Being Real

Honesty is the best policy, right?  Isn't it good and right and godly to tell the truth?  I am rapidly learning in my years as a stay-at-home-mom that while yes, honesty is good and right, it is also shaded into an area of grey.  Maybe it isn't really honesty I'm talking about, but more like transparency.  Stay-at-home-moms are not transparent.  They don't share what it's like, how the job wears them down, or how they sag into the couch each night feeling defeated and wondering why God gave them this job to do.  No, moms don't delve into those details.

When you go out and about and take your kids places you see plenty of moms out too...at the library, the mall, the grocery store, the playground, the picnic table, etc.  Sometimes you just smile and nod and sometimes you sit and chat a bit.  Always the moms are happy.  Always they LOVE their job.  Always they feel fulfilled and satisfied.  Always they think their children hung the moon.

No one talks about it.  And when you experience it, you feel terribly alone and isolated.  Like something is wrong with you.  Like you're failing as a mother.  What is it?  It is job strain, the perpetual wearing down until you feel as though you are a broken record doing the same thing over and over again.  Get up, make food, clean up food, clean up children, dress children, discipline children, make more food, clean up food that no one ate, clean up children (again), discipline children (again), do house chores, make more food....  You get the idea.  The same thing.  Over and over and over and over.  Like a broken record.  I've had broken record syndrome now for the last few months and I'll be totally honest and transparent.  It is HARD.  Some days I wake up and I know what is before me and I wonder how I'll ever even make it to that moment of sagging into the couch feeling totally defeated by the day.  How can I put one foot in front of the other?  How can I do the same thing day in and day out and fight the same battles with my children day in and day out?  When this started happening to me I felt even worse as a mother.  No one wants to feel like a failure, least of all as though they have failed as a parent or mother.  I felt very alone and very isolated.  I felt like I couldn't share my true feelings with anyone because they'd look down on me as a mom.

Then I decided to be transparent.  This job, this thing I do all day long, it is HARD.  And I'm not going to say I'm down in the dumps defeated every single day because that isn't true, but I'm also not going to say I'm peaches and cream delightfully overjoyed to do this job everyday either.  Some days are easier than others.  Some days are happier than others.  And some days are downright ugly.  Yes, I love my kids.  But in real life, I don't always sweetly correct them or joyfully give them a five minute warning before we have to leave the park.  Sometimes I yell.  Sometimes I get angry.  Sometimes I lose my temper.  I don't always point them to the gospel when I correct them and I don't always have the perfect verse memorized to apply to every discipline situation.  I don't think well on my feet and give snap responses that aren't always the most logical or the best.  I am NOT a perfect mom.  I do NOT have it all together.  The more I found myself being truthful and honest...transparent...with other moms, the more I soon realized I was so not alone in how I felt!  Then why do we do that?  Why do we try to cover up and hide how it really is?  Why can't we moms just get real with each other and support and encourage one another like we should?  We are all so wrapped up in this image of the perfect mom and we're so busy try to attain that form of perfection that we don't stop and look around.  We want to only portray the "facebook" mom image--you know the one I'm talking about.  The one where you only post witty things your children said, talk about how ooey gooey in love you are with your babies, and post only photos that show just exactly how perfectly prim and proper each member of your family is.  No one ever posts a photo of their children throwing their lunch on the kitchen floor for the 15th time, or shares a video of their six year old begging and whining to watch one more video on TV.  Your status update never reads, "I yelled at my kids today.  Bad."  Let's get real!  This job is hard.  I struggle sometimes.  My friends struggle sometimes.  Why can't we be more transparent and honest with each other when things are tough?  That just seems too easy.

God has really been convicting me of many things in my life as a mom--one of them this battle within me to maintain a certain image to those around us.  Never asking for help because asking for help is a sign of weakness.  Never sharing a struggle I'm having, but only offering advice to those who seem to have it worse off than I do.  I think God's been trying to share this message with me for some time and I've been too busy keeping my image up to hear Him.  Then He decided He needed to get my attention.  Loud and clear.  With a five year old who is relating to me as I would expect to relate to him much later in the teen years, with a two year old who acts like they don't know their name, and with another two year old who giggles when discipline comes and sweetly says, "yup!" when asked if discipline is needed.  Things are hard.  Answers aren't there.  And we aren't a perfect family.  Nothing like having your image come crashing down around you to realize how wrapped up you've been in your identity as wonder-woman, super duper do it all, accomplish it all mom.

It's time to get real.  Honest.  Transparent.  God, I cannot do this without You!  I cannot accomplish this task of mothering these children alone.  I am desperate, God.  Desperate for you, your wisdom, your insight, your answers.  Speak to me and I will listen.  No more image.  No more identity as a "facebook mom."  I want to be me.

So what is life like with three ages five and under?  I'm going to be transparent.  It is a hard job!  It is tiring.  I sag into the couch each night and often I admit I feel defeated.  I struggle against feeling like a broken record.  I get angry with my kids.  Sometimes I daydream about running away.  I don't have the answers.  I battle with ugly sinful hearts.  I battle with my own ugly sinful heart.  I cry.  I try to hide my realness from others.  I sin against my children and have to ask them for forgiveness.  I lose my patience.  I feel lonely.  I feel like I've lost a sense of who I am.  It is hard.  But it is so, so good.  Not the ooey gooey facebook my life is wonderfully perfect kind of good.  Or the "I met you at the park and isn't being a stay at home mom wonderful" kind of good.  It is the hard, deeply satisfying good that comes when you see God's hand at work--His Spirit moving.  How can it be good in the midst of all the struggle and heartache?  Because I realize how needy I am.  How thirsty I am.  How desperate I am for a Savior.  I see my broken attempts to parent and my failures as a mom and without His mercy, His grace, I'd have nothing to show for it.  Thank you, God, that you can take these broken pieces, this pile of dust, and make it into something beautiful.  Thank you for this struggle, Lord.  And thank you for helping me to get real and be transparent.  I cannot--CANNOT--accomplish anything apart from You.  Anything that drives me closer and into a deeper realtionship with the Lord must be good!

Moms, be a friend to the other moms around you.  Be honest with them.  Open up to them.  Share and be transparent.  Then pray for one another.  Point each other to the gospel.  Help us keep Him from getting lost in the shuffle, lost in the struggle, or drowned out in the battle.  He promises to be ever present in our battles.  Don't face them alone.

"And let us not grow weary of doing good, for in due season we will reap, if we do not give up."  Galatians 6:9 

Isms

It has been a long time since I took the time to write out some of my favorite "isms" of Joshua and Grace.  As chief toddler translator I feel pretty satisfied with my fluency in their language, though I must admit, there are times I have to ask a couple times and still just have to say, "Oh really?!  Wow!" and shamefully shake my head thinking I have no clue what my child just said to me.  I love the development of language.  I love the little things they say and I miss them when they replace them with the "right" combination of words.  I love to see their little brains working as they communicate and I LOVE that crying is no longer our primary mode of communication (though it definitely is still secondary.....a very close second, I might add).  I find so much freedom when they come to me crying and I can kneel down and ask them to stop crying and tell me with words.  And oh the words they will say!

Joshua:
There is something so unique about the way Joshua speaks.  He has this lilt and rhythm to his speech that is so unlike any of our other children.  He is deliberate with his words and often pauses between them to find just the right word to say.  He is very expressive.

• Probably my current absolute favorite of his: Hold it back!  Hold it back means, pick it up with your hands.  When I feed him PB & J he will tell me, "hold it back, Mom!"
• Run ex-a-ater!  This means will you please drive by the excavators.
• Oshua!  This is how he says his name, Joshua.
• Hey Mom!  Pretty self explanatory there, but he loves to say it to get my attention and I MUST respond!
• Do this!=I can do it myself.
• Es.  Joshua adds "es" on to the end of anything he wants to make plural.  Right now some of my favorites include: blockses, eyeses, ballses.  So cute!

Gracie:
There is nothing unexpected about Grace's language development, though it is soooooooooooo different to me as compared to our boys!  Grace has LOTS to say, when the boys just say a few things about something, she'll carry on a long conversation about it.  She has a sweet, nurturing tone to her voice already and will speak sweetly to babies, baby dolls, toys, etc.  She also knows how to use her voice to tattle on her brothers when they may have poked her one too many times.  Yes, little girls definitely know how to express displeasure!

• Color paper=I'd like to color on paper with crayons, please!  (This is one of Grace's most favorite activities).
• Uhhhhhh...hansonbed! = What happens when you disobey?  Hands on bed!
• Oh my gosh, rejoice! =This is her version of one of the songs we sing during worship.  The real words are "Oh my soul, rejoice."
• Mommmmmmmmmyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! This one is pretty self explanatory, too, but she will do this, loudly, until I respond.  When I ask her what she needs she will usually respond with, "Oh, I see cars (or whatever else she sees out the window--we usually play this game in the car)!
• Cupisome or Upisome=May I have a cup, please or will you pick me up, please?
• Right back a minute!= I'll be right back in just a minute!

As is always the case when I sit down to write these down, I forget all of them!  I know there are more....as I think of them, I will add!

By the way, when doing a post on toddler isms, spell check will hate you.

Five Years

Five years.  Wow.  It sounds like such a long amount of time and yet, it has gone by in an instant.  Jacob turned five this week and he was so sweetly excited for his big day!  He woke up and ran to give me a hug saying, "Mommy!  I am FIVE today!"

We've decided recently that we want birthdays to be more about memories and less about "stuff."  So we are skipping big parties and endless trains of presents and going for special moments with each one of our children.  This year we allowed Jacob to take one friend from church with us to spend a day up at the Cincinnati Children's Museum.  Chris took the day off work and oh, what a fun, special, and memorable day it was!  On his actual birthday we went to church where he received his much anticipated birthday sticker from his BFG teacher and then had lunch at Cici's.  We opened gifts from family (us, aunts, and grandparents) and then had a nice afternoon rest enjoying some new things.  He requested breakfast for dinner and had John Deere cake afterward.

It was truly a great day together as a family!  He seemed to love it, Chris and I loved it....everyone was happy celebrating the special gift Jacob is in our family!

Dear Jacob,
My little boy is getting SO grown up!  Happy fifth birthday, son!  I love you so much and I've had so much fun this week preparing for your birthday and reflecting on all God did in our lives to bring you here.  You don't know this now, but Mommy and Daddy waited and waited and prayed and prayed for the precious gift of a child.  Sometimes Mommy though I might never get to be a mommy!  God provided for us one of the deepest desires of our hearts when He gave us you!  We were so excited to become YOUR mommy and daddy.  We'd longed for you for so long and now, here you are, five years old!

It is hard for me to think about all that will happen during this year, the year you are five.  You will start kindergarten and become more interested in friends.  You'll play T-Ball and have more and more of an interest in "guy stuff" you do with your Dad.  I'm thankful you still have moments you are just a silly little boy who wants and needs to snuggle with his Mommy.

I love you, sweet Jacob.  We go through our ups and downs and can get pretty annoyed with each other, but I want you to know that through all of it, I still love you--more than you will ever understand.  I adore all God created you to be and I look forward with great anticipation to what He will guide you to become.

You are so bright, so thoughtful, so loving, encouraging, faithful....I hope you keep all of these character traits as you grow.  I beg the Lord to continue to pierce your heart to know more and more of Him and long for Jesus to be Lord in your life.

Happy Birthday, Jacob.  You are my son, who I prayed for!  I love you!

Mommy

Sweet Siblings

Can I just say that I love how much they love each other?

Blessed indeed. 

Life With A Little Girl

Raising a little girl is....wonderful, precious, sweet, and well, just different from raising boys!  There are unique things about raising girls that seem so complex.  There are little intricacies of being a godly woman that seem so impossible to describe or even begin to teach.  Perhaps a great deal of the difficulty comes in at the fact that I do not see myself as a strong, godly woman.  I have not "arrived."  I am still learning.  God is still sanctifying me!  How can I somehow pass along what needs to be known to my daughter?  How do I teach her what she needs to know and protect her from making mistakes I've made (and make)?  Our culture screams against teaching girls to be what the Bible calls them to be.  Submission is almost a dirty word in the world.  There are so many things little Grace has yet to learn.  How to be meek and submissive, yet strong and have an independent mind.  How to be feminine and live a life of servanthood, yet not be a doormat.  How to live a life without fear, yet hunger for and cling to the love and protection a godly man will offer her.  How to know how to provide for and take care of a home, yet trust peacefully in the ability of her husband to do the providing.  It is a tall order and one I can only fathom facing with God at my side and long moments of prayer.  God teach me, that I might teach her!

On a funnier note, one thing I have learned about raising little girls is that things can be....well....a bit MESSY in the morning.

Wow!  That is some serious bed head!  Beautification in the morning is not a ritual reserved only for big girls.  No, it starts just as soon as the little girl grows enough hair to create a rather monstrous bird's nest during sleeping!  I think curly hair (which Gracie has) just compounds the whole bed head issue.  Taming something like this takes time!  A little girl's ability to be still and have an attention span starts at a tender age as they are put through the rigors of hair styling (and if their mommy lacks skills and is still learning, as I am, well...it takes even longer!).  I can say, it is a wonderful blessing God graces GIRLS with hair that requires styling and NOT little boys.  No way my boys could 1.) stand still that long or 2.) tolerate the tugging, pulling, pinching sensations of having your hair styled by someone who does not know what they are doing and is using itty bitty teeny weeny elastics that are about the size of my toddler's finger tip!  I should also note that sadly, the little girl's beautification process is not a once and done occurrence either.  No, hair is re-styled morning and post nap at minimum with a good chance of additional styling throughout the day, depending on the stability of the style and how well mommy successfully wrapped those minuscule elastics around the hair.  I have no idea how people survived without Pinterest or Google (that may explain a lot about why my hair looked rather similar to the picture above on a daily basis, even after styling, when I was a little girl).  My poor mother had a time trying to pin down my massively curly fly away hair when I was this age.  Holy frizz!  However, enter Pinterest and Google, and I am saved by the help of others...who, get this, actually KNOW what they are doing!  We've experimented some and found some styles that seem to survive even the nastiest of naps or wallow on the floor kind of days.  They do, however, produce even cooler bed head in the morning, if that is even possible!  We are learning, albeit slowly, but we are learning to tame the locks of Gracie!

Happy Day, Gracie!

Dear Gracie Beth,
It is with great excitement I write this letter to you on your 2nd birthday!  I am so excited to see your little life unfold and discover all God has planned for you.  What a gift it is to be your mommy!  On your birthday I'd like to tell you a few things that I adore about you right now:

1.) I love that life is a song for you.  You are always singing...either praises to God or the ABC's.  I love your little voice lifting up to God, "holy, holy, holy!"

2.) I love your eagerness to learn to pray and the innocence of your prayers, asking God to help you obey and have a happy heart.

3.) I love the little homemaker you desire to be!  You are so helpful!  Always finding a rag and rubbing this or that (or me...I guess sometimes I need a little cleaning, too!), helping with the laundry, keeping me company while I cook, and just showing a deep interest and desire to learn about all things home related.

4.) I love your PASSION for books and reading!  I think you know some of the stories better than I do!

5.) I love that you can keep up with the boys, yet you are very careful to discern between girl toys and boy toys (and are quick to tell the boys about it!).

6.) I love to watch you with your sweet little doll and stroller.  What a precious mommy you will be one day.

7.) I love your tenderness.  You are always the first to come hug or "rub up" a boo boo if anyone sheds a tear.  You sweetly pat and tell them it will be okay.

8.) I adore your curly hair!  I have no clue what to do with it, but it is sure CUTE!

9.) I love how you already care about clothes and show a strong interest in what is in your closet and what you will wear for the day.  You certainly did NOT get that from me!

10.) I love YOU and all the neat, precious, sweet ways God designed you!

You are my itty bitty, enthusiastic, picky eater, tender, reader, singer, snuggler, dee dee lovin' , thumb suckin' little Grace and boy am I glad God saw fit to place you in our family!  All that time I spent hoping for boys (because frankly, I wasn't sure I'd know what to do with a girl), and God had you in store for us.  I am so glad HIS plans are mightier than mine because I don't know what I'd do without your sweet feminine joy you bring to us!

I wish you the happiest of birthdays from the bottom of my mommy heart,
Love,
Mommy

Remembering you with joy...

Happy Day, Joshua!

Dear Courageous Joshua,
Happy 2nd Birthday, Joshua!  I am so thankful for you and all that you add to our little family of five!  I thought I'd tell you some things I love about you, just like we enjoy reading in the Pookie books by Sandra Boyton!

1.) I love you because of your total abandon to enjoy life.  There is joy in a dandelion, excitement in the breeze, and wonder over the clouds.

2.) I love you because of how you love others.  You must hug others.  I lose track in a day the number of times you randomly stop whatever you are doing to run to someone saying, "Hug!  Hug!  Hug!"  You LOVE to hug!  And I love hugging you!

3.) I love your expressive little face.  You can't get away with much because you face tells the story long before you could.

4.) I love the way you adore and cherish your big "Bubby" and follow him everywhere.  You do exactly as he does and say exactly as he says.

5.) I love the way you jump, jump, jump!  You are free and full of joy!

6.) I love that you want someone with you all the time and will holler for Grace to "c'mere" till she comes!

7.) I love to see your boundless energy as you boing, boing, boing in your bed before you go to sleep at night.

8.) I love your passion for books, trucks, trains, airplanes, and well....all things BOY.

9.) I love your hunger for FOOD.  All kinds of food!  This is a boy who is driven by his stomach!

10.) I love YOU and all God has made you to be.

Oh how I long as your Mommy to see you come to know the Lord at an early age and courageously and boldly proclaim Him to all those around you!  I adore you, my little affectionate, passionate, courageous, ambitious, crazy, wild, silly, happy, joyful, wonderful Joshua!  God knew we needed you in our lives and I'm so glad he gave you to us.  What a BLESSING you are.

Happiest of birthdays, my sweet middle son!

With all the love in Mommy's heart,
Mommy

A little walk down memory lane...