Bathing optional.

Are you willing to jump off God's cliffs?

I define bravery as the willingness to trust God with your life.  Not just an ability to squash the fear that rises up before you do something you've never done or never expected to do or think.  I never would have expected that I would not work outside the home for 6 YEARS.  I never dreamed that I would have 4 kids. I never would have said I was someone who works well with small children.  But God does not call the equipped. He equips the called. And the ONLY reason that I find that I can DO THIS, is because of God.

I have wrestled with God. I have wrestled with God. 

And I have come away every time schooled -- like Jacob -- that God will always win.  

Not in this resigned and settled way but because he HAS to win, to save my soul, today, tomorrow, and the next day.  God has given me this assignment for the august purpose of healing me. I have tried to run the other way from God, like Jonah.  I am quick to anger, never slow.  I need to stem my impetuousness, like Peter.  And yet God has trusted ME to raise these 4 little kids. And he has placed ME at the center of their lives, every, single, day.  Wanting me to teach them the character qualities that so often, I doubt I myself have with any consistency: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control.   Sometimes I wish he would have given me any easier task, like climbing a mountain, but no He's called me to be at home with these four kids.

And so each day I jump off God's cliff and hope that today I will respond to the days' events the way God wants me to.  Knowing that only His working inside of me is enabling me to have even the hope of doing that.

I do not do the things I want to do.  I do the things that I am primed to do.  

I want so much to be brave.  If not for me, for them.

So let this be my testimony Lord that, by God, I am trying.

Just another Manic Monday

Monday mornings are simply painful at our house.  I think it is because we are so LAZY on Saturdays and Sundays.  And then Monday morning crashes in.  Lana and Theo both go to pre-school on Monday mornings so there's a lot of running and dashing around to get dressed.  I wish I always had their bags pre-packed the night before but usually not.  The twins wake up at 7am and want to have something to eat and lately are crawling all over the place.  Generally Monday morning is chaos.

For example.

Theo comes down stairs and strips off his diaper.  He's potty training. Himself.  No I'm serious.  I really would rather he keep the diaper on his rump but off it comes. And then he's running around screaming.

I'M NAKED!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!

He usually likes to run a full circuit of the first floor.  He goes around the furniture in the living room then careens through the foyer and into the dining room then into the kitchen, then into the pantry.  The entire time, he very loudly exclaims his bare-bottom-ness.

Lana comes down stairs next (usually).  Lana is a bit like me.  Well a bit like me BEFORE I had children that catapult me out of bed.  She would rather not be bothered for 10 or 15 minutes when she wakes up.  So usually she tries to wake up and then hangs out in her room until she's ready to face all of us.  On days that she doesn't do this...

Lana: Theo STOP screaming! Are you CRAZY! I'm SERIOUS.  BE QUIET!!!

Cue Theo to run by screaming his head off.  Oh! He has to PEE!!!

Theo: I HAVE TO PEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!

Lana: Theo! Shut your MOUTH!

Theo:  I need the POOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOTTTTTY!!!!!!!!

Me -- Eyes still closed, shuffling to the kitchen and to go make coffee espresso.

Theo: I MADE A PEEE PEEEE!!!!!  I GET AN M&M!!!!!

Oh did I mention that Theo likes to drip like 5 drops of pee in the potty?  Since he figured out that he gets ONE M&M for peeing he likes to maximize his profit.    He then "goes peepee" like 20 times in the space of 10 minutes. My little economist.

Lana: Can I have an M&M too?  I was helping him to get the potty!?  I opened the bathroom door.

Me: unhg? 

Theo&Lana: Make a pee pee! M&M!!!

Now all the racket has woken the twins who add to the noise level.

Zeke: "RAh! Rah! Rah!"

Amani: MMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMMoooommmmmmmmmyyyyy!?

Dear God what TIME is it?

6:50am

I want my coffee. Pout.

Good friends help

So this is a blog I've been meaning to post since December.  Forgive me for letting it slide.

Friends. I used to think I was someone who had a lot of friends.  Now I realize that I'm not.  I'm someone who has a lot of family and some of them are related to me.

We were truly sad to find out in December that we were not going to be able to go home to the US for Christmas. We are in the middle of adopting our twin boys, Zeke and Amani and although we'd submitted our paperwork to the embassy for review at the beginning of December, it seemed that the 'plan' of the office workers was to go on vacation and get to it, oh, never.  Me being who I am... I was understandably frustrated.  Or in layman's terms PISSED OFF.  So we weren't going home for Christmas.  We were. STUCK. IN. KENYA.

fine. Fine. FINE.

So not fine.  But I had had this thought. That it would be really fun to be stuck in Kenya IF I had someone fun to be stuck with.

So Neil and I called the Giles Family in Turkey and convinced them that the best way to spend Christmas was...

WITH US!

And thankfully they agreed with our obviously unshakeable logic.

This is Theo and Clara obviously in it to win it in the dirt.  LOVE the African Wildlife in the background.

 Jamie and Marie on horseback.

James and Elise.

So I just wanted to say that we had THE BEST CHRISTMAS EVER! I will remember this Christmas for as long as I live. 

Although my FAVORITE memory will have to be.  Neil, James, Jamie and I gathered around a picnic bench having dinner at the cabin we rented near Lake Naivasha.  Neil (as usual) was engaging all of us in a story which he ends with...

"and there's a HIPPO right THERE!"  Pointing behind Jamie and I.  James, Jamie, and I whip our heads around to see a HUGE HIPPO perhaps 100 feet away from us.   Ambling up the side of the property on its way to dinner. 

I have NEVER seen James move so fast, who virtually VAULTED from the picnic bench to the back porch.  Jamie was not far behind and I honestly couldn't tell you where Neil was in all of this.  For some reason I felt it more important to focus on gathering up some dishes before rushing to the back deck. 

We had made pork chops.  And I liked them.  I don't know, I guess I didn't want to tempt the Hippo to come explore our leftovers.

I wasn't thinking clearly. OK?

Still makes me giggle just reflecting on it.  Probably always will.  Anyways, I love my extended family.  They are some good people.

Today we got news that the US Embassy has approved our adoption. 

They probably set an efficiency record on this one.



Parenthood

Is exhausting.   Rewarding and incredible but truly exhausting.  Anyone that tells you otherwise is not parenting or has the advantage of at least a few years away from having really been in the trenches. 

So when you have those days when you are snapping at kids and frustrated at even the smallest infraction.  Give yourself a break.  You have the hardest and the arguably the most important job on the planet.  These little hooligans futures as well as the future of how they impact civilization depends not on your performance this minute or even necessarily this day but over the months and years you parent them.
So when I'm having a rough patch I figure I need to teach these kids that we all have off days.  Days when we'd rather not do what we should do.  Days when I'd rather be selfish and not selfless.  Days when I'd rather just not wake up.  And how I parent on those days greatly impacts how my kids act when they are tired or hungry, or when they are managing an emotion bigger than they know what to do with, like anger.

Lana has emotions bigger than she knows how to manage. So at 3 and a half we do a lot of naming.  What emotion am I feeling.  Why? What can I do to truthfully let this emotion exist without hurting someone else?  I don't think there's anything wrong with being pissed off at someone.  As long as you can be angry and not hurt someone there's no reason they shouldn't know you're mad and why.  Then it's up to them to tell you how they feel and what they think of your feeling.

Lana often gets mad at Theo and just resorts to screaming and whining.  She just breaks down instead of actually being able to productively say anything that could make the situation better.

So we practice.  If you're angry.  Say ----I'M ANGRY!-----

And say why ---YOU BROKE MY PILLOW FORT!  I WORKED ON THIS HARD!---

Theo is a bit flighty.  It's not that he doesn't *care* it's that he's careless. Does that make sense?  So often if Lana can get him to focus AND she can speak clearly. He'll often see what he's done that isn't acceptable and even tell her he's sorry.  Pretty remarkable for a two-year old, I think.

Amani and Zeke are just oblivious.  They are 14 months going on space-cadets.  They'll grab your hair, pinch you, and smack you with a matchbox car with no awareness that it hurts.  I'm trying to get the concept of --pain-- to sink in with them.  Gentle is a nice thought but a far-away dream at this point.   And Theo's response to intrusion (on something he's focused on) and certainly to (in his opinion) an attack is to throw-down some big-brother butt-kicking.

All to say I have a day-full of conflict resolutions from the second I wake up.  And when I'm not on my game let's just say the day goes rocky.  If not fully careening off a cliff.

It's on those days.  We watch TV.  There. I said it.  Sometimes we just eat popcorn for lunch.  And if I'm really lazy. We might have popcorn for lunch and ice cream for dinner. 

The point is --- they are good kids and taking down my standards on days when I'm not up to meeting mine--- is better for everyone.

And then there's tomorrow to be Supermom.