April 2010 – Page 2 – Kingdom Twindom +2

Sometimes, When You’re Late, the Sun is Perfect.

So, yes, I do know that most of you city people are thinking, “Stop your whining already! So you had to drive around!” But really, it’s a story to me. And that’s all I’ve got today, friends.

I spent most of Wednesday morning on the phone…trying to set up a late term OB appointment for a needy local woman and working out arrangements for Papa Bear’s dental stuff. Both went well.

The big kids had a vaccination appointment, I had scheduled a photo shoot and Papa Bear needed to make it back to town to pick up the antibiotic and painkillers that were prescribed by the ER doctor. We just had to figure out how to make all of those things work together…which we were pretty sure we could do.

First, we drove into town to pick up the prescriptions. I know, this is super interesting stuff; it’s not going to get much better. We pulled into town in time…but we didn’t allow for the thirty minutes it was going to take to fill the prescriptions (which was dumb). So, we turned around and drove to the doctor’s office, knowing we’d have to make it back for the much needed drugs.

I had bribed all of the kids with milkshakes, so I was fairly confident that the appointment was going to go smoothly. Plus, Papa Bear would be in the waiting room so I’d only have to be in the exam room with two ~~victims~~ kids at a time. Oh, and we’d heard rave reviews about the nurse who was going to be administering the shots. Easy breezy, I could almost sigh at the thought.

Well…

It was awful. And all I have to say is that, no matter how skilled the nurse is rumored to be, if she thinks it’s best to give your three and five-year-olds, “The one that stings the worst, first,” she really should be questioned.

Oy vey.

The doctor’s appointment took longer than planned (even though we had allowed for more time than usual), and I started to worry about my photo shoot.

“Let’s run and pick up your prescription and then I’ll have her meet me here (in the town in the middle), instead of trying to make it all the way back home.”

“Sounds good,” Papa Bear said, tires rolling onto the highway from where we had parked to make a plan.

Then, after less than a minute on the road, I screamed, “But that would only work if I had my camera with me!!”

And we turned around again.

In the end, though, everything was perfect…which really is the point of this post.

See?

And to think, I wouldn’t have gotten these shots if ~~everything~~ anything had gone as planned.

I struggle, because I try not to over-spiritualize my life. But as I sat up in bed before falling asleep on Wednesday night, I couldn’t help but wonder….

“God, with all of the starvation and pain in the world, why would you care (and you certainly seemed to care) about the lighting during my photo shoot?”

I didn’t hear an answer, I just felt a peace…like a much broader, much bigger truth was being applied to my life in that small, insignificant moment. Money, time, food, rain, sunshine…all of the resources of God are without limit. And God can care about me, and tend to me, without turning a blind eye to those who are infinitely more deserving and more in need.

I thought I’d share that tonight, in case it applies to someone besides me. If you need something from God, but you feel silly asking for it because God’s hand is more needed elsewhere.

Just ask Him anyway.

P.S. The beautiful girl in the pictures is Jess. She’s a talented young designer who is a finalist in a very exciting contest. Warm up your voting fingers because I’m going to be asking you to help her out sometime in the next few days!

Where to Begin?

Yesterday, no, Tuesday was my grocery shopping day. I woke up to a clean house, and we got to a slow, lazy start because Tuesday was Papa Bear’s day off. I made biscotti while the kids played outside, and then we packed up to leave around two.

Our drive to the grocery store is between forty-five minutes to an hour. But we don’t mind it much…especially now that the snow is gone. My Tuesday night Bible study starts at six-thirty, and I was determined to get back in time to put away the frozen food and hop into the shower. That meant McDonald’s from three to three-thirty, Wal Mart from three-forty to four-ten and grocery shopping from four-twenty to five….which is not exactly how things ended up happening. I’ve considered blaming it on the beautiful diamond clad woman who insisted on parking her cart, sideways, in the middle of the isle. She must have been using my list, because I pulled up behind her seven times, and every time I had to ask her to move her cart before she thought of it. We made it home just a little after six, but I ended up forgoing a shower for the sake of the groceries.

Oh well. Bible study was wonderful even though my hair was dirty. After the meeting I drove a dear friend home and ended up sitting in the car and talking with her until after one. I was fairly certain that Papa Bear would be waiting up…probably enjoying nag-free video games.

When I walked through the door with Baby Bear (staggered really, I was extremely tired from a long day and little sleep the night before), I could hear a faint groaning coming the t.v. room. “Are you OK?” I whispered, running in to the room to find him curled up in pain. I have a tough guy for a husband, and I have never seen him like that before. “Why didn’t you call me?” I asked. “Because there’s nothing you can do,” he moaned.

Papa Bear was among the very first into Iraq during the launch of Operation Iraqi Freedom. This is not a pro or anti war post, so please don’t be distracted, but I am very proud of my husband’s service and the countless innocent lives that were saved because of men like mine. Within the first few days after crossing the line into Iraq, a violent storm came. The winds picked up and the sand blew so hard against their faces that they were spitting it for days.

When Papa Bear returned from Iraq…well, so did a lot of other people. I’m sure that the Navy doctors and dentists are completely overwhelmed, but that hardly explains the horrible job that was done on Papa Bear’s sand eroded teeth. Unfortunately, he was discharged before he began having any trouble.

A little while back, one of his back molars chipped, and then very recently it cracked in two. It has given him a little trouble here and there, but on Tuesday night something changed, and the pain was clearly unbearable.

“Do we need to go to the emergency room?” I asked.

“I don’t know,” he said with his head between his knees.

I Googled toothache (which he had already done) and concocted a couple of remedies that he hadn’t been trying. At first we both thought they were helping dramatically, so, like a jerk, I seized my opportunity for a quick shower. But, by the time I had finished my shower, he was rocking in pain again.

“OK, that’s it. I’m going to go wake the kids,” I said. And within about fifteen minutes we were making the trip back to town. But not before I spent two minutes looking for my hairbrush (which I soon realized I had let Baby Bear play with during the Bible study). Papa Bear wasn’t very happy with me at that point.

For about forty minutes, Papa Bear sat in the passenger seat and rocked in pain. Then, and he said, “Of course,” as we neared the hospital, his pain began to subside. But the doctor prescribed a painkiller and an antibiotic. And once the antibiotic has had a little time to work, he’ll see a dentist on Monday or Tuesday.

The original plan was for Papa Bear to go into the ER alone while the rest of us waited in the car. But the kids were pretty hopped up by their middle of the night adventure, so we grabbed our books and ran inside. I wish I’d taken the camera, because they all realized, within the first few minutes, that they could slip under the arm rests and make a bed out of the waiting room chairs.

“Just rest there and I’ll tell you a story,” I said, nursing Baby Bear and trying to stay awake.

“What’s wrong with Daddy’s tooth,” Cuddle Bug asked.

“Well, your daddy went to war. Did you even know that?” I asked.

He never talks about Iraq around the house, so I wasn’t surprised when all four kids shot up and echoed, “Daddy went to war?!”

So, yes, I proceeded to tell them the G rated version of Saddam’s madness and Daddy’s cavities.

I wasn’t sure they were listening. But I guess that Cuddle Bug was.

The Rest of the Story is Coming

I’m really tired. So the story behind the quote is coming tomorrow. But tonight, while Papa Bear was tucking the kids into bed, Cuddle Bug prayed, “Dear God please help Daddy’s tooth to get better, and please stop the bad man from putting children in jail and from putting sand in Daddy’s mouth. Amen.”

And amen. I seriously cannot stop laughing.

Fear.

On Friday, we took the kids to Blondie’s birthday party. It was the older girls’ very first sleepover (which I was not even remotely prepared for – they did great), but all of us went early for pizza and swimming.

Papa Bear jumped in to play lifeguard while I sat on the sidelines with Baby Bear and the camera.

It’s been a long time since we’ve been to the pool (the last time was pretty much a disaster), and I was nervous about how the kids were going to do. Tiny Dancer shocked me by being the first in the water. We kept having to call her back from the deep end because she was absolutely fearless.

Next in line was Lil Prince who was equally fearless. He tends to be timid in unfamiliar situations, so that took me by surprise.

I think Bay Bit was the only one who didn’t surprise me. She screamed like a siren for about fifteen minutes before squealing, “This is FUN!”

And fun, it was.

Cuddle Bug clung to the side and watched. The splashing, the screaming and the laughing…she seemed so jealous but still so scared. We all explained to her about her life-vest, and how she couldn’t go under the water even if she tried. But her faith just wasn’t there to except it. Even though Bay Bit kept yelling, “Come on in, I’m not melting!” Cuddle Bug was still scared.

“Honey, it’s not the water. It’s only fear,” I urged.

I don’t have any photos of what happened next. But I’ll do my best to do the story justice. I, for one, will remember it for the rest of my life.

She got out of the pool and she paced around. I had begged and coaxed for about twenty minutes, so I tried to give her some space….but I watched her out of the corner of my eye. “Fear,” that seemed to be making her angry. And the longer she paced, the madder she became.

“Cuddle Bug, it’s alright Sweetie,” I said, “Just come sit here by me.” And then, without any warning, she ran up behind me and grabbed her abandoned pool noodle. She picked it up like she was going to use it to beat the Devil, and she held it as she made a flying leap into the pool.

I stood up and screamed like a charismatic at an old-fashioned Holy Ghost meeting. “Did you see that?!?” I yelled to Papa Bear who had missed it. “She just said, ‘Take that, Devil!’ to her fear.”

She walked over and sat beside me wearing five inches of a smile. “Honey, do you want to try it again?” I said, really hoping for a picture.

“No, not today. That was enough,” she said.

Blast from the Past

We were finally able to retrieve the photos from our old computer (we lost her about a year ago), and I’ve been entertaining myself with (and crying over) old photos all week. I put a few of them on our “About” page (which is now up and running with a first draft). So if you’ve been thinking about sharing us with your friends, that page is a great way to get to know us in a hurry. Check it out.

And check these out too…just a few of my favorites from the last seven years. My, oh my, has the time flown by.

Thanks, Grammie

Thanks, Grammie, for the roller skates. The big five-year-olds would thank you themselves, but they’re a little tuckered from all the skating.

As the Fog Clears

**UPDATED**

Oh, how I had plans. From that first moment when the end of the stick turned pink, I just knew I was going to love being a mom. And I was going to be absolutely superb at it too. I would never yell, that was for certain, but there were finer details to implement as well. My children would all learn sign language and Spanish…and all as babies while their brains were eager to learn. They would each hear the Bible in its entirety by the end of their first year…and then they’d hear it again every year after (until, at a remarkably young age, they were able to read it for themselves).

I had grand goals for myself as a wife too…goals that, I’m afraid to admit, I was only really reaching until the end of the stick turned pink.

And my life was turned upside down.

And every thing I knew flew quickly out of reach like dandelion seeds in a wind storm.

Having four children in sixteen months will do that, I’m told. But still, it has been frustrating to me. I didn’t recognize myself for a long time, until the flip-flops and sweat pants wearing person I had become became the person I actually was. My kids still know me as the girl they see in our wedding album. But I don’t. And on a insecure day, that scares me.

The thing that has frustrated me the most, since ~~becoming a mom~~ the sixth week of my first pregnancy, has been my complete inability to keep up with my house while doing everything else I’ve wanted and needed to do. I’ve wanted to write, and, albeit halfheartedly, I’ve done that. I’ve wanted to play and to teach and to cuddle, and, though I have not fully succeed at the “no yelling” clause, I have been active in all of those areas as well.

When it comes to the things that can be put off till tomorrow, I’ve learned to just let go (for the most part), except as it’s related to my playing the hostess…which I have no doubt I was gifted to do. This is where the mess was holding me hostage. And that was making me mad.

As it turns out, I have many shortcomings that have revealed themselves through my motherhood. And sure, I can blame most of them on my twin mommy badges…my desire to contain rather than equip, for one. I have been well aware, for about a year now, that my big kids were old enough for chores. But I’ve asked them to do little more than wipe their nose prints from the window, set the table and pick up their toys. Because, well, it’s easier to do things myself than to explain, train, and clean up the messes that automatically result from childhood productivity. It’s laziness, on my part, and I’ve finally gotten mad enough to care. I care about raising responsible kids, and I will not take the easy way out* any longer. I refuse to raise kids that know nothing about housework and take zero responsibility for their own messes (we all know these people as adults, but let’s keep their names to ourselves).

*containing them with movies while I fly through the house on a kid-free cleaning rampage

For the past month, my house has been clean. It’s not immaculate, mind you, but if you showed up at my door right now ~~with chocolate or cash~~, I would definitely let you in.

I don’t have any big secrets to share; this part of parenting has probably come much more easily for you than it has for me. But after I finally learned, only three or four months ago, that my productivity increased if my kids were occupied in the same room I was cleaning (and I’m sure this is only true with toddlers and small children), putting them to work in said room seemed like the obvious next step.

For now, this is what we do: From eleven to noon, we clean as a team. And if we still have more to do (or if we were gone and we missed our eleven to noon window), we clean again from three to four. I’m finding though, that while group cleaning works best, the scheduled cleaning times are becoming less and less important as everyone grows comfortable in their role.

While at my twice monthly Bible study last Tuesday night, I think I finally figured out, from my end, why this new system of a few simple changes is absolutely revolutionizing my home. The reason, I think, is that my days are being structured in a more Biblical way and evening is now the start of each new day. My children are doing chores, but they are not old enough to carry a life-changing share of the load. The things I am doing (making sure my kitchen is clean before I go to bed, baking quiches and muffins so that breakfast is quick and healthy in the morning, setting the alarm on my coffee maker so I can skip that step upon waking) are largely centered around the desire I am now wholeheartedly committed to…

I desire to wake…and have my husband and children wake…in a peaceful home.

I now put a load of laundry in the washer every night (except Friday because Saturday is my Sabbath) before I go to bed, but I stop the cycle as soon as it starts to swish. This allows the load to soak all night (I have had stain free clothes all month!), and I start it again in the morning. The kids help me fold and put away each day’s one load of laundry…and that’s not all they are learning to do!

I’m so proud of my little trash man!

So far, they haven’t broken a single dish. To save money, I put a pan of soapy water in the bottom of the sink instead of leaving the faucet running (they take awhile).

All of the kids love cleaning the kitchen floor, so they take turns with this job.

“Yep, it’s perfect, Sweetie!”

And you may have noticed that they are all dressed in actual clothes. Well, that’s not just for the pictures. It’s happening every morning, because we pick out our clothes the night before! They each have their own personal bucket, and they are responsible for taking off their pjs, putting them in the bucket, and then putting on their pre-decided clothes every morning while I make their breakfast. At night, I check their clothes to see if they need to be washed or if they can be returned to the bucket. We’re OK with wearing the same clothes two days in a row (as long as they are still clean and they smell nice). It saves on time, water, and electricity…which are all things we prize above fashion around here. I automatically change out their pjs every two or three (OK, more like four) days.

It’s just what is working at this stage in our lives. But you’ll have to pardon me. My house is clean, my laundry is done, my kids are dressed….and it’s all becoming habit! I’m a little excited.

I might celebrate with a nap.

It Was Pretty Much Like Any Other Thursday

It was a really good day. It was so full, in fact, that I am just now sitting down to write this post at 12:45 am (now that Papa Bear has drifted off to sleep). I was planning to type away while he ~~snored~~ slept next to me (we both thought that would work fine); but first, I spent a little too much time oo-ing and ahhh-ing over Jennifer’s awesome giveaway/fundraiser

It (I’m back to talking about today now) wasn’t filled with anything especially important. And we didn’t have a schedule to keep. We woke up around eight, had oatmeal for breakfast, talked about the Holy Spirit in Bible, turned ice into steam and talked about the Trinity, worked on our number of the day (which was seven), practiced a few phonograms, wrote our names…etc.

Then, and because I wasn’t held hostage by the weather or my house (which has been remarkably clean all week…related post coming tomorrow), we packed up our paints and we took them to the park. Yes, I pushed the kids in the quad. No, not all five of them at one time. I’ve already gotten the lecture from Ellyn (who called me a pushover…or a “settle-er” or something like that). But seriously, I don’t get to go to the gym. And my kids get plenty of exercise once we’re at the park. And I don’t have to worry about them getting in the road if they are contained in the stroller. And I’m trying to talk myself into believing that I’m still a strict parent even though I let my five year olds take turns in the stroller (Ha! Love you, El).

At any rate…and one way or another…we made it to the park. We (not me, I was tired from pushing the stroller) ran relay races and got stuck half way up the rope climb about fifty thousand times. But it was a fun day…especially our still life painting time.