It's All About Perspective

Hi.

I'm typing as quickly as I can, because I am hearing Lizzie stirring in her crib; she's been asleep for almost 2 hours, so the time is limited. I love it when she sleeps for a nice, long time. She is so much happier. She really thrives on her schedule. I think I'm probably the same way.

However, yesterday's revelation that considers that "interruptions" are part of the excitement, glory, and joy of life has helped me immensely to keep my attitude in check. Who cares if things don't go as I had planned?

I also realized that when I speak to my baby, I do so in cheerful tones, with only positive things, and do everything possible to keep her feeling secure and happy. Why don't I do that with the other people in my life? Because they can organize abstract thoughts and have conversations using actual words, does that somehow grant them the privilege of hearing my every complaint and frustration? Why do I try so hard to make Lizzie laugh, and don't think much about whether my poor, stressed, tired husband is happy or not? How often have I been a pain in the @$$ when I just need to be kind, supportive, and fun to be around? Going forward I do want to focus on my tone and my words, and the effect they have in my home.

This week has been a rough one as far as school goes for Sam. If anybody reads this, please pray with us that he gets the sign-offs he needs from his professors, so that he can finish this senior project and graduate. It's the 2nd time he's had to submit it, and if he doesn't complete it this time, it would be heartbreaking.

For fun, I signed up for "Swagbucks" and it would be exciting if I actually earned enough of these to win some kind of gift card. They have $10 Starbucks cards for 1300 points. We'll see if it's actually worth the trouble. If so, maybe I'll treat myself out to coffee once in a while, especially since it should be nicer weather and more fun to take the Lizzie Bit out on stroller jaunts.

We found out this week that Lizzie loves to watch ice skating and dancing. She was mesmerized by Dancing With the Stars on Monday night. While watching a little bit of figure skating on TV, she couldn't take her eyes off of them, and I promise she started holding her arms outward like the girl skating on the screen! Since she's so into dancing, this toy has been her absolute favorite this week, thanks to Christina and Wade and Ann!



Well, that dancing Lizzie Bit is grunting in the corner of her crib now, so of course that means I'll be greeted by an all-too-familiar smell when I go in to get her. Fun times!
Have a happy weekend. :)

Keep a Quiet Heart About It

I felt compelled to pick up Elizabeth Elliot's book "Keep a Quiet Heart" this morning. In 1998 I read it along with several girlfriends in my youth group, and the time impacted and shaped my growth in many ways.

The very first page has this quote, which I think I am going to have to print and frame or keep on the bathroom mirror or the refrigerator--or both:

"I think I find most help in trying to look on all the interruptions and hindrances to work that one has planned out for oneself as discipline, trials sent by God to help one against getting selfish over one's work. Then one can feel that perhaps one's true work--one's work for God--consists on doing some trifling haphazard thing that has been thrown into one's day. It is not a waste of time, as one is tempted to think, it is the most important part of the work of the day--the part one can best offer to God. After such a hindrance, do not rush after the planned work; trust that the time to finish it will be given sometime, and keep a quiet heart about it."

--Annie Keary, 1825-1879

Oh, Lord, help me. The part that struck me with conviction the most upon reading this is the phrase "getting selfish over one's work". I realize that the work that I do and that I get so stressed about is more about me and my day than it is about it being a service to my family. If my family interferes with my chores, then what does it say about my priorities? It bears repeating: Oh, Lord, help me.

Seriously, how do you do it?

I have had one of those weeks ... admittedly, for a few weeks. One of those weeks in which nothing gets done. OK, truth be told, I did a lot of playing Farmville, and playing "throw the ball to Mama," and wanting nothing more than to sit on the couch with a cup of coffee and my new Runner's World magazine. (Yeah, forget that running business--I haven't done anything that qualifies as exercise in a full 15 days.)

Now, fortunately I have managed to keep dinner on the table every day except one (plus a time or two when we have gone to get a meal), and all our bills are paid. And our clothes are clean. And mostly put away (except for the baby's, but since it's hard to put them away when she's awake, and when she's asleep I don't want to go in her room to put them away, the clean clothes live in the hamper in the living room for a few days).

But the table ... well, do you want to see what the kitchen table looks like?

Yikes. We just push everything over at dinner time to eat off of one half of it.

And the living room:

Those are gift bags (top left) from the end of February when we did our family birthday lunch. And Sam's t-shirt(s) on the couch. And the baby laundry on the chair. And the mail on the piano bench... because there isn't any more room on the kitchen table. And cedar chips to go in the dog house outside - then why are they inside still? And the toys...... Sigh. These are small pictures, so you can't see too much in detail.

But the bathrooms have gone too long. Really, there will be no picture necessary.

So, how do you do it?
How do you keep things up? Do you budget your time? Do you say "no ____ until I finish ____"? Or maybe you have children who are done with teething and no longer eat leaves when you're not looking? Perhaps you actually have people come to your house regularly, so you have motivation more than once a month, to keep things picked up.
Of course, why would I try to pretend I keep a nice clean house for company, when I just put pictures of my disaster area online for the world to see?

Do you have secrets to keeping your sanity? Or do you have weeks like this, too?

The past week, however, has had some milestones:
On Saturday Sam, Lizzie and I went with Jessa to the vet's office, and only Sam, Lizzie, and I came back. After 14 years, Jessa had her 3rd strike, and we had to put her to sleep. It was sad, but it was the right time, and I had a peace about it. It has actually been a huge relief to us to not have to take care of her anymore. Though of course I miss seeing her around the house, sleeping like a log, and I keep thinking I can throw the odd table scrap to her, but then she's not there. Lizzie kept looking for her for about a day - Jessa used to always follow me into the room whenever I went to pick Lizzie up from a nap or go for a diaper change. So every time Liz looked down, there was the old yellow dog. She's stopped looking now.

On the brighter side, Lizzie popped 2 teeth in one day, so now she has 5! Two on the bottom, and three on the top. The top ones are slowly coming down more. I wish I could get a picture of them, but that would require her to hold still while I hold the camera, which is not a skill set we have mastered yet. Now that she can bite down into things, she loves to take her Cheerios and put them in her mouth just to hear them crunch between her front teeth. She also spent several days testing the sound her teeth made when she crunched or ground them together. I am glad that's stopped for the most part. Terrible noise.

Lizzie now throws the ball. She's actually pretty good at it!


She also dances to music or a beat. Here is a short video:



Please excuse the misspelling of the word helicopter. I don't know where the spelling brain cell went.

Isn't she fun? I do love having her around! The fun of watching her learn, play and understand is probably a fair trade for the chaos that sometimes surrounds us. Though I do hope that before long we'll have less chaos and just as much fun.

Thank the Good Lord for Coffee

This morning started too early. But it started, so who am I to complain? Besides, I have my coffee, so that helps.
And I just found this link, which leads to a "Read the Whole Bible in 2010" passage all lined up for you, so maybe I'll start that. Sure, we're 3 months in, but there's never a better time to start than now, right? And I am glad to have found it, because I need somewhere else to focus for a few minutes.

So why did the day start so early? Well, the good news is that Lizzie slept from about 7:30 PM until 5:30 AM. That was wonderful. And she is still asleep, and it's a little after 8 AM now.

The not so good news is that from the time I woke up with Lizzie, Jessa (the 14 year old, mostly blind, mostly lame, completely deaf Lab I've had since I was 15) needed to go outside. There was an urgency, because yesterday she left an unwelcome deposit on the carpet, which Sam cleaned up. This morning, by the time I put Lizzie back in bed, and disarmed the alarm, Jessa was already squatting. So between 6 and 7 AM, she was outside while I scrubbed the carpet with a half-functioning SpotBot. (The SpotBot, by the way, is probably one of the best $120 investments we've ever made, even if the only part of it that works anymore is the manual hose attachment.) And then after I cleaned the carpet, I had to scrub the dog's behind. If it's not one dirty behind, it's another, right?

We had already decided after yesterday's floor fiasco that we're on a 3-strikes-and-you're-out policy as it relates to Jessa. Well, that's 2.

OK, on to other things, because this has been somewhat depressing.

Last night, before watching the baby episode of The Office (which made both Sam and I laugh quite hard, and remember how tiny Elizabeth was when she was born), I got on the treadmill. I've been working through (sort of) the "Couch to 5K" program, and have gotten through week 3. I did week 4's first day, which involves 2 intervals of jogging for half a mile. I am pleased to say that I did it! Granted, it was a slow jog, but I sure did it!

Then we were up pretty late, working and talking through some stresses that we both were feeling. Like until nearly 1 AM. So, we haven't had much sleep. I think I'll take a nap sometime today.

Sam is getting Lizzie up now; she just started stirring, and since he's going to leave in a few minutes, this is his opportunity to spend a little time with her before this evening. I convinced him to change her diaper, too. He's a good daddy.

Oh, and I just heard her say "Mama" through the monitor! I don't know if she's actually saying "Mama" so much as saying what she always does when she gets her diaper changed. And puts Cheerios in her mouth. But I might be able to claim she's talking about me!

Here is a picture of Her Royal Cuteness:


In exciting other news, my mom, Meg Moseley, has just signed a contract and sold her novel to Waterbrook/Random House! You can read her blog here. This has been a long and sometimes seemingly unrewarding journey for her, but after about 13 years, she has finally been offered a book deal! Congratulations, Mom!

Snow Really is Coming!

At 1:45 PM - You can see the deck a little bit wet



At 2:00 PM - You can see a little bit of snow dusting the back deck





At 2:15 PM - I took the dogs out in the front yard to wander, and took a few shots out there




At 2:30 PM



At 3:00 PM (after the dog had run around out there)


Finally a panoramic at 3:40 - and it's still coming!

Snow is coming?

I'm excited to see snow, if it actually makes its way here today. But before it comes, I want to run to the store - though not to buy the traditional Southern Snow Concoction of milk, eggs, and bread (actually, come to think of it, we could probably use more eggs before the end of the week) - to buy oatmeal, baby Motrin, a Valentine's Day card (or two), another bottle that flows fast enough to keep Lizzie happy (all the ones we have now are slow), and probably some kind of frozen pizza or easy meal of some sort to put in front of Anna for when she babysits for us on Saturday.

Tomorrow night is the beginning of the big "Jubilee Celebration" for Brother John, celebrating 50 years in the ministry! It is a huge hoopla, with hours and hours worth of planning, many out of town guests, real china, and special slide show and testimony presentations prepared. I'm really looking forward to it, if anything I'm looking forward to the night out with Sam, dressed up, and without hauling the baby with us!

I can't believe that I'm actually "that mother" who has never left my baby with a sitter yet! Yes, I have left her with my mom a few times, and with her daddy plenty of times, but never with a non-family member. Granted, I'm leaving her after she goes to bed, but still, it's a "first" and I seriously thought I'd leave her long before she was 8 months old, but I have surprised myself and not parted with her yet!

While Lizzie is napping, I do need to get a few things done: have a quiet time (why does that get pushed aside lately?), make sure there will be a bottle of milk available for Lizzie in case she wakes up while Anna is with her, empty the dishwasher and wash last night's dinner dishes, and try to guzzle a whole Liter of water. If I'm really industrious, maybe I'll exercise (on the Wii Fit again, since I somehow injured my knee after pulling a muscle in my back - overcompensating, maybe? I don't know), charge the camera battery and empty the camera memory card, since we will have to get footage of Lizzie's first experience with 1"-2" of snow, right?

*Edited to add a link to the pictures in the next post of all the snow!

This kid is fun!

Here is a 45 second video of Lizzie laughing at me popping up from behind the couch: