Dear Homeschooling, We're...on a Break

  Dear Homeschooling,

  We may not be over, but we are definitely on a break. It might have just been a fling. I wasn't myself with you, I was someone I thought you wanted me to be and I can't do it anymore. I am heartbroken because I was in love with you and I really wanted it to work.

  In all seriousness, I have decided to stop homeschooling. It started to feel really wrong for us. I decided to homeschool last spring after Gavin spent an entire year in Pre-K and learned nothing that he didn't already know. His teacher showed me an assessment during a conference and announced that he "knows all of his letters." Yeah, thanks for telling me that, he's known "his" letters since he was two. I realized that the expectations were very low and didn't want to waste anymore years of school. I wanted to educate him myself. I wanted to know his progress firsthand. I also didn't want to have him gone all day all week. 

  So we began our homeschool journey for lots of good reasons and I imagined that it would be hard but that it would be worth it. It was around Spring Break last year that we made the final decision to homeschool. I went to a Homeschool convention. Umm, yikes! The curriculum fair was huge and overwhelming and I ended up buying a curriculum package that looked amazing at the fair but once I started using it realized that it wasn't a strong curriculum. 

  The package I bought was all subjects integrated into unit studies. I loved it because this is the ideal way to teach, according to my Early Childhood Degree. It was kindergarten but it was too easy for my Pre-Ker. I supplemented reading for Gavin and thought about buying a separate math curriculum as well. At first I would look ahead at the next unit and plan a lot of extras to give the boys a more opportunity to learn. I quickly got burned out and was more disappointed with the curriculum each week. 

  By the end of October, I reached my third trimester of pregnancy and realized that this wasn't working. I hung on for another month and the week of Thanksgiving just boxed up the curriculum for indefinite storage in the closet. I was so relieved to have it out of sight. I hated it and I didn't have to do it anymore. I thought about researching curriculum and getting another plan of action together to start after Christmas. The huge problem with that idea is that we are having a baby right after Christmas. 

  So I thought and I thought and I thought and I became overwhelmingly convinced that my boys and I and our baby girls would all be better off if they went to school full time. 

  It was after I decided to homeschool that we found out that we were having another baby and I didn't want to let the baby stop us. We ended up moving, which we had planned to do in another year but decided we needed more space right away with another baby coming. We needed a bigger house and also a better school district. We managed to find a perfect house that is about 2 blocks away from arguably the best public elementary school in our area. Had we been in this school district before, I might not have felt the need to homeschool in the first place.

  It was 3 weeks before the start of the school year when we moved and my husband really wanted me to enroll the boys in the school. He kept saying he didn't think I could homeschool with the new baby. I pointed out that lots of homeschooling families are large and they don't let babies stop them. I thought I could do it. I wanted to try. I could rattle off a huge list of reasons why homeschool is better, many of these I still strongly believe. 

  The summer brought so much change for us. Moving, new baby on the way when the current baby is still a baby, I quit my job that I loved. It was too much change. I think we all needed this time of being home together through the fall semester. I absolutely could not have enrolled them in such a big school for the full day full week at the beginning of this school year.

  Now that we have tried homeschool for a semester, I realize that I am not doing my best at this and I certainly will not be able to improve things anytime soon. In a matter of weeks I will have a newborn attached to my boobs at least 8 hours a day. Poor Everly is going to be lost in the middle. Gavin has reached frustration level with reading and does not respond well to my instruction. I never dreamed that I would think that someone else can probably do a better job than me at teaching him to read. He cries when I sit down to do a reading lesson with him, I doubt he would do this for a teacher, especially when he is surrounded by peers who are learning right along with him.

  A couple of weeks ago, I let the boys know that I was thinking about having them start school right after Christmas break and they were thrilled. In the past, Gavin has been adamant that he prefers to homeschool so this was the first time he said he would rather go to school. I realized they were feeling the same about homeschool as I was. It just wasn't working and with a newborn, we won't be able to improve things anytime soon. Next, I let my husband know what I was thinking. He was relieved. He had been really worried about me homeschooling with a new baby and a toddler. 12 hours later, he had them enrolled.

  We went on a tour this morning. The teachers and classrooms look perfect and I know that the boys will be in the best place they can be while I focus on this new baby. I feel like a weight has been lifted. I could not mentally fit a new baby into our daily routine. I could not begin to imagine what our school days would look like. Now that I know that the boys will be in school, I can actually imagine caring for the baby and Everly during the day. I used to think that I would send the baby girls to preschool so I could homeschool the big boys but then I realized how backwards that was. Why would I send my babies away so I could keep my big boys home? 

  I have a lot of peace about this decision but I do feel a bit defeated. I am accustomed to doing it all, and it is uncomfortable to acknowledge that I have limits. I do know that this is the best decision for all of us.

  Interestingly, as soon as the boys were enrolled, I began having false labor and went on a crazy nesting spree to get us ready to bring home a newborn baby. I feel ready and am so looking forward to this new chapter.

Sometimes, I Hate His Guts

  I have a friend who says, just like the most adorable third grader you ever met, "Sometimes, I hate his guts." She is talking about her husband and she means it. Sometimes, I hate my husband's guts. I'm sure he feels the same about me from time to time but he is too good to confess it. 

  I spent several days earlier this month hating my husband's guts. He hadn't listened to me about something that I felt was important. It was also a stressful time because the kids were sick with a stomach bug. I selfishly turned it into more than it was. I pulled all the other times he hadn't listened out of my treasure box of grudges and threw them at him. I lay at night as far to my edge of the bed as possible, actively hating his guts and feeling sorry for myself. I shunned intimacy, though I craved it. He said I was acting really pregnant and that only fueled my anger. 

  Then I read a blog post that was circulating Facebook, I can't find it now, but it was a woman who had been recently widowed offering marriage advice to her daughter. It was beautiful and poetic and I cried through the whole thing. She was so wise. I imagined being in her shoes. How heartbroken I would be. How I would miss everything about my husband if he were gone. That nothing that I was upset about now really mattered in the grand scheme of life or even in the grand scheme of this week.

  I get in these ruts sometimes where something really irks me about my husband and I dwell on it and I add to it like rolling a big snowball for the base of a snowman. When I am busy rolling my snowball, it is very hard to stop. I am suddenly blinded to the positives and the negatives shine like a lighthouse. 

  You see, my husband and I are very different. Apart from Keith and me, a Proffitt and an Owen would never marry because we are so different. But, we all know that opposites attract and I fell in love with Keith for a lot of reasons but there were some specific opposites that were very attractive to me. I forget that some of things that irritate me now are the very things that caused me to fall in love with him in the first place.

  I am really in no position to offer marriage advice to anyone. The story above is an example of what not to do. I did learn that anytime I fall into this rut of begrudging my husband, it is when I am being selfish. In love, one cannot be selfish. Love is not selfish. 

1 Corinthians 13:4-5

⁴ Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. ⁵ It does not dishonor others, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. 

  So, basically, everything about hating his guts is wrong and here it is straight from the Bible, in a very familiar passage that we have all heard and may be able to recite. Read it again. 

  I spent the last two months helping a friend facilitate a marriage course at church because marriage matters to me. My marriage matters and I care about other people's marriages too. I want people to be happy. I want people to stay together if they can. I want children to live with both of their parents if they possibly can. A man who had participated in the course with his wife shared that they had not been living together prior to taking the marriage course and that after taking the course, his wife had decided to come home and they were experiencing healing and renewal in their marriage.

  Our own marriage was in crisis a couple of years ago. I had built a huge snowball of hurts and I was lost in the dark with only a lighthouse to show the way. The light beamed only on my unhappiness and the darkness veiled all that was good in my marriage. 

  We went to a marriage counselor. It was miserable. We sat in his office feeling like we were broken, but knowing that we weren't really broken. It was incredibly painful to share our wounds with another person, even a professional counselor. The counselor listened to our stories and advised us not to talk to each other (about issues) until the next week when we were in his office again, so we never went back. We didn't have time to wait a week between talking about issues, we had to talk immediately. We were better than this. We had to get out of crisis mode immediately.

  So we talked about everything, not just the problems that seemed so big at the time. We learned each others' fears and insecurities and renewed our love. A bottle of wine in Paris led to a real breakthrough. We discovered that an underlying problem was my parents' recent divorce. It had scared the crap out of us, and it took several glasses of wine in the City of Love to get us talking about it, a few days without our kids added to that equation too. He was afraid that I would leave him and I wondered if there really was such a thing as true love because my model had been shattered. If my parents got a divorce, it could happen to anyone. I realized that we were not immune to divorce, then I had to learn that we were not destined for it.

  I knew how much Keith meant to me and how much he means to our children, but I realized that our marriage matters to a lot of other people too. We are a unit and we have a meaningful place in our sphere of influence. If something were to happen to us, the effect would be devastating. A devastating current would wave through our selves and our families and ripple out into that sphere indefinitely. That realization was slightly burdensome but it put everything into perspective. There really isn't anything between us that would be worth setting that wave in motion.

  

  Just like any personal story I share here, I share this for the purpose of helping others. Maybe someone will read this who can relate and glean hope from my experience. Just because visiting a counselor didn't help us at the time, doesn't mean that going to a counselor would not help another. We all have unique situations and perspectives and we all require different tools to help us with our problems. I am in no way discrediting the counseling profession. It just felt really wrong to us at that time. 

 The marriage course that I referred to is the Alpha Marriage Course, an eight week video series with a workbook to go along with it. Participants sit at a small table as a couple and enjoy a candlelit dinner followed by the video lesson and built in discussion. The beauty of this format is that each couple can have complete privacy as they discuss their marriage. Keith and I participated in this course and really enjoyed it. 

  

  

  

They Say the Kitchen is the Heart of the Home; It Might Just Be the Heart of Me

  I am sure you have heard it said that the kitchen is the heart of the home, maybe you've said it yourself. I have always cringed at those words. I have a love hate relationship with my kitchen. Okay, mostly hate. I hate all of the messes that I make when I cook. Cooking is exhausting in itself but it also comes with dirty dishes, counters and floors. I don't often clean my cooking mess the same day that I cook, I usually leave it for about 12 hours and let it suck the joy of cooking right out of me.

  My first kitchen was a tiny little hallway into the suite that I shared with three other girls when I was in college. I used the kitchen more than the other girls because I had to cut my meal plan in order to  afford tuition and housing. I spent $25 a week on groceries and made all of my food. Okay, not all of it. Keith always paid when we went out to eat and that was fairly often. My poor roommates had to deal with the mess I left in the sink. If I had a lot of school work, I would tell myself that I didn't have time to clean or do dishes. I often waited until Friday afternoon to clean up from the week. After projects were turned in, papers written, and tests were taken I could think about pesky things like a weeks' worth of dishes piled next to the sink waiting to be washed. By hand.

  My next kitchen was also a hallway in the apartment I shared with my husband after we got married. That semester was very strange. I am glad that we don't have to relive it. I was student teaching and that meant spending 7:30 to 4:00 at school everyday. I also had a full load of school work to complete at the same time. It was equal to being a full-time student with a full-time job. Meanwhile, my husband was in his last semester and only had nine hours, not even a full-time student. While I was gone at school he would make the apartment look perfect and expect to be treated like a hero when I got home. It was annoying. I felt like he wanted me to be happy with him because he did my housework for me. It was my work because I was the woman. I didn't see it as my work, I saw it as our work. We lived there. We ate there. At least I never had to do the dishes.

  There was another apartment, I barely remember it. It had a nice big kithen with a dishwasher, but I hardly remember using it. My husband had started working full-time and I was in my second semester of student teaching. Once again, full-time course work along with full-time unpaid internship in the classroom. I didn't like to go home alone in the afternoons so I would usually go to a coffee shop to work on projects after school. Then it would be rush hour and I didn't like driving back to our suburb apartment at that time. Usually, Keith would meet me for dinner and we would head back later in the evening. That's probably why I don't remember it, we hardly spent any time there. 

  That spring, we bought our first house. I was pregnant with our first baby and unbelievably exhausted. We kept our house very clean. Thanks to Keith. I knew that he would clean anything I left out and sometimes I would just let him do it and be glad. Most of the time though, I tried to have everything picked up and cleaned up before he got home because I wanted to just relax with him. The problem was that no matter how clean I had the place, he would still walk in the door and start cleaning. It made me feel like I wasn't good enough and I resented it. A great deal of bitterness built up inside me and I sometimes left everything undone because I knew he would find something no matter how much cleaning I had done. What was the point, I reasoned.

  Now we have 3 kids and the days of having a very clean house at all times are over. Keith is still better at cleaning than I am but I try to appreciate it rather than resent it. Actually, he is better at "picking up" than I am. There is a difference between "picking up" and cleaning. He also doesn't touch the kitchen anymore, unless I specifically ask him to clean the floor or unload the dishwasher.  

  We understand each other much better now, so housework is less of a fuss. I realize that he has a need to do some cleaning in order to unwind. For example, when we have something to really think about and talk through, I sit down on the couch or the bed. I can't do anything while I'm thinking. He walks around picking up toys, he can't do nothing while he's thinking. He isn't cleaning because I didn't do enough, he cleans because he needs to. That realization was liberating for me.

  The last few weeks I have been doing  a lot of extra cooking so the kitchen has really suffered. Most days I have more than one dishwasher load of dishes so the sink is never empty. Even if it is empty, it only lasts a few minutes before someone's sippy cup gets tossed in there.

  We spent the entire weekend making messes in the kitchen and then leaving the mess in order to run off to soccer or church. Every time I walked in the kitchen, I wanted to do something about it but I was too exhausted. I am fast approaching my third trimester of pregnancy. I thought I would clean it before bed on Sunday night but we ended up letting the kids play outside until bedtime. I fell asleep wondering how I was going to clean up the next day and still homeschool my children well.

  Monday was a fantastic day. I sat with the boys while they did their morning school work then I sent them outside so I could focus on the kitchen. Eventually, I locked them out so they would leave me alone. They were fine. I could see and hear them through the kitchen window. Everly hung around with me and "helped." It took an hour and  a half to load and unload the dishes, put away all of the things that were out of place, clean the counters and table and sweep and mop the floor. 

  Once the kitchen was clean, I felt awesome. I felt free to focus on other things. The messy kitchen weighed on me mentally, physically, and emotionally. I felt like a failure as a woman and a wife and a mother as long as the kitchen was a mess. It didn't matter that I have done some of my best cooking ever in the past week. It didn't matter that we sat down together and had hot, homemade food every night last week. We even had the neighbors over for an impromptu chili dinner because I had made a huge pot so I offered and they had no plans so they joined us. Those things should have made me feel like a successful home cook but I allowed the disorder of the kitchen to cause me to feel like an utter failure. 

  It seems that my kitchen is not only the heart of my home, it is actually connected to my heart. What goes in, what comes out, the work in between and the state it is left in are all connected to my thoughts, feelings, and emotions. It seems a bit ridiculous but having suffered a guilty conscience over messes in the kitchen or eating poorly for lack of a  good meal plan has finally brought me to the unwelcome realization that there is something about the kitchen. I don't want it to matter but it does matter.

  I don't want to have to cook and clean simply because I am the woman of the house but somebody's gotta do it and I am a bit of a control-freak. My 23 year old self would not recognize my 29 year old self. For a long time I would have preferred to work outside of the home and pay others for childcare and help around the house and take-out food. I tried to stay home when I had my first baby but only lasted a few months before getting depressed  and lonely and going back to work part-time. I knew I couldn't work full-time but I also couldn't stay home full-time. 

  I felt like I owed it to women in history who fought for the right to work outside the home if they wanted to. I felt like staying home in this day and age was like going back in time. I felt like my degree was going to waste, that I needed to teach part-time because eventually I would want to work full-time and I needed to keep my foot in the door if I was ever going to have the career I dreamed of.  Work made me feel important, housework made me feel very low and worthless.

  On one hand, I feel like anybody could do this, there is no special skill involved. On the other hand, I never feel like I have kept the house or kitchen well enough. Since I stay home now, this is the only thing I have to do but I still can't do it all. Alternatively, I put a great deal of energy into making things perfect and feel spent when I am done, with little satisfaction to keep me going. I feel like I am the only woman in the world who feels this way, but I know that I am not. 

  Last Monday was the first time that I felt satisfaction from thoroughly cleaning the kitchen. It felt awesome so I reveled in it. I felt good about myself and I let that feeling really take hold because it is rare. Maybe the state of my kitchen is of no importance to the world, but it is important to me, and it is important for my family. It turned out that it mattered for the neighbors last week as they got to eat dinner with us.

  When I turn off all of my own negative ideas about myself and my role, I can unashamedly enjoy the simplicity, though hard fought battle, of a clean and comfortable kitchen that functions as the heart of our home and is an extension of my heart for my family, as well as, friends and neighbors who may happen to step in and enjoy a meal with us. It is small, painfully small sometimes, but I no longer believe it to be insignificant. It is hard work but I finally feel the value in it.

  

  

  

  

I Sent My Boys to Preschool and Am Reminded Why We Chose to Homeschool

  I've been meaning to share this for awhile but not really sure what I want to say about it. If you remember a post from a couple of months ago (good for you, I'm impressed), I described an emotional melt down I had during our first week of homeschooling. I can't believe that was almost two months ago. Around that time, I drove by a church preschool that is about a mile away from our new house. The school is one that I have often heard of and knew it to have a good reputation. There was a sign advertising that they had a kindergarten class. I thought of a friend whose son recently attended that kindergarten and a teacher that I knew was the co-teacher in the kindergarten class. I was interested.

  I casually mentioned it to my husband and he emphatically encouraged me to look into it for the boys. I had already read their website and found that it was two days a week and that tuition was very comparable to what I had paid previously at our own church preschool, now too far away to be practical for us. 

  

  I mulled over it for a few more days. My pride was hurt that my husband wanted me to send the boys. I felt that he didn't believe in me to teach them well enough on my own. After some honest self evaluation, I realized that he and I both knew that I did need help. This year, I need help. I am expecting in January and currently have a 13 month old. I am constantly exhausted and overwhelmed by the little things, let alone this big thing of undertaking my children's education. 

  I emailed the director and asked if there was room for my two boys. I thought they would probably be full anyway and I was only going to do it if there was room for both boys. The response was, "Your boys were meant to be here. Someone just dropped from Kindergarten and I have a spot left in Pre-K." The next day, we toured the school and I enrolled the boys. In Kindergarten, Gavin will use Saxon Math and Phonics, and Henry will do some Saxon Phonics in Pre-K.

  Initially, when I told Gavin that we were going to a new preschool, he cried. He said he just wanted to homeschool and I knew that he really did love it but I was surprised that he was so upset. My boys have attended preschool since they were babies. Last year, Gavin actually went to two Pre-Ks as he attended afternoon Pre-K every weekday at a public school and preschool 3 mornings a week at our church, where I worked part-time. Gavin always was happy to attend school and adjusted to new classes and teachers seamlessly. He was a big part of our discussions when we decided to homeschool. As soon as I suggested homeschooling, he wanted to do it. Over several weeks I checked in with him to see if he changed his mind and that he really understood what homeschooling would be like. I told him that he wouldn't be with his friends every day. Gavin was consistent. He wanted to homeschool.  When faced with this new school, Gavin was upset. I showed him a calendar and explained that he would go to school two days a week and we would still homeschool the other three days. Over the next few days, I heard him say that to himself several times. "It's only two days, it's only two days." He felt better after seeing his classroom and teachers and has been really happy every day that we have gone to preschool so far.

  This is the fourth week in the preschool year and about the eighth week of our homeschool year. The first couple of weeks were hard for me. I didn't know what to do without the boys. Since then, I have warmed up to it. I look forward to alone time with Everly and she seems to know that it's special too. Today, after we dropped off Henry and were headed out, just the two of us, she laid her head on my shoulder and patted me. It was like she knew she had me all to herself.  

  I have been able to schedule my doctor's appointments during preschool so I don't have to worry about getting them a babysitter. I have also used this time to run errands. Grocery shopping with one child is a dream compared to grocery shopping with three, even though she spilled Cheerios all over Target today.

  Our homeschool days are better in some ways because we aren't able to get stuck in the same old same old when we meet every other day as we might if we were meeting every day. Gavin brings home a lot of homework because they are working through the entire Saxon Kindergarten curriculum for math and phonics, even though they only meet twice a week. This is great for us because the curriculum I bought for this year is not strong enough. That was part of the reason for my melt down the first week of school. I was realizing that the curriculum that I had carefully selected wasn't good enough and would require supplementation in every subject. I was planning to buy Saxon math curriculum before I found this preschool.   

  I have had some trouble with Henry's teacher. It seems that she would like to diagnose him with some sort of developmental problem. The first week she let me know that he had trouble following directions. She was so concerned, I had to make an effort to listen seriously. She didn't tell me anything I didn't already know, but I apologized and let her know that we had the same problem at home. Then we were out of town. The next time I saw her  she was looking at me in a very strange way as I dropped Henry off. She seemed to be studying us and it didn't feel good. After school that day, she said that he had had trouble once again. Then spouted off some conclusions to her observations of Henry that day, her third day to spend with him. She said she thought there was "Something else going on with him." She asked what our pediatrician had said about him and mentioned that she thought he had a sensory issue because he had been distracted by a fan in the music room. 

  I couldn't get away from her fast enough. My head was spinning and my heart was pounding. She doesn't know that I have an early childhood degree and have taught preschool myself. I would never say these sorts of things to a parent in a conference, let alone over the door at pick up. In my classes, we were instructed to share observations but never conclusions that only a doctor should share. I knew the things she said were "Teacher Talk" for something serious like ADD or an Autism Spectrum Disorder. She had said the buzz words "something else going on" and "sensory" and she felt it was serious because she mentioned the pediatrician.

  Rather than act on my immediate feelings, I decided to give her time to get to know Henry. I know that he doesn't follow directions. I am his mother. However, I don't think that he has a diagnosable or treatable problem. I think he is a little boy who has his own ideas about everything. He gets frustrated with himself over the mistakes he makes, it's heartbreaking to watch. I think that 6 weeks is a good adjustment period, so I decided to give her 6 weeks to get to know Henry. If she is still telling me that he is a problem, then I will meet with the director. If he really is ruining this woman's day, she's probably ruining his, too and I would be happy to keep him home.

  I am reminded now of something that I realized early in our decision to homeschool. Even though Gavin is the Kindergartener this year, and I was thinking specifically of him when choosing to homeschool and more vaguely about the rest of our family, Henry is probably our true reason to homeschool. Gavin is the sort of kid who will do well in any situation. He would thrive in public school. I feared that Henry would have trouble and I was right. Here we are a few weeks into the year and his teacher is really concerned about him. If he had to face this for several years, he would begin to feel discouraged and feel like a failure. Especially, when he gets older and sees Gavin doing well in school. I think school would be ruined for him forever before he leaves early elementary.

  At home, I can teach him everything he would learn in school but without the stress of conforming to the standards of a classroom. He can study what interests him, he can take the time that he needs, he can feel his successes and have time to just be a little boy for a few more years. He knows just as much as Gavin knew last year, he loves the topics that we study and takes his new knowledge out into the world with him. For example, our second week we learned about the moon, ever since then he has been giving me his thoughts on the moon randomly when we are out. One night, when we were driving home, he said, "Mommy, I stinking about the moon." (Stinking = thinking, I can't bear to correct him because it's so stinking cute!) "I stink the moon comes out at night to give us light when the sun goes to the other side of the erst." (Earth) I love the way he thinks! 

  I hope that this teacher begins to notice the good in Henry. It would be so sad if she just pegged him as a problem and missed all the wonderful things about him. She thinks he has a sensory issue. I think he has a heightened awareness of the world around him. She thinks he can't follow directions, I've learned that he just wants to finish what he is doing or thinking before moving on to the next activity. Henry requires endless patience and love. Something that a preschool teacher should be able to give but, perhaps, only a parent can give.

  

  

Gender Reveal Party

   We hosted a Gender Reveal Party for our families when we found out that Everly was a girl. It was so much fun, I knew I wanted to do another one when we found out the gender of #4. When I had my boys we just casually told our families when we found out, Gender Reveal Parties were not yet "a thing." I had not heard of them until some time after I had my second son. Poor guys.  They turned out ok, I guess.

  I am seeing a new doctor for this pregnancy and he does not have imaging  equipment in his office. I am used to having monthly ultrasounds at the doctor's office. With my first three, I knew genders by 16 weeks. This time we had to wait until the 20 week anomaly scan at the imaging center. I felt like we might as well just find out at the birth, we waited so long.

  As soon as the ultrasound was scheduled, I began making plans for the party. Pinterest had good ideas but most were too over the top for me. For Everly's party, I made white cupcakes with pink candy in the middle. The idea was that when our guests bit into the cupcake, they would see the color and discover that the baby was a boy or girl. This was fine, except that a couple of the candies showed as the cupcakes were unwrapped giving a few of our guests a little advance notice.

 This time, I decided to try something different. I bought pink and blue balloons. One color was to be sabotaged with a pin after we found out the gender. At the party, our family members would choose a ballon according to their guess. At the same time, all would try to blow up the balloons. Only one color would work, revealing the gender of the baby. 

  The day before the ultrasound, I dragged my kids out shopping for party supplies. Pink and blue plates, cups, and napkins, and balloons and some streamers that I forgot to use. We also grabbed cupcake supplies and got busy making them as soon as we got home. 

  The night before the ultrasound, I could not sleep. I was super hungry and ended up eating three bowls of cereal over the course of the night. The baby was crazy and this was the first night that I had been kept awake by all the kicking and punching going on in there. I could tell that baby was already head down because of the movement I was feeling.

  Finally, the sun came up and I got the boys ready for preschool. Off they went and Everly and I headed to the imaging center. The only problem was, we were an hour early! Blast!! Why had I not scheduled it an hour sooner?! Naturally, we went to Starbucks to kill time. Everly was an absolute doll and played peek-a-boo with the barrista. 

  We started heading to the imaging center and got a call from Keith to pick him up, he was going to meet us there because of a meeting but had decided to skip it. We were still 30 minutes early when we got there :-/ we waited and waited and waited. 

  Finally, after two different waiting rooms, a now familiar ultrasound tech called us back to the exam room. I've never been so happy to pull up my shirt and have that gel rubbed on my belly! He asked if we were hoping for a boy or a girl and we lied that we would be happy either way. 

  The truth was, I was desperately hoping for a girl! Our boys are 16 months apart and though it was really hard when they were little, it is so wonderful now that they have each other to play with and I pray that they will forever be best buds. Everly and the new baby are going to be almost as close, 17 months apart, and I hoped, for her sake, that she could have a close sister as the boys have each other. However, I really thought it was a boy.

  We saw our baby on the screen. Perfect, beautiful baby! Hands and feet perfectly formed and the most adorable little baby face with an upturned nose! I watched, breathless. The tech got a shot of the baby's bottom and was measuring the umbilical cord. I looked closely. No sign of a penis! Instead, little lines that meant girl! Keith looked at me, I knew that he knew too and I smiled and winked at him. After showing us the blood flow through the umbilical cord, the tech zoomed in on the baby's bottom and circled the girl parts and announced "It looks like a little girl! See those lines? There's no question it's a girl." Keith and I high fived and I felt hot tears stream down my face.  I was so happy for Everly! God knew she needed a sister and he is giving her one!

  I can't believe how perfect this is! You can't plan these things. We have two boys close together and a space of three and a half years now we'll have two girls close together. It's a miracle! Especially, considering we had a conversation in April in which we discussed having another baby so Everly could have a close sibling like the boys. We both kind of wanted another baby but decided that we needed at least another year before having one because I was beginning to homeschool and we needed a bigger house and maybe a bigger car. I remembered the blur that was Henry's infancy and thought I couldn't do it again. God had other plans, and a few weeks later I was in the shower, crying in bewilderment over a positive pregnancy test.

  After the ultrasound, we went to lunch at a nice restaurant to celebrate. I couldn't shake the feeling of wonder. I was so excited for this baby and for our family. I imagined all the times that the boys would be doing Boy Scout stuff with Daddy while Mommy and the girls would do whatever the girls want to do. I imagined matching dresses for Easter and the dress up box they will share. I imagined the protection of older brothers as they grow into teenagers and young women. The value of the companionship that these little sisters will share through out their girlhood and into their womanhood.

  The rest of the day, I got busy preparing for the party that was coming that evening. I iced cupcakes and decorated them with a question mark on top, I poked holes in 20 blue balloons, got the kitchen ready for the party.

    Finally, it was time for the party. Family arrived and Keith teased everyone pretending to accidentally give hints about the gender. I passed out the balloons and for the most part, boys and men guessed boy and girls and women guessed girl. I explained that only one color would work and counted to three and everyone blew on their balloons. As the pink ones inflated, I heard squeals of joy from the grandmothers. The only damper on the moment was that we had to encourage Gavin and Henry to be happy for Everly to have a sister instead of being upset that they weren't getting the brother that they were hoping for.

  What joy! Now to come up with a name that is as pretty and unique as Everly and pick out colors for the nursery. 

Nature's Bounty

  About 5 years ago, my husband and I spent, rather, invested a couple hundred dollars building a raised garden bed in our backyard. We used railroad ties, brought in soil and compost, and built a lattice fence around it to keep the dogs out. The lattice fence was the most expensive part, chicken wire would have done the trick but I wanted it to be attractive. The lattice, however, cast big shadows on the garden when the sun was low and started to look terrible after about a year of weather so we ended up using chicken wire anyway.

  We are strictly recreational gardeners, not professionals. Nor are we experts by any means. Our favorite things to plant are tomatoes, peppers, cucumber, squash, green beans and okra. Our boys love to help in the garden, especially when it is time to harvest! Though growing our own vegetables has not turned them into vegetable lovers, it has encouraged them to taste vegetables that they wouldn't even touch otherwise. If nothing else, it has been a very rich educational experience for them. 

  Usually, we keep our garden alive until about the end of July. The last two years have seen record breaking high temperatures and drought. Almost every year, I have let the garden die because I didn't water while my husband was out of town. Oops! I don't love to trek out in the heat and drag a hose from one end of the yard to the other dodging dog poop, mosquitoes and flies the whole way. I love gardening in the spring, not so much in the summer.

  This year, has been wonderful! Very mild temperatures and lots of rain early on. It was our best tomato year ever! The tomato plants stopped producing at around the time we moved in July. I was a little sad to leave our garden, but I thought it was pretty much done anyway.  This was about the time every summer that our gardens fizzled out. Though we moved, we still own our old house and rent it to my grandmother. We got a call from her that we needed to come pick some tomatoes that were ripe on the vine before the squirrels got them all. Now, I really don't like squirrels eating my tomatoes because they waste most of the tomato as they are trying to eat it. Stick to the nuts bros!

  When she said we need to pick some tomatoes, I has no idea that she meant we needed to pick this many! 

Unfortunately, I am the only one in my house who likes to eat tomatoes. Though  I do love them, there is no way I could eat this many before they go bad so I did what any good farmer would do. I got online and searched for recipes! I made fresh salsa and spaghetti sauce. I plan to freeze the sauce in smaller portions to use as needed. If this ever happens again, I will try my luck with canning. I have never canned anything before and am too overwhelmed with my little life right now to experiment with a new skill.

The salsa recipe was pretty straight forward. Chop some stuff and mix it together. Voila. This was my first time to use a fresh jalapeño and I learned that my skin is sensitive to the juice. My hand burned in several places for about four hours after I chopped the pepper. Ouch! Turns out this is a fairly common problem.

  The spaghetti sauce was a much bigger undertaking. The first thing on the recipe's to do list was to peel the tomatoes. Excuse me? How the heck do you peel a tomato and is it really necessary? Surely, no one will notice a little tomato skin in their spaghetti. Well, I really didn't want to peel the tomatoes but I didn't feel comfortable skipping the step so I searched YouTube for a how to video. There were several. I picked the shortest one. Turns out, that it is necessary to peel when slow cooking a tomato because the skins don't break down like the rest of the tomato and you are left with some yucky stuff in your otherwise, yummy food. In the video I watched, the chef demonstrated scoring the tomato with a pairing knife then dropping it in boiling water. After about 30 seconds, he removed the tomato from the boiling water and placed it immediately into a bowl of ice water. He then picked it up and very easily removed the skin with his fingers. 

  I decided to give it a try. I boiled my tomatoes in two batches. The first batch, I scored first by slitting the top with a knife. The second batch I tried skipping that step. Lesson learned: score the tomatoes first. The tomatoes that had been scored came out of the water with a nice slit in the skin that ran all the way down one side. Most of these, I peeled the entire skin off in one piece by gently pinching it between two fingers. The ones that hadn't been scored had no such slit and I had to use a knife to get it started. After I peeled the tomatoes, I puréed them with an emersion blender that I bought for making baby food. Then I chopped some stuff and sautéed it all before combining everything in my crock pot to simmer for 4 hours.

The round bowl is full of skinned tomatoes. The rectangular bowl is full of the skins. Good thing I took the skins off because after they were cooked, they were thick and tough, yuck.

Peppers, carrots, onion and basil.

Everly waited patiently.

The finished product looks delish. Although, I think it will be necessary to purée the whole thing because it looks a little too vegetably for my crew. 

  Now I am tired and my kitchen is a disaster. I will probably continue to buy spaghetti sauce in a jar from the store but for today, I feel like a chef and my house smells like an Italian eatery. Basil anyone?

Fighting the Bullies, My Sons

  After a hectic day full of mommy frustrations, I experienced one of my darkest parenting moments to date. All day I had fought with the boys, particularly Henry (4), about every single basic routine that is in our day. Time to get dressed, time to go, time to clean, you name it, the boys refused to do it. We met Keith for a rushed dinner and I actually cried in the restaurant telling him about it. How am I supposed to raise these boys if they don't listen to me? 

  I will give you some background information for the story I am about to tell. Recently, Gavin and Henry have been playing with a new friend. This boy is closer to Gavin's age (5) and enjoys doing everything he can to exclude and put Henry down. Henry often comes to me crying about what is happening but he still wants to play. Henry has experienced the hurt feelings resulting from being treated this way and Gavin has experienced the social high of being associated with the "top dog."

  I do not blame this other boy for the behavior of my sons. Every time my boys try to give me a "but he..." excuse, I say, "You are in charge of you." I do think that this recent history is a part of the bigger story. Gavin and Henry have experienced new social behavior and were acting out this behavior in order to experiment socially, and to better understand new experiences and emotions. Or maybe they were just being bullies because they are mean boys.

  As parents, I think we always try to figure out where the negative behavior  our children display comes from. We don't want to believe that our children are really capable of being or doing [fill in the blank] on their own. We blame things like TV or too much sugar, or not enough sleep, or absent fathers, or friends who are bad influences. We hate to admit that our children are solely responsible for their misbehavior, especially if such misbehavior points to a perceived character flaw, or our own failures as parents. 

  Following the tear-filled spilling of frustrations over dinner, Keith went to fix a plumbing problem at our rent house while I took the boys to a park with a splash-pad. During our time there, Henry sat in time out twice. Once for spitting mouthfuls of water at another boy, and once for wandering out of the play area and ignoring my calls for him to come back. I decided that we would leave if he did anything else. I have a "Three strikes and you're out" policy. It's very reasonable. I would love to have a one strike policy but that would make me a tyrant.

  I quickly assessed a new family that had arrived. The adult was an older man who gave me the creeps, too much smiling. I wondered if he was there by himself but he appeared to be with a boy who was about 3. I watched Everly closely but glanced up at the rest of the splash pad frequently. At one point I heard crying and quickly looked at my boys. They were behind a water shooter and both looked happy. I went back to watching Everly until I heard more crying. When I looked again my boys were just as they had been, both aiming the water shooter and both happy. The boy who was crying was darting back and forth while my boys followed him with the stream of water. I wondered if he was actually laughing but then he just crouched on the ground and covered his head. All the while my two boys were together gleefully harassing him with the stream of water. The boy was trying to runaway but never ran far enough to get away from the water. After trying several different directions he was panicking. I frantically called for them to stop as the boy's grandpa (or whoever he was) laughingly went to pick him up.

   I called my boys to me. I couldn't believe what I had just seen. That little boy was in pure distress. I hoped that Gavin and Henry didn't realize what they were doing. I hoped that they had thought that the boy was playing with them. I hoped that they had not known that he was upset and continued to spray him. They walked over. Gavin was working up a serious face, Henry was working up an innocent face. I quizzed them about what happened.

"Were you spraying that boy?" 

"Yes." 

"Was he trying to run away?" 

"Yes." 

"Did he want you to stop?" 

"Yes." 

"Did you know he was crying?"

"Yes."

"And you sprayed him anyway?"

"Yes."

  

They knew exactly what they were doing. There was no mistake. "Get your things. We are leaving." I said through my teeth. "Get. Your. Things." Henry dawdled the whole way and I was fuming. I thought I was going to explode. I was saying to myself things like "Just you wait until we get to the car." And "I'm going to light their asses on fire." Light their asses on fire? Really? What was I saying? I wanted to spank them so hard that their little bottoms stung and burned. I have never said that before. I don't even know anyone who talks like that. Why was I thinking like that? I wanted them to cower and cry like they had made the little boy at the park cower and cry. I wanted to yell some sense into them and make them sorry because they didn't seem to be sorry.

  I buckled everyone in. I had to work really hard to control myself and not spank them. I knew that if I did it would be too harsh. I also knew that spanking them was the exact wrong way to teach them not to bully and hurt others. If I spanked them until they cried I would be doing to them what they had done to the poor boy. I knew that punishing them with a spanking would probably encourage more bullying in the future, because the next time they had an opportunity to be bigger and more powerful than another that they would try to use that power to hurt as they had been hurt. I said some stern words, got in the car, and turned on worship music. Really loud. I said "Lord, help me." Over and over again.

  How will I punish them? What can I do that will be serious enough? A time-out won't be severe enough and a spanking will do more harm than good. I looked back at them. They were serious. I said "Boys, that was very wrong to spray that boy even though he was crying and trying to get away. We need to have a serious consequence. When we get home, even though it's too early for bed, you are going to bed. You cannot play or do anything else when we get home. You will go straight to bed." "And get up after our time-out is over?" Gavin asked. "No. We will put jommies on and brush teeth and go to bed. It's an early bed time, you won't get up until morning." I replied. "Oh. Because we were so naughty?" He asked, and looked out the window. "Yes. That was very wrong to treat that boy the way you did."

  I texted Keith to let him know what was happening. I didn't want him to come back home and get them out of bed. When we pulled in the driveway, I noticed that the toys were still in the yard from earlier. Normally, I would have asked the boys to clean up, but I decided to keep this solemn and follow through to get them down quickly. I put them in the shower and was all business. I didn't let them play at all just soap and rinse and done. They were serious by now, the gravity of the situation was sinking in. After they got in bed they said they were hungry. I told them they had had a good dinner and needed to just go to bed now. I questioned myself about that but told myself that they had eaten well at dinner and would survive until morning.

  Everly and I played downstairs and Keith came home just as I was starting her bedtime. He had read my text. He was serious and didn't try to go in to see the boys. I was so relieved. In our house Daddy is Mr. Fun so he would have ruined things if he had gone in their room. He couldn't believe the story and was respectful of the way I had handled it. 

  I couldn't stop questioning myself. Had I done enough? Did the boys really understand? Was sending then to bed early an effective way to teach them not to bully others in the future? I was ashamed of myself too. I had raged against my boys. I cried myself to sleep as I wondered how to follow up on this in the morning. I had to talk with them about it some more. I had to make sure that they really understood.

  In the morning, I was still so sad. I wanted us to have a good day but first we had to take care of business. The idea of journaling came to me. I decided to have them journal by drawing pictures about what had happened. I made scrambled eggs and toast. After breakfast, I sent them out to jump on the trampoline. They already had energy to burn and I knew that the journaling would be more successful if they got their wiggles out first. When they were done, I called them to the table and told them what we were going to do. Neither one complained. Both were appropriately solemn and attended to the task.

  I took a piece of paper and folded it in half making two sections on each side. I wrote the journal prompts in each of the four sections and instructed them to draw the following pictures.

The first one was "What happened?" I gave no extra instructions. These pictures are Gavin's. Henry did well too but his work is not as clear as Gavin's so I am not showing it here. The words in black ink are Gavin's dictated captions.

"I was spraying a little boy and he was crying." Notice that he drew himself much larger that the other boy.

  The little boy felt sad.

"When I hurt others, I feel sad."

"I could make it better by hugging."

I left the lesson at that. I think they got it.

I will definitly be using this type of journaling in the future. I don't have to wonder if they understand because they represented each part perfectly through their drawings. If necessary, we can bring these out and look at them again. Unlike the night before, I felt closure after each boy drew their pictures and we were able to move on. I thanked God for giving me patience and wisdom.

  We went through our morning school routine and packed a lunch for the park and splash pad, a different one. "What's with the splash pads?" You ask? Well, they close after this week and I want to squeeze every last drop out of this summer that we possibly can. In a few weeks (or one week), when summer is fading and splash pads and pools are closed, I don't want to regret not taking full advantage of the summer and the fun of cool water.