an ache
wilbur-do babies have teeth?
me-no. they start with no teeth and then God makes their teeth grow as they grow bigger.
wilbur-how do they eat if they don’t have teeth?
me-well, the food gets mashed up for them. like, if you take a banana and smoosh it all up, a baby could eat that.
wilbur-but a baby can’t mash a banana.
me-no, their mom and dad can do that for them.
wilbur-did you do that for me when i was a baby?
me-(aching-inside my heart) no. i didn’t have you when you were a baby.
wilbur-well, where was i?
me-you were at mommy _______’s house.
wilbur-how did she know how to feed me?
me-someone told her.
wilbur-did she feed amelia that way too?
me-yes.
oh, the incredible ache of not knowing them then. the incredible ache of not holding them, feeding them, meeting those such basic human needs. the incredible ache of having to say, “no, it wasn’t me. i wasn’t there.” the incredible ache of the void that leaves for them. the void they don’t understand yet, but someday will. i know my children came to me at just the right time. i don’t question that at all. i know i wasn’t supposed to know them when they were born, before they had teeth, when they needed to eat mashed up bananas.
but, i really wish i did.
and it’s an ache that my heart will hold. likely for always.
Filed under Uncategorized | Comments (3)yearbook yourself
okay, so this is hysterical. in a perfect world, i’d have time to make yearbook photos of all of my friends and family. but, i have a husband and three kids to take care of so…you’ll have to do it for yourselves. i did want to share a few of my favorites of josh and i though. after viewing, head to www.yearbookyourself.com and have a blast.
me in 1968-this is my favorite one.
me in 1976-the year i was born.
me in 1992
josh in 1974-yikes!
josh in 1976-kinda cute actually.
josh in 1996 -i think there really is a picture of him with hair like this.
be careful, this site is addicting. don’t say i didn’t warn you.
have fun!
Filed under Uncategorized | Comments (2)it is in
but since josh, his brother ben, and his dad pretty much had to lay it totally on its side, we’ve been told we can’t turn it on for 24 hours. goodbye popsicles. goodbye reese’s peanut butter cup ice cream. sorry i didn’t eat you sooner.
Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (1)the new fridge
doesn’t fit in the kitchen. it fits in the opening where the refrigerator sits, but not through the opening in between the cupboards that are the entrance to our kitchen. the delivery guys aren’t allowed to lift it up and over the counters. they also can’t remove the old fridge up and over the counters. frustrating! so now i have a beautiful new fridge in the middle of my garage, and an old fridge in the middle of my kitchen, and three coolers bursting at the seams with food that’s waiting for its new home. rough life, i know, i know. :) hopefully we can round up some family and friends to help josh with the removal and installation tonight. off to do more laundry.
Filed under Uncategorized | Comment (0)happy mother’s day
we had a great day today, sharing my 3rd mother’s day with our children and josh’s family. josh and his dad, my brother-in-law and his wife, all took care of lunch. my mother-in-law and i got to sit and relax and look at magazines. thanks everyone!!
got great gifts from the kids, handmade at school of course. i’ll post those photos later. great gift from josh too, a new creative memories album i wanted to use to make a scrapbook of just our family. the album is just an adorable shade of green which happens to be my favorite color.
also, had a great night last night with my sister and my mom. we went to a fernando ortega and sara groves concert. have i ever mentioned i really like sara groves? just wondering.
and finally, just in case you’re interested, here’s what was happening two years ago today.
avoiding a child-controlled home, part 2
here it is, part 2. not that any of you have been waiting in agony to read this or anything though. but i have to tell you, i keep referencing these articles when i am feeling like a ‘bad’ mom and they are so helpful! enjoy!
“I Want an Oompa Loompa Now, Daddy!”, Part 2
Disobedience or Childishness?
In disciplining our children, Ray and I try to determine whether their behavior was rebellion against us (as in outright disobedience or disrespect) or childishness (forgetfulness, procrastination, sloppiness, etc.). We do this because disobedience requires punishment, and childishness requires a different disciplinary approach. Discerning between disobedience and childishness can be so difficult! Even after twenty-three years of parenting, Ray and I still continuously ask each other which behavior a child is displaying.
Difficult or not, we must do it. The Bible says that we are not to exasperate our children. Two sure ways to exasperate them are to discipline incorrectly (in anger, etc.) and to discipline something as disobedience when we should be training through consequences.
All parents are faced with this—parents of many are just faced with it more often! A child dawdles when we call him to come get ready for bed, and we wonder whether this is just childishness or if it is real disobedience. Our son leaves the dog out all night rather than kenneling him (for the third night in a row), and the pooch potties on the new carpet; we ask ourselves if our little guy is disobeying or forgetting because children (and adults) forget things—and need help remembering.
When our older children were little, we taught them what we called “obedience math.” It goes like this:
Obedience + Own Method = Disobedience
Obedience + Delay = Disobedience
Obedience + Incompleteness= Disobedience
Obedience + Bad Attitude = Disobedience
Obedience math sums up the saying, “Do what you are told, when you are told, how you are told, with a good attitude.” Thus, disobedience math is not childishness but outright disobedience.
It is not childishness when a child is given a direct command, and he does something different than he is told. It is not childishness when a child is given a direct command, and he waits and does it on his own timetable. It is not childishness when a child is given a direct command, and he only does part of the command. It is not childishness when a child is given a command, and he complies but does it with a bad attitude. All of those are disobedience and should be punished.
Benchmarks for Determining Disobedience and Childishness
Through our years of parenting seven children (currently ages seven through twenty-three), we have established a few benchmarks that have helped us determine if a behavior is disobedience or childishness.
One benchmark is the age of the one violating the command. If I tell my seven-year-old son to go unload the dishwasher right now and when he comes into the dining room to put some knives away, he starts watching his brother play a computer game and forgets about his dishes, he is being childish. Seven year olds get distracted! He doesn’t need severe punishment for his infraction. He needs reminding and, perhaps, consequences if he is characterized by getting sidetracked by computer games.
However, if my thirteen year old is told to go take the trash to the corner and then come back and help his brothers straighten the family room, and he stops to shoot baskets for fifteen minutes, he is more than likely disobeying. He should be mature and responsible enough by that time to consider his brothers’ feelings as they do his portion of the work. He should be obedient enough to go do the job he is told, then come back inside and do the next job.
Another benchmark is whether the violation was of a direct command just given or a routine or schedule type command. For instance, when I tell my seven year old to go unload the dishes right now, and he decides he would rather go upstairs to play Legoes, he has directly disobeyed me and needs punished. However, when he finishes his morning routine and is supposed to (according to the schedule) go directly to the dishwasher and start unloading, and he sometimes starts looking at books instead, he is more than likely displaying childishness and probably needs consequences (or a chore chart, etc.) to turn that childishness around.
Reality Discipline
In I Corinthians, Paul says that when he was a child, he thought as a child, but now that he is grown, he thinks differently. This tells us that children do not have the capability of thinking things through like adults have (or should have). (Piaget didn’t have anything up on Paul!)
That’s why Jacob (age seven) stops to watch the computer game when he is supposed to be unloading the dishes. It is why my thirteen year old son forgets to kennel the dog some nights. It is called childishness, and every child has it! (After all, in part, that’s what we love about them!)
As parents, it is our job to help our children transition from childhood to adulthood, from childishness to responsibility. We do this by making them responsible for their behavior. We make them responsible for their behavior by giving them consequences for inappropriate irresponsibility.
Notice I say inappropriate irresponsibility. I always try to remember that I sometimes forget to kennel the dog when the boys are at church and it’s my responsibility. I try to remember that I sometimes do not run the dishwasher before I go to bed when I tell the kids not to worry about it, for I’ll take care of it. I try to remember that there have been times when I have had a stack of checks in my purse to deposit for days only to discover that I forgot to deposit them—and my checking account was overdrawn. I try to remember that I sometimes let my “junk drawer” accumulate until the drawer can hardly open–and it breaks.
I love what I learned twenty years ago in Kevin Leman’s book, Make Your Kids Mind Without Losing Yours. In that book, he describes reality discipline. I was a very young mother (just over twenty) with only one child at the time that I read it. I remember thinking that reality discipline made so much sense. In part, I think I saw it as so appropriate because I was still an irresponsible kid myself in many ways!
Regardless of why it made sense to me, it did, and my husband and I pored over that book until we understood the concepts Mr. Leman presented. We began implementing it immediately—as much as we could. (The majority of infractions committed by a three-year-old are disobedience and require punishment.)
Reality discipline says that the consequences of a child’s behavior should match the behavior. We should strive to make the consequences of our children’s childishness to be as natural as the consequences that an adult might encounter when he or she commits a similar infraction.
Basis of Reality Discipline
For example, when we forget to deposit checks into our checking account, we get charged for being overdrawn (and incredibly embarrassed). When we don’t clean out our junk drawer, it gets full, the drawer won’t shut completely, we can’t find anything, and it takes longer to clean out later when we finally get around to cleaning it. These are natural consequences.
For children, reality discipline means setting up consequences (unless they naturally occur like in the case of forgetting to study for a spelling test) that are appropriate for the infraction. For Jakie who looks at books instead of unloading the dishes after his morning routine, he might not get his computer time (his free time; he already took part of it), or he might not get to choose two stories during story time (he already looked at his books). For Jonathan forgetting to kennel the dog three times in a row, he, perhaps needs more kenneling practice. Maybe he should have dog responsibility for an entire week instead of two days a week.
Of course, there are instances in which grace is extended. Just like the bank occasionally calls to tell us that we are overdrawn and asks us if we would like for them to move money out of the newspaper-delivery-business account into the family account, we extend grace to our irresponsible children. Just like when my husband surprises me by cleaning out the junk drawer while I’m at a meeting (thwarting the natural consequences I would have endured), I extend grace to my childish little ones.
But just like in real life—-too much grace for my irresponsibility, and I become lax—-and more irresponsible. Too much grace for my seven-year-old’s disregard for the dishwashing schedule, and he becomes more childish rather than less childish. Sounds like the Lord’s prescription for working with us—a balance of grace and justice—grace because He loves us and justice because He loves us too much to let us remain as we are.
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Donna Reish is a homeschooling mother of seven who lives near Fort Wayne, Indiana. She and her husband (along with their grown children) operate Training for Triumph Family Ministries, a writing, speaking, and publishing business and ministry. You can learn more about them, including about their complete language arts program, Character Quality Language Arts, at
http://www.trainingfortriumphhomeschool.com/
it’s official!
we are a forever family!(we have been in our hearts since the day we met, but now it is government declared!)
last monday we went to court and the judge granted our adoption petitions! what an amazing and emotionally overwhelming experience! it was such a beautiful time of sharing with our family and friends, and the court, what it means to us to be parents to our children. we still in so many ways can’t believe how God’s plan for our lives has played out. and even when i replay the timeline in my head, i am still in awe. oh, adoption. the joy! i wish everyone could experience it in some way, shape, or form.
is it easy? no. well, in some ways. each situation is different. would i recommend three children at once? no. well, maybe if you are crazy like us. or if God is clearly revealing that’s what He wants you to do. and like us, if what He wants is what you want.
is it hard? no. well, in some ways. each situation is different. but the hard times are easily replaced by the good. and by the love. the love that you feel that you can’t even describe. it is essentially like loving a stranger, but a stranger that you can’t imagine your life without. and how exciting that someday my kids will be all i’ve ever known, even though in the beginning i didn’t know them at all.
our best friends put it this way. and what a perfect, beautiful way it is. thanks j & h!
life together
just us, we learned, we worked, we loved.
God had given us so much
and our time as one taught us about how we should live.
we prayed and asked for more,
we wanted a family.
patience, grace, and misunderstanding became the new lessons.
but we waited and continued to pray.
our miracle was on its way.
for them life was different, but the same.
they waited, wondered, and watched as God put love into their lives.
it might not have been clear, but there was a plan.
two separate lives spiraling toward one another.
the three and the two would become one.
one family.
it is not hard to look back now and see,
but there was a time when questions saw no answers.
His timing and His grace brought more than our request.
the one we had wanted soon became a beautiful and perfect
three.
as small, medium, and large, all made a wondrous fit.
now we move on into the rest of our time here on earth
and we thank God
for our new and flawless
life together.
after court we enjoyed time together with family and friends eating and celebrating at josh’s parents house. thanks so much mom & dad!
amelia on court day, enjoying peanuts at our celebration at grammy & gramps’ house
wilbur in papa’s glasses at our celebration
orville at court with his gavel pencil
Filed under Uncategorized, adoption, children, family | Comments (6)