I'm trying

This is Grace and Gertie reading the Saturday morning paper together.

Okay. It's been waaay to long since my last post. I know this. I don't know how the time got away from me like it has, but I do know that I've been trying to come up with something worthy to report for several days now. I've even started to write, but I just end up deleting it. Things are going well, but I don't have any great stories to tell.

I'm forcing myself right now to write, because we are leaving for South Dakota in about forty minutes. It is Dakota Days in our hometown, and we like to go back for that each year if we can. It is a good time to catch up with friends. A lot of people seem to be around for the weekend. I'm looking forward to it. They have a parade and the kids always think it's a lot of fun. I'm not sure how Gertie will like it. The last parade she seemed a little upset at the noise level as the bands came by. I have discovered that I, on the other hand, just love the bands. I am not the least bit musical. I can't carry a tune, and I don't play any instrument, but I love to watch them march by in their uniforms and big hats, and I love the big band sound. It's my favorite part.

Grace won't be in the marching band, she'll be in the orchestra. I'm sure that will be nice too. I love to listen to her play the cello.

Monday will be Grace's last day of tennis. They'll have a meet here in Austin. And next week is Ethan's last week of flag football. I'm glad because it's getting colder out there in the early evenings. He doesn't seem to mind, but he's moving around. I'm sitting in a chair. That get's cold.



We may have a short reprieve before all the activities pick up again. I asked Ethan if he wanted to play basketball. He said he'd like to wrestle again. I'm okaywith that if it's what he wants (and it seems to be). It just seems like such an emotional roller coaster each year, but we'll roll with it, I guess.

John has fallen asleep on the couch for a quick cat nap before we hit the road. Gertie has fallen asleep in the chair. I'm not sure if this is good or bad. My guess is it's bad. I was trying to hold her off until we got in the car at three p.m. I guess she couldn't wait. I'm thinking she'll take a very short nap, and not sleep any more after I transfer her, but we'll have to see.





Well, I'll load the last few snacks into the car, and be ready to go before we take off. Thanks for reading, those of you that are sticking with me. I'm trying to get used to this letter to everyone.

Go Patriots!

Well, Ethan is giving up reading time tonight to watch the Patriots play the Bengals. Nothing beats Monday night football, but it is hard when you are eight years old and they don't start the game until a half and hour before bed. Sometimes we break the rules just a little.

It's been a good day today. I got several things accomplished, and that always feels good. Unfortunately, it doesn't happen every day. I am always surprised how long phone calling errands take. Can you make phone calling errands or does that make sense? Anyway, it seems like that always takes all day, somehow. I am trying to do some things on the computer that require a few calls to technical support. That takes hours. I hate those calls. You just can't budget enough time. Maybe I just have large, unsolvable problems. I don't know, but I'm still working on a few issues.

John is feeling a bit better. He'll have an MRI in the morning, and maybe we'll get some answers, or rule some things out. I'm glad he's pursuing it. He did make a delicious pot of chili yesterday. I'm so glad that I married such a good cook. I love to eat what he prepares.

Gertie and I made a quick visit to the park while Ethan was in piano. We had a good time sliding on slides while Ethan had a "perfect" lesson. We've been working on practicing, mostly trying to remember to do it. It's paying off.

Ethan and I are having some issues with his attitude. Maybe I should say I'm the one with the issue. He had a friend over yesterday and they made a huge mess of the upstairs. Ethan likes board games. I'm glad he does. But he took out about six board games and left them all out. Gertie plays up there all the time too, and she gets into that stuff. So anyway, I asked Ethan and his friend to pick up after themselves, and then I went about doing other things. This morning when Gertie and I went up there, it was still a disaster. I picked it up because I didn't want it to get worse, with the board games especially. The whole time I'm thinking about how I don't want to be a maid to my kids. I want him to be responsible for himself.

Well, on the way home from piano I was talking to him about this. I asked him if he thought he did a good job. He said he didn't know what a good job is. I said we have a problem if you don't know what a good job is. Then he gets upset and says that what he meant is I'm the one, as the parent, that determines what a good job is. I think this is ridiculous because he is smart enough to know when he's done a good job and when he hasn't. This makes me mad because he doesn't want to take responsibility for the bad choices he makes, and he tries to blame others. This is not a new game for him.

I told him he'd be cleaning up after dinner tonight by himself, and I expected him to do it with a good attitude, and to do a good job. He needed to determine what a good job was.

I have to hand it to him at this point, because he did do a good job, he did it with a good attitude the whole way through. He can really turn it around, which is also not a new game for Ethan. It made me proud of him to know that he could do a good job, and with a helpful heart, but also a little privately frustrated to know that he just doesn't care to obey sometimes.

Probably a boring story for many of you, I'm sorry. I just think it's so hard to be encouraging and discipline your kids all in one day sometimes. I don't want to ride him too hard, and I want him to enjoy his days and his friends and his home life. My expectations are high, but it takes a lot of effort to see them through. Sometimes I fail to do that, or I forget what I've disciplined. (That's one reason I think disciplines should be immediate and not last forever.) I want him to grow up to be responsible; to recognize his faults and turn them around.

I have to realize I can't always control his attitude, but I need to just hold his feet to the fire. I love parenting, but it is hard. It was physically taxing when they were young (and I'm in that stage too right now), but now it is full of decisions on how to best reason and influence and shape these more mature thinkers. I have to remember to do that prayerfully.

I work in Rochester the rest of this week. It's been a while, and I'm looking forward to it. I'm going to be working with the same judge that I worked for for three months. It will be good to see him again.

Patriots 10, Bengals 7. Top of the 2nd quarter. Go Patriots!

Goodnight.

Saturday Morning. Ahhhhh...

(Oops. Sideways again. i thought I had that figured out.)

It's Saturday morning. John went to get donuts when he picked up his Saturday morning paper. We are spread out over the dining room table with newspaper, donut crumbs, laptop and cereal bowls.
Grace likes to eat cereal after donuts because otherwise you get a stomach ache. I agree, but I just live with the stomach ache. I don't know why we like donuts so much when they make us sick, literally. They are just so good going down. I ate a chocolate cake donut with nuts on it. I love those, and the cake donuts frosted with maple and nuts. Yummy.
Anyway, everyone slept in this morning. I love that. Well, Gertie and I didn't sleep in. She woke up at 6:50 a.m., which she's been doing more often lately. But that's really okay. I'm kind of an earlybird myself. We had a good morning. And I like the quiet house knowing that my family are all settled in with those precious sleep faces on, including John.
John back is feeling steadily better and better. It's hard to trust because it collapsed on us last week, but he just needs to continue to take it easy. Don't get overzealous.



On the agenda today is get Grace's room into order. The issue is mostly clothes. You need to see this. Granted, she is super busy. I feel like I didn't see her this week. She had a tennis match on Tuesday that brought her home at 8:30 p.m. Bedtime at our house is 8 p.m. Wednesday night she came home from tennis practice at 5 p.m., only to leave for church at 5:30. Thursday was another tennis meet that brought her home at 7:15.
I really miss this messy girl of mine. I hate it, to tell you the truth. I am happy for her to find things that bring her joy, but I like having her around. I don't know if this is just another phase of this journey into becoming more independent and separating from Mom and Dad a little, or if I need to pull in the reigns. I praying about that.
Ethan fell off his bike on the way home from school yesterday. Thankfully, I was with him, and he wasn't hurt too badly. He had a sweatshirt and jeans on, but he was a bit shaken up. He said his backpack strap got caught in his spokes. That was a bummer. Here he is loving up his little sister. Gertie calls him Egan now. She LOVES this brother God picked out for her. It brings me much joy to watch them together.

Mommy Dearest

You know, I don't think of myself as an abusive mother. I don't try to hurt my children. But today, as Gertie and I were finishing up our shopping trip to the local thrift store ($3 a bag sale), I was holding her hand, and we were walking out. She decided she wasn't into leaving like I was. So she did what toddlers do: She just went limp and dangled by her arm. She wasn't crying or upset, and a lady behind us was even laughing at her antics. I let her hang there for a second, and then I picked her up. That's the best reconstruction I can create, considering I wasn't focusing on the details.

Anyway, she starts crying as we're leaving, crying hard. I don't know if she's just mad because we're leaving, or if she's hurt or what, so I ask her. She tells me, "Ouchie. Elbow." Then she continues to sob. We drive home, I bring her into the house and I do notice that she won't move her left arm. She is still crying. Hard.

I load her in the car again and take her to Urgent Care. By now she'll just barely move her arm, and I'm starting to wonder if I really need to be here, but when I hand her pink bunny to her, she only grabs it with her right hand. The left one stays stationary. Uh-oh.

Well, I am somewhat wise to this situation, because I am also responsible for doing the same thing to Ethan when he was about this very age. It is called nursemaid's elbow. With Ethan I was lifting him up by both his hands at the same time, and setting him down, lifting him again, and setting him down. He was loving it, until he started crying. John happened to be out of town, so I loaded Grace and Ethan into the van and headed for the emergency room. I'll never forget that as we were driving along, Grace said, "I know you didn't mean to hurt Ethan, Mommy." I was ready to be hauled in to jail, but the doctor didn't seem at all concerned. I guess this is fairly common. They just snapped his elbow back in place, and he was ready to go.

And that's what they did for Gertie today. She screamed while the "provider" pulled and tugged on her arm, but once it snapped into place, the pain seemed to have disappeared entirely. She grabbed her bunny with both hands again, and we made our exit.

I haven't received any notice that I'm under investigation by Child Protective Services yet.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

Well, the day was going so well. The kids got off to school this morning with minimal hounding. Grace always takes care of her own business very well. She watches the clock for herself and packs her own lunch. She's been getting up extra early to do some Bible study as well. We were doing devotions together for a while, but that book wasn't quite what she was looking for. It wasn't much in the way of a scripture study. We found her one, though. It's a study I did when I first became a Christian, and it covers the very basics of the faith. It's a good foundation study.

Back to the morning routine, though. Ethan, on the other hand, will try to sneak the tv on or read a book, or play with Gertie or anything but focus on the tasks at hand for getting ready for school. So what occurs is I hound him CONSTANTLY. Have you done this? I told you you need to do this. Ethan, don't forget to do this. Ethan, you need to be doing this. It truly is ridiculous. Someone was telling me the other day about the mother that was waking her son up so he'd get to college on time. She thought that was ridiculous, and so do I. However, I feel like I can see myself doing that if I keep up this same pattern. Now, I realize he is only eight. There is a lot of life between now and then, but I am thinking I need a new strategy. We (Ethan and I) tried to create a chore chart from a template on Works. Well, we had two extra chores to add, and it was messing the whole thing up. Finally, I gave up. I know that's pathetic. You'd think I'd just get out a magic marker and a piece of paper. Not so. Maybe I better do that tonight.

Anyway, John and I had a great morning. John's back was feeling better for the second day in a row, so we tackled some yard work. He pruned the roses back, they needed it badly. Then he moved on to the garage. It's been needing some reorganizing. He was feeling so good that he could accomplish some things.

Ethan's school called us at about 1:15 to tell us that Ethan's braces were broken. John went to pick him up and I took him over to the orthodontist. She fixed them in about 4 seconds, after waiting about twenty minutes. The wait provided just enough time for Ethan to beat me 4 out of 7 games of tic-tac-toe. I was trying to win. I couldn't believe it.

We arrived home in good time to practice piano before his lesson. As we came home from his lesson, John was taking the homemade fries (I love those) out of the oven. Something in his back snapped and he is back to square one with pain. He tried to eat with us, but it wasn't pretty. He's been icing and heating, popping pills and trying to walk around, but this is so discouraging to him. I think he might have pushed too hard today. Please pray for him.

Grace was so concerned because the play tryouts were after school today, and she also didn't want to miss tennis practice the day before the meet tomorrow. I guess that all worked out well, too. She was able to audition first and then get off to tennis. Their last meet was rained out, and it doesn't look too promising for tomorrow either. We shall see. I did call the tennis coach last week to talk about his plans for the meet that ended up getting rained out. He said he was planning on pairing Grace with a more experienced player this time, and also maybe talking to the opposing coach to see if they could accommodate her inability to serve yet. (No other schools include the sixth grade in their program.) It was a good conversation. I just wanted to know what he was thinking. We'll see how it goes.

John had rented Syriana from the library. We are going to try to watch it. I just remember falling asleep at the beach house while watching it, waking up confused, and those that stayed awake said they were confused as well. I want to try again, though.

Tonight, I Blog

Well, it's been too long, but sometimes I just don't know what I'll write about. We just had John's sister Nancy here for a couple of days, and that was nice. Her health isn't good, so things were pretty low key, but we had time for lots of chatting and a couple movies. We got to hear many stories of her granddaughter Kaelyn (I hope I spell that right). She sounds like a spitfire. We still haven't met her, but this makes me more eager. I'm sure she and Gertie would have a great time together. We took a picture after the farewell lunch at the Old County Buffet. John and I like to go there when we go to Rochester. You'd think we might pick a classy joint in the big city, but we like to eat with the old people. I like gravy.


We arrived home in time so that Gertie and I could ride over to pick Ethan up from school on my bike. I had been working so hard with him when we'd go in the morning to make sure that he knew where he was going so that he could ride by himself if he needed to. Well, yesterday he needed to. He made it to school just fine...it was the coming home. I guess he got lost. I'm not sure how lost because I was napping (I love napping), but I figured we must need to review the return trip route as well (even though it's the same as the route he takes on the way to school, just in the reverse). He led the way, and figures he now understands where he went wrong. I love that kid.



Gertie played in her new sandbox, which she LOVES. She stands at the back door and asks for "box, sand, box, sand" and then gets quite upset with me when I say no. So I said yes this time.











And then she did it. She made the stress face right while I was snapping pictures. She's been doing this since she was so tiny. It is very strange, and now she'll do it on command every once in a while, but this one was voluntary. Notice the little fists that go along with it. Strange child.




Well, shortly after this picture was taken we raced off to football with Ethan. He is fun to watch, he's so serious about football. I love it--

and yes, I also love to chat with all the other moms that deliver their strapping young boys to the field to burn up energy. We have a good time.




I took this video mostly with my Dad in mind, but he'll probably never see it. I know it will be grainy, but look for Ethan, he's the center, and he sticks with the blocking to the end. They were just scrimmaging, so it isn't a real game. Maybe if this is works out, I'll try to get a good piece of game footage when it comes along.


And last, but not least, as I've been down here blogging, thinking my kids are all in bed, Grace comes in to show me the t-shirt she just decorated for school and the homecoming football game tomorrow night. I love it, and I hope you do too.

So, my husband is relaxing on the couch with a football game on the tv. The homework is done, the teeth are brushed, the kitchen is clean (well, sort of) and I have kicked off my shoes and I'm playing on the computer. Life is good.

I thank God for these moments. I thank Him for the way His Word convicts my heart right after I lose my cool with my son who wants a second bowl of mush when there are six minutes to bed, then he adds too much water so he won't eat it.

"Therefore, as God's chosen people, holy and dearly loved, clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues, put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity." Colossians 3:12-14

football!

my mom gave a bit of an update on me. I know you might want to hear my opinion on tennis, but I'm not talking about it any more.

anyway, today Ethan had his football clinic. we also played a little mini-football after we took a short walk with my dad (he's still feeling poorly). Gertie was enjoying watching her bro












go crazy, but then she decided to join in. these were taken right after our workout.

I have been so busy with school until 3:00, sports until 5, and then homework!!! school has been fun though. i like most of my classes, like most of my classmates and teachers, school is more challenging too. overall things are going well though.

i also started Sunday school and youth group this year. I am having a ton of fun. I've started getting up at 6 am to do a bible study with my mom, and i like it so much.

it feels so good to be blogging, but i have to go to bed. I'll try to write again soon.