Whingy Melt Down

Something has skipped a generation.

My Mum loves building houses and renovating.

My Dad loves building houses and renovating.

I.....don't.

I thought when we bought our own house and it was actually MINE I'd somehow find a passion for building and renovating. There's passion, passionate dislike! I don't like choosing colour schemes or fixtures (I did for all of about two months then the reality of budgets and actually having to commit to something changed that!), I don't like making decisions about it, and I passionately dislike, with the fire of 1000 suns, LIVING IN THE MIDST OF BUILDING. I can't count the number of times in the last six months that I have just wanted to turn tail and move back to our old house (no, be moved back to our old house - the only thing I dislike more than building is moving) and if it weren't for the whole "landlords throwing you out so you have to move"** I'd happily rent the rest of my life. People keep saying I'll like it when I start seeing things come together, well things are coming together and I feel relieved in the same way one may feel relieved when a very large hippopotamus stops sitting on your head. I wouldn't say I like it.

*sigh*

Thankfully, our very good God had the foresight to provide me with a husband who LIKES all this stuff and has strong feelings on colour schemes and fixtures - so I don't have to. I just have to put up with the building part for a little while longer!

Whingy melt down over, we now return you to your regularly scheduled blog reading.

** Just a side note, we kept getting evicted because landlords decided to liquidate their assets and sell the house we were living in, NOT because I didn't pay rent or had wild parties. Just thought I'd clarify

I realised it's been a fortnight or so since the last update, whoops! Life has been happening at a furious rate lately. Nothing major, just every day stuff being all consuming for a bit.

Erin:
has discovered her tidy gene since the beginning of Project Black Box. She pushed the boundaries on this one on the second or third night, fiddling around and playing and even getting MORE toys out when she had been given time to tidy up. We filled the box to the top PLUS 2 garbage bags of stuff going to charity - overflow goes to charity, no exceptions. The room was very sparse after that and there have only been a few nights where anything was left on the floor at bed time. She is slowly earning things out of the box by keeping things tidy and values her toys a lot more now! Handing her the responsibility has made me a lot happier and more relaxed and taught her far more than if I was still cleaning up for her.

Billy:
took a layer of skin of his nose and forehead this morning at playgroup and bit his tongue hard enough to make it bleed yesterday. It hasn't slowed him down much though! He seems to go non-stop until he sleeps these days. Since he was born really! Maybe even before that.... Anyway, I weighed him the other day and he still hasn't put on much (if any) weight since January's Great Gastro Adventure. But he is much happier and his stamina has picked up so I am just going to watch and wait now. A bit of training was/is warranted to deal with the grizzling, but we are making progress with that. I wish I was as consistent as Beloved where that type of thing is concerned. I have an awful habit of forgetting!

Christopher:
is going back to the Dr. soon because his back is a mass of excema. I am trying most of the natural remedies I know after the steroid cream not doing much (I need to get some coconut oil, flax seed oil and apple cider vinegar) but it is still progressing. It itches and he scratches himself bloody on the back of the neck the poor love, in spite of his nails being cut short. He is walking beautifully now (at last!) and his vocabulary is expanding, the favourite word still being Anna!

Anna:
is still gaining a pound a fortnight, sleeping 6-10 hours a night straight and being the most delightful little baby girl on the face of the earth! For some reason she thinks the diagonal pine on the wall next to her nappy change trolley is HILARIOUS! She coos and laughs at it every time I change her nappy, even if she was cranky a moment before hand. I have no idea what she sees in it, I think it is ugly, but she gets so much pleasure from it, it will almost be a shame to get rid of it.

The house:
now has a partially sealed floor in the front study! Beloved finished putting it in and put the first coat of sealant on it on Sunday. We just need to rewire the house then we can put the plaster up in the study and MOVE THE BOXES out of the living area!!!!! Yay! We will also be able to make a start on The Shed which is the next big project. Laundry got a little bit away from me with some days too hot and disorganised for me to get it out, in and folded away. I am getting back on top though fairly easily. I wish I was just one of these people who can naturally keep things tidy without seeming to even think about it, but I am not. My natural state is controlled chaos. With each child though, I have become more and more organised. I am hoping that by number 10 I will have myself sorted out!

Garden:
Do you know what I did this week? Weeded! I look forward to doing more of it, because believe me more needs to happen. I said to beloved that if anyone asks what I want for my birthday, to tell them I want mulch, compost or gravel. If I get anything else for inside the house I am libel to cry - especially if it needs to be stored or cleaned - but stuff for the garden will make me happy!


Jess

Book review

Head over to Weird, Unsocialised Homeschoolers to read a review of a book called "Wild Things: The art of raising boys". I haven't read this book but it looks great and 'Wild Things" describes my boys well!

Family Ministry

As part of our family ministry we have a prayer box. It is a small box with index cards in it. On each card there is something or someone we are praying for as a family. Each meal, we choose a card from the box and pray for the person, people or ministry on that card. We have our immediate family (the kids get a kick out of having their own name come up!), our extended family, friends, neighbours, communities, countries, missionaries, outreach projects and groups of people (we have just added those touched by the Victorian bushfires). This helps us remember (it is easy to forget to pray for those you don't see often or those who aren't in the headlines anymore) and gives us a powerful ministry. I don't know how many times I rang an old friend or family member because their name 'came up' and it turned out that they really DID need the prayers at that time! It also cultivates a love for others and a heart for mission work in the children.

For more tips head over to

....in moments of self pity....

I haven't actually been feeling self pity at the moment, but using the blog-sphere the Lord dropped a few people in my lap to pray for at the moment. The one that has stood out to me is Promise She now lives at Sarah's Covenant Homes in India, an organisation which specialises in caring for children with special needs in a family style environment. If you have a moment or need a reality check....

A new word....

Christopher: "uh-oh"

Words to strike fear into the heart of any mother.......

And we fell off the wagon...

I am so far off the wagon this week I can't even see it's dust!

It all started when Beloved bought home 4 chocolate chip buns. Now I could have said to myself "Oh, I will just give them to the kids seeing as I am 'under contract' at the moment" Or even "I will pop these in the freezer to bring out on Wednesday for afternoon tea" but do you know what I did? I ate them. All of them. Let's just say this is typical of the choices I made this week and my body would be completely within it's rights to sue me for breech of contract! So here I go, climbing on the wagon again, reminding myself of how good it feels once I'm doing it!

I'm recycling last weeks goals, which were perfectly obtainable....

Walk to the post office three times this week
Use my exercise videos three times this week
Take iron daily
Restrict yummy treats to Wednesday afternoon tea and Sabbath Meals
Snack only on raw fruit and veg
Drink at least 1.5L per day
Do Kegel Exercises twice a day

One challenge I am facing is the fact that Anna sleeps 6-10 hours a night now. "Challenge?" you snort, yes it's a challenge. You see I USED that time when she woke up early to do some jobs and work out. This morning she woke up at 7:30, ten minutes before the other kids. Alarm clocks don't work for me unless they wake up a child (yes, I've even tried setting them accross the room) so I will have to do some thinking on this one!

A Confession

Confession time.

I miss writing.

I'm not talking about the writing that I do on here or on stray bits of paper that get jammed into folders. I miss the REAL writing. The type that makes you sweat blood as you try and craft the words into something beautiful, something true.

It simply isn't something I can do at the moment.

That type of writing takes TIME.

You have to NOT think about it for an hour or so first, go for a walk, clean the bathroom, something. Then you have to pound the keyboard. After several hours of keyboard pounding, you find it. That state of being totally in the zone, words flowing, characters leaping off the page, mental images dancing in your mind. It sounds tranquil, but it isn't. Fingers fly, trying to get it all down. Your mind reaches out and grabs at the ideas, the words and characters that seem just out of reach. It is like pushing up that last Km up a mountain. Except then, you have to go back and trawl through it all to find the stuff that is really good, and after a day of work you think you have something. Then you go back the next day and nearly cry with frustration because the words on the page don't quite have the magic of the day before. So you go back, and you do it all again.

And I miss it, because I love it.

The same way a marathon runner would miss running I guess.

I wish there were four of me at least to do all the things that I want to do at the moment.

You see, being HAPPY makes me want to do things. Watching these little people develop and grow provides me with a million different moments of inspiration in a day. I could spend a few hours just writing about Anna's belly button (seriously, the swirl of her belly button is increadable! I spend ages gazing at it every day. It is sort of shaped like this: @. And Christopher's is like this: *.... No, I was talking about something else, one day I will do a special post about belly buttons another day).

Sleep, while nice, seems like such a waste of time at the moment. When they are awake I want to watch them and be with them. Drink them in and take pictures with my mind and be a Mummy. When they are asleep I want to DO. I want to clean, sew, write, blog, create, love, dance, sing, learn, teach......

But this pesky body has it's limitations.

I just hope this over abundance of creative energy has a long shelf life so I can still dip my hands in its quicksilver between rocking grandbabies one day and WRITE again.

A giggle.......

A man and woman had been married for more than 60 years.
They had shared everything. They had talked about everything.
They had kept no secrets from each other except that the little
old woman had a shoe box in the top of her closet that she had
cautioned her husband never to open or ask her about.

For all of these years, he had never thought about the box, but
one day the little old woman got very sick and the doctor said
She would not recover.
In trying to sort out their affairs, the little old man took
down the shoe box and took it to his wife's bedside.
She agreed that it was time that he should know what was
in the box. When he opened it, he found two crocheted dolls
and a stack of money totalling $95,000.
He asked her about the contents. 'When we were to be married,'
she said, 'my grandmother told me the secret of a happy marriage
was to never argue. She told me that if I ever got angry with you,
I should just keep quiet and crochet a doll.'
The little old man was so moved; he had to fight back tears. Only two
precious dolls were in the box. She had only been angry with him two
times in all those years of living and loving. He almost burst with
happiness.
'Honey,' he said, 'that explains the doll, but what about all of this money?
Where did it come from?'
'Oh,' she said, 'that's the money I made from selling the dolls.'


A Prayer.......
Dear Lord, I pray for Wisdom to understand my man;
Love to forgive him, and Patience for his moods.
Because Lord, if I pray for Strength,
I'll beat him to death, because I don't have time to crochet



I thank the Lord daily that He had the wisdom to give me a husband who has enough strength to withstand my moods, fads and foibles. I thank Him that Beloved is consistant when I waver. I thank Him that Beloved's strength allows me to be soft. I thank Him that Beloved is proud of my gifts and celebrates who I am.

And I also thank Him that the times of pure, unadulterated FRUSTRATION are significantly LESS now that we near the end of our first decade of marriage!! Thank-you Lord, that you know us better than ourselves and dragged us through the rough spots in our marriage (sometimes kicking and screaming!) because He knew He made us for each other. In giving me Beloved, He gave me a best friend, lover, confidante and support. He gave me my husband.

He Speaks......

Christopher: Nana, Nana, Nana, der's Nana!!!!

Translation: Anna, Anna, Anna, there's Anna!!!!





Seriously, Christopher.

He's been saying it non-stop for a few days now, every time he sees her.

I am soooo not ready for him to be this grown up!