Speed blogging (J getting more daddy time, good quiet times and one-on-one mom time)

It's 10pm and I'm going to try and beat the clock and make it to bed by 10:30 tonight AND get the blog done. I think I'll do another bullet highlights for the last couple days. I love journaling what we do but lately it's been keeping me up at 12, 12:30am, and have to rein it in.

(Tuesday)

• After the extended weekend, L and I got back to our morning time alone together. We were able to take about an hour together for catching up and prayer. It has been good to learn more about what's on his heart and more of what's going on in his life. You can get so busy with every day life that you're not in tune with everything happening with your spouse. It's worth the sacrifice of sleep!
  
• This morning's activity was grocery shopping. This continues to be interesting. I had learned that bringing a few toy animals would keep him busy and happy, but that's starting to wear off. J got pretty ornery and kept asking to get out. Finally, I decided to do something different and let him out and getting him to help push the cart. This was OK for a bit but then he started to run and got too rambunctious so I put him back in the cart and I don't know which was worse his running down the aisle or the crying tantrum putting him back in. So that continues to be an experiment.
  
• We also went to library in the afternoon. J saw the Cat in the Hat on the computer and wanted to watch and listen. He sat there enthralled the whole time while I browsed around. I was always within earshot and could hear his little narration of the story and plenty of giggling. I had a buying faux pas. So I'm continuing my 30 day buying fast of only essentials (which has been interesting and so far no buying. I am putting a post together about it to update.) So I was checking out and found these vintage Disney books of Lion King, Lion King II, Dumbo, and Finding Nemo. J has been really excited about these lately so I was buying them when it hit me that I'm not supposed to buy stuff. They were 50 cents/piece so I told myself they were essentials because I probably won't get a chance like this again. Argh! Rationalizing wins.
• In the evening, I was leaving to get together with my friend Cecile but J wasn't handling it well. It turns out he cried and cried for a while after I left and wouldn't eat much for dinner. Cecile and I had a fruitful time sharing about what's been going on in our lives for the past month. It is so good to be able to reveal more of yourself to someone as you grow in trusting one another. That was happening last night. As we were talking, I heard a little voice calling, "Mommy, mommy, mommy." It was odd because it sounded like J! Sure enough, it was. L had dropped by after a workout at the YMCA so we all visited for a bit. Then I stayed so we could pray and J left crying. It was a hard decision but I realize he needs to spend this kind of time with daddy. He spends so much time with me that he mainly looks to me for comfort and most of his night routine, so we're working on J getting over that so he can receive that from dad.
  

(Wednesday)

• In my morning time with L, we only had about 20 minutes of talking and sharing time before I heard J waking up. After breakfast, we headed out to Pal Zone. Our last time with this group for a while. I'm starting a new women's bible study that meets the same day so I found another Pal Zone day at a different location we'll go to probably every other week. My friend Eileen showed up at circle time. J overall was more aggressive today and I had to watch him pretty closely. He kept putting his arm up in the hitting pose and I'd catch him before he tried doing it. He doesn't hit hard, just kind of a tap but he needs to learn that it's not OK. This is a slow learning process for him. We also had lunch together and then went to the mall for some running around play time for the boys. I love days like this with so much mom to mom time. Eileen and I continued to find so many things we have in common in our backgrounds and it was great to be able to really talk. The boys spent over half an hour alone on the toy fire trucks and race cars at the mall's entrance. All of that with no quarters so they didn't even move yet they loved going from one to the other.
• We got home and I thought it was nap time but J wanted to "watch something" so instead I put in a CD a friend recommended by Hap Palmer "Learning basic skills through music." I had no idea how J would respond but soon he was following along with the song sitting down and standing up and dancing around. We had so much fun doing this and it was fun for me too. I love to sing with him.
• We went to the Y tonight and I had a hard but shorter workout since we got there a little later than normal. When I picked J up they said he was asking for me constantly the last 15 minutes after a little boy said he missed his mom. J said, "I miss my mommy too." And then kept asking for me. Before bed, he found these Thomas shoes I bought (in advance) since they are a size or two ahead of where he's at now. He wanted to wear them around for a little bit so I let him have fun with that but when he wanted to wear them to bed I had to say no. Lately, when I say our prayers and bedtime song he has to be looking at me. I would sit in the rocking chair with his back against me but now he insists on turning around to be able to see me. That's harder though because then he likes to play by poking my cheeks or touching my eyebrows, etc. But things like this are so cute to me.

Devotional Time

• Yesterday I read more from To Live is Christ by Beth Moore. We were in Acts 15 at the start of Paul's second missionary journey. Paul and Barnabas having a horrible falling out. They were making a plan to go back and visit the churches they had started but Barnabas wants to bring Mark, someone who deserted them the last time around. Paul disagreed and it says they had such a sharp disagreement that they parted company. Beth reflects how in this passage we get to see how God uses flawed people, people who are like you and me. How often do differences come up when you're working closely with others, and especially when there are two strong-willed people unwilling to budge. Unless we invite God in, results can be disastrous, especially in the church body. This made me reflect on how I can easily fall into this. This happens more often to me with people I'm close to and it's so hard to bite my tongue and let things go when I should. Beth shares that with maturity we can learn to avoid it by confessing to God, being willing to pray for the other person (which often changes our heart in the process) and searching to see if there is anything underneath the anger (old resentments, envy or jealousy, etc.)
• In my time today, I was really able to connect with the Lord as I let myself be still and just prayed what was coming to my mind. One of the things I thought about was how I miss my walking. A big part of that was I used the time for prayer walking and it really refreshed me. I want to do that again. I started a new chapter in my study Uncommon Vessels. Today we looked at Romans 12:1 Therefore, I urge you, brothers, in view of God's mercy, to offer your bodies as living sacrifices, holy and pleasing to God—this is your spiritual act of worship. The core question I reflected on was what do I think it means, a living sacrifice. For me, a couple areas are eating healthy, giving of my time to the Lord to receive daily "spiritual food" and learning to give of myself to others more generously.
  

OK, so it's 10:58. Not quite as speedy as I hoped, but better than midnight or later!