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."