The Kiddos

Jillian

Georgia

Elias

Walking with the goats

Georgia-Pie

Sisters

Parenting

There are some days when I really lose it with the kids. I have had anger problems in the past (I hope that if I run for public office one day someone doesn't dig up that sentence from years prior and post it all over the news as, what's the word, is it "propoganda"? I can't think just now) (just joking-about the running for office part, I added it as a comic aside because it is still a little hard for me to share about my issues with anger-enter: pride - again).

A little over three years ago, I had to face my problem head-on. Primarily, this was because my baby wasn't simply a cuddly cute chubby cherub, but one that I realized exhibited symptoms of the universal disease called Depravitus Humanus. I'm not sure why I didn't deal with anger that I felt when I got married, or even before that. I think it is partially because I hadn't experienced or fully realized the weight of my influence on others until becoming a mother.

I Timothy 2:15 says "But women will be saved through childbearing--if they continue in faith, love and holiness with propriety." (The Bible, NIV). Interestingly, this verse comes right after Paul's discussion of the order that God has put in place between men and women's roles in the church.; as well as a note about The Fall, Adam and Eve (See I Timothy 2: 11-15). I will not diverge into a discussion on submission here. I will say that the "women will be saved through childbearing" part applies to me!! Through bearing/rearing my children have I realized my complete depravity, and that by continuing in faith and love I am being sanctified (does this sound too Christianese?). As I am continually convicted of sin, I go through a process of confessing sin, repenting of it (stop doing it! yikes!), and reconciling the wrong I have done (okay, this is the most difficult part for me, I get so pridefully ashamed of my past sin, I don't want to bring it up, even to reconcile it). And along the way, Jesus helps me to see myself, my attitude (on the inside or the out) through my children.

I am going to tell you about today. To preface, I realize when I tell stories about my kiddos, that they are vulnerable children, and I am not trying to demean them in anyway. I hope that I do not come across that way in this story. We came home from a really great time at the library today. The kids were well behaved, Jillian's underpants stayed dry, etc. Enter chaos. Georgia fell asleep and I laid her down. I began cooking dinner. Elias suddenly jumps up from watching the library movie, screaming "I'm hungry!" Tears appear and stream down his face while he screams "I want a banana with peanut butter!"

Me: "Please ask in a polite way!"

Elias: "Please may I have a big banana with peanut butter"

Me: "You can have a 1/2 banana".

Dinner was truly almost done and I didn't want to spoil his appetite, so I gave him a 1/2 banana, no peanut butter . I could have cut his arm off and I don't think he could have cried harder. He was madder than a hornet. He squished up the banana that I gave him. He continued to scream as I told him to put the banana mash on the counter and go to his room.

Elias and I walk to his room. Jillian is playing in there. She looks at me with watery eyes and says "I poo-pooed in my pants". I can smell it. Elias shoves her out of the way to his bed. "I just want to be ALOOOOOONE JILLIE!" He wails. Do I deal with the shove or the poop? It's a toss up at this point. "Waaaaaaaaah--I'm hungry!" in the background as I take Jill to the bathroom to clean up. Poop plops in the toilet, soiled underwear in the dirty clothes basket, Jill gets a baby-wipe bath. I hear Georgia crying, then the smell of slightly burning frying chicken on the stove reminds me to check dinner. I wash my hands, twice, as I am really grossed out. Sort of saved the chicken from burning up, get all the kids to the table (forgot to have Elias wash his library hands--didn't realize this till after dinner), bribe them to eat veggies w/ a raspberry Hansen's "natural cane sugar" soda. At this point we are all having fun again. I bring up the whole banana incident. Elias says "I'm sorry".

Jillian takes a drink of her soda. "Its spicy, it gives me the hiccups" says she, hiccuping.

I give Elias his last bite of green peas and edamame. He chews a few times, gags, and spits them out, "They give me the throw-ups" says he. We all laugh. I don't push the peas, glad I am not cleaning up barf. We actually had a really good dinner. And Elias ate the banana he mashed with peanut butter mixed in for dessert.

So, two things from this long-winded story. One, how often do I say to God, or Dustin, or whoever: I want what I want, when I want it, the way I want it--NOW! And I'm going to make you know how mad I am about not getting it! And Two: I didn't really lose it with the kids today. God gave me grace to deal with the chaos, the attitudes. The kids are all in bed now *sleeping*. I'm waiting for Dustin to come home on his "Chow" break and share a few minutes together. Praise Jesus for my precious family.

Things That Have Happened

A few weeks ago we had an animal casualty: Lola the duck was eaten by a coyote (sniff). We forgot to put the birds into their pens one night, and Lola was the unlucky duck.

Dustin and Elias went on a guys camping trip with Cousin Ben and Caden; Susan and the girls joined her parents on Eliza Island-ahh, bliss! But hard being apart from each other, but good, too.

We went swimming today.

Dustin is in San Francisco for the weekend visiting two of his really good buddies.

Also a few weeks ago our baby chicks arrived in the mail and they have moved from our garage to their outside pen! Yee Haw!!! They are really cute. A couple of them have names: Scalliwag and Mexico (Elias named them).

My kiddos are really growing, physically, developmentally, heart-wise, too.

I went wake boarding today with our friends Nick and Sarah and Scott. What a TREAT!!

I started working outside the home again....I work per diem at St. Joseph Hospital in the Childbirth Center. I work there about once a week. I posted a poster in the nurses lounge of dates I am available to work. This has made me so much more sane regarding when I sign up for shifts. If I am not available (i.e. Dustin is working and we would have to find a babysitter if I were gone, too), then I say "no" to that shift. I have already fulfilled my September and October months with shifts I am signed up to work. Previously, it had been hard to fulfill my four-shift a month committment that goes along with my per diem position contract until I was already into the month. I don't know why it took me SO LONG to figure out that posting dates I was available would help this problem....perhaps it was because I had pregnant brain...I am thinking somewhat more clearly these days now that I am post-partum.

I RSVP'd to my cousin's upcoming wedding. Looking forward to spending the weekend in Seattle in October.

Went to a Zoo-Tunes concert to see Shawn Mullins...but more importantly, to see some dear friends: Becky Jones, Elijah and Lisa and Makaio Cabiles.

Redeeming Summer

Summer hasn't left us yet. What a gorgeous NW day. But autumn is coming, as it always does. And I get this "can't put your finger on it" feeling in my gut when the end of summer peeks at me. Kind of a sad, defeated feeling, like the child who is REALLY tired but doesn't want to go to bed and his mom makes him go to bed. That's how I feel about autumn coming. It is a good season, but it's disappointing that summer always has to end.

Summer has always been so dang fun for me. I love summer--you can garden, its warm, you can wear shorts, flipflops, tanktops, get tan, mow the lawn, pick berries, swim, eat popsicles outside, dinner al fresco!, grill, play outside, sleep outside, camp, see shooting stars, did I say play outside?, my mom doesn't work in the summer, go to Eliza Island, go on boats w/ out getting really cold, the sun doesn't set until after dinner or later--there is a lot to enjoy, but...I love summer so much that it is one of my idols. Idol: "a material effigy that is worshipped" (http://www.wordnet.princeton.edu/). Worshiping anything that is not God. For instance: In the deep of winter, I long for warm sun so much that my attitude is changed by this longing--to the point that I get impatient, grumble, complain because of the weather. In the summer, when its sunny, I have what come close to anxiety attacks if I don't spend most of my day outside, in the sun, having fun...its no wonder my home has been such a wreck these past two months. And so, I must repent. And then allow summer to be redeemed in my life. So how can I redeem summer? For me, I think it is by cleaning and keeping up with my duties as a wife and "house manager" and mom even if it means skipping a few minutes (okay an hour or two--or, gasp, a day) of the warm weather (without having an anxiety attack about it). Or maybe by ordering my day better (wake up earlier to do a load of laundry in order to play outside later). In the winter, I tend toward that condition called "Seasonal Affective Disorder" (who doesn't?), and so I must be all the more vigilant to not despair about the weather.

And so, as summer comes to a close, I am doing some belated spring cleaning as well as some heart cleaning: asking Jesus to root out the idols in my heart to replace them, by His grace, with Him.

ThreeYearOld Logic

"Dinosaurs live far far away because they are dead...and who killed them?" Such began the bedtime conversation tonight with Elias. I love seeing how his mind is developing and how he interacts with the world and how these interactions play out in his thinking.

Its been a busy month--mostly because of the nice weather we've been graced with (though Dustin keeps reminding me that there ARE places in the USA where the weather is nice 6 + months out of the year).

Our ducks have started laying eggs! We get one almost every day now.

The chickens "roost", meaning that if I leave their pen door open with the ramp down, they will go up the ramp and into their pen on their own at night! I LOVE this feature with chickens! I still have to herd the ducks, which tonight involved chasing Pogo up and down our yard three times trying to catch her. I now feel less guilty about not having a regular exercise routine.

And today I received a call from the Post Office letting me know that our new chicks were in and to come pick them up--16 of them. They were inside a 10x10x5 inch box with holes in it and peeping VERY loudly. I've secretly always wanted to order chicks by mail. They are about a day old and both male and female. Our garage is a gabarn again. The chicks that turn out to be hens we will keep as layers, the ones that turn out to be roosters will meet their fate at the Rudolph Poultry Guillotine approximately 10 weeks from today--then into the freezer with 'em. Yes, we are again going to attempt to grow our own meat. Yes, I remember that it did not go as well as hoped with Ping, the duck. We have a plan this time (we had a plan last time, too).

I've decided that a blog for me is sort of like an electronic scrap-book (minus the expense and the mess) mixed with a journal for me to look back on and reflect upon. I have a journal too (several, actually, that I take turns writing in--I think journaling is an art that I'm not very good at and I have thrown out many a page where I am simply ranting and complaining maliciously). But here's to the "log" part of blog:

A log of the week of 8-9-2008 - 8-15-2008

Saturday 8/9/2008--Went to the Mariners Game with Elijah and Makaio

Sunday-went to church as a family at Oikos Fellowship

Monday-went to the Lynden Fair with the Tarrell clan, Gigi, Mom, Deena and Berna

Tuesday-can't remember-oh yes, recouperated from the Fair, family movie night (Nim's Island)

Wednesday-Weekly grocery shopping trip to Fred Meyer together as a family, swam at Gram's

Thursday-Picked blueberries while kids played at Aunt Deena's house w/ Sunny, Caden Saylor

& Lucy; later went to pool where The Kheriaty's work so that we could swim w/ Dustin--Elias dove off the diving board several times

Friday-Met Amia @ Zuanich Park to play, picked up chicks from post office, swam at Gram's

What a wonderful week full of fun with people that we love so much!

Time with Gram

I spent the afternoon with my Grammie today. Our neighborhood had a summer picnic and Grammie came with the kids and I to enjoy hot dogs, face painting, a raffle, and some freebie toothbrushes.

The kids call my Grammie "GiGi". We live in the same neighborhood that Grammie lived in while she was raising her three girls. She doesn't live in that area of town any longer, but I like living on a street that my mom used to take walks on with her pals when she was a teen. On our way back to Grammie's house, I asked Grammie to show me the house "on Cedarwood" that I've heard so much about. It's a beautiful house, well maintained and Grammie likes to see how well its been taken care of.

I like to listen to Grammie talk about her past. It seems like I always learn something new about her. I think that when you love someone you never lose interest in learning more about them. Today she told me that the home she lives in now is the only one she's lived in without "Phil". Grandpa Phil. I didn't get to meet him. He died when my mom was seventeen. It is always obvious that Grammie loved Grandpa Phil. "He was a neat guy," Gram said to me in the van today, "He was just a neat guy with a problem. And then he wasn't any fun". Grandpa Phil was an alcoholic and he died of Cirrohsis of the Liver.

I wish that I could have met Phil. I like to see his pictures from WWII looking handsome in his uniform. My mom has his eyes. I wish that I could have met him when he was healthy, I wish that I could have felt proud when he came to my events that my other grandparents came to while I was growing up. I will never know the real Grandpa Phil, just stories about him from Grammie and Mom and other family members. I wish that he could have enjoyed having grandchildren like I see my parents enjoying my kids, and I WISH that Grammie could have enjoyed her grandkids with him...

So, I'm kind of sad about that tonight. Sad that I didn't get to meet Mom's dad, that he was never around to tell me stories about her. Sad that he died a rather self-inflicted death. And I wonder if I'll meet him--a sinner redeemed-- one day in heaven?

Why did God make mosquitos?

My three-1/2 year old boy asks a lot of "Why?" questions. This has been going on for the last year or so. So many "Why?" questions, that I sometimes find myself tuning them out, or answering them without the topic of the question even registering in my mind. But when Elias asked me, oh-so-sincerely "Mom, why did God make mosquitos?" I had to stop and think before I answered.

Elias had gotten a series of mosquito bites in the back yard a couple of weeks ago. A few on his arm, couple on his back, one on his eye-lid that swelled and turned kind of purple. Nasty mosquitos. Why are they here? We teach the kids about God's goodness, that God is Good, that all things he created are good. I love that my son has thought this logic through: if God has created all things, if all things He created are good...what in the world are mosquitos doing here?!

Why is there evil in the world? Why do bad and sad things happen? Why doesn't God stop all sin? Where is God in the pains of life? We talked about some of the obvious things like "Mosquitos provide food for the bats and the spiders and the birds"--which I happen to think is a really lame-o! answer, but I gave it anyway. Then we talked about Adam and Eve, how sin entered the world and is still here and causes death and decay and itchy, swollen mosquito bites. Then we talked about how every person has sin and how Jesus died on the cross as a sacrifice to take away our sin. And only through Jesus can we be accepted by God. Its pretty cool that my little boy is already asking and thinking through the big questions in life and I can point him to the Gospel to seek an answer.

Romans 8:19-21 "The creation waits in eager expectation for the sons of God to be revealed. For the creation was subjected to frustration, not by its own choice, but by the will of the one who subjected it, in hope that the creation itself will be liberated from its bondage to decay and brought into the glorious freedom of the children of God."