Suhweet!

So, as you all know, I have four boys.  Four.  As a result, even though I am a girl myself, I am very much used to all things boy.  However, I do have one lone girl.  And even though I am a female, I forget how to deal with all things feminine when it comes to raising her.

One thing I noticed right off the bat with her is that she is quite good at a dirty look.  If she doesn't like someone or something, she can turn on that scowl quite quickly.  In fact, if she is crossed, her little fiestiness comes out like a lion.  It's like this side of her is just prowling around in her heart waiting for a chance to swipe and lunge at something.  Scary!

I also noticed that she has a penchant for over dramatization.  When she cries, she really cries.  Being as though I am a mom to four boys, I am not used to this crying.  I usually tell my boys to button it up quick or else.  No one wants a cry baby period- especially a boy cry baby!  But it isn't quite the same with her.  I do try and have her dry up her tears without much fuss, but the tender side of her needs to have some sort of resolution to her troubles.  She needs to feel heard.  This is also something I am getting used to as God continually reminds me of her frame.

But lastly, one of the main differences has come in how easily her emotions can take over her whole demeanor.  I understand this because I have spent my whole life trying to reign in and steer my own emotions in a good direction.  I may feel one way but that doesn't mean my feelings are reality.  Story of every woman's life eh?  I can't believe how important it is to start training a girl when she is young to differentiate between these things.

Enter sweet and sour.

This little phrase has become quite prevalent in our household lately.  I can't believe how much Elliana has taken to it.  When Elle is listening and being kind, I remind her how sweet she is being.  And we constantly talk about being sweet.  She usually pronounces it "suhweet".  "Mommy, I be suhweet NOT sour.  I want to be suhsweet."  And just the same, when she is having a horrible attitude, overdramatic or just plain nasty (which is very easy for girls to be I'm afraid), she is reminded not to be sour.

Recently I watched an exchange between her and another girl.  This girl is a great girl but the meanness so often seen in little girls had peeked out and Ellie came running to me in tears.  I was quickly brought back to grade school when there was a friend "mad" at me every other week.  Mom, how in the world did you get through that with me!  Anyhow, I was transported back to the mean girl world and was reminded how much I need to train this out of Elle.  She is fully capable of this, and I see it on a daily basis too, as it is part of her.  This is part of the curse.  Women are bent this way through and through whether we like it or not.  Of course Elle needs Christ to redeem her soul but she also needs practice rooting the sour out!

Sweet not sour.

Sweet not sour.

Sweet not sour.

If she can repeat that enough times throughout the day, maybe when she's old, she will remember it.

God knows, she needs to.

Baseball, Maxwell's Poetry and Hope

It had been a long day.  One of those types of days where you push through but your heart is weary.  Not just your physical body is tired but your spirit is waning too.  Yeah, like that.  We had spent the whole morning out at the baseball field for some last minute tryouts.  I had planned to be at a women's Valentine's Tea for church.  I knew Steve would be busy so I had arranged two different babysitters for the four older kids (thanks grandparents!) and was excited I could attend.  Saturday events have been hard for me to navigate for the last three years because Saturday is Steve's main study day.  So when I can make something, it's an extra special treat.

Big brother wanted to dance with his pretty baby sister!

On Friday I had unexpectedly gotten wind of baseball tryouts the next morning.  I hadn't gotten an email or anything about them.  So when I saw they were the next morning, I was down.  But they started at 9 am and the tea wasn't until 10:30 am.  I had hope that maybe I'd still be able to attend but would just be late.  I reworked things with both sets of grandparents and hoped for the best.

Woken up too early for a Valentine's Date with Daddy!

We showed up at 8:55 am ready to hit some balls and practice fielding.  Evidently the league wants the teams to be fair so that is why there has to be a tryout.  Around 9:15 people started showing up.  And people kept pouring in until about 10 am.  There were kids ages 7-12 in attendance.  Meanwhile, the kids and I went to the playground to get some energy out while we waited.

Inside I wanted to complain to someone.  I wanted to whine that I already had plans and waiting at the baseball field wasn't on my list of things to do that morning.  But my little seven-year-old has been waiting to play little league baseball for the last two years.  He loves baseball.  During baseball season, he listens to as many games as he can on the radio often falling asleep to the announcers calling the game.  I knew I had to put myself aside and just do this for him.  He couldn't be placed on a team unless we showed up.

So we waited.

We'll have to work on those moves :)

Around 10:15 they started tryouts.  And someone thought it would be a great idea to start with the biggest kids there.  There were about 20 kids in each age group except for Isaac's.  In Isaac's there were five.  FIVE!  But instead of getting the littlest ones out of there quickly, they started with the twelve year olds and worked their way down to the 7 year olds for the next hour and a half.

When we had been there about two hours, Isaac came up to me choking back tears and said, "Mommy, this isn't very much fun."  He wasn't being bratty, he was just disappointed.  He thought he was going to play baseball and instead of getting to play, he was constantly told to stay out of the way while the big kids played.  He thought that little league was going to be like that all of the time.  I held him close to me, told him I understood what he meant but that this was just a silly day, it wasn't going to be like this once he was on a team and that mommy didn't like to wait either but we had to.

My oldest is getting so big and handsome ...almost too much for me to bear.

From that moment on I knew my attitude must be impeccable.  I prayed for strength because inside I was pretty disappointed too.  It was clear I wasn't going to make the tea.  I was still going to drop the kids off with grandparents and get some quiet time that afternoon so I tried to focus on that.

There was definitely a voice inside whispering that this wasn't my job, that Steve should be there with all of the kids and I should be at that tea!  Sports is his area anyway.  Because of the frustrating circumstances, I wanted to give in to it.  But I've been down that road before...it's poison.  And that poison can take all of us out quick.  So I fought it.  No, this is OUR choice.  This is the way it has to be for just a little bit longer.  We're almost done.  Yes, it was messing with my plans, but God knew that.  This is what God had for me today.  As a parent, my needs/desires come last, that's just the way it is.  I'm a grown-up now.  This is my responsibility and not anyone else's.

Valentine's workshop...this kid kills me-enough said.

Isaac was the last batter of the whole try-out.  He hit a couple of balls and it took about 5 minutes.  Three hours, no tea for me, for five minutes.  Okay...I took a deep breath and was onto the next thing.

I dropped the kids off with grandparents, had some lunch in town with my parents (which revived me a bit) and then drove home.  My attitude was doing better but my spirit was tired.  I quietly prepared for our Sabbath meal coming that evening and soaked in the still house as the little ones slept.  Right before dinner we picked up Steve from studying and then all sat down.  When it came time in the liturgy for Steve to talk about me, he went to his backpack and got his notebook out.  Being an unusual move, I had no idea what he was doing.

Our architect at work

He rifled through the various math notes scribbled here and there full of symbols and numbers until he got the page he was looking for and then he read these words to me:

Trust me Spring is very near
All the buds are swelling
All the glory of the year
In those buds is dwelling

What the open buds reveal
Tell us life is flowing
What the buds still shut, conceal
We shall end in knowing

Long I lingered in the bud
Doubting of the season
Winter's cold had chilled my blood
I was ripe for treason

Now no more I doubt or wait
All my fears are vanished
Summer's coming dear though late,
Fogs and frosts are banished

-James Maxwell (A poem written to his wife)

Steve didn't write those words but James Maxwell did (the guy he is doing his thesis on).  Who ever said mathematicians can't be poets??  I hadn't even been able to tell Steve much about our disappointing day.  But I needed to hear those words.  God knew I needed them.

The One my Heart Loves

Trust me Spring is very near....

All the buds are swelling.

The tears slid down my cheeks.

Summer's coming dear though late  

Fogs and frosts are banished.

He then reminded me that we were so close and he was so proud of me.  I needed that encouragement.  I needed him to acknowledge the fact that my muscles were straining and even seeming to fail in these last miles of the marathon.  I needed him to understand that it wasn't always easy for me.  Not because I needed to complain but simply because I needed him to know me.

It had been a long, weary day and it was hard  for me to see past myself.  But these words, from my left brained, mathy husband (written by a math genius) spoke to this right brained mama's heart and I knew-it had been hard.  But I had been where I needed to be that day.  And soon, this race would be run.  There would be others but this one would be over.

Those words comforted me...God knows me.  God cares.  Steve knows me.  Steve loves me.  We're going to finish this well.  And in that moment, God in His kindness, had reminded me of what was coming.  And getting a glimpse of the impending spring was just the hope my weary soul needed to carry on. 

James Maxwell and Some Personal Redemption

This past week everyone has been sick, including myself.  It's not just been a regular cold either.  It's a pretty nasty one with lots of snot and lots of coughing!  Even the baby has it now which always makes me nervous.  I've had two babies get RSV in the past.  So I've been watching him like a hawk.  This morning I'm home from church with him and Caleb as they convalesce a bit.  Poor little baby needed to get a good nap in his own bed!

I know I promised a post on that chocolate cake.  It simply is divine.  And it will come.  But for now, I'm going to have to shift gears.  Too much has happened since then and I wasn't able to comment on it until now!  The biggest thing going on in our house right now is Steve's final project on mathematician and physicist James Maxwell.  Hang with me here.

Currently Steve is smack dab in the middle of writing his Final Oral Examination Project (a fancy and deceiving way of saying thesis).  Way back when he started at Texas A & M, we thought he wouldn't be doing a thesis but rather a final, cumulative exam.  And boy was he elated.  He doesn't care to write long papers and I don't care to be up late with him cheering him on while he does!  So when he emailed his graduate committee at the beginning of this semester about what he should be studying for his final exam in April, they wrote him back that he had to pick a topic that he didn't have any prior coursework experience in, research it, write it up, present it and then defend it.  That's their oral exam.  So much for not having do a thesis.  Sneaky little devils.

For a week he agonized over it.  He couldn't come up with a topic.  I didn't want to press him about it but I also knew that he needed to decide soon because he only had two months to do it.  And he is also in his last grad school class, he works full-time and has five kids.  I'm hyperventilating just thinking about it all.  After a few conversations, he finally had an idea and it was a good one.

There are two scientists who are personal science heroes of his.  They are Faraday and Maxwell.  Faraday proved the relationship between electricity and magnetism experimentally.  However, he did not have the Math genius to prove it mathematically.  But Maxwell, slightly younger than Faraday, did.  He had both the physics and math genius to tie it all together.  Both were geniuses.  Without them, we wouldn't have electricity, computers, modern day engineering, etc...Maxwell proved Faraday's findings with four partial differential equations.

Being a Physics teacher helps Steve have a good grasp of the physics/engineering behind the problem.  However, so far he has only known about it at a pretty elementary level (think basic bachelor's level physics).  This thesis has opened up the door for him to explore the math at a much more complicated level.  And he is absolutely, positively FASCINATED, riveted and entrenched.  To him, the whole thing is incredibly beautiful.  James Maxwell and his story has enchanted him and I couldn't be happier.  What a great way to go out you know?!  He is really enjoying the project.  Phew!  I am sure I'll still be up with him at the end, helping him shape and edit his paper but at least it will be in something he is totally in love with.

It's also a great topic for him on another level.  It's totally redeeming.  Sometime soon I'll have to explain the journey that my husband has been on over the last ten years regarding his math abilities and schooling.  When he was younger and an undergrad at Cal Poly he did not do well in school.  Not because he couldn't.  There are many reasons including laziness, lack of maturity, etc...But one of the main reasons he did not do well is because he lacked the confidence to really try.  He was too afraid of failing.  Before, school was easy for him so when he got to college and had to put some effort in, he was afraid he wouldn't be able to do it (don't even ask me why!!!) and so he simply thought it would be better to not even try.  That way, when he failed, he at least knew it was because he didn't put an ounce into it rather than him putting his whole self in and still failing.  Of course his logic was faulty because if he would've put in just a bit of work, he would've done amazing.  But don't tell the mathy about logic...ahem.

When I met him, he was pretty much at his lowest point; he was switching out of electrical engineering and into liberal studies (he later switched from that to just pure mathematics which was a much better major for him!).  Anyhow, more on that journey later.  But when I met him, he was in a partial differential equations class and he not only was doing poorly, he was not even on the map.  In fact, he has often told me the story about this low point in his academic career when he happened to see the professor of that class on the bus one day.  The professor said to him, "There are people in the class who are doing poorly and then there is you."  I think that comment still hurts him to this day.  That class came as he hit rock bottom academically speaking.  So it is etched in his mind that he cannot do PDEs (partial differential equations).  And truthfully, even most mathematicians think they are positively horrible to deal with!

But these failure were not at all indicative of his actual abilities.  Time has shown that.  Last summer he had a class that dealt with the mathematical modeling of PDEs and so he had to get over his fears and deal with them.  He worked really hard and succeeded!  And now that he is older, wiser, more mature and much more confident, he has been able to jump in with both feet to tackle a subject with gusto that was insurmountable to him in his youth.

To be honest, it makes me, as his wife, fall on my knees and thank God.  I have labored for years to build confidence in him.  To show him I believe in him and that I love him.  And over time, my belief has slowly morphed into his own.  I'm thankful because it isn't too late for him.  He can still pursue his dreams to be a mathematician.  He can still stretch his mind to the utmost.  And over time, God has worked with him on his character.  And that work, though painful, has enabled him to fly.

So we end on a high note.  James Maxwell.  Electromagnetism.  Michael Faraday.  Partial Differential Equations.

Steve's beauty from ashes.

The Goings On

Well, life just keeps plodding on here.  Lots of little trips to the grocery store, school runs, playing outside in the rain/mud, baking for a baby shower, cookies and brownies, and planks-lots of planks!

The little darling just started sitting up.  Every day he gets better at it.  Of course that makes him and me quite happy.  He's happy because he can see the world in a more normal way without having to act like a seal and me, well it means he can sit and play with something without getting his face perpetually smooshed into the dirty carpet (yes, I vacuum regularly but you'd never know it).  Win, win people!

My neighbor and friend had a shower this weekend and so I was asked to make her a cake.  Nothing too fancy because well, I'm not a cake decorator and I must be realistic about my own capabilities.  However, I did my best.  The theme of the shower was "Busy as a Bee" because this friend just had her third child and she is quite busy!  So, I attempted to make a beehive out of brownies to put on top of the cake.  Utter fail.  It looked like a big pile of well, poop (a delicious one at that, but still quite unappealing).  So I ditched the beehive in the eleventh hour and just decorated it normally with some yellow around the edges.

I was quite pleased with it because it was the first time I was able to make a chocolate cake and frost it with white frosting without the brown crumbs getting all mixed in.  I accomplished this by doing a "dirty layer" of frosting after freezing the cake for a short time.  I have tried this many times before but it hasn't worked.  This time it did.  I don't know why but I'll take it!

Onto planks...my boys got some lovely little Keva planks for Christmas.  Out of all the boys though, Caleb has really taken to them which is not a surprise since he's the builder in the family.  The only problem is that they fall down easily.  Sometimes he will work for hours on a project only to have a sibling brush by them and accidentally send his creation crashing down like a bunch of dominoes.  This train he built was wrecked numerous times but his determination won out and he kept starting over and moving on.  He's built a bunch of stuff but here is another one of his latest-a church.

And lastly, I have a confession.  Don't judge!  I have finally passed the buck on one of my wifely duties and I am not sorry about it, no not one bit.  Here it is-I got tired of my husband going to work in wrinkled clothes.  I am horrible about keeping up with the ironing and since Nathan was born, I have not ironed one stitch.  That's right, nothing!  Steve never complains; he simply puts on his shirts and heads out the door.  Sometimes I could get the shirts to be okay by grabbing them out of the dryer just in time but they still weren't all that great.  The guilt was piling up (not enough to get me to do anything about it because I don't have the time or energy to...but the pile, the literal pile of laundry and the guilt pile, was getting bigger and bigger).  Then last week I had an epiphany.  Why not take his shirts to the local laundry for ironing?  It can't be that expensive although truth be told, any price that was reasonable was looking pretty good to me at that point.  Months of wrinkled shirts guilt was on my shoulders by then and I simply had to do something about it (except get out my own iron)!  I checked into it and lo and behold, it was not too bad.  $12-15 of my own cookie money every two weeks was all I had to pay to get rid of the guilt?!  Done!  Sign me up!  Why didn't I think of this sooner?

Hope you all are having a great week!  I'll be back next time with the particulars on that cake.  It was scrumptious.  I got the recipe from a friend and it deserves to be shared.  I won't make another kind of chocolate cake ever again.  It was that good!  Talk soon friends...

Regrouping

Regrouping.  That is the word round these parts.  There have been some things in the hopper here that were potentially life changing for us.  Lifechanging and downright exciting!  As of Friday, God made it clear that we weren't to travel that road, at least for now for reasons that were unexpected.

It's disappointing and discouraging.  However, whenever we step out for anything we know that no matter how good something might look, we want to follow God.  That takes faith.  A lot of faith!


I am a pessimist at heart.  When I first got married to Steve, the eternal optimist, I thought I was a realist.  As time has gone on, I've realized that no, I am a pessimist and that I truly need to work more on being optimistic.  Why?  Because God calls us to faith.  And that faith is what gives us hope.

The boys and I read parts of Matthew 9 this morning at the breakfast table and it tells how Jesus healed many.  Many were healed because of their faith.  They knew Christ could heal so they stepped out, went after Him and then were healed.  I want active faith like that.  I don't want to shrink back into my pessimism because I'm afraid.  I want to trust God like those people did.  God give me more faith!  

Over the weekend, I tried to cheerfully sift through the emotions that bubbled over in my heart.  And as I did, the same truths that have been with me since I was a child, kept coming to mind-

God loves me.

God never sleeps.

God knows what I need.

God is always faithful.

We've been here before.  And God always takes care of us.  It's not that the feelings of let down aren't real.  Or that we don't understand why God set us on that path in the first place.

But, BUT as God writes our story, we are aware that He knows what He is doing.

An oldie but goodie Caedmon's Call song has been speaking to my heart throughout this entire process- Lead of Love.

Looking back at the road so farThe journey's left its share of scarsMostly from leaving the narrow and straight
Looking back, it is clear to me thatA man is more than the sum of his deedsAnd how you make good of this mess I've madeIs a profound mystery
Looking back, you know you had to bring me throughAll that I was so afraid ofThough I questioned the sky, now I see why
Had to walk the rocks to see the mountain viewLooking back, I see the lead of love.

My Littlest Little

My little soldier is growing up.  He just recently hit five months.  I can't believe it.  The other day I caught him up on all fours rocking.  What??  When did this happen?  My heart immediately began pounding out of my chest as I thought about my littlest being old enough to crawl!  The mama pride in me swelled and my heart broke all at the same.  Conflicting emotions are a funny thing arent they?

In some ways he's so much easier now as he flies fast toward six months and in others he's getting more difficult.  Totally typical.  But every day that passes with him, I'm more and more in love with him.

The way he stares at me with a silly grin when someone else takes him from my arms making sure he knows right where I am at all times, or the way he jumps and squeals in delight at his siblings making over him, how he nuzzles close when he nurses totally content and filled by the love and nourishment he's receiving, how he sleeps on my shoulder in the early morning hours as we rock back to sleep, and how he marvels at the world of colors, lights and sounds around him.

He is a gift.  A precious gift.

We love you little Nathan.  Our irreplaceable fifth.  Our fourth son.  Everything is new all over again because God gave us you.  And no one is quite like you.

The Long View

I had a whirlwind of a day today and it isn't over.  School is back in session.  Such is the life.  Once the kids were dropped off at school, I zipped over to a friend's house for tea.  While our two fourth children played and baby Nathan slept in my arms, we chatted and she encouraged me about some of the most important things of all-generational thinking.

It's easy to get narrow-minded in my thinking, as I mother in the trenches.  It's hard enough to put one foot in front of the other to attempt to meet the many needs that stack up in front of me.  So if it's hard enough to do that, then how can I even think much about next week let along two years from now?  How is that even possible?  Yet much of what I am doing now, has the future in mind.

We can't escape it.  Our kids will be who we are someday.

Here's the thing though, mothering with the long view in mind is what gives me hope.  And hope is what carries me in the day to day craziness.

This is what I mean.  It's a lot easier to continue to do something when you really believe it is going to make a difference.  Because whatever we do, there is a goal in mind.  We may not realize it but there is a goal.  It may not be a good, godly or healthy one, but there is one.  When we're parenting well or not, there are always consequences.  They are blessed consequences or curses.

If my little two year old darling girl continues to throw fits despite my consistent efforts to train her, then I can become discouraged.  But if I take the long view, commit to the training regardless of the immediate fruit, then I will hope to see results over time, not just in the immediate short term.  This way I am relying on what is right, not on my heart and the feelings it produces.

This sort of view can be tiresome because immediate results are what spur one on in the process.  I'm not bemoaning short term results.  They can be encouraging!!  But often times in life, and in the long span of parenting over many, many years, the long view is what wins out every single time.  It's the long term benefits, the generational building that produces the most fruit.

This is hard for us American parents who are used to getting what we want quite quickly!  But parenting isn't about quick results.  What we build now our children will be in the future.

The long view always wins out.  A man will reap what he sows.  I cannot think so much about where I have come from or where my husband has come from- although we both have wonderful parents that love us and that we love tremendously!  I must act as a responsible adult and think about our future generations and the ones who will come after us.  We must honor our parents for all they've done for us, but then we must look to the future-always to the future.

What am I building?  How can I change?  What do I need to be or model for my children so that they will know how to love their future wives/husband?  What sins in my heart need to be addressed so that my kids can live free of my guilt and not be compelled to do the wrongs that I have done?

This is the long view.  It won't change things for tomorrow.  It will just force me to keep going.  The long view is letting go of past sins, confessing my own, and sowing the future with patience in mind.

"Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old.  Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?  I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert."  Isaiah 43:18-19

What do I want to see in twenty years?  (We often ask this of ourselves as we're talking about our children.)  Here is what I want to see- I want to see faithful children who love God, love others and who are wise.  I want them all to want to be around us and to want to be with each other.  I want them to get along.  And I want them to sit around our table, talk about God's faithfulness, and teach it to their own children.

This is what God has given me.  We are a "new" thing.  It starts now.