Huh?

Kaleb asked me today, "Mommy, next year, when I'm a midget (that's the next level after flags in the football league they play in)..." Crap, I don't even know what the actual question was, because I am so stunned this child wants to keep plugging away. I asked him if he wanted to play football again next year. "Well, yeah," he says. "Really, Kaleb, are you having fun this year?" "No. But next year, it will be tackle, so it will be fun!"

Sigh.

Huh?

OK. Whatever.

Cut and Run

I think, at some point, you have to know when to cut your losses. As it turns out this football thing was a terrible idea. It is so life consuming and the furthest thing from fun. Jeremy and I would be loving it if Kaleb wasn't HATING it. He's pretty good, extremely competitive, and he absolutely hates it! This weekend was just has been the straw that broke the camel's back. Apparently Kaleb was really tired (he plays both ways, the whole game.....he and about 4-5 other kiddos go both ways the whole game) and asked the coach how much time was left in the game because he was tired and they were losers. Something to that effect, anyway, we'll never know what really happened, because the coach is a dramatizing, negative jerk, and Kaleb is six. So of course we chewed Kaleb up one side and down the other after he ALREADY felt like crap because his team just got stomped 33 to zero. Tough morning, especially when you are six. He's learning some tough lessons. Lessons, neither Jeremy nor I think we ought to be having to teach a six year old.

And this, friends, is merely the TIP of the iceberg. It's been nothing but terrible, and Kaleb's done nothing but hate pretty much every minute of it past the days we stopped conditioning and started playing. You know, right when the actual fun was supposed to start? That is when it stopped being fun for him. A great deal of it is the coach, who, for all intents, is a good guy, but he is just terrible with young kids. He couldn't be MORE negative if he tried. In spite of me finally working up the courage to tell him he really needed to try and say some positive things to the kids, he just doesn't have it in him. All he could focus on at the end of the game was "one of leaders" comments about being losers. Don't get me wrong, Kaleb was out of line, but WHY would you make that the focus of your final thoughts on the game in front of 30 parents and 13, 4, 5, and 6 year olds? FIND SOMETHING, ANYTHING, positive, and focus on that! Why doesn't he get that? The kids HATE him, have no desire to please him, and they aren't having any fun. He was aggravated by the team mom's attempt to counter ALL his negativity by giving the kids little stickers to point out all the GOOD things they did. It was great, and he was annoyed by it!!!

I'm trying so hard not to be the parent who complains about the coach (don't all parents think the coach is terrible when the team can't win?). I'm trying so hard to do the right thing and to do the right thing by my kid. Unfortunately, I'm not sure those are the same two things right now. NOTHING is as it should be. Absolutely nothing. I could sit here and type a day long list of the issues we've faced over the last 4 weeks, any one of which are reason to be aggravated and seriously annoyed, but the combination of which are maddening and reason to cut and run. THIS after my husband and I spend 30 minutes teaching our kid a verbal lesson on the difference between a loser and winner while he bawls his little eyes out, has to apologize to a grown man who treats him like complete dirt, and suck it up and act like a big boy in front of his grandparents and our friends. It was just awful. Awful. And I have this sweet, sensitive kid that does not deserve this. And I'm really afraid that I'm going to lose the sweet and sensitive part of that kid if we keep pushing him to "be tough." He, as the quarterback, has taken to yelling at his linemen to "get lined up!" when, before, he was crushed by the coach repeatedly yelling it at all of them. He was so upset, both crying about and praying for Jeremy's stepdad, who had surgery on Tuesday, because he knew he was in a lot of pain. I LOVE that kid, and I want to do right by him.

Right now it feels like 'right by him' is to cut and run. I'm sure that will be easy to explain after my speech about losers being quitters.

I always say "Sometimes, being a parent is hard." That's wrong. Being a parent isn't that hard. Being a GOOD parent is hard. It's really hard right now, when I don't know which wrong choice is the right choice. It's wrong to quit, because I hate the message it sends, and it's wrong to keep doing this because I hate the message it is sending. sigh

Making the bad into good....

So, I recently have realized that I needed more diapers due to Georgia needing a change MUCH more often than before. I went to diaper swappers, a popular "mommy site" for buying and selling new and used baby and small kid things. Sort of like a consignment store online. I've used it for years, and been fortunate enough to never get scammed. Well, my fortune ended, as I got scammed last week. I at least ended up with something, instead of just someone stealing my money (which has happened so many times to others). The something I ended up with was just not in the condition described, so the pics I saw were fakes, etc. I was disappointed, but lucky enough to have the minimal sewing skills required to shaped them up, the bleach required to clean them up, and the determination to make bad into good.

All of this set into motion what you see above. I went to Hobby Lobby to get some of the things I'd need to repair those diapers, and got the idea to figure out a way to make some bows.....cheap. Bows are sooo expensive, so I have a love/hate relationship with those suckers. I found some cute bling, and some feather boas (which is all the new rave in bows, now) and BAM! cute bows. Now I even have people offering to buy them! I think I'll have to perfect my skills before they are worthy of being sold, for sure, but they will work for Georgia....and Laney too! So the black and white bow I'd been on the hunt for finally exists, and it exists in the newest fashion. Yeah, just call me Super MOM!

And to think none of this would have happened had I not gotten scammed on Diaper Swappers. Now that is the story of how bad got turned into a lot of good!!!

We have our first football game on Saturday!! News and pics to come!!

First Day of First Grade

And here I thought Kaleb wasn't too excited about school today. After crying yesterday about how he'd be gone all day and miss us, and saying he didn't want to start school today because school is BORING, I thought I'd be rushing around this morning getting him ready and there on time, and yet here I sit blogging at 6am. Yeah, he's been up since 530am. So he can say what he likes, action speak louder, and all....

So, we are certified to play football. That was a barrel of fun, let me tell you. Thank God for new/good friends and people who will take good, if only brief, care of my kids. We were late, but the Team Moms were waiting by the door the grab the kids out of the car and take them in, so all was well. I love my new friends Dawn and MIssy. They are AWESOME, and together, and organized, and responsible, and just my kind of mamas. They can take care of their own kids and all the other kids with parents too flaky to get places on time...amongst a whole host of other things parents do that warrant the need for strangers to do things for their kids.

Today is the beginning of another new normal. I think the house will be nice and quiet about 230pm when the boys will certainly be crashing after their 530am wake up!! Pics to come of my big first grader!!

Summer coming to a close

Wow! I haven't blogged in so long, but it is so hard to find time to sleep enough, let alone blog for 45 minutes. I get inspired reading other blogs, though, thinking I could be blogging when I'm reading :)

So, summer is about to come to a close. Our first summer since having a kid in school. We stayed super, super busy. We've been everywhere it seems. And if you follow me on Facebook you've seen all the pictures from our summer adventures. I'll make the synopsis short. The highlight was definitely Kaleb's profession of faith and baptism. Nothing is better than when your kids accepts Jesus as his personal savior. We feel 1/3 accomplished. We skipped the "buy a season pass to some local amusement park." A good decision, too. Georgia would not have been pleasant if we spent more than half our Saturdays at Sea World like last summer. I mean, really, the place is not that great when you have little bittys...there just isn't anything for the small kids to do. And Jaylan, watching Shamu for 45 minutes....yeah, he thinks that is cool exactly ONCE! We did VBS at least three times, a beach trip, a river trip, a trip or two to Nanni's and one to Grammy's. And a few weeks back we started football.

Football has sort of taken over life, and in all honesty was quite a bit more than I bargained for. It is VERY serious. It astounds me how serious we can be about some 5 year olds playing flag football. But it is serious stuff. And, oh yeah, it is HOT!!! In spite of the yelling coaches and up/downs in 100 degree heat, the boys are loving it. Georgia, not so much. She is being a trooper, though. We started the first to weeks for 5 days a week for two hours each day. The last two weeks have only been three day weeks for two hours each night. We'll keep that pace for the remainder of the season, adding in, of course games on Saturdays. We have our first game the 4th. And for this year, Kaleb and Jaylan are on the same team, so that is nice.

School starts Monday, and we are "meeting the teacher" tomorrow morning. Which reminds me, I should bother fixing my hair for that. First impressions and all :) Kaleb is going to a new school this year. The one that was being constructed just down the street when we moved in. I am very excited that he'll be just a 6 minute walk away, and very excited that I do not have to fight traffic every day twice to get him there and home. I'm not, however, excited about the fact that the school day starts at 730am. I mean, really, when is it they expect elementary school kids to sleep? Apart from that, I'm really looking forward to this new school. Jaylan doesn't start his preschool program until after Labor Day. He goes for 5 hours a day, three days a week to our program at church. He'll have Ms Jodi, who was also his Sunday School teacher (and who's husband is mine and Jeremy's SS teacher) until promotions last week. He just promoted out of her class, but he'll still have her during the week. I am especially pleased with that, because Ms Jodi is wonderful and she loves Jaylan.

So in a couple of short weeks it'll be just Georgia and I for the better part of most days. I'm telling myself I'll be less busy, but I know it isn't really true. I will fill those "only one child" hours with all the things it is harder to do with two or three, and then it will be time for the others to be home. And speaking of Georgia.....she crawls, she has teeth, she stands, she is her own little full time job! At 7 months she didn't crawl, she wasn't opinionated, she didn't eat solids, she had no teeth....oh man, the difference in a month when you are small :) She is QUITE opinionated now. And, the best thing is, she adores her brothers. You should see her face light up at them, it just warms this mommy's heart. And they love her back, so much. It's awesome. My children remind me, everyday, of what a great God we serve.

Jeremy is still working hard as ever. Harder, actually. It seems he is rarely home before 7 or 8pm. He's been helping lots just by getting dinner ready for the boys when they get home from football practice, so I can get Georgia to bed. We really are a team, lately, but all that teamwork sure doesn't leave much time for a conversation. 3am concrete placements and 8pm dinners make life tough, these days, but we are managing well, I think.

I have to add one thing to this post, before closing. I was clearing a bulletin board yesterday and there were a bunch of old Chuck E Cheese pics from El Paso. Apparently we spent a nice chunk of time at Chuck E Cheese. They have this little machine that takes and "draws" a pic of you. You know what I am talking about. We have a 1/2 dozen or so of those. I found one, and Jaylan's eye is crossed (you can clearly tell in this Chuck E Cheese drawing/pic of me and both boys), so it was from a time when that was still an issue. I remember a time when I wanted to burn every picture that had been taken when his eye was crossed, so I obviously didn't know this one existed. There aren't many pictures that were taken like this, it was only about 6 months, but there were some, and one done professionally. I've tucked them all away somewhere so I didn't have to see them repeatedly. This one, though, when I saw it yesterday, and my first thought was "wow, God is so good to me!" I decided it needed framing instead of hiding, because my perspective on that time has certainly changed. I no longer look back on that time as a time my child suffered, that I wish I could forget, but as a time God showed us just a glimpse of His greatness, mercy and power......a time, certainly, worth remembering.

Journaling

It's really not my thing, but I am realizing its significance, and perhaps even importance.

Here is something I should have journaled about long ago. Something I wrote because I was asked to talk about it with my Bible study group next week.

Hi. Well I don’t know where to begin, really. Most of you guys don’t know me. I don’t attend Cross Bridge. Actually we are members of Bulverde Baptist Church in Bulverde. I’ve come to be involved with Cross Bridge’s Ladies Ministry through JoLynn Posey, who I went to high school with. That itself is just a blessing from God because we only moved here in May and JoLynn has been instrumental in helping me maintain a strong relationship with God in the midst of moving to a new town away from one you loved, a town your husband doesn’t work in for the entire spring and summer, and having my first kid start school this year. It was a crazy summer, and I was so glad to be a part of the summer series with Cross Bridge’s ladies because it was some of the only proof I had this summer that God was indeed in San Antonio too, not only just back home.

I really don’t even know where to start this story because it has been such a long story in the making. Well, at least for me it seemed long. I guess I’ll just start at the beginning. On New Year’s Eve of 2007…so the night before 2008…last January I was about 15 weeks pregnant with our third child. I began bleeding, and my husband and I went to the ER, being that it was New Year’s Eve. The ultrasound showed a perfectly formed little body complete with 10 toes and 10 fingers, but no heartbeat. I have to interject here that I have lived this charmed little life. I’ve never suffered through much of anything, so mourning, loss, depression, real suffering were all a VERY new concept to me. I didn’t even really know how to suffer, but I was about to learn. I did the regular questioning of God and begging for an answer to the WHY?? that I knew God MUST have for me. It was a very dark time for me, something I know has changed me forever in numerous ways. I was sad, I was angry, I felt VERY lost, and it was not something that ended after a short time. I’m sure anyone that has endured a miscarriage, especially one nearly half way into a pregnancy knows exactly how I must have felt.

So now I have to skip to the part of the story where I am here, involved in the David Study we did this summer. Now, through that study alone, I learned a lot, and God revealed many things to me, but I was still very much dealing with my miscarriage from the previous year. Partially it was because I wasn’t “over it” and mostly because I was pregnant again, just 13 weeks when we started, and struggling VERY much (as I continue to do) with just trusting God with this baby. I agonized over everything, though I tried very hard not to, and convince myself I wasn’t, I was, and I often still do. I refused to do anything other than just be pregnant. I didn’t wear maternity clothes until I absolutely HAD to. I continued to work out as though I had no physical limitations, and I made the extra room the guest room when we moved. I bought nothing, and didn’t consider buying anything. I stayed as disconnected as I possibly could, justifying that thinking that if I didn’t allow myself to get attached, I wouldn’t be as hurt when my hopes were stripped away. I just wouldn’t have any hope, then I couldn’t lose anything. I am sure I am not the only person who has been in that place.

ENTER BETH MOORE!

What a revelation through her words did God have for me and, though I don’t feel completely transformed, I am no longer afraid to have hope. To have hope that in a few weeks I will deliver a healthy baby girl!

So what did God reveal you might ask. Well this is the best part of the whole story. Beth talked a lot about devastation, and what it is like in the bottom of the pit of despair. She talked about the way God can redeem us from those circumstances if we are willing to be redeemed. Christians do one of two things when we enter a time of need or hurting. We turn to God or we turn away from God. And after my loss, I turned to God. I spent so much time in tearful prayer, mostly trying to understand the new concept of grief in faith. Whether I recognized it or not, at the time, my relationship with God was indeed growing. I felt deserted, but He was there, sustaining me all along. He never left me, and he filled my saddest moments with whatever I needed at the time. And looking back, especially, I can see that. About a week after my miscarriage, I lost the center stone in my engagement ring somewhere between Upward practice and home. Needless to say, I had quite a bit of perspective on the loss of a THING. If that had happened the weeks previous, I’m embarrased to think at how I may have reacted over the loss of just a THING.

As my relationship with God grew, something I probably wasn’t even acutely aware of the time, another drama began to unfold. My youngest son, then about 2.5, woke up one morning with a crossed eye. This began in early March of that year, so about 2 months later. We were in the Ped’s office that morning, who had us in the Ophthalmolgist’s office later, and then to a Radiologist later that day for an MRI. Sudden onset of eye crossing in a child of that age very often means brain tumor. And unfortunately for me, at the time, I knew that before we even went to the Ped’s office. Well, praise God, it wasn’t a brain tumor, and we went back and forth to Dr appts for 6 months with no explanation for the crossing, which never went away inspite of several different and exhausting therapies. About 5 months into it, our Dr suggested surgery, which would have to be on both his eyes at one time. We even took him to Oklahoma to see a Pediatric Neuro Opthlamologist who did a very thorough exam, and ultimately rec’d surgery. We went home and had surgery in September of last year. And I am happy to say that it was successful and even the problems that he had as a result of the crossed eye have resolved, which only do so about 50% of the time. We feel so blessed that his outcomes were as good as they get.

Now I know you are wondering how all of these event tie together. Well Beth tied it altogether for me. Something she talked about at length was about being IN a relationship with God. When a stranger calls you on the phone, you don’t recognize their voice because you don’t have a relationship with them. But when your best friend or your husband calls, they don’t even need to identify themselves. You talk to them all the time, you know their voice, so they can just start talking you’ll know who you are hearing. That is no different than our relationship with God. You could totally be going through the motions, doing all the things you know you are supposed to do and still not be in a relationship with God. Spending time in prayer, with God, talking to Him and opening yourself to his response and to His voice is being in a relationship with God. When you are in a relationship with Him, when you are talking to Him, depending upon Him, and pouring your soul over His words, you will recognize his voice when he speaks to you.

I finally understood what God was working out for me when I lost that baby last year. God used that circumstance to draw me into a deeper relationship with Him because he knew my future. He knew my son's future. He knew my response to losing a child, would be to turn to Him for the answers only He had. He knew that if I wasn’t in a deeper relationship with Him, I wouldn’t recognize His voice when my son desperately needed me to recognize his voice. We spent months praying and asking God for answers about how to treat our son. And when we decided to go ahead with a surgery that wasn’t guaranteed to work, I was CERTAIN it was God’s voice telling me that was the right decision. A voice I’m not certain I would have recognized distinctly if I’d not been drawn into a deeper relationship with God because of great suffering. This summer I finally understood that I had to lose that baby in order for God to use my grief and sorrow as a time to draw me to Himself. That sorrow lead me into such a close relationship with God that when He spoke to me, I knew His voice.

He also knew that I’d have that baby girl my heart so longed for, but that it would be in His time, not in mine. And the transformation from waiting on the impending doom and unending despair into hope and renewal came only a short time after God revealed all of this to me. From the beginning of this pregnancy, when I refused to have any hope, to now, living in Romans 5:3-5 which is sustaining me with only 11 weeks to go. Romans 5:3-5 says:… we^[c] also rejoice in our sufferings, because we know that suffering produces perseverance; ⁴perseverance, character; and character, hope. ⁵And hope does not disappoint us, because God has poured out his love into our hearts by the Holy Spirit, whom he has given us.” (NIV)

Death of Ted Kennedy

Divine intervention? Maybe. Hopefully. Can I dare hope that the death of the last influential Kennedy means the death of this socialized medicine nonsense? That is probably taking it too far, but TK's death probably puts a stop to the bill passing in September, at least.

Between all the Micheal Jackson sympathizers and now this devastation at the death of a 40 year senate member who was about as liberal as they come and from a family of political leftists, I''m beginning to think the end is indeed near. The fear now is who will replace Mr. Kennedy? Perhaps someone even more liberal leaning? I shudder at the thought. \

At least, for now, I feel like I can breathe a bit of a sigh of relief over this supposed "health care reform" bill. I just don't think there will be enough liberal strong arming to pass it, now. Plus no TK to "bridge the gap." Let's get through September. All we need is the beginnings of socializing medicine right at the time H1N1 goes rampant. We'll all be standing in line to get our mandatory vaccines before ya know it!