Your Love Sets Me Free...You Define My Heart's Desires

As Alisa says, I am not my own. I've been carried by you...rising waters...where is the shore? YOU are my shelter from the storm....everything rides on hope now...everything rides on faith somehow...when the world has broken me down...your love sets me free....you define my heart's desires...I will sing your praises higher...your love sets me free.

Mad on Monday

Why do I feel angry on Mondays? Some of you know I've posted about Wednesdays, but now I'm ready to unravel Mondays. Sunday can go wonderfully, we can have the house cleaned, and I can have accomplished all on my list. But Monday comes and I frantically try to make the stuff on my new list happen. And it doesn't...And kids get angry...They fight...I struggle to get them up and going...I have to remind them of everything they are supposed to be doing...we try to have a family quiet time...I get angry...there's nothing to eat...I stay in my pajamas for hours...I finally get a bath. Tell me this time will end. One day they will have to figure out their own breakfast. One day I will not be responsible for their schoolwork. One day.

I think I'm angry because I want things done MY way. I want a lovely home where the children all come down at a certain time ready for their quiet time. Breakfast is served because the children or mom has already made it. There's three kinds of jams or jellies and fluffy biscuits with eggs cooked just right. Fresh milk and fruit are laden on the table. After breakfast the butler comes to clean it all up so we can get started on those history books we have yet to read. That doesn't happen at your house either? Oh, good, well I'm not alone!

I must treasure today and not worry about what doesn't get done.

Okay, the good things. I must think of the good things. They get their schoolwork done while I'm in the shower. They get the dishes done, too. Somehow we always find food. And then today, Tammie's post made up for it all. I just died laughing, and that's what I needed. See "All Creatures"...

Then I got to see a smiling friend's face. She needed a vacuum cleaner. God bless her. She's soooo pregnant, and I was there not too long ago. She'll have her baby on Wednesday, my bad laundry day. They'll be moving to Montana in a few months, but for today I got to see her smiley face.

One day you wake up and realize....

My, God, I have four children! Did y'all all know that? Why didn't anyone tell me?

I am making up for my lack of posts

Do you want to try to make homemade cheese dip without Velveeta? Click here. This is a healthy way to make it, and it is GOO-OOOD as Rebecca would say. It truly tastes exactly the same.

Some things I have wanted to do but haven't been able...

• visit my MIL in Marble Falls
• visit my MIL in Austin
• shop all day (Oh, actually I HAVE done this, but once is never enough)
• stay with my mom for two weeks without actually missing my husband

Things I have done lately that I really enjoyed...

• Found a new second-hand store that I really liked. I found two skirts and two pairs of pants. We will not discuss that I purchased a pair of pants that I cannot actually button. There is no sense in this purchase except that I could actually get the pants ON.
• Bought Abigail an Easter dress that she ABSOLUTELY did not need. Oh well.
• Bought her a cute little Sea Horse that plays lovely lullabies, lights up, and gurgles like the sea. I admit it is therapy, but I just love buying things.
• Gone to see my mom.
• Slept until 10am at my mom's.
• Ate a double chocolate brownie.
• Looked at my husband and baby fast asleep on the sofa. So cute.
• Looked into the eyes of my ten-year-old and realized I was looking into the eyes of a lady.
• Hugged my thirteen-year-old and realized that sometimes...we are friends. She is truly my right hand.
• Cuddled with my seven-year-old son on the couch.
• Talked happily on the phone with my husband about nothing at all.
• Looked at fairy houses that my girls had built in the country.
• Watched Blaine run and play soccer at my mom's, without any inhibitions.
• Listened to Rebecca think of "happy things" while driving home through a storm.
• Looked at a beautiful, sparkly clean room without asking anyone to clean it.
• Talked on the phone to a friend today. Gosh I miss her.

My turn at Randomness

Thanks everyone for all your encouragement from my previous post. I cannot tell you how meaningful it is to read comments to blogs that you post. Thank you.

I'm up late tonight with not much of anything to say. I cannot sleep even though I'm tired and actually seeing stars. Scary.

Abigail had shots today, and she has been super cranky. Poor little girl. Not like herself at all as she is a very happy go-lucky girl, and this has made me realize it all the more. I bought her a little sea horse today at Target, but it doesn't work. A sad little girl deserves a cute little toy when her mom drives home in a torrent of rain to give it to her! Shucks.

The days pass so quickly. I always want to blog and before I know it, it has been a week or longer. Blaine is still having night terrors; though, while we were at my mom's house he didn't have any. My mom held Abigail for three days straight. We could be dealing with a few reprucutions from such activity...

I miss Adam.

Since my last whiny, lonely post I have:

• Gone on two walks with a friend
• Gone to the Botanical Gardens & the LBJ Ranch with my family
• Gone to see my mom and dad for 3 days
• Visited with friends at Park Day for 2 hours

I feel like things are looking up. It was soooo good to see my mom. I needed her company.

I couldn't sleep last night either. A friend, someone I don't know extremely well, had to do something really hard. She is pregnant and has two small children. She had to leave her husband because he is abusive. That is depressing isn't it? I'm sorry, but it is what I am thinking about. I felt for her and couldn't stop praying for her that she would go through with it. And she did. She is now safely living somewhere where no one knows but her. It is hard to believe that you can meet someone and know a little about their family. Then you find out later what kind of hell they have been living in all their lives. Really sad.

I love my husband, and I love my family. Sometimes I have to pinch myself. I get frustrated with my kids when they ask me for a million things like...

• where are the toothbrushes? (same place they always are)
• where are the band aids? (ditto)
• what can I eat? (we're pretty boring and eat pretty much the same things)

But golly I really love them and think they are great.

At youth group tonight some boy asked Elizabeth what book she was reading. She stuck the book out, and he commented that he had never heard of it before. She told her daddy she thought it strange that he had asked her the same question at the youth retreat. How odd indeed... :[ Is it really already time for this?

I really do think we have the prettiest baby ever. I am so infatuated with her!

Missing Friends

Here is a copy of an email I sent to a friend. I hesitate to share it because I don't want to evoke a pity party. I just need to share how I'm feeling because it's such a big part of what I'm going through. By sharing it, this is a big step in me helping myself admit that I need people and that things will be okay.

I am sure there are a lot of hormones raging in my body, add a lack of sleep for two months, and you have a brew that's ready to boil over. But it's that lovely new mommy brew and I'm learning to love it. I have really enjoyed that little girl.

God has blessed me with soooo many friends, my cup is overflowing. I am just going through a weird stage right now where I don't always get to spend time with those friends. Most people are planning trips, going to classes, and have their hands in lots of outside activities. I'm of course not able to do much of that right now, so that means I kind of miss out on the fellowship. And with as much as I need to connect with people that's like taking water from a sponge. I have also realized that when my kiddos were younger, friends just naturally gathered together so that our kids could play. That doesn't happen so much anymore, except park day of course! And somehow that is a little more difficult than just going to someones house. But as she gets older I will be able to enjoy it more and more. Things are just really different than when my kids were young, and I'm learning to accept that. But somehow I need to find a balance between accepting and doing something about it.

I am learning I need to pray more about these issues instead of just ignoring them or explaining them away. Also, I need to grow in the confidence of asking friends to do things. I often don't like calling friends or asking them to do things because I don't want to be a bother. Sometimes I just forget. And I think I'm a little afraid of rejection. But I really need to get over this. A friend encouraged me to pray that God would send me the relationships He wants me to invest in that would be good for me and a blessing the other way around.

I realize I probably need to connect with other women going through the same stage of life as me. You know, the new mommy stage. I need to know someone else can't sleep all night long and only cares to talk about diaper rash. And thankfully I do have at least one good friend I can do that with. Unfortunately, she lives on the other side of town. Somehow it soothes the soul to be around people going through the same things. I was actually blessed to spend time with her yesterday. Oh, it was so refreshing!

Another big adjustment is that this time around I'm the only one in the family with a baby. That has never happened before. I am so blessed to have shared all the past pregnancies with either Jenny, Amy or Christy. This time around I'm all by myself and it's quite strange. In a way it magnifies how I feel.

So that's me in not so small a nutshell. I'm doing well and God has sent many opportunities even this week to be with people I love. I'm just needing to continue to trust, hang on, and make a few phone calls.

I Take Joy

I Take Joy

I Just Love Her!

My heart is just overwhelmed. I love her coos and her sighs. Her laughs and her grins. She has such a cute personality. Everyone loves her so much. I pray for a wonderful, delightful lifetime of smiles for this little one.

The kids are so good at playing with her. They are such wonderful helpers around the house, too. They have truly made these days with Abigail even more delightful. I love seeing their fresh delight in her. Life through their eyes is truly more interesting.

There she goes....

Seven hours of sleep two nights in a row! We'll see how tonight goes!!!

I just sneaked a peek at her sleeping and....

My, God, she's beautiful!

Overwhelmed on Wednesday

Warning: This is going to be a potentially boring post in which I just need to talk through some things to figure something out.

I've stopped in the middle of my chores. I'm snacking on my "ZBar" and thirsting for milk. Laundry is waiting and currently on hold. Baby is sleeping, fed, and bathed. I've got kids who need things to do. Things need to be double checked and held accountable. But for now. I need to blog. I need to figure out what's going on here. Too bad you can't make "I's" stand out by capitalizing them. They already are. "Duh!" as my kids would say. I need to blog. THERE- that's much better.

EVERY solitary Wednesday morning I get completely overwhelmed. Does everyone else? Is it because it is no longer the beginning of a new week yet not the end of an old week? I have to figure this out. About this time I figure out I don't have enough time to accomplish all the tasks I wanted to for the week, yet I really want to play. I have errands to run, and for me that's "playing". I love to run errands!

Back to the point. Wednesdays are filled with distractions. EVERYONE needs medicines on Wednesdays, or at least they decide they do. EVERYONE seems distracted. Blaine wants to find his tiger that none of us have seen for months, maybe years. Elizabeth's hamster dies. Rebecca's pecks hurt from doing over 150 push-ups at the gym. Baby spits up countless times on the day I have no burp cloths because.....TODAY IS THE DAY I'M SUPPOSED TO WASH THEM! I just don't get it. Murphy's law, I guess.

So, in the midst of all this distractedness I refocus. I go to my closet. Laundry is everywhere. And I do mean everywhere. I have rid our closet of a laundry hamper and chide myself for doing something so foolish before having a solution. It was everywhere anyway because a certain DH didn't put it in the hamper anyway. I figured why fight a losing battle? Mine was the only clothes to fish out and for some reason he has four or five times more clothes to wash than me. Wednesdays are the day I ponder over this phenomenon because Wednesdays are the day it completely stresses me out.

Monday and Tuesday the girls do their laundry. I haven't figured out any other way. I'm trying to allow them the opportunity to grow up. I gave them their own laundry day. *A door just slammed.* That just means that by Wednesday I have had THREE days of no washing. Can you imagine??? Everything is piled up and staring at me in corners.

And that's it. For now it just seems to be the laundry that is actually overwhelming. Maybe it's not Wednesday after all. Maybe, just maybe it's L-A-U-N-D-R-Y that's overwhelming.

Life With Four

So what is life like? Well, I wake-up around 6:30 or 7:00 to feed the baby. I stumble out of my bedroom sometime after that ready for breakfast. Thankfully, while Daddy was home we taught the girls to wake-up and shower on their own. I know many school-aged children already have this skill down, but ours did not. There's really no need when you homeschool. Blaine already wakes and dresses with the roosters. Someone unloads the dishwasher. We start school. I dress the baby and eventually put her back to bed. Try to get a few things done. Usually this means washing a load of laundry, checking email, picking up the house. The kids start school. Oh, wait, where are the kids? There they are. Maybe a little nap. Feed the baby. Oh, wait, where is the baby? Just kidding. There she is.

Lunch time. Spelling and maybe another nap or maybe a few errands. Sometimes I run errands in the morning if I'm really hot to trot. I have found I cannot wait for everyone else to get my stuff done. I must strike while the iron is hot.

Send the kids outside if it's sunny. Find a game to play if it is not. We have just now added reading/history. Of course my kids have been reading every day. I am talking about ME reading read-alouds to them. Now, you may think the older girls are too old for this, but I think it is something we will enjoy forever. Somehow I find the time to check whatever work they have gotten done and encourage them to finish the rest and make corrections. Sometimes Elizabeth will go for a bike ride with friends and the girls have gymnastics/dance/youth group three out five days of the week.

I have no idea what else we do in the afternoon. All I know is the baby eats every three hours and by God's grace I keep the house going! Whew. Now it's time for dinner and Daddy to come home. Yeah!!!

I certainly never could foresee that four children would be in my life. I am still astounded that I have done this so many times. I feel sort of like a circus clown keeping the circus alive. But a little at a time I'm feeling we are getting more used to things, settling in, and accepting that this is the way things were always meant to be...

Advice for New Parents....

My pearl of wisdom for today:
"Spit-up dries."

That sounds really gross doesn't it? But in my moment of panic when she spits up on the outfit I just put her in (for the second time) and I lay her on the sheets I JUST washed....I stress. Then a few hours later when I realize I never had the time to change her or care to wash the sheets on my bed...I remember with a shrug, "Oh, good, spit-up dries". It may not be the most ideal way to deal with the crisis. The clean-freak in me would much rather rip the sheet off and change her cute outfit ONE MORE TIME. But the desperately tired part of me somehow won out.