Things I Love Thursday – Quiet Me Time, in Broad Daylight

I’m trying a new Thursday thing, to go along with The Diaper Diaries’ Things I Love Thursday.

One of my most satisfying things is knowing that I’m taking care of my family, whether it’s helping Jet with his homework or playing patty-cake with Songbird or spending time matching coupons to sales at the commissary to stretch the dollars that Knight works so hard to bring home.  I know that I have room for improvement, but I like to think that my family receives the things I do as efforts to show my love to them.

Dr. Phil often says a phrase that really resonates with me:  “You can’t give away what you don’t have.”  Since becoming a stay-at-home mom a little less than a year ago, I’ve learned that I absolutely HAVE to make some time for myself.  When I don’t, I become cranky, irritable and just plain not fun to be around.  THAT definitely doesn’t show love to my family.

So, when Songbird goes down for her afternoon nap, I take 20 minutes or so to pick up her toys, load a few dishes in the dishwasher, start some laundry, or whatever.  And then?  Oh, then… the very BEST.  I SIT.  In the living room, in broad daylight, in a somewhat-clean, and very, very quiet house. I READ whatever book I’ve brought home from the library, generally something light-hearted and fun.

I usually have somewhere between 30 and 45 minutes before Jet comes home from school.  I take a few minutes to think of all the other things that I should be doing.  Then put them in my mental “I’ll do it later” file and sweep any residual guilt under the rug.  Because what I really should be doing is exactly what I am doing – recharging my batteries in preparation for the evening onslaught, so that I can be refreshed to greet my son and hubby when they get home.  I can prepare dinner and juggle the baby.  I can field the myriad of questions from Jet.  And, quite possibly, still have energy after the kids go to bed for some adult conversation with Knight.

Possibly the very best part is that, because I do this in the middle of the day instead of after everyone else goes to bed, I’m not too tired to really enjoy it!

Quiet Me Time, in Broad Daylight (*gasp*!) is definitely a Thing I Love!

Choices and boundaries

I read (and commented on) a very interesting, thought-provoking, and encouraging post about The Choice to Be Unpopular at The Diaper Diaries. It rolled around in my head, and splashed down into my heart, quite often yesterday.

Our sweet Jet, who will be six in just a few short months, has been having a rough time of it.  He’s been making some poor choices about what to do when I ask him to do something.  He knows perfectly well (and can tell me quite clearly) exactly what he’s supposed to do.  In the heat of the moment, however, it all blows apart inside his head.  All that energy from the explosion expresses itself as yelling, foot-stomping, running away and, ultimately, tears.

Paul lamented his own choices many, many years ago:

“I do not understand what I do. For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do.” (Romans 7:15)

I can see this disconnect written all over Jet’s sweet, angry, tear-stained face as he sits in time-out, struggling to do what he knows is right.  He doesn’t want to sit there, but he absolutely knows that he has to.  I know that, at five years old, he may only be doing it out of fear of the consequences.  But it’s our job as his parents to keep him safe, to be sure he does what he’s supposed to do, even if it’s out of that fear, until he can do the right thing for the right reasons.

My heart twists to see him making choices that he knows perfectly well are the wrong ones.  It hurts me to know that he won’t like what’s coming, be it a time-out or loss of privileges.  At the same time, though, I know I will stand strong and enforce the boundaries that have been set for him.

As written at The Diaper Diaries, I have no desire for Jet to grow up thinking I’m his friend.  Someday, yes, it would be nice, when he becomes a responsible adult.  At this age, though, friends can be fun, and can be confidantes.  Friends can also be fair-weather.  Their young choices may not always be right.

As his Mommy, though, one of my deepest longings is for him to know that I love him more than anyone else on this planet and only want what’s best for his sweet self, every single day of his life.  That means making absolutely sure he understands the difference between wrong and right, and makes choices accordingly.  Kids thrive on structure and boundaries (and Jet more than most).  Though their words and actions may seem to indicate otherwise, deep down, they receive discipline as love.  As he pushes against the boundaries we’ve set, he needs to know that we will meet him just on the other side of that line so that we can push him right back to safety.

On how we came to be an Army family

Meeting people on an Army post is much like meeting people in college.  Everybody always has the same conversation.  In college, it’s about your hometown, your major, and whether or not you’re involved with anyone.  In the Army, it’s about the soldier’s MOS (occupation), where you’re from, and how you and your soldier decided to join the Army.

Knight and I met in college and started dating in 1997.  It was my junior year, and his first year.  He “lived a little” before starting college, and struggled academically during that first year.  He seriously considered joining the military at the end of that first year, even to the point of taking the ASVAB and going to the MEPS with his brother-in-law, who was intending to join.  I was ready to walk away if Knight joined; I told him that I wasn’t going to wait for him after a relationship of just a few months.  I “encouraged” him to finish school first.

It turned out that Knight’s brother-in-law was permanently disqualified due to a previously undiagnosed medical condition.  Whether Knight’s decision to not enlist at that point was due to that factor or me, I don’t know… but I’m betting it was a bit of both.

Fast forward about six years.  Now we’ve been married a few years, are expecting our sweet Jet, and Knight is graduating.  Again, he begins to talk about enlisting in the military, this time the Air Force.  But I, the control freak, had The Plan.  The Plan was that we were going to move to my hometown, where my parents still live.  Knight was going to get a nice, stable, corporate job, complete with benefits and 401K, and work his way up the ladder while I stayed home and did my best to imitate June Cleaver, sans heels and pearls.  So, we moved to my hometown, where Knight practically bent over backwards trying to fit himself into the mold I had created for him.

Fast forward four years.  Knight has spent these four years in various jobs, struggling and failing to attain the impossible standards I’ve set.  During those same four years, we’ve been active in a church for the first time ever in our relationship, and I’ve finally allowed God to work on my heart about the roles we are designed to play in our marriage.  God slowly, surely, sweetly begins to break me of my need to control everything about my life.  He teaches me, through family, friends, and His own words, that the best way to a peaceful marriage is to let my husband be who He created him to be, not who I planned for him to be.  Gradually, I surrender The Plan and trust God for His Plan.

In January 2008, Knight begins to talk about enlisting in the military again.  He has a long way to go to be Army material… let’s just say that he was “too much man” for the Army.  He starts working out and losing weight.  After a couple of months, I realize that he’s really serious about this Army thing.  In May, on the way to my sister’s wedding, he says the one thing my heart has been waiting to hear:  “This is what God is telling me to do.”  Instantly, I felt peace rush through my body like an electrical current, and I’m confident that this is part of His Plan.  So, I turn to Knight, and simply say, “OK”, ready to support him and follow him to the ends of the earth.

Thankfully, I’ve only had to follow him to New Jersey (so far)!

“For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the LORD, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.”  Jeremiah 29:11

We’re here!

I don’t really know what I expected “settling in” to be like, once we arrived in New Jersey.  I think I was worried about homesickness, missing my parents and friends, learning my way around a new town…  and while all of those are valid concerns, life has been good in the (nearly) two months since we’ve moved.   Those concerns were alleviated in large part due to my mom being here for two weeks, the joy of Skype, and the nice lady that lives in my Magellan.  (I know she’s nice because she doesn’t get her panties in a twist about “recalculating” like the lady that lives in Knight’s Garmin.)

We have been blessed by instant friends, too.  We live on post, in a very nice duplex that is considerably larger than the house we left — 500 square feet larger, plus a basement, to be exact.  (Which is a LOT of house to keep up with, I’m finding, especially when laundry facilities are two floors below where laundry is generated.  I consider it an opportunity to tone and firm my… uh… areas that need toning and firming. *ahem*)  The family that lives on the other side of our duplex has two small children, including a four-year-old son I’ll call Superhero.  Superhero and Jet met on the day the movers came, and an instant bond was formed, further forged by the movers quickly unloading Jet’s Big Wheel.  Superhero also has a Big Wheel, and, really, what more do two young boys need to cement a forever friendship?  They have played together very nearly everyday since.

It helps that Superhero’s mom and I clicked.  She’s a very laid-back, go-with-the-flow-until-someone-gets-disrespectful-or-might-get-hurt kind of mom, which is precisely how I described myself in my mommy-to-be interview.  (You know, the same one where they handed out the Parenting Manual.)

Speaking of parenting, I finally came up with a bloggity name for our sweet baby girl.  I have a difficult time with these things… partly because I’m amazingly unoriginal and uncreative in these arenas, but also because I don’t have nicknames for our kids.  I call them by their names because that’s the purpose of said names, right?  (Yes, go ahead and roll your eyes about how anal-retentive I am about this.  I don’t care.  Much.)   Additionally, she’s only six months old, and her personality has yet to show itself in grand and glorious ways.  With Jet, it was easy – he was two when I started this blogging adventure, and the boy still loves to run around the house pretending to be an airplane, or ride in the car pretending to fly it like a plane, or have his food on his fork and turn it into an airplane…    At any rate, *insert grand thoroughfare and drum roll here* she shall be called Songbird, due to her penchant for “singing”.  She has discovered her voice over the last several weeks, and uses it beautifully… and forcefully, when necessary.  If she’s anything like her mama, that’s not going to change anytime soon.  So, I think the name will fit her for the long haul.

Songbird spends a lot of time on the floor these days, learning how to crawl and sit up between bouts of drooling and chewing on stuff.  She’s really a fairly calm baby, much like Jet was.  In fact, I think her very favorite person is Jet; she loves just being in the same room with him.  She’ll sit in her bouncy chair and watch him play in his playroom for an hour or more at a time, singing and “talking” to him.  I’m pretty sure that she saves her biggest smiles for him, probably because he never puts her in her bed to let her go to sleep on her own.  It’s so much fun to watch their relationship develop and to see his tender heart toward her.

Here’s where I feel like I need to wrap up this post, and cleverly tie this part and the middle part back to the beginning (a la High School English Paper Writing 101).  Really, though, I just want to say that God is good, all the time.  I’ve told several people that things have worked out so well for us here that it’s just like Somebody planned it for us… which, of course, I believe He did.

Ready.

So much for writing more often.    Time to stretch the writing muscles and try again!

Quite a bit has happened since the last time I’ve been here at the ol’ blog….

*swoon*

First, a little background:

Knight sort of lost his job early last spring when the company he was working for sort of began something of a slow death.  He has career plans in the form of joining the Army (hopefully by the end of this month, which I am very excited about, but that’s not the point of this post), but has had odd jobs in the meantime.  Since April-ish, he’s been working at a local bowling center, either tending bar, working the front counter, or doing various IT-y things for them.  It doesn’t pay nearly what he’s worth, but I admire him for putting in long hours to make ends meet.

One of the things I hate about the situation is that his schedule is wildly unpredictable from week to week.  It’s almost impossible to make plans, or even to know how many evenings he’ll be home with the family.  He works a lot of evening/night shifts, and, as a result, we mostly see each other through our eyelids.  This, of course, is a difficult thing in and of itself, but it makes it even harder on a calendar-dependent freak like me since we have a hard time communicating on a regular basis about what his schedule will be.  He doesn’t understand, though he has done a fantastic job of at least tolerating, my obsessive compulsive disorder about getting everything written in my day planner.  It’s an understatement to say that he’s spontaneous.

Today, though, I received an email from him that made my heart skip a beat or three.  You know that funny feeling you get when your heart does a few somersaults and then splashes down into your stomach?  When you just want to hold onto a moment forever?  Yeah, it was one of those moments.  Here’s what the email said:  “I’ve been using Google Calendar to organize my calendar, find interesting events, and share my schedule with friends and family members. I thought you might like to use Google Calendar, too.”

He’d imported his work schedule and everything.

I love it when he speaks my language.   *swoon*

Good News!

It’s a GIRL!!!!!

We went back to the doctor today, and he said all is well.  Healthy baby, healthy mama!

And now the Great Name Debate begins in earnest. 

Look! Quick! Over here! A POST!

A great big “Hi There!” to all my friends who live in the computer… and to all of them who don’t but read here anyway for some reason!

I can explain the hiatus from posting, sort of, but that might just bore you to tears, so why don’t we just move on to the good stuff?

The pregnancy is progressing well – I’m 20.5 weeks along (halfway!  woot!).  We don’t yet know if we’ll be buying pink or blue, but we go in on Monday next week for a sonogram.  We do want to find out, so I’m hoping that the baby cooperates.  Jet sure didn’t.  Knight and I were living in Dallas during our pregnancy with him, but would visit my parents often.  We had our first sonogram for Jet, and he wouldn’t show.  Maybe he thought he was being polite.  For the next two weekends in a row, we visited my parents for one thing or another.  My dad is an anesthesiologist, and took us up to the hospital to get someone to try to find out on BOTH of those weekends.  Jet didn’t show for either one of those!  Finally, on our next regularly scheduled doctor appointment, we wheedled our doctor into trying again.  I guess Jet got tired of hiding, because we sure got an eyeful on that appointment!  I know I said early on that I thought this baby was another boy, but I’ve decided that it’s a girl.  This pregnancy has been so different from my first one!

I’m feeling really good these days – they say the second trimester is the “best” one, and I’m thinking I agree.  I’m past the exhaustion and nausea of the first trimester, but not yet the size of a HOUSE.

The other thing that’s really fun is sharing the pregnancy with my high school students.  I’ve had most of them for three years in a row, which is one of the reasons I love my school.  I get to develop close relationships with them, and see them grow and learn over a longer period of time…  Anyway, they are all really excited about the baby, and are taking good care of me.  I rarely have to bend over to pick something up from the floor, and I never have to carry anything.    They’re all very sweet and helpful.

We finally told Jet about the new baby in Mommy’s tummy.  He was instantly excited.  The playschool that he attends has infants, so he’s somewhat familiar with what a baby is like.  He LOVES babies!  It’s been about a month or so since we’ve told him, and he talks to the new baby everyday.  He always says, “Hi Baby!  This is your big brother Jet! I love you!”, and proceeds to tell the baby all sorts of things.  When I ask him what he’s going to do with the new baby, he always tells me that he’ll hold him and change the diaper!  I think if he was just a bit older, I’d be seriously encouraging this train of thought…  Everyday, he tells the baby good morning, and includes the new baby in his prayers each evening.  I knew that one of my favorite things about a second pregnancy would be talking to Jet about the new baby, but it’s even more fun than I thought it would be!

That’s it for now… I’ll try to post more blah blah blah…. 

Updates

I thought I’d start with the kidney thing.  My doctor did put me on antibiotics, and I finally came around to taking them.  My pharmacist went over the specifics about what possible harm could come to the baby with me.  She’s fantastic, and I really trust her.  (If you’re interested, the insert with the antibiotic stated that, when given to lab mice, a dosage of 65 times the proportional human dosage caused developmental problems, but a dosage of 25 times the normal dose did not.  I’m a total science geek, so this made me feel a lot better, knowing I’d have to have a serious overdose to cause any harm to the baby.)  One of the things that my doctor said to me was along the lines of “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure”.  Basically, this little prevention is much safer than actually getting a kidney infection, because they wouldn’t be able to give me the intensive, high-dose antibiotics that I would need without possibly causing harm to the baby.

Also, I can’t believe I only have two more weeks of summer left!  I officially have to be back to work for inservice on August 7th, but I’m going to start back on the 4th.  They have us in meetings for several days during inservice, and I just have too much work to do before school starts.  There’s no way I can wait until then!  Prepping for four science courses takes quite a bit of organization and .. well.. prep work.  I’m excited to go back – I’ve already started having dreams about the first day of school.  This time of year is when my nerdiness shines.  I even have to be careful in Wal-Mart, since they have aisles and aisles of school supplies. 

Well, I’m off to pack and do a million other things.  Jet and I, and my sister Tinkerbell, are leaving bright and early in the morning to go visit my other sister Badabady in Minnesota!  Yay!

Logic

Our conversation this morning:

J: Can I have a snack?

D: You need some breakfast first.

J: No…  You know why I don’t need waffles or a sausage biscuit?

D: *shakes head no*

J: *holds up right hand* ‘Cause this arm hurts.  That’s why I only need a snack.

~~~~

I have our niece Little Daisy (2 years old) with us for a few days while Knight’s sister moves their stuff to Houston (*sniff*).  For the most part, the two kids are less trouble when they’re together — they keep each other entertained!  As usual, they managed to get out every single toy in Jet’s room and spread them around/pile them up until there was literally no carpet viewable (which is completely fine – they had a blast).  Jet and I got in there last night before bed and cleaned the place up.

After we got it picked up, he said happily, “My room got a haircut!”

~~~

In other news, the pregnancy is going well.  I’m 11 weeks along and finally feeling MUCH better.  The nausea left a few weeks ago, to be replaced by near-daily heartburn.  I don’t mind the heartburn.  I can eat TUMS all day long – after all, they have calcium!  Right!?!?

I have my energy back, too, so the house has finally been getting cleaned.

I went back to the doctor yesterday, and he said everything is going well.  I heard the heartbeat for the first time, briefly.  The little goober was hiding, so the doctor had to work for several minutes to find the heartbeat.  He looked a little worried, which made me a little worried, but then we heard it… and it was fantastic.