Refresh. Regrow. Renew.

Little boy blue, stop blasting that horn

When is multi-tasking too much?

Making the kids a PB&J, putting dishes in the dishwasher, taking out the trash while singing songs to encourage them to be calm and eat.

Watching a movie, reading a book and drawing a picture.

Wiping tushies, blowing boogers into separate tissue (I hope?), keeping kids from stepping in the poop on the floor while watching the other throw up.
All of those seem perfectly rational to me.

But what if someone was to eat Dove's Ultimate Chocolate Ice Cream, take a shower, while planning this blog.

Hmmm . . . . maybe a bit much. Although I am sure that the exercise of washing hair and reaching for the ice cream was more then enough to burn off the calories of the happy shower treat. Opps! Did I mention the brownie?

"I can't wait for you to meet Revered Thomas. Have you accepted Christ as your personal
savior?" (Starr)
I considered telling her that we hung our gods from trees, but thought better of it. (Astrid)

This struck me funny last night because it was probably something that I would have said to a Christian when I was an agnostic.

I feel like writing but empty of words at the same time. There seems to be so much I want to say but I can't. So I will start with the trivial. I spent the day creating a new yahoo 360 profile which was fun and cheered me up a bit. It took most of the day due to annoyingly sweet interruptions. Tiffany has been making cards for her previous teacher complete with words and pictures. It is so sweet but I am more impressed that she sits in her room during nap and writes words by herself which are fairly close to correct. She was interrupting me while working on my 360 today just to show me her cards but it was so cute that I wanted to cry instead of yell. I will have to bring her to her old teacher for a visit before school starts.

My sweet hubby was a bit of an ass last night. Yesterday, I was at the store and called him up to see if he needed anything. No he is fine and should actually be home in time for dinner, maybe. So I decide to cook something instead of leftovers. He comes home, says he is starving so I make him a plate and set it at the table with everyone else. I let him know that dinner is ready and he feels compelled to work on the computer instead even though it is unimportant and can wait until this weekend. I could tell his mood so I let him be. Instead I eat dinner alone with the kids again, listening to Tiffany ask why Daddy isn't sitting with us and how much she misses him. Does he even get it? Maybe I should go out and buy a iron skillet and hit him upside his head. I honestly don't think he realizes how something simple like eating dinner with us can be so important but hopefully this weekend I can help him understand with love, patience and an iron skillet if necessary.

What an interesting week I have had! This year our church's vacation bible school theme was Velocity-the speed at which something moves. We made humorous references to our children with that theme but it was intended to refer to the speed at which God moves through our life when we accept him into our heart. I was blessed with a group of enthusiastic three year olds. Notice the careful phrasing of that statement. Blessed is accurate because I truly loved having these kids but enthusiastic barely covers their personality. They were rambunctious, unintelligible children who peed on the floor, hit their friends, picked their noses and put boogers in their friends food. I have truly learned my lesson and next year I will volunteer in an older age group. On the upside, my kids loved it and wanted to keep going. I would see them when we met up for kids church and would watch them singing and dancing with everyone else. We are still singing all the songs we learned this past week.

Naturally when Saturday came around I was really looking forward to sleeping in since I had to be up at 5:30 all week for VBS. So when I woke up at 5:00 I was more than a little irritated. I tried for thirty minutes to get back to sleep but I kept thinking about coffee so I gave in, got up, drank my cup of coffee and cleaned out part of the garage. That was really far more fun than sleeping and I might start doing it everyday. But first I should check myself into the pysch ward for evaluation because that would be crazy. Even for me. I spent the rest of the morning cleaning, reading and entertaining my kids. That afternoon, Tiffany and I had some girls time together as we searched for the perfect backpack and lunchbox for school. Five stores and one restaurant later after looking through the mall her royal heiness finally found what she wanted, a Tinkerbell backpack with wheels and a matching heart lunchbox. It was really cute and she wanted to take it with her to Lake Jackson the following morning but I finally talked her down explaining how Tinkerbell might fly away if we use the backpack for anything other than school. I really don't have a problem lying to my children when it serves my interest, I only hope I am not discovered since I am teaching her how lying makes God angry not to mention me. (sheepish smile) I am glad that she found what she wanted but that really pushed me over the edge and I was glad to be home so I could watch our new cable service that was being installed while we were gone. Oops! The cable guy was still here . . . until 1030! I was so tired by then that I crawled into Tiffany's twin bed and slept with her, while hubby and the cable guy worked out a couple of kinks. He is coming back today to finish, I hope!

Tim's cousin Jennifer invited us to her daughter's fourth birthday yesterday in Lake Jackson and we had a wonderful time. It was a Fancy Nancy party so Tiffany got to dress up and have make-up applied with her cousins and friends. The Bouncy Bus also came to visit. It was an old school bus and inside was a zip cord that ends in a swimming pool of cushy blocks; there were tunnels, a small trampoline and many other things to climb on, through and under. It was really neat and a great party idea. While all this was going on, I was able to visit with Tim's aunts. I have always loved his aunts because they are so nice and have a kind of southern traditional manner about them. Its like stepping back in time a bit with their devotion to the Eastern Star, their display cases full of family treasures and pictures and their bold conversational skills. These women are not shy about speaking out when they feel it is necessary. There was recently a situation where a family member . . . umm. . . secretly did something that the aunts found out about which offended them greatly and the shit hit the fan. To further prove my point, one of his aunts pulled me aside at the party and asked me if there was something I wanted to tell her. Perplexed and a bit nervous, I said no. Then she patted my tummy and said, 'are you sure'. That confirmed my suspicions that I have in fact gained weight. When I told her that I wasn't pregnant, she referred to how quickly I showed with Benjamin and she wanted to be sure. Even in that moment, I loved how she spoke so bold and lovingly to me, it was really hard to be offended. Although, I am now really bothered about my tummy and wonder if I sanitize scissors, needles and thread that perhaps I can perform my own tummy tuck . Hmmm. . . no I will just eat some salty french fries and chocolate cake. That always makes me feel better. If only all of life's problems could be fixed so easily.

It has been a blue week for me. What a wonderful milestone for parents using a potty can be but all I see is that my baby is gone and instead I have this wonderful little man. I wasn't ready for this. He was supposed to potty-train after I was pregnant so I wouldn't realize that I was losing my baby. Benny's urge for diaper Independence has definitely taken its toll on me but as the Beatles say, La La La La Life goes on. It probably doesn't help that I have had PMS all week either and today Aunt Flow paid me her monthly visit which I am sure also helped my mood. I never really liked her very much and I wish she would leave. Perhaps a week of taking care of three year olds will help cure my baby fever. Probably not, but this week will certainly be distracting until my mood lifts me back up. Until then, tread lightly so as not to anger the beast within.

Last weekend at church, we had a wonderful guest speaker (via video) by the name of Craig Groeschel. He is the pastor of LifeChurch.tv, an online church and at first I really wasn't all that impressed by him. I figured he was going to be boring and preachy but he turned out to be interesting and funny.

Our pastor talked for a bit and then they started the video about seven minutes into it. For me it was a great place to start because Groeschel was interviewing New Yorkers about whether Christians were a unified group or divided. They all pretty much said that we were divided which is something that I also have seen and something that has always troubled me. It is part of the reason I chose to be agnostic in the first place and why I resisted God's call for so long. Why would anyone want to be a part of something that couldn't stand together and argued so much? But how do you unify something so complex as Christianity? There are so many different theories, belief systems, traditions that I don't think we as Christians can truly unite. I love what the cowboy from the interviews said, "you either believe that Jesus is God and we are subservient to him or you believe that the story of Christ is the story of ourselves-we are the son of God and we live as the son of God." It sums of church division rather well, for me anyway.

Groeschel goes on to discuss church unity basically saying that we as Christians may not believe the same things, sing the same songs or have the same traditions but if we can stop fighting with each other and stand together, we would have a better chance of showing people who we are and what we believe. I absolutely agree with him and love this message, although I have to admit that he got a little melodramatic towards the end for my taste but I loved it none the less. Just click on One Prayer if you would like to see it for yourself, but be sure to give me your opinion on it after you watch it.

I just jumped back in time. I went back to my hoochie days of wearing cut offs, shirts barely covering my breasts and of course barefoot, fortunately I could pull it off back then because I was a tooth pick with perky breasts. My friend Jenny and I were singing, 'We like the cars, the cars that go boom, we're Jenny and Kathy and we like the boom.' I would dance like the girls in the video. I wonder what I would look like now with my post pregnancy tummy sticking out over the cutoffs that would have to remain unzipped in order to get them on, my breasts dragging my 'barely-covers-breast' shirt to my knees and me trying to dance sexy. Hmmm . . . Scary! But not as scary as watching the video twenty years later. Watch at your own risk!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaeNelsAOGo

It wasn't the weekend I had envisioned for us. I saw us staying on the beach in a nearby hotel watching the children play in the waves, helping the kids make sand castles and sleeping late. I love my fantasy world. But it was good overall, sort of.

Friday started out good. I took the kids to Hobby Lobby to get materials for a Fourth of July craft we were doing later that evening, but something greatly surprised me as I walked through the store. It seemed as though I had traveled ahead through time because I was completely surrounded with Christmas. There was hardly any Fourth of July craft material but there were pumpkins and ornaments. What in the world is going on? Its July! I don't want to think about Christmas yet! It is my favorite time of the year but only when it is that time of the year. I left wondering what would happen to those people who go all out for Christmas. You know the ones I'm talking about. They have to get new decorations that outshine the neighbors houses and have it done by the time Thanksgiving dinner is finished. You know . . . people like me.

After nap, the kids and I make wind socks which turned out really good. Tim and I have our usual unsolvable fight which is always entertaining to say the least, we ate dinner and shot off some fireworks in our street. We almost went to the firework show in town but we weren't sure if the kids were ready for that and we turned out to be right. After the the second loud boom, Benny was crying for his bed. So ends Fourth of July.

They were scared at first, then wanted to help, then were scared again.

Throwing Snappers.

Picture of a crazed zombie standing under our craft from earlier.

Nothing too exciting on Saturday happened. Tiffany and I had some girls time together and Tim and I went on a date.

Sunday was much more interesting though. We went to church in the morning and I was blown away at the speaker. Even now I keep thinking about everything he had to say. But I will talk more about him later. After church, we played out of control shopping cart while Tim looked at entertainment centers. Then home, nap and now here comes the highlight of our weekend. We are about to go swimming, so I tell the kids to clean up while I get dressed. Next thing we know, Ben is crying and Tiffany has run to her room slamming the door. Tim stays with Ben and I attend to our sweet, gentle princess. Yeah, right! She begins by telling me it was an accident and Ben wasn't obeying me. Suspicion creeps into my mind. She apparently hit Benny because he wasn't obeying me and it was an accident. I told her to stay in her room and I would be right back. Of course we believe that she is lying so Tim talks to her and she finally admits that she punched her brother in the face and then lied about it. We had a long talk with her and discussed punishments, hitting and lying. She is only four so how is it that we are having these serious conversations already. I am so frustrated with her for hitting him but at the same time it is such a ludicrous idea that I almost want to laugh.

Happy Fourth of July!

I told the kids yesterday that they needed to play so I could clean something when in fact my only desire was to play on my computer. When I heard Tiffany talking I wandered out to find her reading a new book, Flat Stanley, to her brother. Naturally, I jumped for my camera for a sneaky shot to help me always remember these wonderful, bright moments.

I felt crying. It surprises me that Thomas the Train could make me want to cry but he did today. Benjamin has been using the potty this week so today I bought him some Thomas underwear. It didn't happen at the store. It didn't happen when I brought them into the house. It happened while pulling them out of the package and holding them up for their examination which they passed. In that moment I realized that my little boy is growing up and I can't stop it. Why can't I stop it? I know that he has to grow up but it surprised me that has. He does love his new undies and I expect that I will be washing them multiple times this week since we are only experimenting for now. We will see how he does.

God's presence has felt stronger in my life lately as if He feels there is something to address. I can hear him saying, "you are doing a wonderful job with the tasks I have laid before, but I believe that it is time for a challenge."

Things have been good lately. Both the kids have been playing wonderfully together, hubby and I are good too, we just got new furniture and I am making new friends. I was actually just telling a friend how much Tiffany's behavior has improved and gave her the 'things will get easier' speech since things have been going so well for us.

That's when God likes to stir things up a bit.

Tiffany had some horrible tantrums this week resulting in me dragging her to the bedroom where she cries and screams for an hour hoping I will cave but sadly for her that won't happen. Benny has also started challenging my authority and screaming at me which has resulted in spankings. I know many people feel that spankings are ineffective, cruel and the parents inability to use alternative disciplinary methods but they work well for my family and is always used as a last measure of discipline. They are also fighting with each other, hurting each other feelings and crying the majority of our time at home. This makes for a cranky, irritable mommy who ends up stuffing loads of chocolate in her mouth hoping for a temporary fix but only gets larger thighs.

It only gets more interesting.

My dog Daphne has breathing difficulties due to her weight which the vet said was morbidly obese. She just had a check up and instead of losing weight she has gained four pounds. They also discovered a new problem; she is having difficulty emptying her anal sacs (which caused a certain amount of childish laughter when I thought she said something else). So she is now on three different medications twice daily, eating expensive food and needs her anal sacs emptied once a month. The problem with the expensive food is that because of the price, my other dog Micah has to stick to the old stuff so they cannot eat together anymore which is problematic because Micah and Daphne have this love/hate/fight routine with their dog food which is the only way Micah will eat. Now I have to use the expensive wet food to train them to eat apart. Thinking about all this makes my head swell.

Wouldn't it be great if I could be pregnant trying not to throw up while emptying poop from my dog, screaming at the kids not to fight, trying to visit with my friends, popping pills down the dogs throat, dragging kids to their rooms, making sure the dogs eat the right food, blogging, throwing cats off our new couch and trying to maintain my sanity all in the same day. Sounds like fun, I can't wait!