Just Write: Being Mother

I often wonder at the miracle of the existence of my children's bodies in real space and time...

Sofia's graceful, statuesque beauty. Judah's lanky, lean limbs-- all flop and wiggle, but with a growing hint and shadow of muscle and wiry strength. The round-headed, never-still bundle of kinetic energy that is my Jamie. I sometimes find it hard to imagine that all those things were once contained within my own body. The shock of chubby squish-balls of cuteness slowly morphing over the years into real, live people takes my breath away.

As I watch them run, wrestle, dance, dive and explore; I am also made breathless by the Gift of their health. God have mercy, the pain I have heard and seen in the voices and faces of fathers and mothers close to my heart, as their babies struggle and gasp. How is it, Lord, that my children have strength and breathe freely? That their hearts beat in perfect time? Their synapses fire in excellent rhythms and every rounded cheek and limb sings a symphony?

Ah me, I am undone by smile and laugh and scream of righteous indignation. The shoulder blades and sway-backed swaggers stir in me a Sistine Chapel's worth of passion. I delight in the transformation of baby fat into man-muscles, push-ups and cartwheels. The long brown hair, shy smile, and Daddy's blue eyes in her girl-woman face that still has some slight trace of the face I once held in the crook of my arm.

I think I must have somehow become a Mother.








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Summer lunches...

I was 22 when Sofi was born. I was in a hurry. I wanted lots of children, I wanted them all Now and I wanted everything unpleasant in Motherhood to speed by as quickly as possible.

I spent a lot of the first five years of her life wanting things I couldn't have. I missed a lot of what I did have in the meantime. I sped through her babyhood in a daze. I forget a lot of it.

The big gap between Sofi and Judah represents a lot. Two miscarriages. Lots of tears. Lots of growing. A lot (but not enough yet) of letting go of Me and learning to hold on to Him.

Now I have two boys. I have learned am learning to slow down. God's gift to me is the occasional day like today which starts with my agenda thwarted (by a spill, or a melt-down, or a fight, or....) and then I, slowed down, have time to see what I have here, now, in this moment. The beauty that surrounds me.

Today, by God's grace, I see...

Lunch on the deck



Silly faces



Short people



My Boys





Sky-high eyelashes



Chubby baby curves and binkies



Milk mustaches

5 Things I'm Not Going To Post About

I wish I had some pics to get my blogging mojo going tonight, but the only things I got the camera out for today were:

1) To show Judah how ridiculous he looked when he throws a temper tantrum like he's a two-year-old.

"Noooooooooooooo! Don't show that to ANYONE!!!!!!!! NO ONE!! Except Daddy. Because he's my family. "

So. Obviously. Not going to post that.

2) To prove to Sofi that she was not, in fact, doing a push-up 

"exactly like they're doing on the dvd!!"

-- she insisted, with her hiney waving in the air...

Again. Not going to post that.

I also really should not talk about:

3) The fact that J is working laaaaate tonight and rather than plan something fun and memorable with my progeny, I turned on Shaun the Sheep and poured myself a glass of wine. The last glass. Which means J is drinking water tonight. Yep. Wife of the year, for sure.

4) My run on Moday was a PR, but sooooo sloooooow compared to all my running friends on FB that I'm totally NOT going to talk about it.

Ok. Fine.

5 miles. 12 min/mile average.

See? Happy now?

5) I just turned 34.

#isold

This I know.

I know one thing about mothering. One thing beyond a shadow of a doubt. It is this:

My Words Have Power.

The words I speak to my children create reality for them. I can tear down or build up with my words. That's my job. Everyday I must selectively demolish and build. Demolish the bad-- harmful habits, hurtful words, disrespectful patterns of speech and behavior. Build the good-- diligence, bravery, perseverance, kindness in speech and actions, faithfulness in the little things and self-control. I build these things largely by talking about them, teaching them, praising their first timid appearances in my children's characters.

So I know this. The problem is, sometimes the demolition seems to take up all my energy, all my time and emotional resources. Sometimes the bad and ugly seem to rise far, far above my puny little wrecking balls and loom over my head with promises of visiting my children in juvie one day soon... the little delinquents.

Today I woke up remembering that demolition is only half of my job. If I tear down and neglect to build in it's place, then I create a vacuum, and we all know how nature feels about that. If I spend all my time disciplining, training, giving out consequences and negatively reinforcing, and then collapse in exhaustion on the couch, my household momentarily bullied into a semblance of peace, then I've missed it. Because while I rest and recuperate, slowly at first and building to a tempest, comes in all manner of  horrible things pouring into the vacuum created by my unfinished work.

Today I woke up determined to do some Rebuilding. I had to slow down first. As always. It always starts there. Giving up my right to Accomplish Many Things. So we started slooooow. We did our chores. We went for a looooong slooooow walk.

We ate lunch.

We read books.

We drew pictures.

That's it. That's all I did today. At least, on the surface. But down deep in Judah's heart I was building all day. Laying the foundation of the man he's going to become one day-- by God's Grace. I praised his bike-riding. His strength. His endurance (he biked nearly four miles while I ran with Jamie in the stroller). I told him about scientists and their keen powers of observation when he noticed a funny kind of grass growing beside the path. "Hooray! I'm going to be a scientist one day!!"

And all the rest of the ride he noticed. Everything. I mean it. Ev. Erything. I was interested in him all day. I taught him that he is important to me, that I care about what he has to say, that I enjoy talking to him and listening. (I'm writing this post in 45 sec bursts, in between helping him with his snapping turtle play-do sculpture).

I know my work is not done because we had one good day. I know there will be plenty to knock down and tear out tomorrow, but I've been encouraged in my determination to Speak Truth into my children's lives. Partly because because I can see it working....




"Mom, sin is really tough to fight. When we try to fight it, we lose... but if we relax... if we relax down in... God can get up and fight it away for us. It's like a big wall in front and we relax down behind and God can *swooosh* fight off Satan for us.You know how in church? In Church we say dat when we sing and pray... Satan TREMBLES? You know dat? It's jist like dat."

The Liturgy of Laundry

One of the hardest things about being a mother is the sheer monotony of the vocation. I've blogged about this before, but it bears repeating. The work that we do every day is undone almost immediately. The larger spiritual goals to which we attain are very long term and it may be decades before we see our ideals for our children come to full fruition. I far too often find myself replacing my daily responsibilities for home and hearth with lesser, more easily attainable and more apparently "productive" tasks. Even "good" things, when elevated above the Best become little more than idols. Fellowship with other moms is a good and godly desire, but leaving dirty dishes in the sink to pack my children, in their unwashed clothes, off to a playdate is probably less often a Best thing than I would like to imagine, however refreshed it might make me feel in the short term. Staying up too late reading inspirational blog posts?... ditto.

I have been helped recently by a book (it is so often a book of one sort or another, isn't it?) by Kathleen Norris, "Acedia and Me". While written from the perspective of a childless widow, and with a much deeper exploration of the topic and far more inspired applications, I have found in it a nugget that I find quite profound for the circumstances in which I find myself-- homemaker, mother-of-three, impatient servant. That is, to seek to become aware of  a Sacramental quality in my daily work. A liturgical parallel, if you will. The daily-ness, the repetition, the lack of immediate and visible result-- all those things can be said of many of the rythms and repetitions of the church's worship.

And in the same sense, my daily routines, if attended to with a reverential and sacrificial heart (in the sense that I offer them to the Lord as a sacrifice and an act of worship) becomes my Liturgy of the Hours, in a very real sense. And with this emphasis I can rightly order my goals; shifting from an expectation of Results, Product and Effect in my environment (my children are clean and well-mannered at all times, my house is spotless, my laundry stays cleaned and folded in the drawers, the weeds never regenerate, etc) to a desire to see change in myself-- in my attitudes, affections, endurance and perseverance, as well as a deepening relationship with Christ. This shift in perspective, in expectations, will I think cause me to be less impatient towards, less critical of, less dissatisfied with my children and husband. I will be concentrating more on the log in my own eye and less on the specks in theirs.

1 Timothy 2:15
Yet she will be saved through childbearing—if they continue in faith and love and holiness, with self-control.

linking up...

Merbaby

(this is the fourth in a series of posts I'm writing about my Water Babies. you might want to read part one, part two and part three,

James in the pool is the most improbable. Guests watch incredulously his tiny body launching from the deck, arching dragon-fly-like, wings extended back, as he splashes belly-first (every time) and then hangs almost motionless, face-down in a deadman's float for a moment, as mother-eyes watch to see if a panicked rescue is in order...

But no, he's merely taking stock of his domain. He jack-knifes underwater, touching his toes and then straightening out to kick his way to the other side. This child swims a good eight to ten feet without a breath. I hold mine while I watch... just to see... so I know when he's running low, when he's about to have to breathe or drown. He swims one-sided. His right arm takes comically vigorous strokes, while his left plasters to his side, his legs thrashing the water determinedly.

On the longest jaunt-- 20 feet, clear across the pool-- he has to flip to his back to breathe. He waits for a moment, white-knuckling the edge of the deck, grins up at me "Wha wide, Mama?" ("other side?"), then pushes off with his toes, sideways, face down, kick-rightstroke-kick-rightstroke, then swoosh he flips to his back, tiny ohsotiny face floating high in the deep blue water, utterly isolated, utterly serene, calm, self-confident.

A baby island in the deep end. 

Kick, kick, kick. Flip under, eyes wide to find the direction, re-orient, float again, kick kick kick to the edge.

Goal achieved.

Destination reached.

He elbows up over the edge, toddler pot belly resting on the deck and arm-over-arm, knees up onto solid ground. But only briefly. This solid ground is not for him. He prefers the world where he is the equal of all, where he is the master of all he sees...

Merman

 (this is the third in a series of posts I'm writing about my Water Babies. you might want to read part one, part two and part four)

Judah... Judah in the pool.

Oh my heart.

Of all our children, he is the one we most worry over. The one we pray God we don't ruin. He seems so easy to hurt. So hard to Shepherd. So hard to understand.

But in the pool, he is strong, confident, brave. He is happy.

When this child is in the water, he is all. the. way. in. He's the one I rarely see breathing. He often just floats, spread-eagle, face-down. He dives, strong arms, broad shoulders-- so like his daddy's, but so small. He's so thin and light, it's hard work to get to the bottom to fetch a diving stick. But he charges down, dolphin-kicking determinedly.

The water seems to fuel his imagination as it does Sofi's. He talks to himself continuously, narrating a hundred adventures and ballads. His imaginary friend, "Betend Friend" (B.F.'s been around since Judah first started talking, many moons ago), swims and plays and "talks" with him. He spends a lot of time upside down. He doesn't so much swim, as he just plays.. underwater... He hardly seems to acknowledge the difference between air and water, up and down are equal, there are no limits, no rules, no expectations. Here in the water he doesn't have to worry about spilling things, knocking things over, running into stuff. His absent-minded way of walking through life is totally fine, safe, acceptable-- in the water.

If only he could float, spread-eagle, face-down all through his life, staring off into the deep. I think he could always be this happy.

Mermaid

(this is the second in a series of posts I'm writing about my Water Babies. you might want to read part one, part three, and part four, too)

Sofia is almost ten. She stands poised, as all ten-year-olds do, on the brink of young woman-hood, awkwardly suspended between adult and child. Vacillating between the two, rarely perfectly comfortable in either world-- the grass always green on the other side of the proverbial fence.

But in the water she perfectly straddles those two worlds, my graceful water-girl-woman. She glides and swoops and twists, mistress of herself. She feels, I think, a little safer, a little private, here in the water. She goes back to her imaginative games, elaborate plots and characters played out on the bottom of the deep end. Completely unconscious of any audience, or even any world outside these four concrete walls and 20,000 gallons of blue, she acts out her fantasies, her dreams.

I'm glad she has this place where she feels so Right. I remember all too vividly the wrong-ness that dogs one during those early teen years. A place where one feels one truly belongs is so important. When I watch her dart and glide and dive, I think perhaps we will survive these next eight years without too much heartache. Perhaps here in the pool we will always be friends. Perhaps we can come out and swim together and all the argumentation and conflict will wash away, untangled and smooth...





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Water Babies

(this is the first in a series of posts about my water babies. here's part two, part three and part four)

I'm sitting here on the deck watching my water babies swim....

My children don't swim like others I've seen-- half afraid, excited screams, tentative forays into deeper water followed by squealing retreats to the steps. My children return each day to the pool as into the arms of a lover; or perhaps a world traveler, returning to the country of his birth-- here is their Familiar, this water is their First World.

All three of them were born in the water, their improbably small and impossibly-large-at-the-same-time bodies struggling out into the birthing pool. The harsh but necessary expulsion from their warm, wet cocoon softened, delayed, made more gradual, bearable, by this detour on their way Out. I had the joy of Pharoh's daughter as I Moses-ed each one up into my arms.  
 Welcome to the big dry world, my water child.

I think that those tiny seconds of delay between womb and world has left each of my children some sort of vestigial umbilicus to the world of the Deep.

When they get into the pool, they at first seperate- each to their own corner-- no loud shouts just yet, no games, no splashing. They dive, down down, they swerve and somersault and dart from side to side. Their returns earthside for quick sips of air are so fleeting, so seamless, I sometimes wonder if I'm really seeing it, are they actually stopping to breathe? Or have they somehow grown gills in the night? Are they breathing water, not air? Only the trail of bubbles, all  I see of them as they dive down the deep end till they are merely shadows trailing the bottom...

...only the bubbles tell me there is human life in the pool.

I can see them, sometimes, under the water, eyes wide open, hair floating smooth and silky-- tangle-free for once, no longer daubed with peanut butter, dirt, paint, or any other myriad experiences of the day. Their moods seem to untangle in the water, too. They move oh-so gracefully, a slow languid swoop of arm or torso, or a whole body twists and turns in undulations, dolphin-like. The slow peaceful underwater movement of body somehow unraveling the cares of the Solid and the Dry.

Building Cathedrals

There were three stonemasons, working in a stoneyard, cutting rough rock into square blocks. When asked what they were doing by a passerby, the first stonemason responded, "Cutting this stone into blocks."


The second stonemason replied, "Working, to make a living."


The third lifted his eyes toward the horizon. "I am building a Cathedral for the Glory of God, " he said.

I've heard that story before. I imagine many of you have, too. But when our pastor told it this morning after a sermon on vocation, work and doing whatever we do to the Glory of God, I heard it with new ears. Ears that had recently also heard the words of some girlfriends as we reminded one another that Motherhood is not just something we kinda do because we have children and someone's got to do it.

It's our vocation. Our career. Our Calling.

It's a good thing to remember, as we bathe and feed, admonish and correct, love and kiss on and clean up after these precious little nuisances, that we are literally raising up temples, the dwelling places of God's Holy Spirit.

1 Cor 6:19 “What? know ye not that your body is the temple of the Holy Ghost which is in you, which ye have of God, and ye are not your own?” 

Our noisy, messy squabbling children, while it may not seem much like it in the moment, are living temples. Lord willing, they will one day be an actual repository of the Spirit of God.

This is a significant realization for me. It sheds a slightly different angle of light on the mundane daily tasks involved in keeping them alive and relatively healthy. I am as much engaged in building a lasting monument to the Glory of God by caring for my children as if I were in fact painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. My children's children's children will continue the line that my mother's mother began decades ago, just as surely as artist, stonemason, carpenter and monk have contributed their handiwork since 1473 to contribute to the beauty and majesty that defines the Sistine Chapel today.

I pray that as we wipe noses, mop up chins and diaper bottoms, we mothers can keep our eyes on the horizon and say by faith,

"I am building a Cathedral for the Glory of God."

I live at the O.K. Corral

Getting the boys dressed in the morning has become a Ultimate Fighting Championship Event. The diaper changing, shirt putting-on and shoe-ing is punctuated with fisticuffs, gunfights and jousting.

One might ask, justifiably, if perhaps letting a nearly-five-year-old engage in fisticuffs with his baby brother might be a wee tad bit un-even of a fight. One would be wrong in this case. James is... scrappy. Very scrappy. He gives just about as good as he gets-- despite the fact that he's half Judah's size and weight.

He also has the advantage that he makes Jude nearly helpless with laughter. It's really hard to maintain the necessary Superhero-esque focus when a pint-sized fury is running at your knees, screaming "Waaaaargharg!!!!" Judah giggles uncontrollably as James takes him to the floor and pummels his stomach with both tiny fists.

They both love it. They revel in it. The testosterone is almost visible.

But this morning I think perhaps some guidance from an older, wiser and more chivalrous testosterone-producer may be in order after hearing this:



"Here Jamie, I'll be right back. You just shoot Mama instead for a few minutes till I get back."

While you were in there...

Today, during assorted trips to the bathroom on my part, Jamie has;

1) Climbed up on the dining room table and found both a not-quite-empty milk cup and the sugar bowl.

2) Gotten out the front door and into the yard.

3) Emptied my entire collection of safety pins out onto the bedroom floor.

3) Dragged a tissue box out of the van into the flower bed and proceeded to tear the tissues into a million tiny, buoyant pieces.

I may not be able to pee again till he's five.

Life With Boys

Judah is a very absent minded person. Most of the time this can be compensated for by my constant attention to keep him out of the path of cars, off the feet of other adults and out of the way of small children who might be bowled over if he simply walks right into them

But there are some situations where I cannot help him out much. For example, the bathroom. It's a twenty-to-one shot whether he actually pees INTO the toilet as he gazes vaguely all around the room, or possibly inscribes the arc of Superman's leap across the street from building top to sidewalk in pursuit of the latest villain.

Today, on a lightening-fast trip to the toilet (leaving Jamie unattended longer than 45 consecutive seconds these days is like playing Russian Roulette), I stepped, barefooted (it's Florida, after all) into a huge puddle of pee on the bathroom floor. Pants already unzipped, I splashed right. into. it, my jeans cuffs baptized with the fragrant liquid. I screeched, frantically shaking the drops from my foot, hopped out to the kitchen for a rag and some cleaner and limped back, mom-cursing the whole way. As I bent to mop up the deluge, I realize something...


I wasn't the only one who'd stepped in it.

Gross.

Blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaach.

So I spent the next twenty minutes hands-and-knees crawling around from one mud-pee footprint to another, *spray-wipe-blech*, all around the house.

And while I was down there, I figured I might as well try to scrub off the Sharpie marker Jamie decorated with this morning.

Just Write

There are marker and pen and scuff marks all over my walls... 

Should I wash them off? Is it worth the time when I know they'll be back on again by the end of the day? Are they some sort of badge of honor for Motherhood (with a capital 'M')? Or just evidence of semi-lazy motherhood (small 'm')?

"Mama, I want a cough drop!" 

Does he really need one? Is all that coughing real or put on to coax out of an un-suspicious mama what my children consider to be just-as-good-as-candy? How much coughing is evidence of a real need for a cough drop? Is this one of those moments to just give in?


"Na?? Mama? Na??" 

Is he really hungry and wanting a snack? Or is he just wanting my attention? If I put cheerioes on the chair instead of picking him up and reading to him, does that make me a bad mom? If he throws all the cheerioes on the floor and I pick them up and put them right on the edge of the table where he loves to grab things, will that buy me another five minutes?

"Mama! I can't do FORTY-EIGHT math problems in ONE DAY!" 

I know she can, but should she have to? Is it too much? Is she getting enough time to just be a kid? Is that even important? Is she learning patience, endurance, wisdom along with her reading, writing and math?


Questions, uncertainties, wonderings swirl around in my head in the midst of all the daily run-around. My mind is on a merry-go-round, a tilt-a-whirl-- the juggler spinning plates on poles.

But what I'm really asking is, can I do this? Am I adequate? Is this working? Will they be ok? Do they know I love them? How can I protect them? Prepare them? What do I do now? How did I get here?

By the Grace of God 

...answers all my questions.

The Real Thing

I'm sitting here trying to wrap up an emotional, moving post I started last night about how thankful I am for my beautiful children and how our years of infertility have intensified my appreciation of the small things (like Jamie and Judah wrestling on the floor in the before-breakfast mornings), but Jamie is circling my feet, whining and screeching. He wants my oatmeal; I'm blogging while I eat breakfast because multi-tasking: it's a mommy's best friend. Also, because I feel less guilty about writing when the boys want me if I'm also eating-- which, you know, is one of those necessary luxuries to which I treat myself. Occasionally.

So. Emotional post, wrapping up, Jamie screeching for oatmeal. I pick him up to my lap, desperately pecking the keyboard with one hand while I try to fend him off my oatmeal with the other. Disatisfied with my continued lack of attention to him, he pitches his binky right. into. my. coffee.

*sigh*

The emotional, moving post about how much I love my children is filed in the drafts folder to finish "Later" so I can go clean up my coffee and actually Love My Children. Right now I'm writing while locked in the bathroom (one of the few doors Jamie hasn't figured out how to open yet) and the boys are taking turns banging on the door and screeching (Jamie) and complaining about a bumped head (Judah), and my back is starting to hurt from bending over the counter at an awkward angle to type.

And so another day begins.





I'm linking up for another morning of "Just Write" with Heather at the EO.

Just Writing

Some mornings I feel like I would sell my soul for another hour of sleep. But the children always wake with boundless energy and they drag my weary soul, reluctantly, grouchily, out into the light of their wide-eyed love for life. There is no defense against the joy of two boys playing with a plastic walrus in the shower. Their bow-legged, sway-backed, pot-bellied selves make me smile through the haze of a 5:00 wake-up call. They have only one volume setting and it's Last Trumpet loud

Jamie is learning animal sounds, but right now everything growls. Lions, dogs, kitties, pigs, walruses...

"Bwaaargggrrrrrr!"

He also eats soap.

And now we've run out of hot water and so my precious few minutes to blog and think and re-group and try to catch up with my life is done. My main goal is to feed, clothe, protect and love. Anything else I get done is a bonus.







We're doing good! it's my third week linking in with The Extraordinary Ordinary and Heather's Just Write project.

Just Writing

When I first started this blog, way back when, my life seemed small and manageable. I was busy, sure, but busy with small things. Busy with one child and one infant, busy with a small house and a postage stamp yard, busy with a few good friends and family only a few hours away. Our life was quiet, orderly, predictable, malleable.

I must admit the possibility that at the time it did not feel this way, it's perhaps just the looking back that makes it seem so.

Back then I had time to write. I wrote, I read, I commented. I also crafted, baked, gardened, taught, babysat and other things.

Today, I feel like my life has gotten BIGBIG. There's a pre-teen, a child and a toddler in my house now. They are busy. They are loud. They each have a life of their own. There are five lives in my house now. My big house, my big yard, my big van. Our trees are big, too-- and now there are four trees, instead of two. And then there's a pool...

Even our city is big. Our friends are here, there, across-over-there and our family is farfar away.

I feel a bit stretched out. A bit thin.

"Like butter spread over too much bread."

Now all my time is taken up in just being. Getting from here to there. Feed, clean up. Feed, clean up. Laundry.

I miss blogging. It was my chance to make a little mark on the world. Something that would still be here, just like this, in the morning. Not used up, not dirty-again-already, not eaten. I need that back again.







Linking up with The EO for Just Write again.

Color me crazy

I am planning to paint the dining room/living room area this weekend, so today I am letting Judah draw all over the walls. ONLY with pencil and ONLY THIS ONE TIME. He had so much fun the last time he drew on the walls (without permission), that I just couldn't pass up this opportunity to indulge his artistic sensibility.

Plus, I heard this NPR piece recently about a new rising star on the artistic horizon talking about how her parents let them draw on the walls. It was her example of how cool her parents were and how much they encouraged her artistic visions. Far be it from me to pass up an opportunity to encourage artistic vision in my children and maybe one day they're famous and mention how cool I am on an NPR piece.

And also, the drawing he put on our bedroom wall is so freakin' COOL we really haven't been able to bring ourselves to wash it off or paint over it yet. The pictures didn't come out very good, but he basically drew a paneled mural depicted some sort of Epic Event, including elephants, castles under siege and some vague Superheroes from his vast mental collection of vague Superheroes. I really just wanted to see what he'd come up with given free reign and an entire room full of walls.

I'm even letting him stand on the couch so he can make "a super-deep ocean, all the way to the bottom AND up into the air!!" But only on the seat, not on the back.

There are limits, after all.

How clean is YOUR house?

I've often wondered over the years how other women keep house. I only have my mother's habits as a guide (at least, the only one I'm conscious of) and apparently my memories are very vague and colored with teenaged inattention to detail. I've concluded this because what I remember is mostly that our house was almost always perfectly spotless and that we (children) were required to do a ridiculous amount of slave labor on a DAILY basis to maintain this impossible and unnecessary standard of cleanliness.

Now that my children are getting older and participating more in the slave labor work of keeping house, I have realized that most likely this memory of mine is... let's say... biased, and mercifully draw the veil on my 14-year-old immaturity.

My routine (based loosely on the way my mom always did it) is:

Daily-- the house and decks are tidied at the end of the day before J gets home from work, the dining and kitchen floors are vacuumed and the dishes are washed before I go to bed.

Every-Other Day-- The kitchen and dining floors are mopped and the bathroom is "wiped down" (ei; counter-tops, toilet, mirrors)

Weekly-- Every Saturday, in preparation for the Sabbath, we do major yard work (mowing, weeding, raking, whatever is needed) and clean the whole house-- dusting, mopping (we have laminate floors, so everything gets mopped), bathrooms, garage. My goal is to spend all day Sunday sitting around in a clean house, enjoying the smell of lemon oil and not making anyone do anything.

Now, the real reason I'm asking is to reassure myself that this is an adequate schedule and that the fact that my house rarely (if ever) actually looks as if it receives this kind of regular care is due to the "time of life" in which we currently find ourselves. That is, can I blame the perpetually untidy and crumb-laden state of my house on the kids, and not on my own inadequacies as a housewife?

In addition, I'm wondering if this clean-the-whole-house thing that eats up our entire Saturday is really the most efficient way to do things. The thing is, I can't think of any other way to actually have a Clean House (all at once), since the kids... well... live here. If I didn't do it all in one day, it would never feel like a Clean House.

I'd like to hear y'all's routines and/or suggestions and (obviously) reassurances that you've seen my house (or know me well) and I am, indeed, a more than adequate housewife.





And please, don't anyone mention Fly Lady. I might scream.

I Forgive You

The Four Important Steps:

1) Express remorse...

"I'm sorry"

These words are at the center of the whole deal. They mean something very important, and I talk to my kids about it frequently. When you say the words "I"m sorry", you mean that you are repenting, turning away from a particular behavior, acknowledging that you were wrong and that you wronged your brother.

2) ...for a specific offense

"I'm sorry that I..."

This is the part most often left out of an apology for the purpose of "saving face." In order to truly apologize, you've got to acknowledge that there was some specific thing that you did that was a trespass against your brother. Something you did wrong. So many apologies that I've heard, given and received over the years are half-a$$ed measures that leave the person apologized to sounding like the guilty party: "I'm sorry that you got your feelings hurt" Oh puhlease. That's not an apology. There's no acknowledgment of guilt.

3) Acknowledge your need for the other person's forgiveness

"I'm sorry that I hit you, will you please forgive me?" (we're going with the most commonly heard apology around here for this example)

Once you've turned away from the sin and acknowledged your guilt, you still have to admit that you need forgiveness from the other person. In a way this validates the anger and outrage of the sinned-against. I did something wrong, something specific and you are justified in your outrage, but I'm asking you to put it aside and take me back as your friend. It puts the asker in a vulnerable position and forces a reversal in position between the two combatants. No apology is complete without this humility.

4) Forgive freely

"Yes, I forgive you."

In our house the rule is, once someone has complied with all the requirements of a proper apology, the offended person is bound to forgive-- no questioning of motives or sincerity allowed. Obviously this won't occur in every situation where my children offer an apology throughout their lives. I know there will be times when their vulnerability and humility is thrown back in their faces, when their apology is greeted with skepticism about their motives and sincerity. But for now, on the training grounds of our family life, this is extremely important. Only the Lord knows the heart of a man and in place of perfect knowledge, they are to give one another the benefit of Mercy. Even when there has been a serious infraction of household rules and some sort of correction or consequence is called for, if forgiveness is sought, then it is freely given. After forgiveness, then we deal with spankings or other consequences.

This last part is so vital for our family. Judah, in particular, with his sensitive heart has on more than one occasion wailed post-spanking, "Bu-bu-but you forgot to say I forgive you!!" Discipline administered in the atmosphere of repentance and forgiveness is SO much more effective.