7 Things I Love About My Husband

http://foxandkey.blogspot.com/2016/09/7-things-i-love-about-my-husband.html

Happy Anniversary to My Love

http://foxandkey.blogspot.com/2016/09/happy-anniversary-to-my-love.html

Well Hello Again!

I haven't written ANYTHING since April- and for good reason. We have been very busy in the last 6 months. Here are the highlights:

-Make leaps and bounds towards a better marriage. (check)

-Discover that our lease was up in July, and not January, as we had thought. Panic a bit. (check)
-Get offered a job in Eugene Oregon and accept! (check)

Moving Day!

-Pack up belongings, sell belongings, donate belongings, and give notice to our Washington jobs. (check. check. check. :'-( check)









-Move out of apartment, with Tristan and our moving van moving down to Oregon to look for a house, and the children and I moving to mom's house in Sequim Washington to spend some time with 'Mimi' and Uncle until said house could be found and rented (check)

 

-Realize that the Eugene rental market is crazy competitive and pack up the kids to join Tristan so that I can continue the house hunt on site while he's at work.

-Be 'homeless' and live in a (depressing) quaint little (shack) unit out in Walton Oregon. The kids called it the broken house in the forest.  (been there, done that)



-FINALLY find a rental, sign, give lots of move in monies, and move into our duplex!

Last, but certainly not least,

-Announce that I am pregnant!

Like I said, we have had quite a lot going in the last 6 months, and even in the last 2 months it has been a significant undertaking to acclimate to a new city and to my new position as a stay at home mom. That being said, as we settle into routines, Tristan goes to work, I homeschool, I cook and clean and take the kids to the library, I find something wanting in my daily life.


And that brings me to today's post. My children are now 5, 4, and 2, and I find that I'm getting the itch. The itch to go to work full time, the itch to travel, the itch to go back to school. I think if I boil it down to it's essence, this restlessness is a desire (now that my youngest really isn't a 'baby' anymore ) to shift some of my focus away from them, and onto myself. Stay at Home Moms, is this normal? Does everyone experience this? Do I need an attitude adjustment? I know that in about 3 months, when I'm in my third trimester and I'm tired all the time, this restlessness won't be as much of an issue. There's something about a pending birth that makes your life feel, well, full. And once the baby is here, and I have a newborn to take care of on top of a 6, 5, and 2 1/2 year old, and a house to manage, my life will feel so full and I doubt there will be any room for a restlessness for more. But perhaps that's a pipe dream. Maybe restlessness is just something stay at home moms have to grapple with, and I am expecting relief that won't come in 3 months or in 6 months. If that's the case, one of you more experienced moms should warn me and speak some wisdom to my heart.

I want to be a grateful stay at home mom. I want to be a productive homemaker. I want to be a wife who blesses her husband by turning his hard earned wages into real, tangible, care. With those goals in mind, I will choose to accomplish tasks in the home, even if doing so doesn't make me feel fulfilled. I will choose to work through feelings of discouragement instead of letting them take root and make me sour. And I will choose to be accountable, when I'm not grateful, productive, or a blessing to my family. Because there's nothing less satisfying than being unfulfilled AND doing nothing. I think feelings of fulfillment will come as we get to know Eugene, and make local friends, and get connected into church. Those things will come with time. I may not be able to control whether or not I feel restless today, while I wait for those things to gradually happen, but today I can choose to get up, be active, be grateful, and be a blessing. And that's a pretty good place to start.

Oceans (where feet may fail) + Parenting

When you have lots on your plate - add one more thing!

It's not very logical. It's not wise. It doesn't even make the tiniest amount of sense. And yet, this is my pattern. Get busy, very busy, then add one more thing!

So, here's the scoop. Currently, I am;

• Hardcore into weekly budgeting (Dave Ramsey style)
• Making a big switch from "I didn't really feel like planning dinner or grocery shopping so we're eating rice and beans again" to a seven day a week dinner plan. Now I have to grocery shop every week and cook every night (cooking and I get along, but we're not best friends ;)
• We've gone gluten free! Seems to be positively impacting the kids, but that means more cooking. Particularly at lunch time. I can't just make PB&J's (because gluten free bread is $5 for the tiniest loaf ever) or mac n cheese. I have to be creative. 
• Slowly but surely dealing with our disease of stuffatosis (thanks to Disney Junior's Doc for teaching me how to make a word sound medical!). I'm weeding through our belongings and getting rid of things, consigning, throwing away, and donating. As freeing as the end result will be, the process is actually laborious. Time consuming. Dull.
• Reengaging in art. I stopped painting and drawing and writing for several years, and I'm slowly wading back in! I have a couple paintings being displayed on the church 'art wall' and I've even been commissioned to (attempt) to draw a portrait. I was going to try to submit some art for the Edmonds Arts Festival, but I missed the deadline (by three months) so I put it on the calendar for next year!
• I'm trying to will myself into being a runner. I don't particularly like running, but it's free, and I am re-committing to exercising a few times each week. Bring on the strength, endorphins, and dolphins! (just checking if you're still awake)
• It appears I will be homeschooling Lorelai for Kindergarten, so I am wrapping my mind around that incredible privilege/labor. And sometime soon I'm going to have to start getting homeschooling materials. Advice welcome. 
• Reading the Bible in one year! I started last August, on my birthday, then failed miserably for about 5 months, so I'm re-entering that commitment :)
• I ordered a Passion Planner - and I finally got it in March! So I've been doing that and that is where I realized that;
1. I have a very hard time changing my schedule to commit to something daily
2. I love to commit to things (and so I commit and commit and commit until I have 3,000 things)
3. I am VERY easily distracted. I'll decide to do a task, but then I'll notice that an area is disorganized, or there's ducklings stuck in the pool outside our window, and all the sudden an hour or two are just gone. Poof. Dissipated into thin air, with nothing to show for them!

All of that is to fill you in on what I've been up to over the last two and half months of radio silence. And to tell you I'm thinking about opening an Etsy account. That's today's one more thing.

Any thoughts? Have you ever sold on Etsy? Please feel free to ponder and respond in the comment section below.

Until next time!

-MM

PS- What do you think of my in-progress custom shoes?

Laughter VS the Teachable Moment

Have you ever felt a parenting dilemma? A moment when you knew you needed to be serious, guide or discipline your child, but all you wanted to do was laugh?

I had a moment like that recently. While at work I got a call from T, who had just finished his workout at  the gym. There's childcare available at the gym, and the girls all get to play for an hour or two while he or I exercises. Today, when he went to pick them from the play area, the teacher told him that there was a boy who apparently was bothering Lorelai. So Lorelai punched him.

…

Yup.

It's a good thing I was at work, and I didn't have to contain my laughter for the sake of teaching our daughter about non-violent communication. I had all day to get all the giggles out before having a talk with Lorelai ("Did you feel like there weren't any teachers who could help you?"). 

I pose this question to you, my reader (I'm not sure yet that you exist, much less more than one of you!) :

What do YOU do when confronted with a dilemma where you want to laugh but feel you ought to discipline or otherwise teach your child a valuable lesson? Do you lean into the laughter? Stifle it completely?

In our particular situation, I felt not only a desire to laugh, but even a little pride. Yes. PRIDE. I'll have to teach her to not react simply off her feelings (in that instance, she was feeling frustrated), but to take a breath, and get help from an adult if there is one available. But I'm thankful that right now I don't have to teach her that it's okay to stand up for herself. I'm thankful that my daughter has gumption. I'm thankful that she hasn't learned the silly notion that 'boys will be boys' or 'girls don't hit.' She is feisty (with a wicked right hook!) and she has a strong sense of justice, and I admire those things in her. So I listened to Lorelai as she recounted what happened, and how she got a time out, and we talked about other options if it happens again - like walking away or talking to a teacher. But I also wrote her a note, to give to her when she's grown, all about the time she punched a boy who wouldn't leave her alone. I told her what happened, and how I wanted to laugh, and how I felt so proud of her for standing up for herself when she felt like there weren't any other options. I'm excited to one day give her notes like these, so that she can see me delighting in her. From her side of the memories, being 5, or 7, or 10, she'll recall me using teachable moments, correcting her behaviors. But she won't get to see the stifled laughter, the pride underneath it all. So just to ensure that she sees that EVEN the aspects of her personality that are requiring the most discipline and direction from me (and may, consequently, make her feel like I don't 'like' that about her) are pieces of her that I have loved truly, from the beginning. 

Here's to you Lorelai. Strong willed. Brave. Fierce. I love every bit. 

Singing! And kid poop.