Weeks 7, 8, 9, and 10--Disposal, Toothpaste, Family, and Earthquakes

Contemplations

It's been a long time since I've written. When I embarked on this adventure, I specifically stated that I would not allow this blog to get in the way of my family or home responsibilities. These past four weeks I've had to push it aside to focus on my priorities. Life has really seemed to speed up in the last month. I can't really think of any one specific reason why. I think it is a combination of things.

The most time-consuming thing right now is continued potty training. April is doing really well. Still having occasional accidents, but is getting better at vocalizing when she has to go. She's peed in the big potty at WinCo and church! Yay! No more hauling the little potty to church every week! (I'll probably take it at least one more week just to be sure.)

Four days ago I added night training to my list of responsibilities. The boys will be four next month and still don't make it through the night. After reading John Rosemond's book in preparation to train April, I decided that once the pull-ups were gone, I wasn't buying any more. The boys are just going to have to learn to stay dry. We used the last pull-up three nights ago. Lukas has stayed dry both nights! Koda has woken up wet both mornings. Hopefully he'll catch on soon. My sister used this method with my niece and it didn't take long. In the meantime, it means I'm washing bedding every day. In the long-run, it will be well worth it, but right now, I'm just tired of doing laundry.

I added a new writing responsibility to my plate in January when I started writing a weekly post for The Frugal Find. This isn't that bad as I can sometimes use Near to Nothing posts and just tweak them a bit. (Sorry, can't figure out why this is centered.)

Another added stress has been the refi we're currently in the middle of. We're hoping to close in the next couple weeks. If all goes through as planned, we'll save a good chunk of money every month and a ton over the life of the loan. But before it can be finalized, we have some things we need to fix around the house. It's all stuff we wanted to do anyway, but it just wasn't high enough on the priority list to make the time for it. Now we have to do it.

Through it all, I've had quite a few times in the past two months when I just wanted to leave the kids to run amok while I crawled under the covers to hide, cry, and sleep. Don't get me wrong, I LOVE being a full-time mommy and wouldn't want it any other way. I'd really cry if I had to go to work outside the house. But lately I've just been so exhausted.

To get through those times, I just keep reminding myself of God's promises of rest in Psalm 127:2 and the glorious future rest in heaven that we read about in Hebrews 4. It truly is only the Lord who can sustain us in troubled times.

Habits in Progress

1. Scripture Saturation: With the craziness of February, I fell quite behind and am still about 10 days behind. Rather than try to catch up, I decided to start March's reading list and go back and pick up February's neglected readings as I have the time. I think this way I will be less discouraged about being behind. I am so far current for March.
2. Toy Pick-Up Time: Going well---need to do a thorough purge of the toys to make it easier and faster.
3. A Hug and a Kiss: Met Robbie at the door almost every day this week!
4. Water: This is becoming such a habit that when I forget, I remember as soon as I start eating my meal.
5. WDTP Scripture Memorization: Proverbs 29:17 "Discipline your son, and he will give you rest; he will give delight to your heart." Due this Thursday.
6. Two More Hugs: Great!! Just gave them each a hug this evening!
7. Disposal Check: Now that they boys are old enough and coordinated enough, I've been having them carry their own dishes to the kitchen after meals. They usually dump them into the sink. But since they can't see what they're doing, this means that the silverware sometimes ends up in the garbage disposal. After running a few spoons through the disposal, I decided I need to make a habit of checking it before running it. Since then, I haven't run any silverware through it.
8. Toothpaste Check: April LOVES to brush her teeth! I often find her at the bathroom sink brushing away. She also loves toothpaste. She discovered that there is often a great supply of toothpaste in the sink after the older kids are done brushing. I have found her scraping the toothpaste out of the sink with her toothbrush and brushing with it. Gross!! So I now regularly check and clean the sink after the older kids are done.
9. Family Time Tuesdays: Sort of as a result of all the recent busyness and craziness, Robbie and I ended up having a huge discussion about how we can make more time for the kids. We decided that Tuesday nights are going to be family time. On Tuesdays, Robbie will not do any school work until after the kids go to bed. I will plan meals that require little or no prep just before dinner time and will wait to clean up the dishes until after the kids are in bed. This last Tuesday was the first time. We all played Legos together and it was so fun! The boys especially liked building things.

This Week's One New Habit

For those of us living in earthquake country, it is very important that we all have emergency supplies on hand: battery-operated radio, drinking water, flashlights, non-perishable food. I used to be real good at making sure we had all these things on hand. But since we moved into our house (almost 3 years ago), I haven't really collected these things again. I've wanted to get this going for some time now, but this week's small quake really gave me motivation.

Buying enough food for six of us for a few days will be really expensive. So to spread out the cost, I plan on buying one or two canned items each time I'm at the grocery store to put away in our earthquake kit. Once I've stocked up as much as we need, I will continue to buy new stuff and use it to replace items that are nearing their expiration date--yes, non-perishables do perish.

So, I hereby resolve to buy at least one extra can of food every time I am at WinCo in order to build up our earthquake emergency kit.

Week 6--Two More Hugs

Sorry, this is a long one...

Contemplations

This last week I started reading another book for DTP--Becoming God's True Woman edited by Nancy Leigh Demoss. I'm on the fifth chapter and cannot even begin to tell you how good it is! In the introduction, Demoss quotes a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier that I absolutely love (1st and 3rd stanzas quoted here)!

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,

Forgive our foolish ways!

Reclothe us in our rightful mind;

In purer lives Thy service find,

In deeper reverence, praise.

...

Drop Thy still dews of quietness

Till all our strivings cease.

Take from our souls the strain and stress,

And let our ordered lives confess

The beauty of Thy peace.

Oh, how I want this to be the prayer of my heart every day! That I would take time out from all the busyness of life and daily contemplate the person of God! That my mind would momentarily stop churning the things of this world and offer up praises to my Lord and Father!

The first chapter is "Femininity: Developing a Biblical Perspective" by Carolyn Mahaney. She says "our femininity is a gift of grace from a loving God" and then proceeds to show how we are to express our femininity through our role as a helper, nurturing children (our own or other people's), and caring for our home. Regardless of marital status, God created and calls all women to express do these things.

If all of us mommies are going to be honest, we'd have to admit that there are times when we are tempted to throw in the towel. While we recognize and wholeheartedly agree that our children are gifts from the Lord, there are times when we've had it and just want to lock the bedroom door, crawl under the covers, and let everyone fend for themselves. Of course, we would never really do so. And I am quickly overcome by guilt when such thoughts flow through my mind, realizing how sinful and in need of repentance I am.

I hit that point a few times in the past week. Last weekend Robbie was at men's retreat. About 24 hours after arriving back home, he came down with the flu which lingered about five days. Counting his late nights out the previous week, I was essentially a single mom for about a week-and-a-half. My heart goes out to all true single parents out there! Anyway, between cleaning up from the potty training (which is going splendidly!), getting kids to and from school, keeping everyone fed and dressed, doing TONS of laundry, and attempting to keep up with some of the house chores, there were moments when I didn't know if I was going to make it through the evening.

But each day the Lord pulled me through the rough spots, was faithful to refresh my soul through His Word, and gave me the strength to get through the next day! As Carolyn Mahaney says, "there really is no other source of refreshment than God."

Habits in Progress

1. Scripture Saturation: I was able to start February one day ahead! This will help me finish on time since there are only four extra days this month. I believe I am on schedule or will be before I go to bed tonight.
2. Toy Pick-Up Time: Still going great!
3. A Hug and a Kiss: With Robbie being sick, I've actually been avoiding kissing him. But I've been trying to hug him, scratch his back, rub his shoulders whenever I could.
4. Water: Even with the busyness of the week, still going at it!
5. WDTP Scripture Memorization: I have reviewed Ephesians 5:22, 23 every day since my last DTP class. "Wives, submit to your own husbands as to the Lord. For the husband is the head of the wife even as Christ is the head of the church, his body, and is himself its Savior."

This Week's One New Habit

Chapter 3 of Becoming God's True Woman is entitled "Daddy's Girl: Knowing God As Father" and was written by Mary A. Kassian. I read this chapter while sitting at a table in the food court area at Target this last week. I'm pretty sure if I had been at home, I would have broken down and cried as I read it. Kassian starts the chapter by describing the sad state of today's families. "Our society has not only lost the physical presence of fathers, but we have also lost something even more fundamental: We have lost our idea of fatherhood....Our society is afflicted not only with the absence of fathers, but also with the absence of our belief in fathers."

As I read this, I could not help but thank God for my own daddy! I am incredibly blessed to have parents who are still married to each other and who still love each other. My dad was always there. When we were little, he took us to our soccer games every Saturday. He helped me build my California mission in fourth grade. During our junior high years he was attending our softball, basketball, and volleyball games and French braiding the whole team's hair! Yes, he can French braid! And in high school he helped us with our Calculus by having us explain the difficult problems to him until we reached the "oh, I just found my mistake" point.

And even though my sister and I have both left home to start our own families, our daddy is still very involved in our lives. He is an excellent Bapa to our combined five children, he rescues me when I am having car trouble, he fixes things around the house for me, and he BBQs/grills dinner every Sunday!

A few weeks ago Robbie made an observation of something that I had been thinking about as well. He commented that my family doesn't really hug that much. The truth is that we were always very physically affectionate when we were younger. I remember hugging my parents a lot when I was a kid. I have fond memories of snuggling up to my dad to watch football on Sundays. But in the past few years, the hugs have been absent. I think one reason is that we see each other all the time. We hug Robbie's parents when we see them because we only see them once a month. But I see my parents multiple times each week. Also, I usually have my hands full of kids and kid-related things. And the kids are always needing their hugs. But none of these are valid excuses. I not only need to tell my parents that I love them (which I do all the time), but I need to show them that I do. This evening as we were leaving their house, I made it a point to hug each of them, even though I was juggling April and my purse. And it was nice!

So, I hereby resolve to hug my daddy and mommy on a regular basis, that they would know that I love them not only by my words, but also by my physical affection toward them.