What Will Become of Me?

This post was originally written on September 3rd, 2014 and was saved as a draft and never published for reasons I can no longer recall! I just came across it and felt I should publish it so here it is. :o)

Right now, as I sip coffee and type away on my front porch, I am undisturbed. The normal sounds of little feet trudging down the stairs and little hands opening the front door are absent. If I feel the need, I can go inside and use the bathroom without having to lock anyone out. You see, today is the first day that all four of my children are in school full time. Today is the first time in nine years that I don't have a little one at home (or two) to take care of and drag around town with me. Today is the first day of a new chapter in my life, and I can't help but wondering......

.....what will become of me? Even now I keep thinking that I should speed this up so I might have a chance of finishing this paragraph before she wakes up. Then I have to remind myself that she's already up....and gone! I don't have to worry about fitting what I need to do in the couple of hours available between meals. Hell, I can skip lunch altogether if I want to! The joy! I don't have to stress over whether or not she is going to run out of the yard the moment I turn my back. The relief! I don't even have to answer countless questions over, and over, and over again all .....day.....long. The rapture!

(Yes, I love my kids and I am already missing that little peanut. Is that clear? Let's move on then.)

Now that my schedule is finally my own (between the hours of 7am-5pm anyway), I find myself at a little bit of a loss as to what to do with it. Of course there are the obvious things that must get done like housework, grocery shopping, basic hygiene...., but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about me. My life. My purpose. What I was put here on Earth to do outside of my familial obligations. What is it?

I was hoping I'd have that figured out by now, but I don't. If you know me, then you know I'm a planner and not having a legit plan is rather troubling. I have spent the last nine years planning out, mulling over, and executing what I believed to be the best options for my four children. In those years, there were few times where I truly did the same for myself. My time was all but consumed with them, at no fault of their own, and that was OK. I wouldn't change that for anything even if I could. Now that their need for me and my time has changed significantly, I have to completely refocus my time and energy during the day and I'm realizing that that might be a tougher task than I'd originally thought. Perhaps the significant drop in interruptions will help bring around some clarity. Right now, so many ideas and half contemplated possibilities are flying around in my head that I can barely focus on what I'm typing. I feel like a Choose Your Own Adventure book at a seemingly mundane but secretly pivotal point. Where do I go from here? Which heart cry do I give heed to? How do I know which move is the best one?

The one thing I am sure of is that I need to give myself some grace and some time to adjust to this new normal. I need to allow my head to clear and fully embrace this new season. I need to trust that God will reveal what I need, when I need it, and not a moment before. I need to stop trying to see the final outcome, and focus on only what is right in front of me. As of right now, that is everything.

Great Idea! Part 1

I'm starting a series that will show up intermittently on this blog. I shall call it: 

Great Idea!

It has a certain ring to it, don't you think? :O) The purpose is to share some great ideas (hence the name) that I discover to hopefully benefit others as well. Sometimes they'll be my ideas, sometimes they'll be someone else's. I'll give credit to whomever I got the idea from, of course, so if you have one to share, send it my way! Here we go!

Great Idea! Part 1

Back when I was cloth diapering my girls (Yes, I quit. No, I don't want to hear your opinion on that.), I came up with a way to help with all the #2 without having to use multiple cloth wipes to do so (or disposables for that matter). Now that I'm back to disposable diapers for my last child, I still find this extremely useful and so I will share it with you!

Behold!

Isn't that beautiful?!? Well, maybe that's a stretch but it has proven very useful when the doodoo arrives. With cloth diapers it's obviously helpful as the toilet paper is flush-able so, when possible, you can shake the solids along with the tp right into the toilet and flush. Voila! With disposables it is the same concept, however, I've found that a lot of people who use disposables just wrap up the waste in the diaper and toss it into the pail. No! Whenever possible shake the solids into the toilet before wrapping up that poop sack and dropping it in the Champ. It's better for the environment (Yes, so are cloth diapers, but I have my reasons!!) and it helps keep some of the stink at bay. It's also cheaper than using just baby wipes or flush-able wipes as I find I don't use as  many with this method.

Another benefit is that I always have a "tissue" handy when the kids have a runny nose on the changing table or in the middle of the night. This way I don't have to go into the bathroom or keep a separate tissue box on their dresser and when I'm done with it, into the diaper pail it goes! Huzzah!

That's it! That's my first Great Idea. At least I think it's great. I'm sure I'm not the first person to have thought this up, but I had not seen it done before so I have no one else to credit but myself. Well done, Self.

Do you use this at home? Have you found it to be helpful? Let me know in the comments below!

Thanks for reading!

What the......What?

As I sit here in yet another Starbucks waiting on a good friend of mine, I'm reminded of the last time I was in a Starbucks. What a strange situation I found myself in there....*cue wavy line thingys*

My 5 year old daughter attended a birthday party at one of those indoor bouncy house places. You know the sort, giant rooms with several different inflatable bouncy jungle gyms for kids to break their neck or catch scarlet fever on. They're glorious.

But I digress. My mom and I picked her up from the party and decided that, since we wanted some Starbucks, we would treat her to Starbucks as well. After all, she had just been loaded up on sugar and adrenaline, by all means, let's keep this buzz going. (Just a pun, it was never my intention to caffeinate my child!) So we located the nearest store and headed in that direction.

I have never even looked to see if they sold drinks for kids at Starbucks before, but I figured they would have some sort of juice so I felt confident. As I approached the counter I asked if they had apple juice (my girl didn't want any hot chocolate or cider and she despises all kinds of milk) and the woman directed me to the cold case which was, in fact, devoid of any kind of juice at all. I informed her of the situation and she agreed to give her a small cup of apple juice from their private stash at a reasonable rate. Hooray! We would all be appeased and enjoy Starbucks together on this glorious late summer day. We shuffled over (that's all you can do with an over-tired 5 year old, shuffle)  to the tiny waiting area in this, the tiniest 'Bucks I've ever seen, and waited patiently.

Some time later our name is called and we receive our beverages. We stop to organize at the sugar table and  I reach for the cup that must be my daughter's apple juice, as it is the smallest one. It is hot. I think I've grabbed my chai tea latte by mistake and grab the much larger cup which I now believe to contain the apple juice. It too, is hot. What? Perhaps we got someone else's drink by mistake? I opened the lid to the smaller cup and it is frothy....did they just serve my 5 year old a latte? It smells like apple juice so I take a sip, and yes, it is apple juice. HOT apple juice. Weird, right? I tell my daughter it's like hot apple cider and try to talk it up. She is not impressed. So I tell the barrista that I had no idea they planned to heat the apple juice and asked if I could have a cup of ice to pour it over. She rolled her eyes and adamantly stated "I wouldn't do that." OK.......my question to her is "Why not?". Ms. Rolly Eyes is now thoroughly irritated and insists on just giving us an entirely new, unheated cup of juice. We simply cannot salvage the heated juice. Not in her Starbucks. Not on her watch. *cue wavy line thingys again*

Am I the only one who finds this so totally odd? Has this ever happened to anyone else? Should I have assumed that because the juice was ordered from a coffee shop that it should most definitely be delivered hot? I am at a loss. It's certainly not the most Earth shattering event and it doesn't even come close to the toddler who was served an alcoholic beverage at an Applebee's last year, but it still puzzles me. I guess you can just file this one under "How to Irritate Barristas and Score Free Hot Apple Juice".

Behold! I have created yogurt.

I did it!

The last time I tried to make homemade yogurt I fouled it up. Three. Simple. Instructions. I couldn't make it happen. Needless to say I was very disappointed as I had waited to try this recipe for a long time. I think part of me knew I'd mess it up the first time. That's not out of the ordinary.

But not this time! This time I followed the directions without fail and was blessed with a crock pot full of homemade yogurt to enjoy in the morning! It tasted just like store-bought plain yogurt and was only slightly thinner. I added some local honey I had recently picked up and it was perfection. I am pleased. I can't wait to try it with the local organic whole milk I plan to buy at the farmer's market tomorrow. Ooooh..I just can't wait! I even tested it out on my 20 month old to see if I could replace the expensive commercial brand organic whole milk yogurt she eats every day and she liked it! I sweetened hers with a slice of canned peach and the pear juice it was canned in. It made it a little too watery and she totally rejected the diced peach pieces (what?!?), but she still ate the yogurt so I call it a win.

The best part is that this really couldn't be any easier to do. It utilizes the brilliance of a slow cooker and you know I like me some slow cookin'. I HIGHLY suggest you visit "A Busy Mom's Slow Cooker Adventures" and try out this recipe, or any of her other delicious recipes. I love being able to prep dinner early in the day and throw it in the slow cooker so the 5pm scramble is a little less, well.....scrambled. :O)

Enjoy!

All Martha'd out.

If I left the kitchen at all today, it was only to use the restroom or pick up a baby. Don't get me wrong, I love whipping up tasty food but I can barely keep my eyes open at this point.

Now you're probably expecting a lengthy list of holiday-type proportions but, alas, it was only 3 different items (6 if you count regular meals interspersed throughout the day). However, I did it all with 5 kids under the age of 7 running underfoot and a 6 month old puppy to take care of, so HA!!

But I digress. What I really wanted to tell you about tonight was the homemade cheez-its I tried from New Nostalgia . Holy snack crackers, Batman, these are fantastic!! Never mind that I couldn't keep a close enough eye on them near the end and I burnt some, or that I can't cut in a straight line to save my soul and ended up with wildly diverse trays of squares and rectangles.....they tasted just like the real thing, but better!

I don't know about you, but I have always found the originals to leave a bitter aftertaste in my mouth. Not that it kept me from eating half a box in one sitting, but it irked me some. I don't want to really think about what makes the bitter aftertaste, I just want to focus on the fact that mine didn't have it.

Here's a few tips you can take from me if you decide to bake some of these delightful little crackers:

1. Watch that you don't forget the dough is chilling in the freezer while you save the puppy from choking to death on a sucker stick. I left it in there for an hour and then had to wait for some time for it to thaw enough to be roll-able.
2. Don't worry about separating your squares out once you cut them, they shrink while baking. I'm sure this may be common knowledge, but I rarely take any one's word on anything, so I did one tray where I separated them and one where I didn't. The only difference I noticed was how much easier it was to leave them as they were. 
3. The flatter you roll them, the crunchier they'll be. I did like them crunchy and chewy, as I had a range of both due to my lack of level rolling skills. However, the flatter they are, the more attention you have to pay to them near the end of their baking time as opposed to paying attention to why the 5 year old is screaming that the 19 month old accosted her with a baby drum (again!) and where in the world the 7 month old rolled off to. 

If I managed to get the bread I baked this morning to be how I like it, I'll post a link to that recipe as well. 

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to go beat my head against a wall for messing up the homemade yogurt I've been waiting so long to make. Why should I remember the simple 3 part instructions after reading them only 27 times? This is why I always refer back to the recipe before I move on to the next step...well, almost always. Cheers!

Somebody Else's Children

We have all seen the commercials begging us to sponsor starving children in far off lands and heard of the people still living in makeshift shelters after devastating natural disasters or wars, but how often do we really stop to think about it? How many of us can honestly say that we’ve sat down and given a significant amount of time to imagining what these people, mostly children actually, are going through just to survive? My guess is not many; it’s not a fun thing to ponder. Up until recently, I would say the same about myself. That was before I read "The Hole in Our Gospel" by Richard Stearns. I can not recommend this book highly enough.

Do you make $50,000 or more a year? If so, congratulations, you ARE the 1%. Even if you only make $24,000 you are in the top 10.29% in the world! Pick your jaw up off the floor….it surprised me too. We, as Americans, tend to think that the way we live is normal, but that couldn’t be farther from the truth.

Imagine if, by no fault of your own, you could not get enough food to feed yourself, let alone your children. Now imagine that the only water you could get would be a cupful of disease ridden sludge that you had no choice but to give to your children to drink. Now imagine that you are one of those children and your parents have just succumbed to your horrific living conditions and disease and now you’re an orphan with 3 younger siblings to care for. Seriously. Look into your child(ren)’s eyes and think about it for real. That is what “normal” is to a large number of the Earth’s population. It may look a little different from country to country, region to region, but the hard truth is this: we live in luxury while yesterday “more than 26,500 children died of preventable causes related to their poverty.” (Richard Stearns, "The Hole in Our Gospel") 26,500 more children will die today….and that many more tomorrow. As Richard Stearns put so well in his book, “It is not our fault that people are poor, but it IS our responsibility to do something about it.”

This is not a “feel good” topic and it may make you uncomfortable to even think about it. (At least I hope it does.) It is, however, an extremely important and urgent topic. These are not someone else’s children we’re talking about; these are God’s children, our own family. To go about our lives as if there are not people in need of our help and that they wouldn’t benefit from the smallest percentage of our resources is not only inhumane, but an affront to God Himself. In fact, I submit to you that if you consider yourself to be a follower of Jesus Christ yet you do nothing to help the hurting and hungry in this world, that it’s not really Christ you’re following at all. God loved this world so much that He sent His only Son to die to save it's inhabitants. I don't think He takes too kindly to our indifference to the marginalized. In fact, if you read Matthew 25:41-46, you can see exactly what He thinks about it. “Whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me."(vs 45) I, for one, am ashamed of how I’ve lived my life casting my shadow on “the least of these” and I am determined to change. I don’t know exactly what it looks like yet, but God has given me little pieces of the puzzle each day, slowly guiding me toward what He created me for, and I know He'll do the same for you. You don’t have to do everything, but you DO have to do something. Even if you sponsor just one child through an organization like World Vision or Compassion International, you pull at least one child from the death grip of poverty, hunger, and disease. Many times, that difference you make in that one child’s life will break their entire family, and sometimes their entire community, free from the chains of starvation. Bono said “It’s not about charity, it’s about justice.” There is  no justice in people dying from totally preventable causes while I indulge my penchant for Starbucks. None at all.

The good news in all this darkness is that all of us can help. ALL of us can do something. Imagine the change we can make if we all changed our focus from what we want for ourselves to how we can help others. We have the means; NOW is the time.

And the Winner is........

Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder! Come on down! You're what's been making my son act like that all this time! Now step right up here and see what you've won..... :-/

It's official now that the tests have all been performed and the results are in. After all this time and all the conditions that were speculated at one time or another, I finally feel like we're getting somewhere. My now 6 year old son has ADHD. "Classic ADHD symptoms in a highly intelligent child." Says the Doc, to be exact. OK, so we figured it out...now what?

A couple more doctor appointments to go and we should have that figured out too. There may even be some "training" involved for my husband and I as to how to best parent our son. Now there's something no one ever tells you growing up! "One day you'll have children of your own and then you'll have to take a class on how to raise them because, well, you'll most likely botch it up if left on your own." Sad thing is.....it's TRUE! I've never felt more lost and clueless in my life than I have parenting all 4 of my children, not just my son. What if I get in there and the Docs look at me and say "My word, Lady! It all makes sense now!" Oh, my stomach is flip-flopping just thinking about it.

It's not that I think I'm a terrible parent, it's just that I can't shake the thought that I could somehow be responsible, in some part, for my son's troubles. Docs say maybe genetics, maybe not, but what if it's due in part to nurture? I can not tell you how many times I have been in these meetings with doctors where they describe some behavior of my son's and I think "I do/think/feel/say the same thing.". What if I've unknowingly taught my child the same strange things that plague my own mind? Yikes..... I've heard it said before that having a child is like have a mirror follow you around all day that reflects all your flaws. If you have kids, you know exactly what who ever said that is talking about. Scary.

At any rate, we're moving ahead and, despite my own insecurities about myself, I feel as if there are better days ahead. If this is true and ADHD is really what is happening....if we can get him treatment that can help him focus and cope with everyday situations....if my husband and I can learn how to help our son grow into all he was meant to be, well, then those are about the best days I can ask for. :O)