Miss Julia

Lately...

Cheering for the wolfpack despite their troubles.

Working out

Learning ABC's

Singing

Kids' Night Out

It's been on my mind for a few years now...a desire to do something more...a conviction that I need to sacrifice for others. But for the longest time, I just couldn't (didn't) make the leap to actually doing something. I don't really have a lot of time, talent, or money that could help people. And I have my kids. Taking them to the grocery store is stressful enough (Shouldn't be, I know. That's another issue), but taking them somewhere new with people I don't know and trying to be of some help to somebody....that just isn't happening. Too much out of my comfort zone. Don't even know where I'd start anyway.

Now I know I've heard well-meaning people tell moms that our kids--staying at home and taking care of our family--is enough. Teaching them and serving them and leading them is a mother's mission field and she shouldn't feel like she should do more. That she's believing some lie or something the world says if she feels that way. But the thing is that I hear the world say that being a stay-at-home mom isn't as praiseworthy as having an important career, but the world doesn't tell me to make sacrifices to help others in need--Jesus does.

I don't mean to say that I think children shouldn't be a mom's priority or that she should get so in over her head in helping others that she neglects to teach and care for her own family. But what I'm thinking lately is this: Maybe when our kids don't see us giving of ourselves to those in need, we are missing a big part of teaching them about Jesus. That making sacrifices to serve others IS part of nurturing them. We can tell them what he did and what he commanded us to do, but if we're not going out and following him, are those lessons going to really make a mark on our children?

We are all busy and we all have many limitations. We are all afraid and we're too comfortable in our own worlds. But somewhere inside every Christian's heart I think there must be a desire to do something more. Could we really be his followers and not be drawn to go where he did?

I am very thankful for my friend Robyn. She is very involved with the people, activities, and needs of our church, her children's schools, and her neighborhood. She has 5 young kids--3 energetic boys and twin almost 3 year old girls. She is busy. But she felt the calling too.

I mentioned that I've been highly influenced by Katie in Uganda and the more I read, the more I'm inspired. She's had all the excuses in the world to say no to helping others. She has 13 adopted girls. She's single. She runs a ministry that feeds hundreds. She is busy. But she still says yes on a daily basis to whatever needs God brings her way. She sacrifices like crazy, but she involves her children in her ministry and from what she says, they aren't harmed, but instead are growing in faith and love.

So I've been determined--okay, maybe I've just been determined to try to be determined--to stop counting the cost so much. To stop worrying. To stop dwelling on my fears and inhibitions and inabilities. To start seeing where God is leading me to share his love.

I am not very good at this. I get excited and motivated and then I realize how much I enjoy my comfort zone. But sharing this desire with Robyn and our small group led to brainstorming, which led to a good idea, which led to more talking and praying and waiting, which finally led to the beginnings of a new ministry for our church, which now has a start date of February 10th.

The plan is to get needy families to bring kids to the church for a fun night of dinner, movie, games, crafts while the parents take a break. When the kids are picked up, we send them home with a bag of food and hopefully some encouragement from a fun night out with people who care about them. One family in our small group started such a program with really great results and they highly recommended that we do something similar. We are kicking off the program with a night for parents and kids so that we can form an initial relationship with the parents before they entrust their kids to us. We have a contact in one of the schools that has heard from about 10 families who are interested. It's exciting to finally have a concrete plan and we're hoping that this will be a monthly event that will really bless the families in Hillsborough.

If you want to pray, we would love the support. We want to put aside our fears and worries. We want to do things just as God leads us. We want to see families experience the love of Jesus. And I really want to just stop making excuses and say yes to God, whatever that entails.

Why I'm Thankful for Potty Training

Saw this picture that I took the other day and it made me think of all the great experiences (okay, I'm being a bit sarcastic about some of it) that come your way when you potty train.

1- Taking tons of fun pictures on the potty. At least your toddler is still for them!

2- Admiring the perfect smile you finally got from your toddler in a photo, only to realize that you forgot to put underwear on her and certain parts are showing.

3- Having a built in cleaning program in which you are pretty much forced to wipe up the floors several times daily.

4- Getting to carry around the perfect accessory to any outfit- the little potty.

5- Developing balance, strength, and creativity as you learn how to carry around that potty along with your toddler, grocery bags, purse, etc.

6- Taking twice as long as normal to find anything in your purse because it's stuffed with underwear.

7- Finding your child sitting in on a committee meeting with your pastor, kicked back in an infant bouncy seat, dress hiked up, legs open, nothing on underneath.

8- Sitting in a walmart parking lot with your toddler on the little potty in the passenger seat while all the people who parked closest to you decide they are finished shopping and come out to their cars.

9- Asking your toddler if she dumped her pee-filled potty out in the toilet and getting a dramatic "Oh DEEAH!" and a point to the floor where she missed her target.

10- Mixing up the conversation in your household. Now discussing toilet activity is a perfectly acceptable dinner topic...and a reason to call Daddy at work.

11- Finding mysterious puddles on the floor and footprints of multiple family members leading away from them.

12- Putting on not one, not two, but 10 pairs of underwear at one time on your toddler just because you don't want to discourage her excitement about getting rid of diapers...and it's her birthday.

13- Getting to make a grand entrance everywhere you go with a quick hello and a demonstration of the versatility of the little potty.

14- Going to the gym and doing your workout in the playroom because you're waiting on your toddler to pee.

15- Using those critical thinking (and acting) skills as you try to think of new ways to make using a toilet sound fun and exciting.

16- Exercising your servant's heart by capitalizing on opportunities to clean poop off the floor.

17- Taking on the challenge of remaining calm and patient when you sit with your toddler for an hour waiting for her to go and then when you give up and let her get up, she immediately pees on the floor.

18- Getting to experience that "first time she ever went in the potty" moment. It really is that exciting, people.

19- Getting to really break in that new washer with daily loads of peed on stuff. But hey- you don't get nearly as much face time with loads of reeking diapers, so it could be a toss up.

20- Another one for cloth diaper people: Your toddler can now fit into half her pants that were too tight with that big diaper booty.

But the absolute biggest reason why I'm grateful for potty training is:

Getting tons of time you probably wouldn't have taken otherwise to sit by your toddler, listening to her talking away about nothing, taking in every beautiful inch of her sweet face, and being so thankful. (And I'm serious about this one!)

How to throw a last minute shower

About a week ago, a friend of mine from church and i decided to throw a shower for a new couple at church. Their second baby is due at the end of the month so we needed to act fast. We ended up putting together this party for them, which we had last night, and it was pretty easy and really fun. Makes me want to have more parties!

Here's what we did: We arranged to have the party on a regular small group night and invited the whole church via email. We added one more babysitter to the usual crew since we'd have more kids involved. We gathered $ for a group gift card. We asked guests to bring food. We made up two simple games: one involved coming up with a list of questions about the guests of honor to test everyone else's knowledge; the other was "taboo" with baby related words and we had our guests make up and write out the words. That's it! So easy with everyone's help and it was really good to talk and laugh and get to know each other better.

One of the funnier moments of the night (which I missed due to Julia throwing a fit when she found a paci and I said it wasn't for her) was when, after several rounds of the girls vs. guys Taboo game, with participants trying to get their team to guess baby word after baby word like "diaper" and "crib", the word "encyclopedia" came up. Turns out Matt missed the instruction about writing baby-related words and his contributions were "encyclopedia" and "dog."

I Doin Mommy's Bible Book

The other day while sitting on the potty, Julia picked up one of my Bibles and asked her token question, "What's is dat?!" When I told her it was my Bible, she began turning through the pages and chattering up a storm.

I couldn't make out many of the words except these: Tank you for (blah blah blah, no idea what she's saying)......Jesus' name, Amen. She did this for a good ten minutes, just in her own little world of praying and "reading" my Bible while I sat by her side.
One time she stopped and put her head down and just was silent, sitting there with her open Bible smiling. I asked her what she was doing and she said, "I doin Mommy's Bible book."
So precious and even the next day when she picked it up again, she began the same "prayers" as she flipped through it. I know she doesn't fully get what she's doing and I actually don't know how she's associating prayer with the Bible, since when we pray with her it is usually in the car or at a meal. I'm sure she has seen me read my Bible, but if I'm praying at the same time, it's in my head, not out loud.

But regardless of how she has made this connection and how little she "gets", I'm just loving watching her enjoy prayer and God's word. It's reinforcing my thinking lately that of all the parenting strategies I've heard and all the parenting books I've read*, the most important thing has got to be that as parents, we just love Jesus and show our kids what a real relationship with him is like. If we are close to him and living out a real faith in front of our children, the rest should fall into place as he makes us more Christlike, gives us wisdom, and shows us what to do.

*Currently reading "Give Them Grace", which talks a lot about putting aside the "good parenting in, good kid out" mentality and just showing our children the love and grace of God.

What we did today

After lots of thinking and discussing and praying, we gave Pogey to Matt's parents today. He had gotten to a point this week of running away from home constantly, which was not fun when I was trying to get everyone out of the house in the morning. One time I had to carry him home because he refused to walk. Another time Matt found him running around some ladies, who said he actually went into their house when they left the door open. Funny in retrospect, but in the moment, not so much.

It just became clear to us that he's really not going to be happy unless he can be with people most of the time. We thought we could make it work for him, and if we could afford a real fence I know doubling that with the electric fence would keep him in, but he is going to be happiest as an indoor dog. We spent a good bit of the day at Matt's parents' today and Pogo was such a happy dog getting to be with us, sleep on the couch, and get lots of affection.

We'll miss him of course, but it wasn't that dramatic giving him away since he's still in the family and just a few minutes down the road. We hope he'll be much more content and we're very grateful to the Crabtrees for agreeing to take him!

That's our biggest news this weekend. Hope you are having a good one!

Quotes from the Kiddos

It has been so funny to listen to Julia these days. She knows words/subjects that I would have about died to hear the boys talk about at barely two! But she picks up all sorts of things from her brothers (and apparently other sources as well!):

Julia (gasp!) out of the blue started saying, "stupid" the other day. Okay, so I do say that with the boys, as in instructing "wise vs stupid" choices and maybe in reference to some "thing" (or dog) not cooperating, but we know we don't ever call each other stupid. But Julia? She just says it and laughs and she's probably going to call her Sunday School teacher "stupid baby" and it won't be so funny. Well, maybe it will since she's so cute.

Along those same lines, I was switching curtains from being on tension rods to the screw-in kind and when Julia saw the first curtain laying on the floor, she said, "Oh my goodness! The winnow fall down off the winnow!" She later started saying, "Oh my gosh!" (I don't even know who says that), which is pretty hilarious coming out of her sweet little mouth, though I don't want her saying it and the boys, of course, encourage her.

I bet most just-turned-two-year-olds also don't know much about bad guys. This girl knows many superheroes by name and also likes to identify shady characters ("He's bad!"). I was reading her a book last night about a little girl who pretended she was a princess and she looked at one illustration of girls on bikes, with a dad and grandma watching them. She told me that one of the girls was a princess and then pointed to the grandma and said, "He's bad guy." Not sure what her criteria is there:)

And again with the bad, Gray has a habit of saying, "bad boy!" to Joshua if Joshua hits him or something. I'm not sure where he got that from, since that's not quite our parenting style, but it's kind of funny the way he says it. Now when Julia gets mad, she throws something and tells herself "bad boy!"

But there has been some good talk too. The other morning on the way to school, Julia prayed by herself for the first time. She loves it when Joshua holds her hand and prays for her, but she's never spoken any words herself. This particular morning, or conversation went like this:

Me: Anybody have anything they want to pray about?

Julia: Me!

Me: Okay, what do you want to pray about?

Julia: God.

Me: You want to pray about God?

Julia: Yeah.

Me: Okay, go ahead then.

Julia: (whispers) Thank you, God.

Her little habits are so funny. When she suspects something is going on that she's being left out of, she runs in the room and shouts, "Me!" Gray and I were doing laundry the other day and she came in that way. Of course she does really like cleaning up. I often find her putting away entire games on her own, even if she didn't get them out. And yesterday I found her cleaning up all the dog food that Joshua left scattered on the basement floor. I even tried to bring her in another area to play with a toy, but she would not be deterred from her mission! She is also always "tryin to" do something, usually when I want her to do something else. Such as when I tell her it's time to go potty and she says, "I tryin to read this book!" (as in "leave me alone!") Her favorite expression lately is "No, not me!" She says this every time I ask her if she needs to go potty. Actually the other day her answer to the potty question was, "No, I don't ever want to do that again, Mr Baby!" Oh brother.

Joshua was really cracking me up yesterday. I made fish sticks for supper (really easy- cod cut into stripes and breaded with eggs and almond flour) and he loved them. When he discovered they were all gone (after his second helping), he was mad! I then remembered we had apple-cranberry casserole, which he loves, and he turned it down. He said, "No! Only fish sticks! If my choice was ice cream or fish sticks, I would still pick fish sticks!" Wow. Guess I need to make these a little more regularly.

If you know us well, you probably know that Joshua is seriously attached to me. I'm planning a trip to see my sister in WV when she has her baby and he is going to be seriously upset when he finds it out, though I know it's probably good for him. Last night he said, "Mommy, I love you forever and I'm going to be with you forever. Even when I grow up, I'm not going to move away. I'm going to live with you forever." I'll be sure to remind him of this when he's 16:)

And Gray, well he's still singing "Good tidings to you and all of your potties. We wish you a Merry Christmas and a happy new bottom." Gotta love him.

Puppy Love

What a beautiful day! We enjoyed playing outside this morning. When we stopped for a potty break, Julia demanded, "I want to see Pogo!" This generally means get in someone's lap or, second best, sit as close to that person as possible. Since she was confined to the potty, she chose to scoot her potty right over till she was almost touching him.

Sometimes Julia's a little intimidated by Pogo and she often tells him, as she's heard me say, "Don't lick the baby, Pogey!" But today, when he was laying there so calm, she was really enjoying him. She kept saying, "I like Pogo."

Us in the New Year

How is your 2012 going? We've had our ups and downs I suppose. We've enjoyed a lot of things...being back at church for a potluck, a quiet afternoon reading and playing outside, a family lunch at Matt's parents' house (Happy Birthday tomorrow, Barnette!!), riding bikes, playing with neighbors.

We've also had a few frustrations. The potty saga continues with Julia. She is definitely making progress overall and will tell us every time she goes potty--just not always in time to get her on the potty and she can be really unpredictable! So we've had lots of mess to clean up still.

And then there's good ol' Pogo. He was doing pretty well and had such a good time playing with the boys and the neighbor boys for hours yesterday. But then today we were gone a few hours in the morning and again in the afternoon. We came home to several holes dug in the yard, a plastic bowl drug out of the garage and chewed to bits, and a very wild doggy. Who knows what he's going to tear up next!

And we are having such a warm welcome to the terrific twos with Julia! She can be so fun and so sweet, but boy is the sassiness coming out...no thanks to her brothers who give her just the words she needs to tell me off in her toddler way! She often tells me "I don't cayah!" And today she was babbling about something and I was walking around the house (didn't stop and listen) and she called after me, "Mommy! I talkin to you!" There is no stopping this girl!

Now I've never been a big New Year's Resolution kind of person, but there's something about finishing up the holiday season that just lends itself to planning and getting organized. So we've done some very New Year's-ish stuff too.

For one thing, I made a plan of doing more homeschool with Gray. I was down to a reading lesson here and there, whereas before our moves, we did much more. As I watched Gray successfully tackle a thinking game (it's "Rush Hour"...thanks Grandmama and Rick!), come really close to spelling correctly several words lately, read some words on his own initiative, and make progress on his own in his writing, I realized he would probably really enjoy some more schoolwork. Now that we are settled, I need to give him that time.

Oh how I love to clean out stuff and in very New Year's fashion, I went through all our toys and the ones at the gym and reboxed and reorganized it all. It is so nice to get rid of some things that are not played with and to arrange the stuff the kids do still like so that it is more likely to be used and easier to clean up.

One of my Christmas gifts was "Kisses from Katie", which is the book by the girl that I've mentioned before who lives in Uganda. Her blog and her life has really stuck with me and made me want to live a much bigger life, getting outside of my own little world. She has encouraged me to give much more of myself to others and I so want to be able to meet the needs of the poor, though it's hard to sort out how exactly to do that. Her life has spurred on my desire to adopt one day and inspired me to hopefully help start a ministry to the poor in Hillsborough with the help of our church.

It is uncomfortable to read about one girl that has made such a difference in so many peoples' lives and to come to the realization that I'm neglecting some of the needs that are closest to Jesus' heart, such as the poor, the orphan, the widow, for the sake of my own comfort. But it's also hard to figure out what exactly to do about it. I know that God is working in my heart and I know that he can open my eyes to the way he would have me live.

Though having our own new business means our income can be a bit shaky, I do want to trust God more to provide and I want to always say yes to him. So last night we decided as a family to sign up to support one of the children in Katie's program. After showing the boys some pictures and explaining more about what life is like for these precious kids, they even agreed to help us pay for it with some of their piggy bank money. We decided they will contribute $5 each a month either from their money or by doing jobs from a list Matt made. I am excited to get a name and picture for our child and to make this ministry even more personal for our family. (Check out amazima.org for more info)

I'm also talking with Durham Cares about volunteering again. They are very good about making personal contact and checking back with you when you are taking a break from serving. So I recently got another email check-in and again, very typical for the New Year, I decided I should see about getting involved again. I am hoping for something with kids.

So that is our 2012 so far. Joshua is very reluctantly starting school tomorrow so we'll officially be back to the old routine. He is getting a new assistant teacher in his class that is supposedly very upbeat and friendly, so I'm excited for that. Hope your New Year is starting off well!