Drew stopped what he was doing and said earnestly, "Daddy, do you know that every second three trees are cut down? And when trees are cut down, animals die?" (Sound of Dave working to keep a straight face.) Then Drew proceeded with a illustration, complete with gestures for added emphasis - "Imagine a field full of horses," he prompted. "Now imagine that field with less horses." Pause. "Now imagine an empty field." While unsure about the link between trees and horses, Dave still agreed to try to keep it all in mind, then sent Drew out to play before we both lost it. :-) That darling, serious boy!

And some random tidbits...I have forgotten to mention how much we are loving our neighborhood. Our next door neighbors on both sides are very nice, and on one side live a 5 year-old boy and his 2 year-old brother . :-) Last week, Aimee discovered that a seven-year-old girl lives across the street, and we've had her over a couple of times, and even Dave has been enjoying talking to the nieghbor on the other side (they're already arranging fishing trips - sigh!), so just about everyone has found someone. I am far from a socialite and need ample time and the right conditions to develop friendships, so just having friends close by again is good enough for me. I'm enjoying setting up house, too now that I've crossed the biggest box hurdles and I can actually see progress being made. Overall, I believe we're all experiencing feelings of peace that we haven't in a long time, and while I know happiness and joy are unrelated, it is admittedly pleasant just to be happy right now!

Success - and a Sigh of Relief!

We went up to Rock Hill yesterday to see the surgeon I mentioned in my last post (we thought that since my mom knew this doctor it would be better than gambling with picking one randomly from telephone phone book here). It was a long afternoon and evening, but Aimee is now finally free of that staple. The surgeon and the nurses were so incredibly patient and gentle that it was a remarkably better experience than any of the three times we went to the urgent care place here. After looking at the staple (which had been turned sideways and thus embedded deeper into Aimee's scalp, curtesey of the first removal attempt - grrrr!), the surgeon recommended applying a topcial numbing cream which had to sit for an hour, then injecting lidocaine so that Aimee would be completely pain-free, and while this whole process took over four hours altogether, it worked! Aimee became very upset when it came time to use the needle, which she insisted on being shown, and she was extremely wary of anyone working behind her, but the doctor was very kind but very firm as he explained what had to be done and what was required of her. My mom, who was especially adamant about not having Aimee held down (bless her!), held Aimee's hands and counted with her to calm her down, and finally Aimee agreed to sit still. She barely felt the shot, and when the procedure began to hurt because of all the work it was taking to get that thing out, she consented to another shot without any fuss at all. Aimee and I talked about everything at bedtime, and we agreed that this procedure went so much better because she was able to trust the surgeon. He was very honest with her (no comments like, "You won't feel anything," or "I'm just looking...", followed by the staple remover), and he never did anything without telling her first. I appreciate this kind of respect, too, and it's a shame that many people feel they can blow children off because it's more convenient. Of course, in this case, if the doctors had respected Aimee's feelings in the first place and had taken the time to work with her, they could have avoided a good deal of trouble. (I wish that I, too, had been a better advocate for my child at the start and not simply assumed that those people were professionals and were doing all they could. Don't I know better?!?!) As it is, we are going to press them very hard for some reimbursement here. They are, predictably, not being very cooperative, and have so far blamed everyone from Aimee to my mom to me, even, for having the baby with me the first time I brought Aimee in. But the saga is over for Aimee anyway - hooray!

How do you type an Angry Face?!

Well, staple-removal attempt #2 didn't go very well, nor did attempt #3 at the doctor's office last night. :-( The NP at the office was, in fact, intolerably rude about the whole thing, and Dave was especially upset about that. He talked to her today, however, and even though she gave him a hard time about the whole episode, she did agree that their office is ultimately responsible for the fact that it will now require a surgeon to remove the staple. (!!!) Fortunately my mom knows a good one that has agreed to help us tomorrow, so hopefully this will all be done soon. So frustrating, though!!

A Thankgsgiving Photo Shoot

A pair of adorable babies! This is Chase with my neice Isabelle. I know I'm biased, but aren't they ridiculously cute? :-)







Sisters.. :-) From left to right, Sarah (mother of Tiernan and Isabelle), Erica ( wish she wasn't so gorgeous - or that I didn't have to pose right next to her!), me (I've had my hair lighter since the summer, but my grandmother thoughtfully asked if I had "brought out the hydrogen peroxide", so it must be time to go darker again!), and Mary K. (the cute newlywed)



The boys - Ryan, Tiernan, and Drew






With my mom

The Other Side of the Moon

...which is where it feels we've been these last two weeks! But here we are at last, and words really fail me. I praise the Lord for this time, and am so thankful for everyone's prayers and encouragement, but I'm also SO glad I don't have to talk about the house anymore!!!!! It was a wild ride to the very last possible minute (and even beyond, I discovered), and I have just gotten past feeling like I still have to look over my shoulder for someone coming to throw a wrench in the works. Ah, we're here, and I do love it. Unfortunately, Dave had to go out of town for a week just a couple days after we moved, and that was truly horrible (yes, I should have asked for some help, and I don't know why I'm so bad at that - I guess I'm out of practice!). The kids were like something off Supernanny, and in fact early in that week, Drew threw something at Aimee while they were fighting and hit the back of her head hard enough to require a trip to the doctor and one staple. Yikes! It was really uncharacteristic of Drew and he was very sorry later. The staple itself has turned into a nightmare, however. Aimee was upset about it having to come out, and trying to get it out at the doctor's office was so traumatic she woke up the next morning with burst blood vessels in one eye and in her face. It had ben an absolutely horrible experience, and while I'm not sure exactly what I should have done, in the week since I have really regretted not having been a better advocate for Aimee, and all the more so when I noticed a couple days later that the staple was still there. There's no way I'm taking her back to that office, but the staple has to come out, so my mom (a nurse) is coming tomorrow to try to remove it. So anyone reading tonight can pray for Aimee and that little staple.
There's just simply too much to say! I could never get it all down, but maybe I'll work on catching up now that we're back online. For now. though, I'm going to retire after a really exhausting day - a virus manifesting fever and aches has taken its turn through the kids, and today was Ryan's day. He's still feverish now and waking right this minute, so I'm off!

Refreshment

Well, we've had some restless moments this week when we all felt like we just wanted to be in a home of our own again, when I have felt like I couldn't stand another minute of uncertainty, or when the the kids have undoubtedly wondered if we are actually ever going to move ("soon" starts to lose its meaning after awhile!) - but I was just thinking tonight how we've really had a restful and refreshing several days here at my Mom's. No boxes, no pointless cleaning, no bored and destructive kids, and no super-stressed-out mommy! We are scheduled (again) to close tomorrow afternoon, and I'll have to deal with the boxes again, although things are a little better on the flip side, so this almost week-long break has been a blessing. The conference over the weekend was great, the time with my mom overall has been wonderful, and today we went to see some very good friends, enjoying a fantastic day with them. Lisa has been a close friend of mine for - dare I say it - almost twenty years, and our children have grown up loving each other as well. Our friendship with their family is almost seamless, so that no matter how many months have passed since the last time we've seen each other, the kids can resume playing as if they had never been parted, and that shows, I think, how close their relationships are on a very deep level. That's a priceless gift, and one that transcends all this silly business about real estate. :-)
So tonight, I do not have an address. (On the other hand, I'm also free of a huge chunk of debt!) Things have been so crazy with this move that I can't say anything for certain, and I'm a little cautious about being too excited over the scheduled closing tomorrow. But I've had bodily rest, some deep soul-rest, and have spent good times with people I love - and my kids, too, have had some carefree days and better sleep. God has been good and has worked out details we didn't know we needed working out, giving us gifts we didn't know we needed, and teaching us how to rest in Him. A good week, and a great God!

Homeless :-)

Last Tuesday we closed on our house in Gray Court house (not without some very interesting twists, though - all that worked in our favor), Friday I left with the kids to bring them up to my Mom's, and last night Dave left with the truck and all the animals, so that chapter in our lives in closed! Because we have not yet closed on the house in Lexington, and indeed have not yet even been cleared to close, that does mean we are quite homeless today, and it's an odd feeling. I'm not sure of God's plan in this, and I confess am a little confused because I had thought all along that He was answering my prayer to be able to ride up to the conference with my friends, which didn't happen. That's a small thing, I know, but there are some bigger problems with this delay, too; namely, that Dave literally had to take all our animals to the at his office last night, and so they are all literally at work with him today! That will only work for a very short time, as anyone could imagine, so we are praying that the Lord will open the final door for our move soon. And we are learning to trust him more completely and to be content in the meantime.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel - and the Collapse That Blocked It!

Last week we experienced some major setbacks in the house purchase, and because I was already stressed and packing-weary, as well feeling a little under the weather, I decided (a much calmer word for what actually transpired!) to come to my Mom's for a break. I came Tuesday evening and only meant to stay for a day or two, but it's Saturday and we're still here! I like to tell myself that I'm trusting the Lord for the situation with the house and the move, but I've still been experiencing a good deal of general anxiety (though much less and less often since I've been with my Mom), so perhaps I have not fully given this all over to Him. I think I'm ready to go back home and tackle the packing again, though, and praying for perfect peace and contentment, in the midst of this and of everything else going on. After taking a steaming bath in my sister's garden tub earlier in the week, and again after the facial my Mom sent me to get yesterday, I realized just how tense I've been and how crummy our days have been lately. I want to change that, but there are all these things and emotions we need to sort through first, I think. I hope that the move, which is now scheduled for later next week, will be the first step - if it will ever happen. :-)

Our Weekend

Saturday afternoon I was heading out the door for a library and shopping trip with Chase when Aimee asked to go. I was looking forward to some time to myself (well, almost!) but I agreed, because sometimes going out with the older kids is a nice treat, too. However when I called out into the backyard to tell Dave Aimee was going along, Drew came running in announcing he wanted to go, too, followed by Dave who was trying to figure out what was going on. Dave started to tell Drew he had to stay home, when poor Drew started crying and implored, "I just want to be with you, Mommy!" I have a hard time denying that kind of request, and I was just going to remind Aimee that she had gone with me last time, when Ryan piped up that he was going, too. Dave was considerably less than thrilled, because he could see that I wasn't going to be able to refuse any of them, and he's not so unfeeling that he could just watch me go out the door with all four kids - in short, he knew he was going to have to go with us. Ten minutes later we were all in the car, and all pretty happy by that point. Dave took care of all our library business, and while we waited in the car I made some shopping lists for each of the kids (even for Ryan, who was entrusted with remembering baking powder so that I could make him the waffles he had been asking for all week!). The lists proved to be a HUGE hit when we got the store, and we had the best fun shopping together - it really was a very pleasant outing. We arrived home and made cheese fondue for dinner, which is such a fun dinner for everyone, and everyone was in great spirits by bedtime.
Sunday morning we went to church and went through the usual routine of dropping the kids off at their respective classes - Aimee dashed off to hers, I took Drew to his, and Dave went with Ryan to his. If I take Ryan, there's no chance at all that he'll stay, but most often when Dave takes him, he consents pretty happily to stay and play after a few minutes, and that's what appeared to happen this time. Dave and I had missed each other that morning, though, because I didn't last anytime at all in the auditorium before I had to take Chase to the Nursing Mother's room, and thus I missed when Dave had left Ryan to go into the service. So I nursed Chase for a few minutes, and then let him play on the floor, and after a few more minutes I commented to the other mom there that it sounded like there were a few really unhappy little ones in the nurseries down the hall. I absolutely hate listening to those poor babies just screaming for what seems like forever, and I always peek out to make sure Ryan isn't one of them. We always explain to his teachers that we want to be called right away if he starts to cry or ask for us, but you never know...so I stepped out into the hall and definitely heard his cry this time. I walked to his room and the teacher was already at the door, so I asked her (just to be sure, before I poked my head in) if Ryan was crying. Rather reluctantly, she said yes, and I had the door opened in an instant for him to come out. "We were going to see if he would calm himself down," she explained, almost dissaprovingly, I thought, but in any case, I was really upset. Why is it that we have such a hard time getting people to respect our wishes in this matter? We don't want their help in "training" the kids to stay in the nursery! And while I completely respect parents' wishes to have some space, agreeing that there may be value in parents helping each other out by taking turns watching children during the service, I must object to this pressure to adhere to a system just for the sake of it. If a mother needs help and time to herself, then no one ought to fault her for it. But why are mothers amde to feel that they need to push down their instincts and "teach" their little ones to stay with complete strangers for no other reason than...than what? No one can even really say! The nursery system probably began just as mothers helping each other out, but now it has become divisive and enslaving. Anyway, I took Ryan outside to wander and play, and we had a great time together, then when the ending worship set began, we joined Dave in the auditorium. The singing was awesome, even overwhelming at one point when we singing, "Oh, How He Loves Us," a relatively new song, I think. We've sung it in church for a few weeks, and even though I think it's a little cheesy in spots, it always "gets me," and yesterday because I realized that a great deal of my struggle this year has been with fighting the reality that my dad doesn't really love me anymore, at least not the way he used to. I had said that my faith was still solid, even if my dad was leaving the very path had set me on, that it was no longer about him but about my relationship with the Lord. However I've been realizing that my spiritual life has been "stuck" these past eight months, as I've been waiting for everything to be set right again. I haven't wanted to keep going if everything - and everyone - isn't in its proper place. And much of my life, even my adult life, has been devoted to doing what my dad wanted and trying to please him, needing to please him so that I could be assured that he loved me, so I've been angry that it all that no longer matters, because he doesn't reagrd those choices as worthwhile anymore, therefore, he can't value me the way he used to. I have found some freedom in that on the one hand - I don't feel I have to explain or justify my adult decisions anymore - but one the other I think I was afraid to realize that it was time to separate my dad's love from the Father's love. In surrendering to that, I'll have to admit that my dad's love has changed, and I'll have to let it go, but then I can embrace the truth that I can go forward with a Father whose love for me will never change. Yesterday was a step forward for me in that.
And now I've spent all the kids' naptime writing this! Oh well - I needed the rest!

Spirited Children

Regarding dealing with those spirited children...Tips? Techinques? We certainly haven't landed on anything spectacular or brilliant; I think it just worked out that we both realized that Aimee was very tired at the time, and we both kept our cool (lots of deep breaths!). And actually, walking away was part of the solution on that occasion! This was the flow of events, at any rate - As she was being put to bed Aimee made a request that was denied for very specific reasons (it wasn't that Dave, who was on doing the bedtime routine that night, just didn't feel like making the effort to grant it). At this she began to demand to see me, and Dave told her that I was nursing Chase to sleep and would come to her shortly. This was not well-recieved, and tantrum behavior ensued. Dave gave her several warnings and attempted to calm her, but in the end he had to take her reading time away (funny - some children have to be coerced into reading, but for Aimee NOT being able to read is the worst possible consequence). I won't go into all the details of the noisy behavior that was on display as I finally walked back to her room, but I will say that it was the kind that doesn't lead inspire happy, snuggly kind of feelings in a parent, and my natural tendency would have been to walk in with the "What in the world is going on in here?" attitude. But I've been reflecting lately on how I would feel if every time I cried or had my own grown-up version of a tantrum, Dave berated me by telling me how ridiculous or selfish I was being. I have a little more self-control, of course, and I have to help Aimee develop that as well, but there she was crying and in real distress, so I just gave her a good hug without saying anything for a few seconds. Another reason for this is that I've tried to offer more "free" hugs in general, after reading in The Out-of-Sync Child about how that kind of firm pressure is good for kids with SI Dysfunction. It does indeed seem to help to reorganize my kids when they seem to be flying apart. At any rate, after the hug the crying stopped, doubtless because Aimee thought I was sympathizing with her situation. :-) When I began talking, she was not quite so pleased anymore, and after a few minutes of quietly explaining (again) the reasons for what was happening, I gave her a kiss and said I was sorry she couldn't understand, but that it was time for her to go to bed. She threatened that she was going to scream all night. Dave and I both told her firmly but gently that she was not going to do that, and then we left. Sometimes this kind of scene has to be repeated a few times, but this time, she actually just went to sleep. I think what really helped in this instance is that there was no power-struggle - it wasn't about us being right and trying to make her admit that - and that because we remained calm, we were able to impose reasonable consequences and to confindently stand our ground (because we weren't second-guessing a knee-jerk reaction). Easier said than done, right? :-) It doesn't always work so smoothly for us, to be sure! But I found the aforsaid book The Out-of-Sync child to be extremely enlightening in understanding Aimee (and also Drew, who definitely has some SI dysfunction on the other end of the spectrum), and since reading it, I've been able to develop some much more effective discipline stragegies.

Vikings and Volcanoes

Two very cool and exciting topics this week! We even made a volcano with the usual vinegar and baking soda lava, which impressed the kids, although Drew thought it would have been more exciting to use matches and somehow blow the clay mountain apart for real. :-) Next week I am packing all the school things up and it will be a couple weeks before they emerge again, so this has been a fun week to end things on.

But speaking of volcanos... Aimee's issues have been improving in the last couple months so that things have been much more tolerable for everyone; interestingly, this has been in the midst of a time I would consider pretty stressful and I would have thought might have actually made things worse. At any rate, we had backed off the counseling/therapy path for a time, and had stopped talking about different school options. But this week, as I mentioned before, all the kids have been acting a little like they've been let loose out of cages, and last night Aimee's behavior in particular culminated in an explosive episode the likes we haven't seen in some time. Fortunately we hadn't forgotten the things we've learned in dealing with all that, and it went as well as it could have. But it reminded me that I will need to get back on top of things soon after we move - maybe not a strict schedule (just too stressful and exhausting to keep that up), but definitely more structure and less flexibility.

Of course structure is nothing I can even think about now. We are living among a maze of boxes, and the packing is tiring, as well as seemingly endless! :-)It seems like I work and work and work, only to turn around and see what looks like the result of an explosion - where is all this stuff coming from? And why is something irrestible to little eyes and hands just because it has been put into a box? If I don't tape up a box quickly, they start pillaging like the Vikings we've been reading about! I'm excited about the move and so happy everything is turning out well, but I am already so tired! Not looking forward to the work that will just escalate in volume and intensity next week.

Memories...and the Amazing Brains That Hold Them

(The HOUSE - all is well this week! Things are proceeding according to plan, and even though there were a few hitches yesterday, they've all been ironed out, and we are still on schedule to close on both houses in two weeks. We were all feeling excited again last night - the light at the end of the tunnel grows larger every day!)

Yesterday morning I was having breakfast with Aimee and Chase (the boys were, uncharacteristcally, sleeping in) and we heard something on the radio about "The Price is Right." I was telling Aimee about my most vivid memory of that game show; namely, the time I was in second grade and home from school because of unusually cold weather, and I was watching it with my mom. As we watched, the program was interrupted to show the launch of the Challenger space shuttle, and thus I witnessed the demise of the same. I told Aimee that even at the memory, I still have that slightly sick feeling in my stomach we often get when watching disasters those kinds of disasters unfold. Drew had come in as I was telling this, and we began talking about something they might have seen in their lifetime that would have had a similar impact on them (this really wasn't as dark a discussion at it seems! we were actually having a neat sharing time). I asked if they remembered Hurricane Katrina, because I know they had watched some of that coverage with me, and Aimee at first wasn't sure, but Drew immediately piped up, "Yeah, there was that city underwater! You remember," he prompted Aimee, "all the water came because of the lake." I was puzzled for a moment, but then a memory hit me - watching someone on CNN explain how Lake Pontchartrain compounded the disaster. Then I was completely astounded that Drew, who was just 3 at the time, could still remember that! Aren't their little minds incredible?!?!?!

A HUGE Mistake!

At about 7 this evening I realized today's date - and with horror, instantly realized that I had not done anything for my mother on her birthday! I had thought of getting together with my sisters and doing something really nice for her this year (since on the whole this has been one the worst, if not THE worst, years of her life), but then the month wore on, and evidently I've been terribly behind. I've left her a couple messages, but I feel so awful, and I wonder if there's any way I can possibly make it up. :-(

Holding My Tongue...and Exercising My Faith

I was, as usual, relaxing in the glider in the nursing mother's room at church this morning (and listening to the "talk" through the speakers - a very laid-back way to enjoy the service, let me tell you!), when I was joined by a young mom with a relatively new baby. She began to nurse her little one, but it sounded as though the baby was struggling at it a little. The mom didn't seem bothered, but also didn't nurse the baby very long before she got up and changed the baby's diaper. When she was finished she sat down again and began nursing on the other side, which gave me a full view of the baby's position. The baby was having more difficulty, and I could see quite plainly why, but I spent the next few minutes resisting the urge to tell her what she could do to fix the problem. Of course that would have been really obnoxious, and I suppose is the kind of thing that leads some experienced mothers to become elderly ladies who feel they need to share their unsolicited opinion and advice at every opportunity (we have a prime example of this in my family already!). Dave agreed when I told him about this later, but he also joked that I might feel really guilty if I see this young mom giving her baby a bottle next week! I suppose there might have been a way I could have begun a pleasant conversation that could have wound its way to breastfeeding...and there might have been some remote chance that the mom might have been interested in pursuing my expertise on the subject - but I didn't, and she probably wasn't. So I have scored in keeping my opinion to myself on this occasion, which hopefully will serve me well when I am old. :-) Not everyone needs to know what I think - or even what I know - and I hope to remember that later in my advanced years.
Now that I have spent an entire paragraph writing about something other than the h-word, I can't help coming back to it again. I spent all weekend cleaning things up so that I could get around to some packing. I am pleased to say that I am in a fairly upbeat frame of mind about it all, and I am feeling confident about getting the house as well. Dave was siezed with my worry bug from earlier this week, so we spent way too much time talking about it this weekend, but it actually had the surprising effect of increasing my faith. I had asked the Lord earlier in the week that if things were going to fall through with the Lexington house, he would have mercy on us and let it happen last week. So when last night came and this morning dawned with no bad news or even the slightest setback all week, I was ecstatic. It's not as if God has to operate by my timetable, of course, and it may be that he has plans he has chosen to reveal to me later, but I really feel he answered my prayer and that all will be well with our purchase of that house. Our fate is not in the hands of the underwriters after all (and who ARE those people anyway? Are they people who really move among us? Has anyone known anyone whose job is that of an underwriter for a lending institution?!), and even if our financial situation is such that they would ordinarily cluck their figurative tongues after reviewing our bank statements and withdrawal their approval of our loan, I believe that this time, they won't - that this time, they will be moved to continue their approval. (That was a sentence of almost Jane Austen-worthy length and complexity, wasn't it?) I am saying before all of you (all three or four of you, my dear and faithful readers!) that I believe God will do this for us! When you think of us in this, pray this with me! Next week I hope I will be telling you of God's faithfulness in our particular situation.
The baby has at least drifted off to sleep, so away I go to pack, pack, and pack some more!

The Making of Beds

Regarding making beds...I want to stress that it's important to me in my house. Other people's unmade beds don't bother me, and actually I feel a sense of relief at knowing this is something people commonly leave undone. :-) Can I "let go" and leave them unmade here? Well, I have this week; I have, in fact, totally let everything in the house go. I had a major meltdown Wednesday evening (when Dave arrived home very late from work and I was stressing about whether our home loan would go through and if it did, how I was going to pack when I couldn't even get the beds made, etc. etc.) Since then I have just let everything fall where it will, and Dave has been the only one to wash any dishes. However, I have recovered, and while I have deemed it theraputic to let everything go for a time, I have now decided that time is up. I am putting everything back together today, and revelling in the feeling of warm soapy water cleaning dishes and the sound of the vacuum eliminating the accumulated dirt around the house (and the kids are helping a little, as they are usually good at doing). We've tucked in nuggets of formal education here and there, and I am feeling altogether less a failure and much less panicked about the house thing. I'm going to the LLL of NC Conference the first weekend of November, and ever since I decided to go, I've been praying that the Lord would allow us to be in Lexington so that I can ride up with my friends there. We are scheduled to close the week before, so I think I can continue to trust him for that, however He wants to work it out.
On a random note...I was putting the boys to bed last night, and I heard the funnniest Bible story! I was telling them a story myself, but Ryan soon interjected, "And, and, and GOD...God went into the water, and there was a shark....and the shark ATE God....and the shark went to the land, and Ptooey!...he spit God out." "What?" I said, laughing. "Where did you hear that?" Drew told me that Ptooey was a part of Daddy's retelling of Jonah, so I gathered that this was Ryan's rendition of the story. Even more dramatic than the original!

The Move Begins

I began packing this week, and now it looks as though the house has exploded. Sigh. And another sigh. Why is it that as soon as turn my attention to something other than keeping everything in check, it all begins to go haywire? The kids behave as though they've been turned loose out of cages, and there seems to be no catching them any time soon, so school is becoming next to impossible. I am trying to get another couple of weeks in - and to make it meaningful, rather than just tossing them a math page or cramming in whatever history we can manage here and there - but I don't know if I can do it in the middle of all this mess and chaos. I have a plan for packing, of course, and am going about it systematically, but it seems I forgot to make a plan for who would do everything else in the meantime! :-) Even as I type this, I'm looking at a cracker crumbs thoughtfully scattered all over the desk and in the keyboard. There's laundry all over the place - clean and dirty, and the beds are unmade (which is the worst housekeeping crime, second only to unwashed dishes, in my mind!). After an unsuccessful attempt to read to the kids outside (because I couldn't keep anyone's attention, and the baby was crawling all over me, probably trying to escape the dog, who kept licking him), I finally just left them to what they were doing and am now trying to get up the energy to gather them inside in a few minutes for some quiet time. I know I've been distracted (still so stressed about selling this house and buying the other one - it's awful thinking about those underwriters, whoever they are, who could, at a whim and at any given time, decide we're not worthy of another home loan after all!), so it's hard to ask anyone else to focus and keep things together, but I hope we can restore some semblance of order soon.

Taking A Sanity Break

Math today quickly became crazy, so I have sent the boys outside in order to have a moment of peace in which to nurse the baby and calm myself down. Again, at the center of the madness was a certain two year-old, although Drew's wads of gluey macaroni noodles all over the table didn't do me any good, either. :-) Ah, but that two year-old! I think he needs to spend a good amount of time with his father this weekend, which will be good for him as well as sanity-preserving for me. In fact, maybe everybody would benefit from lots of daddy time! Oh, I know this move is driving everyone crazy, though, and we'll all do better and be able to handle more when it's all over. All the same, I'm looking forward to the first weekend in November, when I'll be going to a conference in Charlotte, sans everyone but Chase. I'm sure they'll be relieved to be rid of me for couple days, too. ;-)
That's not to say that I don't really love all this madness, however, and I know these will be the memories that I'll always cherish. Sigh.

A Place to Go, Another Home to Create!

Our offer was accepted last night, so it looks like we now have a place to go when we leave here. We're really excited, and are now just praying that everything will continue to go well.

A LONG Post!

Yesterday morning I took the kids to the library, and it went fairly well, but the librarian checking us out took forever, and Ryan did try to leave without me a couple of times during the long transaction. :-) However, another librarian did come up to me during this same period of time, which really was ridiculously long, and she gave me a very nice compliment about my mothering. I don't know how close to accurate it actually was, but it was certainly a good confidence booster.

We had gone to library to get out of the way of the appraisal, so when we returned to face the long afternoon (made much longer by the fact that I had been awake, courtesy of Chase, since 5:30am and was extremely tired), I was already a little nervous waiting to hear how it went. Then Dave called to ask me to scan and e-mail some more documents we needed to get the loan together, and I was made all the more nervous when he indicated that there might be a problem because some information had been recorded wrong and the lenders were concerned about a couple of things. I didn't know, then, if that meant the entire loan was in jeopardy, so I was extremely on edge by the middle of the afternoon. But I was struck with a thought about how I was worrying - and even though I had been trying to use different words to describe my emotions, they all just amounted to worry, if I was going to be entirely honest - about a loan for an amount of money that so many of my brothers and sisters in Christ around the world would find incredibly exorbiant, and I was worrying about whether or not I would be able to own a home that contains luxuries they would never dream of, because they live in content with so much less. In fact some of them suffer, and suffer joyfully, for the kingdom, and their concerns are infinitely higher and more noble than whether or not a house appraises for the right amount or whether they'll be able to own a nice home in a nice neighborhood. I felt humbled, and thankful, at the same time, that God didn't add to this gentle reminder, "You stupid, small-minded creature, behaving like the world revolves around you!", as he certainly could have (but is so gracious that he rarely ever does this!). I have always said, too, that I dislike when people start trying to figure out the reasons for why particular things happen to them, or even what they're supposed to learn from it - as if they are at the exact center of whatever is going on, which is really rather silly if they would stop to think about it - but I have been doing just that about the house we had wanted but were denied. Maybe there was a good reason that applied just to us about why we couldn't have that house, maybe there were specific lessons to be learned, but we weren't the only people involved, so it is more likely that there were many things going on that involved all parties - and for farther in every direction than we could imagine. The amazing thing is that we aren't just pawns in each other's games, but that God is able to work out details for us individually AND continuously be weaving a much larger tapestry all at the same time. Even though all of this is barely a breath of eternity, he still cares for our limited humanity that can see only dark shadows in the glass, and gives us blessings that won't matter in the least once we "see him face to face."
So remembering that, I am much more relaxed going into this weekend, even as we are waiting for a response to an offer we put in on another house. And not a moment too soon - I think we've really been burdening the kids with all this house business. Earlier in the week Drew showed me a picture he had drawn of a house, and it was done with intense color that filled the entire page. I showed it Dave later in the evening and remarked that I thought it was a good representation of how all our house concerns have filled our thoughts and our days, and that we should probably be mindful of that around the children at least. You can imagine how impressed he was with my psychological analysis...:-) Nonetheless I thought of it yesterday when Ryan, for the second day in a row, was being uncharacteristically difficult at naptime. I couldn't lie down with him, because Chase was awake, and I was frustrated because he was vigorously protesting having to rest by himself, even though Aimee and Drew were in the room resting and listening to books on tape - an arrangement that it usually soothing for Ryan. He kept insisting (loudly!), "I need you!" and it didn't look like he was going to settle down. The day before it had taken an hour before I could get him just to rest quietly for a few minutes, and he hadn't gone to sleep at all. I had been firm, but really hadn't felt all that good about it, and I was having those same feelings yesterday. I didn't want to "give in," and my explanation that I was just outside the door and he didn't really "need me," sounded reasonable, but the fact that I was feeling I needed to justify something was a red flag. If discipline ever comes down to just insisting on being right no matter what, I don't think that's very thoughtful parenting. So I thought about his claim that he needed me. Now I know sometimes kids just know the right buttons to push, and sometimes "being difficult" just comes with the territory of being two, so I took that into consideration, but I also realized that the kids haven't really had much of me for most of the past couple weeks. The older ones have done remarkably well, but I've been distracted lately, and Ryan has had less real and thoughtful attention (or thoughtful discipline either, for that matter) than any of them. In that case I realized it wouldn't hurt anyone if I just stopped everything and rested for a minute, so I brought Chase in the room and let him play on the floor while I sat by the bed and listened to the book on tape with everyone. I held Ryan's hand and conciously relaxed my entire body, letting that flow through to him, and within about sixty seconds he was asleep and I was more peaceful as well.

So brevity is evidently not my thing, as you can see. I love to write and could write a book on something if I ever had time, although I doubt anyone would really be interested in a book on the daily minutae of raising four children!

Beans and Gloom

This morning I woke up early and was prepared for a good day a school, but when we started math, Ryan indicated he was going to be less than cooperative. So I thought I would give him some beans and different size bowls and let him play on a tablecloth close by. This was a novel idea and he was very interested - unfortunately, so were Aimee and Drew, so I was battling whining from them instead in very short order! When they were done with their work I made the mistake of letting them play with him, and very shortly thereafter Aimee was directing the play, which was frustrating the boys, and I was reminding her that it was supposed to just be fun preschool play, then Drew was throwing handfuls in the air, at which he was instantly removed from the cloth. But by this time Ryan was no longer interesting in quietly scooping and pouring, and was, instead, dumping bowfuls on the carpet in the living room. I had him pick them up, of course (this said to counter my mom's observation that he "gets away with alot" - well, he does, but not with everything!), but still, the activity that was supposed to help de-stress our morning definitely raised my stressed level, even though I made supreme efforts not to scold or fret. Next time, though, it will be a strictly preschool activity!
That was pretty boring, I know - but my really deep thoughts are rather gloomy this week. We lost for good the house that we put the offer on, and though I should just be thankful for the closed door, I am also having a hard time letting it go and trusting that something else will work out. It seemed so perfect, and we are beset with difficulties around any other option, of which there are actually none at the moment anyway. Ah...God is good, at any rate.

The Things They Say!

Ryan has been more impish than usual, and he knows it, too. Today he was doing some jumps and leaps I was just overlooking because I was trying to read for History, but he began calling me. I paused at a break and asked him what he wanted. He jumped in what he thought was a daring way, and therefore one he thought - very likely hoped - I would dissaprove of, then coached, "You got to say, 'Ryan, you're crazy!'" (I guess I must say that alot!) I laughed and obliged, then he replied, "Mama, you're crazy!" He's probably right!

When I was feeling so bad earlier in the week, Drew offered one of his funny moments - I walked past him as he was getting settled in to go to sleep, and he said in his very loving way, "Mommy, you're so beautiful." He says this frequently, and it is so sweet - he's going to make a great husband. But this time, he added thoughtfully, "Well, halfway beautiful. The bottom half - maybe not the top half." I was wearing pink striped pajama bottoms, and pink makes a girl beautiful in his eyes. I had to agree, though that the top half of me was not looking so hot! His honesty is endearing, though, and he's offered it once before as well. A few weeks after I had Chase he started to give me the usual beautiful comment; I could hear it in his voice. "Mommy, if you would... take your glasses off...and fix your hair...and get dressed...you'd be so beautiful!"

Aimee's moments are delivered with her signature flair and spark. She was upset about something a few days ago and wanted to call and talk to Dave about it. She got his voicemail, at which she snapped the phone shut and exclaimed with great princess contempt, "His voicemail! Where is he when I absolutely need him?!" Okay, so maybe she has heard the queen say this once or twice before!

Open Doors, Closed Doors...and Everything in Between!

I remember listening to a missionary once talk about how he came to a crossroads in his life and wasn't sure which direction he should go. As he prayed about it he decided that he would just walk through the open doors and ask God to close any that were the wrong ones. I liked that idea, and ever since, when I have the presence of mind to remember it, I have tried to follow that principle. I have found, however, that while sometimes open doors are in fact wide open, some appear closed but are unlocked - and therefore count as open because you just have to make the effort to turn the handle - and some are locked, but if you are handed a key before you walk away, they also count as open doors. So the theory becomes very muddled! The element of patience comes in, at least, and that can be hard. The point of all this is that our offer on the house in Lexington was rejected - not because another offer was accepted or because ours wasn't acceptable, but because the owners decided they aren't ready to move yet. Our offer is still on the table, though, until we find something else or until they decide they're ready, so technically the door has neither been open or closed. Hmmm. That house was going to be perfect for us in so many ways, and one way was so important that we aren't even sure if we'll be able to purchase another house right now. Renting again seems a really depressing option - I can't imagine selling our lovely little house and land just to go back to living in someone else's. Of course it could be a moot point if things don't go well with the appraisal and inspection this week, and then I won't know how to feel. If the house appraises for less than our asking price, we're in trouble for a long time - who knows when we could move! But if all proceeds well and we must make a quick decision about where to go, we might have to settle for so much less than we had hoped. So I keep coming back to that house. If only...! Yes, I know God may have a better plan. Or it could be that we who have sometimes sown idiotic decisions may finally have to reap the reward of idiots. :-) That is my fatalistic self talking, when I know that the Lord shows mercy to all and has never given us over the the full consequences of our stupidity. He has always been good to us.
So we will keep lookimg, all the while praying that He will open the door to that particular house, or that He will shed light very soon on the better path. Most of all, I am praying that He will have mercy and more mercy on us. We are all very tired and stressed, which has been telling on us this weekend. Yesterday we were all felled by the same aches-and-fever virus that Ryan must have had earlier in the week (so sorry, Jenny, if we passed this on to your household at the party - we had been free of fever for over 24 hours, so I thought we were clear). Fortunately the worst of it was over quickly, but Chase had a very bad teething episode right as my fever reached its peak. He might had the same thing we had, actually, although he never had a fever, but whatever it was had him screaming inconsolably from 9 to 10. I felt like lifting my head was a challenge at that point, but I summoned every ounce of strength and paced the floor with him, after discovering to my chagrin that he refused to nurse. Dave took turns with him, but this caused even louder screaming, and didn't seem to be doing much good other than letting me rest my throbbing head. When Chase finally succumbed to sleep in exhaustion, we went to bed, but he had similar screaming bouts off and on until after 12. So now everyone feels better but me! My fever is gone, but my head and eyes still ache, and, almost needless to say, I am still in my pajamas. I was going to try to go on with school as usual this morning, and when Ryan began waving "A Bug's Life" at me, I almost gave the standard, "No, dear, it's a school day." But reason won out and I declared it a sick day, at least for the morning!

Another offer

We have found a house we like, and we think it will work great for us, so we're placing our offer today! Another afternoon of waiting...And such an afternoon it is! Ryan has had a high fever since yesterday afternoon and didn't sleep well last night, so I am VERY tired, and he is VERY cranky. And we must just wait patiently.

THE OFFER

Well, it came this evening - the offer. It seemed really good, and our realtor said it was very good, so we accepted it... with much trepidation. We are scheduled to close October 15, and we don't have a house to move into yet!!! There are so many details, some huge, so it's hard to get really excited just yet, but this is a gigantic step forward.

Waiting...

I am so exhausted this week. Chase has been cutting a tooth and has not been sleeping very well at all, so I have been in a fog. I have also suspected that in addition to the tooth, he might just be getting hungrier, and so I have tried offering him solid food again, which he has indeed consumed with a gusto not previously displayed. :-) Maybe that, as well as the pearly white of the new tooth at last gleaming just above his gum, will help improve our nights a little. Yesterday we had to get the house ready to show - a 5:00 showing, which is a the worst time for me (so hard to keep everything together all day), and made more difficult by the fact that I just wanted to get back to bed. :-) But we did it, and it seems the family who came really liked the house, and the realtor expects them to make an offer today. My heart skipped a beat when Dave called me and told me that, and it has done so every time the phone has rung today! In light of that, we have been searching almost frantically for houses to look at down there and have been on the phone on and off throughout the day. It would really help to get a realtor with more enthusiasm, though. When we were looking here, our realtor was so wonderful and treated us with as much respect and seriousness as if we didn't have the tiny budget we did, and with some creative thinking and diligent looking she found this house for us. Now we have a bigger budget, but the realtors we've talked to so far aren't very optimistic. I think it can be done, though, and while waiting for that fateful but long-awaited call for this house, I have been praying that God would lead us down the right paths to discover the right house for us - and that everything will fall into place once we find it.

The Party

Drew is five today, and so very proud of it. For some reason, five must be a particularly exciting and enviable age to be, because Drew has made a very big deal of it for quite some time. When his cousin turned five just eight weeks ago, there was much emphasis, uncontested at that, placed on the difference in their status. I heard them conversing about it at the beach - "I'm five, you know, and you're only four," Tiernan informed him matter-of-factly. Ordinarily this would have been the kind of statement that would have inspired an argument - or a punch- but Drew calmly and almost submissively replied, "Yes, I know. But I'll be five in September!" He has asked about it almost daily, and has not been impressed by the idea that he's been getting closer to five every day. No, he is still convinced that something almost magical happens on one's birthday, so last night he was still only four, and today he is five. He did consent to having his birthday party yesterday, however, and almost all the family from both sides came. It was loud and hectic, and my sisters and I made a pact, or renewed it anyway, that we will help each other grow old with grace. I won't say much more than that on that point... Anyway, after everyone left and we were getting the kids ready for bed, there was a huge blow-up over some obscure (but new) Star Wars figure, and Drew was at the center of it. Of course we knew he was overstimulated and tired, so we were trying to make allowances for that, but he was really being difficult, and at one point I did something that wasn't harsh or rough, but was out of frustration nonetheless and made him feel unneccesarily cornered. I backed off almost immediately, but still after it was all over and he was in bed, I peeked in the door and whispered to him, "I love you Drew, and I'm sorry I didn't respect your space a little while ago," at which he quietly replied, "It's okay, Mommy. I'm the one who should be sorry - I never should have said those ugly things." I'm not making a word of that up, and if it hadn't been dark, you might have seen me melt all over the floor!

Boys and Girls

Some things actually heard here in this house full of boys: "We do NOT sit on the kitchen table in our underwear!" (sidebar: if this has been repeated every day for the past three or four years, how long does it take the male mind to process this and finally comprehend - and act on - the notion of how disgusting this is?) "Darling, if you're going to shoot at him, you can't cry when he shoots back at you." I say this, too, almost daily, but somehow when I said it this morning it seemed particularly absurd! :-) From the five year-old to his six month-old brother, who was watching in blissful adoration, "Pow, pow, pow! [actually these were much more sophisticated, and therefore difficult to reproduce in writing, shooting sounds]. Now I shot you and you have to fall down. I'll help you..." Fortunately I caught the baby in time, and it was difficult, once again, to say, "You can't do that to the baby, and no, he doesn't 'like it' ", when the baby is smiling and evidently does think it's funny!
Meanwhile, the girl in our house is ever and always one of the most self-assured and determined young females I know - she is a princess in the finest sense of the word, in that she appreciates order and beauty, but she is also bold, confident, and adventuresome. She is excellent at bending people to her will and convincing them that they like it (and if not, that really they have no choice - Drew is under this spell especially and has to be reminded that Aimee actually has no authority over him!), and I haven't the least bit of doubt that she will always be able to stand her ground in almost any circumstance. I don't worry, certainly that she could be coerced into doing anything she didn't want to do. This, of course, poses daily challenges for her parents who are trying to raise her, but I confess I can't help but admire her spirit when she adamantly refuses, for instance, to have her finger pricked at the doctor's office, and in that instance, I wasn't much of a help to the nurse.
At any rate, during our art lesson yesterday, I think this spirited individual was showing her colors and deliberately missing the point - I could see it in the smiling, but challenging gleam in her blue eyes (which, by the way, are the kind that sparkle, smolder, and do all the other descriptive things that are written about eyes in books). The idea was to take a construction paper shape, glue it onto a white piece of paper, and then draw a picture around the shape. For instance, the circle could become a scoop of ice cream in a cone, or the wheel of a car, or the head of a cat, etc. Well, Aimee loves doing things a certain way, but usually it's her way, and I could tell that she instantly bucked the very idea of drawing according to a set of instructions. She wanted to argue a little about it, but I asked her just to try, and so she picked something to draw. She drew a stick person with the circle for the head, and then drew a rather nice and much more elaborate cat NEXT to the stick person. One of the art books I have used discourages using the words "right" or "wrong," and the like, so I said some encouraging things about the picture, then gave her a square and tried to reinforce the idea again, without disparaging the first picture. She took it a little too gladly, made the square a box in a pet shop. Next to the box she drew a very good and colorful parrot. By this time I was a little stressed ( also because despite my best efforts at inspiring individual creativity, Drew was attempting to copy Aimee's work exactly, and so no one seemed to be getting the idea of the thing at all ), and I complimented everyone's work a little half-heartedly, then let them go play. I was feeling a little frustrated at the lack of creativity I had hoped to see, then I realized how ridiculous I was being. For one, that little girl was doing it on purpose, I was fairly sure, and for another, there was nothing wrong with her creativity - she had drawn a couple of animals that were really quite good. All in all, her personality beamed through, and it sure is a great one!

A Trip to the DENTIST

It wasn't actually so bad! When I told my husband I had made an appointment for Drew and Ryan, he said something like, "Yeah, well, have fun with that!", because he prefers to try to avoid any outing that might be remotely difficult (but just getting four children out of the house to go anywhere is difficult).However, they have to go sometime...so at any rate, we went. The five of us, with the baby in the stroller so that I could hold or otherwise encourage the boys if they needed it, squeezed into the exam room (or whatever they call it at the dentist!), and the hygenist suggested we start with Ryan, so I sat with him in the chair. The dentist, who is a very young and affable woman and thus perfect for the kids, came in and said hello to them - she remembered everyone from when Aimee came to meet her - and, as she did so, smiled and said hello to Chase. His mouth twitched. The hygenist, friendly and unintimidating also, said, "He's so cute!" and smiled at him as well. His face now beginning to contort, he looked at the dentist, looked at the hygenist, then turned to me imploringly and and promptly burst into tears. The hygenist offered to pick him up and try to console him so that we could get through Ryan's exam, but of course he only wailed all the harder at this attempt, so I rescued him and he was instantly quiet. It really is nice to be so desperately and completely adored by someone, so how could I possibly be annoyed by it? :-) Ryan, however, while not crying, flatly refused to open his mouth. Assuming his very best Aimee-esque, what-do-you-take-me-for look, he kept his lips practically sealed, so we all agreed to move on, and Drew moved into the chair. He settled in and mentioned once that he was more nervous than he had "ever been," but his body language totally belied that statement, because he was calm and relaxed, and remarked a few minutes later that it wasn't so bad after all. He has no cavities, and there were no other problems, so we were out quickly. So THERE, Dave!

A couple more Ryan-isms - Monday evening we were all hanging out outside, and Ryan was literally hanging on the swing set in all sorts of dangerous ways, so, naturally and very parent-like, we encouraged him to be careful. He gave us an exasperated look and said, "But I got to do my eckersizes!" However last night he must have been feeling more cautious, because when he, Dave, and Drew were wrestling, he stopped suddenly and exclaimed, "Time-out! Somebody will get hurt." I wish I could show the way he raises his eyebrows when he says these things - it really makes the moment!

Personal space, and Aimee and Drew...

This morning I went to the library for an hour by myself - Dave had volunteered to keep all four children after our usual night-before-a-hunting-trip fight. :-) It was very peaceful, and I could actually think about what I was doing, as opposed to my state of mind when I have to take everyone. For some reason my boys, even as babies, find a quiet space absolutely irresistible - "Hey, listen how my voice can totally fill the room!" - and I have never been able to land on a fool-proof strategy for coping with a two-year-old who suddenly decides he's not leaving and drops to the floor half-way to the counter in very loud protest. If I am to avoid excessive noise or other unruly behavior, I have to be so strict and precise as I move through the library and get to the check-out counter, that my nerves are pretty much exhausted by the time I get home anyway. So it was refreshing to go by myself (even without the baby, no less!).


As soon as I arrived home, with a load of books (the librarian said today that after we come to the library and pick up all our holds, she feels like she's already fulfilled so much of their circulation goals for the day that she could go home!), Dave and Drew left for the hunting field near our house to go dove hunting. I had asked him earlier in the week if he really thought Drew would make it the whole day, and he was optimistic, but I was not the least surprised when an hour and a half later, they showed up again, accompanied by the son of a co-worker who had come up to hunt with them. ("Do you mind...?") So now the kids have someone to play with today, and I think it's going well enough so far. Drew in particular is thrilled to have a boy relatively close to his own age to play with, and indeed I think it will be good for him. He's been...especially energetic lately! He's so funny about it, though, because he always has a convoluted explanation for his behavior at any given time. Usually he insists that his mind just can't control what his body wants to do (like when he feels compelled to knock his brother down or shoot arrows in the house), and when we try to talk about self-control, he starts talking about the soldiers in his brain - the good ones, who (with little success so far) try to restrain the bad ones, who, judging from the pillaging of my house on a daily basis, are Huns. Of course as he's talking - and talking and talking - about this he's no longer hearing a word I'm saying, so I'm never sure if anything is getting through! This morning as we were all waking up, Aimee, who had been next to him on the pallet in our room, commented that one of the most annoying things was Drew grinding his teeth in his sleep. He hadn't said anything up to that point, so we didn't even know he was awake, when he suddenly began explaining that he grinds his teeth when he wants to dream, etc. etc. etc. Our Drew!

This week for Aimee has been interesting. Her day Thursday made me wonder again if the therapist was right about the psychological issue she suspected, and Friday started that way again. She began to get "stuck" on a certain subject and the intensity began to grow, and as this process, although different subject, had nearly driven everyone insane the previous day, I tried to help her redirect herself early. I suggested she make a room in her mind for all those related thoughts. I had her imagine herself walk out of the room and close the door, and I told her she could open it again that afternoon. It actually worked! She has still been intense, but more manageable. On Thursday she was eating, drinking, speaking, hearing, feeling, etc. that one thing, and nothing else seemed to be getting through. It's difficult to explain this sufficiently, and maybe it is just normal seven year-old girl behavior, but it certainly does seem a little over the edge sometimes. I'm not sure what direction we'll go in, though, whether or not we'll actually see the psychologist. I felt I instantly lost support as soon as I mentioned that part of what the therapist said. So we'll see!

Multi-tasking, M&M's, and Panache!

First of all, "panache" really has nothing to do with anything - it's just my favorite word at the moment, from a couple of books I've been reading (I can just hear my grandmother - "When," she said once when I mentioned having read something, "do you have time to read?" As always, my answer is that I put off my already neglected laundry...!). So that's all about that, except to say that there's a great deal of panache to be found in the Count of Monte Cristo, the book I am reading currently, and it's highly entertaining story (and about a thousand times better than the movie, as usual).
As for multi-tasking, it's something I have become very skilled at in the past few years, as most mothers usually do, but it can be so consuming that I sometimes forget how to do just one thing at a time, both physically and mentally. For instance, Ryan's nursing demands have been - well, very demanding, and a little tiresome, if I must be completely honest. It's not that I mind nursing him at all, it's just that I dislike feeling that I'm a slave to it, that every time he rounds a corner and sees me he MUST nurse or perish. :-) There is no subsitution or distraction once he asks. So of course I've been thinking of all the usual suggestions I give moms, and one of those is that perhaps the toddler or preschooler in question needs more focused mommy time, which, subsequently, I've been trying to give Ryan. I have been trying to offer this in a natural and genuine way, rather than as if I were throwing a dog a bone - I read an interesting parenting article once that suggested we think of some of our parenting strategies and tactics in the light of working on a marriage. How would you like it if your husband, in other words, approached you with a list of nice things a husband should do for his wife and proceeded to check them off mechanically - then became annoyed if you didn't appreciate this very much and it didn't do anything for your marriage? The same thing would be true of our children - they probably don't appreciate being guinea pigs - "let's see if this makes you behave better" - instead, they just want us to love them. But I seriously digress! I was saying that I have been trying to make sure Ryan has enough of my attention, and I have thought that I have been available to him in general as much as possible and have played with him on specific occasions, but he has still been so needy. I realized last week, though, that my thoughts at any given time are on the next ten things that I'm going to do; and while it's helpful to be aware of what's going on and what needs to happen several steps ahead, children are very likely able to sense when someone is with them, but not completely committed. Therefore this weekend I made a conscious (and difficult - it's hard to put the brakes on!) effort to let everything go when I sat down to play with him, and it was good to really reconnect with my little boy. He's a quintessential middle child, and for several reasons right now he's the one who seems to get the dregs of everyone's attention. He does often get nuggets of attention, though, when he's being funny, and he is hysterically funny. Last week on several occasions he went around the house with a pretend cake he had made. "Who wants happy birthday cake?," he would say, missing several consonant sounds so that it came out in his unique and charming accent. He would describe with great relish that it was chocolate, "with M&M's," and feed me pieces until he would suddenly say in a very grown-up, important fashion, "That's enough! You have to share with Drew-Drew." Unfortunately I can't include all the expressions that made this so delightful. Yesterday the older kids were telling knock-knock jokes, and he chimed in, too - "Knock-knock," he said, his eyes sparkling. "Who's there?" I answered. "Bana" (banana), he replied, then threw his head back and laughed uproariously. That was around the same time Dave and the kids were tying stuffed monkeys to the ceiling fan in the living room and playing games to see which monkey would stay on the longest and who could catch their monkey when each flew off!
But back to the M&M's - when Ryan started dishing out his imaginary cake I aquired this intense craving for a cake my mother-in-law had brought for my husband's birthday in April. It was from Publix, and it really did have M&M's on it - lots of refined sugar and all other kinds of terrible things, and it wasn't homemade, but it was good, and over the weekend, chocolate, particularly in the form of M&M's, was all I wanted. I had to stop by the store after church yesterday (my favorite thing to do on a Sunday afternoon, you know!), and I went completely overboard in the baking aisle. A few aisles later, however, I looked over what was in the cart. I had the coveted candy, in miniature form for baking, the cake mix to put the candy on, chocolate chips, and baking chocolate in two forms. I realized I must have a nutritional deficiency of some kind, but I knew enough to know it wasn't for sugar, at least not that much, so I put half of it back. I did come home and make the cake, though, adorned exactly the way I wanted!

Weathering with grace

THANKS, all, for the encouraging comments (and the phone call!) I think - I hope - I'm done whining now, and I'm ready to press on. At the beach I was talking with my mom about hard times and how it's interesting that we say there are things we could never handle, or when we're in the middle of really rough situations we say we feel we're going to go crazy or die, but in reality most people just keep going, whether they want to or not. This is both encouraging and dissapointing at the same time - on the one hand, the sun will keep rising and setting and eventually I will experience transistions into other phases of life; on the other hand, I can't make things change or go away just because I rant and rave that I can't stand it or I'm going to lose it (a little like having a baby!). I suppose it's how I ride the storm that counts, of course, and I really want to display grace in everything, so I am praying for God's grace (and his mercy, because I still think it would be nice to feel a little relief). As for the kids, fortunately I think they are mostly unaware of my inner strife. I remember another time when I was going through similar difficulties and I had felt unhappy and distracted most of a particular day - at the end of the day I apologized to Aimee for having been so unglued, and she blissfully replied, "What do you mean?" I realized as I was talking with her about it that she hadn't been aware of any lack in good parenting or even really that it had been the bad day I had considered it - after all, she had played, she had been fed, we had gone through most of the routines that mattered to her, so as far as she was concerned everything was okay. Also over the years I've come to believe (perhaps just to make myself feel better, but perhaps with some real merit!) that it might not even be a good thing if we as mothers were perfect and never betrayed personal struggles - what kind of pressure would that put on our children? Better, I think, that they see me have a bad day (or week, or month, or whatever!) and then pick myself up and start again the way I ask them to - and better, ultimately, that they see that it is not me, but Christ, who is the standard, and that following him does not mean I have a life that is, or appears to be, so perfect as to be unattainable, but instead that all goodness, all strength, and all wisdom comes from him alone. If I am at all good, strong, and wise, it is him in me, and when I fail, when I am weak, and when I don't know whether to turn right or left, I have to seek him all the harder.
So at any rate, we are making it through, and the week is almost done. Dave is working today and has to work a few hours in the morning - I feel bad for him and a little for myself, but everyone is pretty happy nonethless. Aimee and Drew slept all night in Drew's room under a tent they had made (instead of on our floor), and they were very proud of themselves, and Chase said "ma-ma" today, and although I won't go so far as to assert he was actually referring to me, it was still endearing. Ryan has had a good day as well, (thankfully, because when Ryan is having a bad day, everyone is!) and he has had me read "Knuffle Bunny", his new favorite book, already about 10 times just today. :-)

Home again

Our last day at Edisto! My mom has a better version of this, I think...

We spent last week at Edisto Beach - the first time in a long time we've all been able to enjoy a vacation together - and it was a good week. We might have stayed a day or two too long, because by Friday we were all really tired, but overall things went well. I do regret that I spent a great deal of time showing the kids off to my mom and sisters (and brothers-in-law!) - that probably gets really annoying, so if any of you are reading, I'm sorry about that! The weekend home, unfortunately, was terrible for me, and I had something of a breakdown on Sunday from which I am still feeling the effects. Monday I let everything in the house go, and of course the realtor called that afternoon to ask if she could show the house on Tuesday. (The house was empty and perfectly clean all last week!) There's no one to blame for that, though, and so I got up Tuesday intending to work on it, but by 10:30 that morning I decided there was no way it was going to happen. Dave was somewhat upset about it, but I took pictures and sent them to his phone to prove my point, then called the realtor and told her there was absolute chaos, asking her if she could reschedule. Fortunately, she said it wasn't a problem. I felt so awful that day, physically and emotionally, and I really thought I was nearing my limit - I wondered what it would look like if I "lost it," and I was actually a little scared about what that could mean for myself or the kids. I wasn't having any disturbing fantasies about hurting anyone, and I wasn't screaming at them or neglecting them - I tend to withdraw, rather than lash out - I just thought I was really on the verge of sitting down on the floor and completely quitting, or even just passing out, because I felt so unsteady. Compounding this feeling was the fact that there is no one I could call for help if I was really at that point. We have no church family to speak of, my real family is now dysfuctional and they are all too busy and too far away, we are no longer in the homeschool support group here (that we hadn't even connected very well with, anyway), and Dave is at least over an hour away at any given point in the day. We are looking ahead to moving so that we can hopefully reconnect with our lives there, which were socially much healthier, but can't control when that happens, so we're stuck in this terrible limbo, and sometimes, like this week, I feel trapped and panicked in it. I know God would not give me more than I could bear, but I also wonder if there are things that we could change. It seems ridiculous to make any connections NOW while we are preparing to leave, but nonethless we asked about joining a small group at church for a time; it seems, however, that we have to have a babysitter in order to do that (one of my biggest complaints about church life in our culture, but I won't go into all that), so that's out of the question. I even looked again at putting the older two in school, but I just can't bring myself to do it, and school already started this week. I feel like I'm always letting them down - it would just mean more dissapointments to start them after everyone else, then pull them out when we have to leave. So what to do? Tuesday when I was at my lowest, I prayed fervently that I wouldn't involuntarily let the kids come to any harm and that I would make it through the rest of the day, and by the afternoon I was doing better. We're still praying, of course, that things will happen soon with the house - I admit I am struggling with having much confidence in that area, and that is an overwhelming feeling in itself. When we get an offer, if we get an offer, will we have the means to go through the whole selling and buying process? But I need to have more faith, more endurance...More faith, more endurance is the theme in general, I think. :-) I keep reminding myself of all the verses and the truths I make the kids learn over and over when they insist they "can't stand" whatever it is, and I know God is faithful.

And life is not all bad right now - Chase cut two teeth at the beach, and the instant (I do mean the instant!) we arrived home, he began crawling full time. We began solids with him last night, too - I was very reluctant to do so, but he seemed ready in some ways, and the other kids were eager to have him start.

So here he is eager and interested...

But not so crazy about bananas!I'm not ready for him to grow up, anyway!

Some ramblings

A busy week, a busy weekend...Dave worked late a couple nights in the week, and we had to get the house ready for a showing yesterday, so we were all pretty tired today. It was good to get some rest, but I'm feeling behind on things. Hopefully the week will start pleasantly anyway tomorrow. That's really uninteresting, but I don't have much to say. I've just been going around in circles lately! Chase, however, has been scooting around and even crawling a little, and today, he pushed himself up into a sitting position with no help whatsoever, and that was pretty exciting! Funny how we think anything less than the riveted attention and constant encouragement we gave baby #1 is neglectful, when really those subsequent babies often seem just as happy to figure things out on their own. :-) Chase is so much fun to play with, though, and I love catching moments to win his sparkling smile and watch him learn.
And Aimee had a nice compliment today - her Sunday school teacher took me aside as Aimee was gathering her things to leave and told me that she was so impressed with how smart Aimee was and with her "caring heart." I shouldn't take any pride in that, but it was an affirming thing to hear as a mother.
As for the boys in the middle, well, they filled the afternoon with Star Wars battles, Yoda impressions, and general havoc - fun as usual!
I've thought about taking up running again, getting up before Dave leaves for work, which means I would need to go to bed now and prepare to wake up at 5...more likely I'll miss that and should therefore just prepare to tackle the laundry beast and the usual...everything...so as I do so:

"The Sovereign Lord is my strength; he makes my feet like the feet of a deer, he enables me to go on the heights."

Correct quote

The correct quote is "There never was child so lovely; but his mother was glad to get him asleep." I actually have that written down in a journal somewhere; I was just too tired last night to get up and find it. So thanks for providing it, Rebecca! :-) And, no, I am never up in the wee hours of the morning (and if I am for some reason, I'm not at the computer!). I usually check e-mail and post before the kids get up in the morning, during their quiet time, or just after I get them to bed. The compter is by a window that overlooks the backyard, so occasionally I'll sit down to type or look things up when the older ones are outside playing and the baby needs to nurse. At any rate, I'm not here in the middle of the night, neither am I neglecting my kids (just my laundry, most likely!).

Time

I don't know what's wrong with the time on this thing, and I don't have time to figure it out - my last post appears to have been published at 7:37, when in fact it's several hours later...

"I Love You!"

Yesterday was a better day than any we had last week, then for some reason things took a sharp downward turn around dinnertime, and at 8:30, when Dave called to say he was just a few minutes away, I was putting the kids (in their pajamas!) in the car to go for a drive. I just needed to be able to sit still for a few minutes, and to have them secured so THEY would be sitting still. It was very soothing, in fact, and Dave (who was really worried about me) did most of the laundry later in an attempt to prevent some sort of breakdown, I guess! This morning I considered the verse about anyone needing wisdom asking for it, and so I prayed fervently for wisdom. If there are some things that need to change around here, I'd like to know which direction to go in, rather than just sitting around feeling like I'm at my limit all the time. I already know that - and I don't want to dwell on it. (And perhaps the reality is that I just need to be stronger.) I'd like to know what else I should do instead.
BUT in the meantime, as I told the kids this morning, after a bad day, we wake up in the morning and start over. We are learning about the fruit of the Spirit, and so again this morning, we read over that verse and prayed together that we would each have love, joy, peace, etc., and it was a good day overall. Dave is gone tonight, and bedtime was a little stressful, but as Ryan was trying to go to sleep (correction - as I was trying to get Ryan to go to sleep) at one point he suddenly stood up and said, "I love you!" It was the first time he had every said that to me on his own, and it was so spontaneous and genuine and sweet it melted me in that instant. But as someone said, "There is no child so beautiful that is mother is not happy to see him asleep," or something like that, and I am relieved that all four of my beauties are sleeping now. :-)

School begins

Well, we began a little school this past week (our year-round schedules allows us to take several weeks off druing the year, as well as the months of June and December). Yikes! I worked hard to stick the schedule I had made for Aimee, and she loved it, even all the detailed little rules we had worked out, but it was hard on everyone else - as well as on my house! It didn't help that Chase hardly slept the first day, preferring instead to watch all the interesting activity that was new to him. Ryan was another big issue. I scheduled time before we began to play with him, hoping that he would be at least appeased during the times I needed to work with the older two, but still, as soon as I began any kind of instruction, he began to loudly demand attention. Because our new math books hadn't arrived yet, we played store for math first, and I thought he might have fun playing along, but no...and by our next subject, which was history, and Aimee's favorite, he was melting down. As I was reading the chapter for the day, standing up bouncing Chase in the sling, Ryan was really unhappy and practically screaming, growing louder each time I suggested he read or play. I was also losing Drew's attention, and he was getting loud (albeit more happily) and was becoming disruptive. So I was already faced with the dilemma I had all last year - should I stop, suggest Aimee do something else or finish what she can on her own while I redirect my attention to the boys; or should I stick to the schedule and just try to get through history by reading more loudly over the din, tending to the boys and putting the pieces of the house back together later? If I do the former, the route I think I chose most often last year, I risk an almost certain meltdown from Aimee within the hour, because she finds abrubt change overwhelming. No, I won't let her just get away with behaving badly, but I may end up spending a good portion of my day dealing with it. If I choose the latter, the destruction in the house may be overwhelmingly widespread and I have a miserable two-year-old who feels he needs all the more attention from me - in short, I am faced with a huge task by lunchtime and am very thinly spread. And actually in this case, things get so loud and out of order that Aimee may have a hard time concentrating on anything, anyway, so I find myself trying to achieve a delicate balance - keep things moving, but see that everyone gets just enough of what they need at any given time so that things are also not too loud and distracting. Yes, yes, yes, I know all the special activities homeschool moms are supposed to give preschool children, and every once in awhile I actually think it might be a good idea to let Ryan play with water in the kitchen sink or completely empty out the contents of the math manipulatives box all over the living room floor...!!!!! Anyway, on the day in question, after history we took a break to clean up and have lunch, and as I looked around and thought about everything, I had a teary meltdown myself. Not good for the first day! :-) I cleaned everything up and got everyone settled down, but it all fell apart again in the afternoon and Dave came home to a wreck! The next day began with renewed hopes and did indeed start better, but in the middle of math the realtor called and wanted to show the house after lunch. I looked around, looked at the clock, took a deep breath and said yes - then we cleaned for three hours!
So I don't know how it's all going to work, but I'm gearing up for next week and reminding myself today to give thanks in all things. I've also been stricken with the terrible thought that I've been living in such a vacuum this past year that I've almost forgotten to be looking out for anyone else. I need to work harder at getting things to my neighbors, most of whom are older and could use a visit now and then (maybe just with one child at a time, though!).

Item of Interest for the O'Rourkes - but Sad

Sophie, the ruluctant immigrant from my parents house, died yesterday. She had deteriorated rapidly, and I just made up my mind to take her to the vet as soon as I could when Dave discovered her last night. I feel sorry about that, but she was a pretty good age, and I imagine the transplant was just too much for her. At least I hope that's what it was, anyway. I really don't want our other cats dropping dead from some disease (although it's my opinion that because I allowed them to wean off their mother's milk naturally, which meant a matter of months rather than weeks, they have superior immune systems - and yes, I'm entirely serious!). That's the only part about having so many animals that I really don't like, of course, and usually around here they don't just die neatly, but there's always some added drama. Even when a neighbor's cat was hit a few months ago, we had to experience way more of it than we wanted, when Daisy got out and promptly brought it (totally flattened, mind you!) back in our yard, which the boys thought was hysterical. So the kids have been toughened up in this area, and at least that helps when something expires now. The boys even help with the burials. :-)