More words for Wednesday

(Tuesday)
This morning, I was able to have catch up and pray time with L before J woke up. He was up much earlier, around 8:30. Our big outing today was late morning we went to go get groceries. It did end up being a long outing (too long) I think since I'm trying to get all my main shopping done at one place. I used to get non-grocery things from Target but I realized every time I went, what should have been a $50 excursion was ending up sometimes at a $150 excursion! It was a good thing that I found a notebook in the start of shopping. I like to keep journals and this is a nice, smaller chunky one. J had to bring his crayons along but I only let him bring 2 so I let him color in the notebook. He was so content just coloring the whole time. Now his crayons did keep on dropping, but picking them up over and over was the price of peace in the shopping cart. After shopping we had some open play time. A couple highlights: He picked his Little People to play with. Then I noticed him getting out his fire trucks and lining them up along the couch. He started talking for the Little People saying, "I'm sitting in my fire truck. Everybody ready to go?" Then he answered with another little person, "Yeah! We're ready to go!" He did this a few times, it was so cute. Soon after, he came running to me asking to watch the DVD Mighty Machines. He wanted the fire truck segment. Then when that was over he wanted to watch the garbage truck segment again.

After dinner, we went to the Verona library. J ran over to the self-check out and climbed the stool asking for my help. He was talking about the pirate and then I remembered we used self-check in the past pressing the "pirate voice" button so the computer uses that voice to walk you through. I told him we'd use that when we checked out. We ended up getting a few more books; a couple on elephants, dump truck, handy manny safety first, and a basketball book. He took these and went into the library's kid castle to "read". At bed time, he grabbed all his new books to take upstairs with him.

(Wednesday)
Morning alone time with L went well again since J was sleeping. We are getting close to having a place secured for our fall trip up north. I'm doing the searches on the internet so I told him I found what looks like a cozy 2-bdrm cabin right on the lake in the North Woods area. We invited a friend to come along but don't know if they'll meet us. Our outing today was to Pal Zone in the morning. We got there only to find out it was not meeting today. Thankfully, my friend Eileen had come with her son and so we brainstormed and ended up taking the kids to a library nearby to play. I had to give J a time out at the library. That's a first. He bit me again. That's an instant time out now. I found a perfect corner for his time out and he obeyed well by staying there the full two minutes. Since I've started doing instant time outs for biting, he does seem to be doing it less (went from daily to maybe once or twice a week). After an hour or so of playing and reading, the boys were ready for lunch. We went to Rocky Rococo's for pizza. J got bored when I was still eating so he started playing with his grapes. I usually don't let him play with his food, but he was lining up the grapes in different ways so I let him. We then spent time at a nearby park. It was just beautiful out. No humidity, low 70's, even a little cool with the breeze. This was such a great day for Eileen and I to talk since the boys were OK on their own a lot of the time.

J took an almost 3-hour nap today so I was able to have some time with the Lord. Today I shifted gears a little bit. I haven't talked about this on the blog for a while, but I'm still struggling with my weight. Over the past few weeks as I've kind of stepped back and watched myself and the eating decisions I'm making, it hit me that I really do not have this area surrendered to God. I went searching on the internet for a book that would help guide me in this. I think I found one. It's called Uncommon Vessels; a program for developing godly eating habits. I started the intro today. I really like the goal that she lays out in the beginning. She says that the goal is not mere weight loss and the fleeting joy of fitting into your favorite jeans. The goal is that eating would be done for God's glory. She referred to 1Corinthians 10:31 So whether you eat or drink or whatever you do, do it all for the glory of God. So I want to learn what it looks like to live out that scripture in the realm of eating. For me right now, that's going to be focusing on times of overeating and too many sweets. It's funny how thinking about this in my time alone hit on another area of my life where there's too much "consumption" and that's in my computer time. I need to have more balance there especially in getting to bed at a decent hour. Another thing she mentioned that struck me was that our hearts are not changed by diets so when we are finished we them, we usually will slip back into the old eating pattern. It's when our hearts are impacted that an impact can be made for a long term lifestyle change. This program is set up to impact the inner man; our heart. Another scripture shared was encouraging: Philippians 1:6 Being confident of this, that he who began a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Christ Jesus.

Tonight after dinner, J watched a Care Bears potty training video. He's not showing active interest in this, but often tells me when he has a bad diaper so that's a sign. I also have him sit on the potty whenever we're doing a bath. We'll see if this sparks more of an interest for him. Then we had our Wednesday night at the Y. I'm back to doing half walking, half running on the treadmill again to change things up. Once we got home, J had his first bubble bath. He loved playing with his dinosaurs in it, splashing around and making bubble beards. After all the fun, it was time for bed.

Picture credit to Elyse Fitzpatrick