Author: Becky

“Look, Mom!” Micah called. “We’re playing “Mommy and baby Davey’!”

Indeed, they were.

And then they switched and Mara was baby Davey. . .  I should have taken a picture of that!

Every day this past week someone in the family (myself included) has been sick. By week’s end, David was the only one still sick, which left three stir-crazy toddlers!

Micah is a constant stream of ideas. For the past several days he has been wearing an apron backwards all day, and answering only to Superman. “Mommy, I need you to FLY me!” He keeps saying. “Maybe we could go outside and the air could blow me up into the sky and I could fly! . . . Maybe I could be running and the wind would just WIND me up there!”

One night he says: “Mommy, maybe we can do something fun! Like go to Chick-Fil-A . . . . or go to the park . . . or build a tower . . . or set up the Christmas tree! Mommy, after naps, we’re going to go someplace! We’re going to go get some pizza, because I would really like pizza after naps!”

Now at dinner, he has two cups: “I’m going to mix my milk with my KoolAid!”
Mara steps in: “Micah, I’m clear! Don’t do it!”

Here’s Riss watching the rainy world go by outside (from our sick inside). Kind of representative of the week. She has her “banky” [blanky/blanket] and her “mocky” [milk/sippy]. I love the bare feet. 🙂

Oh, no, don’t let the rain come down. . . I might drown. . .

We saw these cute little flower and butterfly creations on the wall at Chick-Fil-A, so Mara and I made some together the other night while Micah and Daniel were watching a show.

Tonight she brought me this:

She wrote: “Dear Mommy, I {heart} U and I luv too doo projex wit you.”

At the bottom she drew a picture of “me and you making the butterfly and the flower together.”

I luv too doo projex wit her too!

We received a huge blessing this past weekend from freecycle!

I have been looking for some bookshelves to get three rooms more organized. I talked with my sister-in-law Sarah about it and she gave me some ideas for what to look for. I had just told Daniel that I’ve been looking on craigslist and freecycle for several months, not finding anything (that was either decent-quality or still available once I contacted the owner), thinking maybe we need to just go to IKEA and buy some. I actually prayed about it, because I really felt God could provide us bookshelves without IKEA if He wanted to but obviously sometimes He provides when we go to the store and buy what we need!

Well, on Thursday someone posted “2 desks, 3 bookshelves and a filing cabinet” on freecycle! and long story short, this is how God answered my prayers!

I wrote the lady about the bookshelves right away, thinking, “I’m sure they’re already taken.” (Such little faith! I had just asked God to provide these–and God could provide through freecycle if He chose!)

She sent pictures of the shelves & desk, which is kind of rare on freecycle, but so helpful in knowing whether you want to put out the time and effort to go pick something up. She and her husband had purchased the furniture eight years ago when they both were going to work from home. They no longer work from home and they needed to free up the space in their house.

The catch was they were giving preference to someone who would take “all or most of them together” since the furniture was matching. Almost without hesitating, Daniel agreed to do it. He said maybe we could use one desk and freecycle the other. I was a bit overwhelmed, still sick and feeling so weary, thinking of having all that furniture to deal with. (God, I only asked for bookshelves! 😉

Then as we stood there looking at the maze of furniture that was in our living room, we realized with homeschooling just around the corner, these quality 8-year-old “L”-shaped desks could be God providing for another need before we even asked! This could even solve the current daily situation with Mara and Micah coloring, drawing, doing “school” on the dining room table, while I’m preparing for lunch & dinner; this would give them a designated place just around the corner for these activities while I do meal prep!

Daniel was a huge help this weekend. We went through a couple different plans for how to set things up before we finally decided on the current arrangement. Then there was lots of moving furniture, sweeping/dusting, moving things in the basement, vacuuming. . . even that made me happy!

The people who gave us the furniture do have cats though, so for a couple of days Daniel, Carissa & I have been sneezing and our eyes have been itching like crazy. But I’m wiping everything down with a wet cloth, so hopefully that will remove most of the cat dander.

Without going into too much detail (or maybe I already have?!), we now have two matching desks, 3 bookshelves & a filing cabinet set up in the living room. The “L” parts (of both desks) are in the basement for when we need more desk space in the near future. We moved the bookshelves that we had in the living room to other rooms. And Daniel organized all his books on the shelves, so now they are set up the way he likes them.

The filing cabinet is meeting another need (once again, something that I didn’t ask for): helping me organize & file our paperwork! I used to be good at paperwork–when I was in the workforce, but here at home, I’m really slack. God knew my need, and I didn’t even ask!

We are getting a bunch of stuff cleaned and organized! There is still sooo much more work to do around here (trying not to think about that tonight!), but I can’t express how encouraged I was, first, that God provided as the Bible says, “exceeding abundantly above all we could ask or think!” and second, that we were able to re-organize the living room desks and shelves and get started organizing other rooms too.

Thank you, Lord, for providing more than what we asked!

For several weeks (months actually) I’ve been trying to get back into blogging.Trouble is: I’m a perfectionist and at this stage of life, I really don’t have time for perfectionist posting.

Since one of the main goals of this blog is to journal our family life, I’ve decided I need to start writing a quick post each day, and just hit a few highlights even if it’s a little “stream-of-consciousness” and I don’t have time to go back through and proof it or add (or edit) pictures beforehand.
So if my posts seem a little sloppier, well, they may be! 🙂 And for Facebook friends, my Daily Post might seem like all my status updates strung together. (That might be the best I can do some days!)

I’m telling my perfectionist alter-ego that ultimately I would rather have some memories of “life with littles”–even if there are a few misspellings and only pictures once a week–than no memories at all.

Here’s the latest for today:

We have all been sick. Micah is mostly recovered; Mara seems to be recovering but still low energy; my throat doesn’t hurt whenever I swallow now (1st time since Wed/Thurs); Carissa still has 101-fever; she is coughing in bed right now; and Daniel & David seem to have successfully avoided catching the bug! It has been a challenging week for me. With a sore throat and almost no voice, I’ve wanted to say nothing all day. But my kids don’t respond well to charades, so I have had to use words, which kills. Today finally things are looking up!

Carissa has been very conscious of her diapers lately. She will say “Poop! Poop!” before she goes in her diaper, and she will tell me “Diaper! Diaper!” when she needs to be changed. Sometimes she will say “go potty,” and I have sat her on the potty a couple of times with no result. Well, today she was very very insistent saying “Go potty! Go potty!” and when I said, “I’ll change your diaper,” she shook her head and gave a frustrated little growl as if I wasn’t understanding her. So I set her on the potty and went to nurse David. Next thing I knew she walked over to me, and when I looked in the potty, I saw she had definitely needed to go! And I was especially proud of her for keeping it IN the potty! YAY! She got lots of hugs and a special treat for that! This was her first real potty-success! and, no, I’m not “potty training” her–but hey, if she knows she needs to go and insists that, I’m okay with it!

Funny of the day:

I told the kids I didn’t like one song on Starfall.com (kids’ edu site).
Mara: “Why don’t you like it, Mommy?”
Me: “It just sounds like you’re smoking something.” In hindsight I wouldn’t recommend saying that to preschoolers.
Now when Mara is doing Starfall, she says, “Mommy, we’re smoking something!” and then whispers to Mic, “C’mon, Micah! Let’s smoke something again.”

David had a check-up on Saturday. Technically it was his one-month check-up, but he will be 7 weeks old on Tuesday. He weighed 12 lbs., 4 ozs. He has gained 4 lbs, 2 ozs., in 6-1/2 weeks! It is so nice to have such a healthy boy! I call him my “big boy,” since Micah was about 1/2 his size.

I haven’t yet forced myself to get rid of his newborn clothes, but with a consignment sale around the corner, maybe that will motivate me! I need to at least get them out of his drawer because he’s already fitting in some 3-6 month! His pregnancy felt like eternity but wow, his first few weeks have just flown by!

And for the sentimental-milestone moment of the day:

Tonight our “baby” moved out of our bedroom and into the room that he and Micah will share for years to come. . . Next thing you know, he’ll be graduating from kindergarten . . . and then the empty nest. . . . I told Daniel, “The baby stage is over!” Of course Daniel said ‘when he’s out of diapers and feeding himself, then we’ll say the baby stage is over.’

I guess I was thinking the “newborn stage” is over. . .

. . . which is what made me think I’d better start blogging again so I can remember it.