I got the kids home late tonight. It was MOPS night so when all was said and done we didn’t pull up to the house until about 9:15. Usually this is a recipe for disaster, but I thought ahead this time and everything they would need for bedtime and left it with Rebecca. By the time I picked them up they were already in their pjs and ready for bed! When I got home, I carried each one of them up and laid them in bed. I cuddled with Baby E for a few minutes (he was the only one still awake!) and then he was asleep too! And as I sit here typing, I think , Why can’t every bedtime be like this?!?  So here’s my plan. Every night at 7pm I will leave my kids with someone else. They can prep them for bed as I wait in the car. Once an acceptable amount of time has passed, I will carry them out to the car, drive home, and take them straight to bed. 🙂

On second thought, I will skip that. Our bedtime routine might be a bit bumpy, and we might get a bit fussy, but it’s our time together, for better or worse, and I wouldn’t give it up for anything. 🙂

I stayed home today because Baby E had been under the weather. He is much better now, but it was definitely a great chance to spend time with my boys. It is such a different dynamic with C in school. Watching the boys chase each other around and scream and shout is a lot of fun. It gives me a glimpse into a few years from now when Baby E will be able to hold his own against his older brother. Oh the adventures they will have!

He’s running a fever again. It’s the fourth time since Thanksgiving. Combined with the shorter days and the cold weather, I am definitely ready for winter to be over. Baby E and I stayed in confinement today. His fever is mild and it’s his only symptom. If he wasn’t sleeping, he wanted to cuddle, which has become a rarity since he started walking. There is nothing better than 25 pounds of kid laying on you, listening to them breathe and watching their chest move up and down. He would grab the strings of my hoodie and tug gently on them. His finger would trace the letters on my shirt. Every now and again he would glance up at my face, making sure I was still there, even though my arms already proved that I was. He didn’t want to sleep, he just wanted to be held. Something is off and he’s not sure what, but he knows what makes him feel better- mommy and daddy. Hopefully the morning will bring him relief!

Goodnight sweet boy!

Our schedules have been crazy for weeks now, so we decided to take advantage of our Saturday and sneak in a much needed family date. The kids have been begging to go on a date, and C’s absolute favorite date location is the Donut Store (i.e.- Dunkin Donuts.) It’s a simple outing, it doesn’t cost a lot and it gives us a chance to connect with the kids. It’s a win all around! Since the tables are so small, I spent the first half of our date at a table with Big E and Tim was with C. Halfway through we switched. Baby E watched from his car seat. I’m thankful for these little moments with my crazies!

I gave Baby E some pasta tonight. He loved it! Actually no, he loved the butter and salt it was covered in. So much so that he took the pieces out of the bowl one by one and sucked off the butter and salt, throwing the remaining noodle on his tray or straight to the floor. Once he had finished that arduous task, he started the job of licking the side and bottom of his bowl clean until no trace of those delightful substances were to be found!

I have always kind of envied people with “Saul on the road to Tarsus” experiences.

I grew up in a Christian home. I remember my mother asking me if I wanted Jesus to live in my heart, and at five years old I prayed that he would. Years passed and what started as my parents’ faith slowly morphed into mine. I grew up going to Sunday School and Wednesday night programs. I went to Sunday morning and Sunday evening services. I went on church outings and youth group trips. I sang in the church youth choir. I participated in the church plays. My Christian experience has always been a part of my life. Of course there have been ups and downs, dry spells and rainy seasons, but I’ve never turned my back on it.

I sometimes look at people who hit rock bottom, meet God there, and have their lives completely transformed and think what a testimony they have! It sure beats mine!

Don’t get me wrong… I’m thankful that I haven’t had to endure that kind of pain, but sometimes I fall into the trap that I think many people who grow up in the church experience- the difficulty of seeing the before and after in our relationship with Christ. Our lives didn’t change in some dramatic, life shattering way when we accepted Christ. The quiet transition was almost imperceptible. You see, we learn the lingo. We memorize scripture. We don’t lie. We don’t curse. We don’t steal. Because we aren’t supposed to.  There is an unspoken behavioral guideline to follow, and we learn young how to follow it.

So when we look back at our lives it is much harder to see God at work there and it is much harder to see that we need God to work in our lives at all. After all, our behavior is pretty good. So instead of a Saul-to-Tarsus encounter with Christ, we risk being the elder brother to the prodigal son, keeping the rules while abandoning the relationship with the Father. While the Saul-like Christians are bubbling and beaming with the excitement of new found grace, we are over here trying desperately to make grace feel new. For them the transformation is tangible, but for us it can seem stale. Like I said, we know the script and the script is easy to follow. But for many, the script becomes so redundant and boring. They’ve played the same role for too long, and followed the rules so closely that they left no room for grace and exhausted by their own endless, mundane performance, they give up and walk away, leaving a trail of apathy or anger in their wake.

For those of us that stay, we sometimes find ourselves silently pleading to the heavens, “Am I good enough? I’ve followed the rules. I made good choices. I haven’t strayed. Am I good enough?!?” And the answer is always “No” because our acceptance has never been based on our works. For as much as the person at rockbottom needs God’s grace to rescue them from their sin, we need God’s grace to rescue us from our good behavior. We need reminded that our behavior is not a means to an end, but rather it should be the result of a transformed life- a transformed life that doesn’t come from rules, but comes from a relationship with God. And how do we get that? We put down the script. We stop taking pride in our behavior. We stop making choices based on how it will make us look. And we start picking up our Bible and looking for the very heart of God. And as we see Him more closely and more intimately, the behaviors we once did out of habit or guilt, will be done out of joy and gratitude.

I realize that a few of my posts recently have been kind of heavy, so I decided to take a break and have some fun with this post tonight. 

Parenthood is a crazy, exhausting, difficult, rewarding, and sometimes hilarious thing. In fact, one of the greatest and most underrated things about being a mom is the awesome conversations and awkward experiences you have with and because of your children. Tonight I have decided to compile a partial list of some of our greatest (and at times, cringeworthy moments) that I will likely have to come back and delete before my children are old enough to stumble upon this list themselves!

To make this even more interesting, let’s turn this into a GIVEAWAY POST!  Read the list and let me know (by posting to the blog or Facebook link) which story was your favorite and why. That earns you one entry. Share a story of your own parenting cringeworthy moment (if you don’t have kids, you can tell me one second hand) and you get your name in the hat a second time! Then Baby E will randomly pick a name and that lucky person will get an awesome (yet to be determined) prize shipped directly to their home!

DISCLAIMER- I will tell you that most (if not all) of these stories happen in or within a stones throw of a bathroom. I will use words like penis and breast pump. You have been sufficiently warned. 

1. A few weeks ago I was with the kids in Walmart on a busy Sunday evening. In typical little kid fashion, C starts dancing around and telling me she really really really has to go to the bathroom. She starts squealing that she is going to pee her pants, so I grab her hand and start toward the bathroom, intending to leave the boys with Tim. Big E pipes up that he has to go to, so he follows us. When we get to the bathroom we find an open stall and C gets herself on the toilet. Big E is standing in the corner of the stall staring at her. At this point the bathroom starts to fill up with other shoppers. Big E looks at me, and in a loud voice says, “Mommy! If C doesn’t have a penis, how does she go pee??” I hear a collective quiet fall over the bathroom and I am acutely aware that every woman in there is wondering how I am going to handle this one. I lean over and whisper, “I will tell you later.” Naively thinking I had handled the situation, I certainly didn’t expect for Big E to grab my face, turn it toward him and practically shout, “No! Mommy! If C doesn’t have a penis, how does she pee?!?!?!” By this time there was quite a bit of chuckling throughout the bathroom as defeated, I just said, “She uses her girl parts.” Fortunately this answer satisfied him enough to buy his silence.
2. One day I was changing Big E’s diaper when C walked in carrying a bottle (with attachment) from my breast pump. “What is this?” she asked innocently. “Remember mommy uses that to get the milkies for the baby, please put that back where you found it.” She left the room. A moment later, she and Big E both burst through the door, each holding an assembled pumping bottle in the air and swing it around and making swooshing noises with their mouths. “We’re firemen! We’re putting out fires!!” they scream.  With that they continued to use their makeshift fire extinguishers to put out the imaginary flames engulfing our home!
3.  One day, shortly after Baby E was old enough to be sitting on his own, I left him in the kids’ bedroom to grab something from another room. This was about the time that Big E was getting really serious about potty training and loved showing off that he was a big boy that uses the potty. Every evening he would use the potty and then run around the upstairs completely naked and talk about his rear end. On this occasion I walked into the room just in time to see him standing directly behind Baby E, hitting him in the back of his head with his penis! I have to admit, the phrase, “Stop hitting your brother in the head with your penis” is not a phrase I ever imagined myself saying.

Ok- now is your chance to vote! Good luck and thanks for playing along!!

When C comes home from church on Wednesday nights she is usually either deliriously happy or tragically tired. Tonight she vacillated between both. With the boys already in bed, I got to spend a little time with her and catch up with her day. With her in chatterbox mode it gave me a glimpse into her day. Also, when she is tired she gets the munchies and when she has the munchies the only thing that will do is bread and butter. Lots of bread. Lots of butter. I cut her off after two slices because it was already well past 9pm- hence the subsequent meltdown. Hopefully she sleeps well tonight and is rested in the morning. Love my sweet ones!

I was getting dressed this morning when Big E wandered into my bedroom. I have to go potty. I’m going to use your potty. He wandered into my bathroom and I continued getting dressed.

In a moment I heard him exclaim, “Oh Figgywhaps!! Oh Figgywhaps!!” And this was our conversation…

Big E- Mommy, did you hear me I just said Figgywhaps because I peed on the potty and on my leg!

Me- Does Figgywhaps mean Oops?

Big E- No, it means that I peed on the potty and on my leg.

Me- Well you are going to need to clean that up.

Big E- I already did! I used my finger!!

Ugh!!!

I was having a little pity party for myself this evening. Just me. Party of one. Feeling sorry for myself.

My day was actually pretty good. The first part of my evening wasn’t too shabby either, but it quickly went downhill after that. The kids had their brakes on this evening and going to bed was not on their agenda. By the time they were all tucked in bed, I came downstairs to survey the damage. Yup! Pile of dishes, old syrup cemented to the table, strategically placed princess barbies on the floor, their little plastic arms sticking in the air waiting to impale my feet as I wandered by. My house is a mess and I’m tired. So I retreated into a show on Netflix while I straightened my kitchen and started the dishwasher. I will battle the barbies another day.

Then I got online and I quickly noticed that I wasn’t the only one having a rough day. In fact, quite a few people I know are having a much worse day than me!  Some of them are sick. Some of them are in pain. Some of them are hurting for reasons well beyond their control. And as I side-eye the two barbies closest to me, I realize this pity party of mine is just not going to cut it. It isn’t accomplishing anything.

So instead of sulking, I’m going to thank God for those little ones upstairs and the wrestling match it was getting them to bed this evening. I’m going to thank God for my husband walking in just now, hours before I actually expected him. I’m going to thank God for the sound of the dishwasher in the other room.  I will even thank him for those silly barbies, proof that God has blessed us relationally, financially, and emotionally far beyond what we deserve.

And I’m going to pray for the people that are actually hurting tonight. For the ones that are trying to swallow devastating news. For the ones that are fighting hard struggles of loneliness and fear. And for the ones that are smiling, yet hiding their hurt behind a fragile facade. Life can be tough. And it is certainly messy. But what is reassuring is that it isn’t at all surprising to our Father in heaven. So tonight I’m trading pity for prayer and let’s see what happens!

This little one has a lot of catch up to do with her verses for Awanas. She joined super late and then with sickness and vacations she just got her book last week. But she says she can’t wait to catch up, so tonight she worked on her next verse.

Big E flat out refused to eat the dinner I set in front of him tonight, and ended up eating a grand total of four cherry tomatoes, so I imagine he will be starving in the morning.

Baby E was pretty awesome tonight. He gave me lots of kisses and cuddles, and was all around a pretty sweet fellow!

I wish they had shown the people carrying Jesus’, she said as I finished reading her the chapter about Jesus’ death in her Bernstein Bear Story Bible. Why didn’t they show that?

Probably because they didn’t want to make it to scary for little kids, I answered.

But I wanted to see them carrying his head!

Honey, they carried his whole body to the tomb. 

Oh. So that was before his body was broken?

I don’t think I ever said that Jesus’ body was broken for us, but she heard it somewhere and has desperately been trying to figure it out. The poor kid has been under the impression that they carried his body away in pieces! It’s moments like these that I have to remind myself that kids are very literal.

 

When I picked the kids up after work this evening, I asked them to put their shoes on. Big E looked at me and proceeded to kick me, so I walked over and picked up his shoes and told him if he thought kicking his mommy was more important than putting on his shoes, than he could go without shoes tonight. He seemed to think this was amusing until we opened the door and he realized that it was both cold and very rainy outside. But Mommy, I can’t walk outside in the rain with just my socks!!! I told him he should think about that the next time he thinks kicking mommy is a good idea. He whimpered all the way to the car. When we got home he said he didn’t want to walk to the house in his socks, but he didn’t have a choice. He got to a puddle and stood at the edge of it. He slowly edged around it and finally got himself inside. It was an awesome consequence to his behavior because it didn’t involve me raising my voice at all and he got to experience the discomfort that his choices caused him.

 

In Baby E news, he is making some awesome strides. He now says Mama, Dada, Papa, Uh-oh, no, and a jumbled version of each of the kids names. He is a very opinionated child and knows exactly what he likes and does not like. In so many ways he reminds me of his older sister.

 

 

 

I saw it before he did… Evidence of our current warming trend in the dip in the parking lot. What started off as a trickle sloped down into a sizable puddle about ten feet in front of him. He didn’t see it at first, too busy watching his feet as he walked along. As he came to the edge he started to hesitate. I told him to step around it, but I could see in his face that this was a battle that a boy in Spiderman shoes couldn’t lose. Without a further thought, he jumped in. If I hadn’t been so tired, hungry, and cranky I might have smiled at the impulse, but it annoyed me and I scolded him, insisting that he get in line and head for the car.

I swear the devil knocks louder on Sundays.

With three kids 5 and under, most days have their crazy moments, the moments that make me want to throw my hands up and hide in the closet just long enough to catch a breather or eat a snack. But for some reason Sundays are so much harder!

Stand outside our home on any given morning and you might think, Hey, there’s a normal family in there starting their day. You might here squealing or whining or laughing. But stand outside of our home on Sunday morning and all bets are off.

Sunday is the day that for some reason, we are always running late. It’s the day the baby leaks through his diaper. Its the day my kids get a sudden case of jelly legs. Its the day that no two socks will ever match. Shoes will be lost. Cups will be spilled. Keys will go missing. By the time everyone is in the car and we are headed down the road, everyone is exhausted and grumpy!

I don’t believe in coincidences. Nope.

The devil hates corporate worship. He despises hearing God’s word. And he hates Christian fellowship. If he can throw a wrench in our morning, if he can get us off kilter, if he can fluster us and frustrate us then we can’t be terribly effective can we? If I can’t focus on my time with fellow believers because I’m stewing over a miscommunication with my husband, than he has won that round hasn’t he?

So how do we stop it? By recognizing it. When I go to bed Saturday night, I go knowing that the morning will probably be difficult. So I pray. I pray that I don’t lose my focus. I pray that I don’t give in to my selfishness. I pray that he doesn’t win this round.

Today I didn’t do so well. I got sucked in. I got frustrated. I got mad. I lost my focus. Thankfully the big battle has already been won, so these little setbacks aren’t devastating. I snuck off to the grocery store by myself this evening for a much needed break. I got to exhale. I drank some coffee. I refocused myself. By the time I drove home, I was eager to see my family, eager to hug them and kiss them. I didn’t have to pretend to be engaged, I was engaged. I listened to my children laughing and I smiled. They were calmer because I was calmer. This evening was relaxing and pleasant.

The devil may have won my morning, but he didn’t steal my day!