Taking some mommy time and enjoying the long weekend

I realize I didn't blog anything about our days from Friday on so I have some catching up to do. On Friday, our main things were the start of September's library story time, working out at the Y, and visiting with friends that night. The story time theme at the library was trains and how funny that J was wearing his train shirt today (picture to the left). He was pretty into it, especially when it came to the songs and ones he remembered like the hello song. He also seems to stay by me now, whereas he used to wander around a bit. After my workout at the Y and picking up J from their child care, he kept saying "the dinosaurs were wet mommy" and I had no idea what he meant until they told me he had watched while they washed them. In the afternoon, I took a mommy "time out" having a babysitter come while I went to a special showing of Avatar in 3D. I think the last time I went to the theater was a year and a half ago. I really enjoyed the special effects and the movie was pretty decent. It seemed to borrow from other movies I've seen (Dances with Wolves, Braveheart) and I wasn't into the new age religious parts. Yet, just taking the time to go to the theater which is something I really enjoy, is so nice. After dinner, we spent some time with friends we've recently connected with. L grew up with both of them and I just met them recently, but really enjoy the time we spend together. Of course, L loves to reminisce since they went to school together, but we also like to talk about our faith. J had a hard time letting me talk with the adults and kept wanting to be held, or play or color with him. He finally relaxed when their girls put on Mickey Mouse and he loved watching.

Saturday morning was a treat. We went to our Farmer's Market for only the 2nd time this summer. It is located downtown on what they call the capitol square. It is actually the largest producer-only farmer's market in the country. J did pretty well sitting in his stroller for a long time as we walked around. We also stopped to listen to a couple different musicians along the way. The rest of the day was pretty low-key and I got to catch up on some of the mommy blogs that I follow. Lately, it's been hard to do that as it seems there's always something going on. I really enjoyed the Rethinking series my blog friend Tea has been writing. So many of her thoughts are things I've been thinking about lately, especially related to trying to live life simply and decluttering. It goes along with my buying fast where I'm not buying anything (other than essentials) for 30 days and taking time to reflect on what I see. I'll be writing about that weekly, probably starting tomorrow.

Yesterday (Sunday) we went to the morning service at our church to volunteer. I'm with the 3-year-olds and L is with the 4th graders. We had 14 kids in our room today and the time flew. There seems to be one or two kids who end up sticking by me most of the time. It's been kind of neat. We teach the 3-year-olds the same thing they teach J so it's helpful for me to be able to talk to J about how his time was. He remembered they talked about Hannah. When I asked about it he said, "She was sad. She prayed to God." Then he said something about David and Goliath and was mixing things up.

At home, we had a little bit of play time and then daddy took J on a little outing to the lake by the Memorial Union Terrace. I was fighting a headache and feeling wiped out so I got some great R&R for a few hours and watched a movie that goes with a book I just read called God Grew Tired of Us. The movie was good but it didn't get into the detail the book did. I really enjoyed the book as I've read a few about the Lost Boys of Sudan yet this one was especially inspiring. The author is a member of the Dinka tribe and is a Christian. He has a solid faith and it's amazing to see what he's done with his life after the horrors he endured. When they got back from their outing, J got to tell me about his favorite things from their time. They took a walk by the lake and he loved seeing the ducks. When I asked about the lake he just said, "The lake was blue." Cute.

We went to the evening service at church and they had no child care available. They weren't able to get enough volunteers so J came joined us. He was excited about that yet I hadn't prepared for it. A friend from my mom's group gave me a bag of Kix cereal to keep him busy with a snack. He ended up doing really well in the service which surprised me. The Kix did help along with a coloring book I had for him. It was hard for me though to pay attention to the message while managing J. This was our final sermon in our "Wired for Relationship" series. Today's talk was about how we are living stones (1Peter 2-5) and although Christ is the center (our cornerstone Ephesians 2:19-22) it is through life in the body that we grow. He likened this to building a stone wall where all the stones fit in tightly together and hold each other up. In this, we also see the support we receive from the body (if it is healthy) and also the support we are to give to one another. We went over all the verses in the bible that are referred to as the "one another" verses. This would be a good study to do sometime.

Monday was Labor Day and started off cloudy but we still ventured out to Devil's Lake in Baraboo, WI. We spent the day by the lake reading and playing with J. It wasn't warm enough really to swim so I brought plenty of J's toys and spread them out on the blanket. He had the most fun when daddy or I would join him in playing with his elephants and making up little stories together.






On our way home, we stopped at Grampa Bernie's place and spent some time there. J had been sleeping and took a little bit to wake up and then wanted to read all the little kid books Grampa could find.










We stopped for some food on the way home and I'm glad we had J's toys since he hadn't had a nap and it could have been a recipe for melt down city. He was so funny playing with his toys and was really animated. He got a bath when we got home and then daddy was snoozing in our room so J tried to wake him. He couldn't and started crying, "Daddy's not going to read me a book" and was really upset so we both went in there and this time J was able to wake him and roused daddy for some reading time.

A weekend being around home

Friday
Since I was going to meet up with my friend and her son later in the morning, I knew I had to get to the Y early-ish if I wanted to get in a workout. I had very little motivation but I remember saying a prayer for the will to go and I did get the motivation to go. It may seem like something small, yet it touched me and reminds me no matter how small, the Lord loves when we bring things to him. It was really crowded in the nursery but it didn't seem to bother J. I had a good workout and we got home just in time for my friend Eileen to call. We met at the West Towne mall and had lunch. Then we went to the kids play area. At first, it was a little weird being there since I had flashbacks to when J was an infant and I wasn't doing well (in depression) and this was one of the only places I got out and went to particularly during that summer. It sure was a reminder of how far I have come from that time. J is pretty cautious there so he stays out of the way of the bigger kids, but I notice how much he's growing up since I don't need to follow him around anymore. He'll come running up to me every once in a while and hold onto me for a bit and just "check in". Eileen's son was having fun too. It's amazing that he's about 9 mos. younger than J but taller and bigger. They do well together.

We got home and my babysitter was waiting. She had beat us to the house. I'm glad I called her to let her know we'd be cutting it close. She watched J while I went to my doctor's appointment. When I got home, Karen had J show me what he had learned. He had been practicing on his kids computer and could find d, e, h and m on the keyboard! He was pretty excited about that. I could tell they had a great time playing. She is really good about doing activities that teach him something when she watches him. He was really tired and went right up for his nap. L worked later hours today and didn't get home until around 6:30 (versus 4pm). We ended up eating late and then before we knew it, it was J's bedtime.

Saturday
We had a nice, relaxing day at home today. It was really hot out so we spent most of our time inside. J and I did some different learning activities together like puzzles, flash cards, alphabet. He got really cranky and tired earlier than normal and when he started crying and wouldn't stop I knew it was time for an earlier nap around 12:30pm. He slept for almost 3 hours and when he was waking up I opened the door and started talking to him with his horse puppet while I hid behind the door. He was answering the horse's questions. Then he asked for the horse in his crib and he lay the horse down and covered him up with all his blankets. It was so cute. Well, we barely left the house all day until we decided to go out to dinner to Culver's. J is always excited about this. We brought his plastic elephant and zebra which he played with while we waited. A few older folks made a point to stop by and talk to him about his little animals. He was shy and just said hi. After dinner, we headed down to State Street where we had a nice several-block walk to rent some movies at a video store we like there. We saw a white horse and carriage on the way and J asked to stop and pet him. He was talking up a storm as we did and the owner just laughed and said he was a little motor mouth. On our way back, we saw a black horse and stopped to pet her on our way home.

Sunday
We volunteered at church this morning. On the way in, we saw my friend Heather with her daughter Wren. I pointed them out to J and he started talking about Joan and Olivia too. Wren and Olivia are his play date friends that we haven't seen for a while. J and Wren were together in the same room and he liked that. I barely noticed the time since we had 18 kids today in our room and I was involved with helping in a bunch of different ways. The time just flew and it was really rewarding. One of the girls sits alone in the way back and often plays with toys and doesn't interact much. I made it a point to talk with her last week and invited her to do things even though she didn't join in. I had no idea if I connected but then this week I was saying hi and talking to her again. During the bible story, I noticed she kept inching closer and closer to me until she was leaning up against me. I put my arm around her and then she laid her head on me. It was really sweet. After the service, I picked up J and we talked about what he learned. The focus is talking to God and prayer through the story of Hannah. J took in the story as he told me how Hannah was crying and wanted a child and then talked to God about it.

At home, he was playing and I noticed he put all his little people in one of the train cars a friend gave us. Then we colored together with some new crayons (which he was really excited about; we put them in the train car) but then it was time for his nap.

We went back to church later on for L and I to attend the service. J wasn't happy this time about going to his teaching room. He said "I'm all done churchy" and started crying when we left him. He ended up having a good time and was so excited to see us. He was running to me saying "uppy mommy, uppy mommy" until I could reach him. We continued in our series "Wired for Relationships" and this was a really good message on parenting. The focus was on Ephesians 6:4 and how Paul didn't write a manual for the Ephesians about childrearing, he gave them this verse. Fathers, do not exasperate your children; instead, bring them up in the training and instruction of the Lord. One of the main things he shared was that as we teach our children to follow the Lord and we include family devotional time, our children will learn from what we do (how we live) not so much from what we say. If they never catch us reading our bible or hear us praying, the teaching we try to do will seem irrelevant. I believe this deep in my heart and so my focus is on living what I'm telling J I believe. I also want him to see I don't do this perfectly and our pastor hit on this too. He had his daughter come up and talk about ways he discouraged her and also ways he made an impact and one of the things was he and his wife were quick to apologize and admit their mistakes. This is hard for me to do, yet I feel it's so important so I strive to do this. But a confession....now I need to bring that attitude to life with my husband! I find it easier to apologize and say I'm sorry for something, yet so much harder to say the words "I was wrong". Lord, soften my heart.

We had a late dinner when we got home and then J colored some more. I noticed he's starting to watch the lines and doing better at staying in them. I haven't been working on this with him much at all but I encouraged him when I saw how well he was doing. Later, I was working on the blog and J comes up and says "Who's this blog?" and it just so happens I was working on my blog which I've mentioned a bit. I told him it was mommy's blog and we went through several days talking about and looking at all the pictures of him. Then really unexpectedly he bit me (something we are really trying to nip in the bud) and he got an immediate time out. All I had to do was tell him he was in time out and to go there and he went right over to his corner across the room. He tried to peek once but turned back when I told him to. Once he was done, when I asked him if he knew why he was in time out he was quick to reply that he hurt mommy and no biting. I really hope this is training him for no biting. When it was night-night time he was whining and crying but it's so funny in about 30 seconds he was happy again and going upstairs for bed.

Volunteering for children's ministry and creative play time

This morning we got ready to go to church where we are helping as volunteers for the children's ministry this summer. J was a bit whiny and difficult as we got ready to go. I thought he might have trouble going to his Sunday school room, but he went OK. I was only two doors away helping with the 3-year-olds. I wasn't sure how this would go but was open for anything. My job was a helper to assist the person teaching and directing the time. I ended up loving it. In the beginning, we had open play time as the children arrived. We ended up with 12 kids in our class. Then we had the children gather for songs and reading a bible story. Our topic is "God is strong" so the story of God helping Moses by parting the Red Sea was told. Then the kids did a craft, had snacks and then more play time. I felt quite at ease helping the kids color, passing out snacks and playing with the kids. All this comes from having a child of my own, as I had helped in the past with kids in Sunday school and never really felt comfortable. I really felt out of my element. I'm going to stay in the same room for the rest of the summer so I can connect with the same kids. I picked up J and he was bouncing with energy. They said that they started the clean up time and J started singing the clean up song which helped get things underway.

J took a really good nap when we got home. We had a late lunch and then I let J watch the Sesame Street counting and alphabet video. I'm glad to see him responding and repeating as they go. J asked me to play with him so I got out his train and set up the track and did that for a bit. Then he wanted to play pretend with his little people. He had my character be the mommy. He had me "preparing food" for them. He asked for hot dogs, pickles, muffins, peanut butter and jelly. They did a lot of pretend eating and then J said the little people wanted to go to the zoo. So I set up a bunch of "exhibits" using his stuffed and plastic animals (penguins, rhino, elephant, bear, tiger, horses). It's been fun to see him enjoy doing more of the imaginary play.

Tonight we went to church and they had the kids join us in the service today. Our friends loaned us a Richard Scarry book that J spent most of his time going through. The only problem is that he likes to "read" out loud and was pretty distracting. We tried giving him his nuk and that worked some of the time but then he'd say "all done with nuk" and go on being loud. He went a couple rows up and sat with our friends from life group for a while and then came back and was restless and somewhat loud. I realize we haven't been in situations very often where he's expected to sit quietly so we need to work on this. I ended up taking him to the lobby and we played in the gym until it was done. The main theme today from Ecclesiastes (the part I got in between all the interruptions) was about the randomness of death, how we don't know the time or place this will occur. Another main idea was how busy we have gotten in our modern culture, so busy we often do not slow down to enjoy the blessings the Lord has given us, often right under our noses. I seem to keep getting reminders of this, and it really is helping to take time to savor those moments of joy.

My husband ran into a friend he met in the men's group and introduced me to his wife. I hadn't known her name but knew her from my Titus mom's group. Ironically, she had been the volunteer helping in J's Sunday school room today. They invited us to Culver's to hang out together. After a while, they needed to leave because their kids were really tired and melting down. By the time we got home, it was already J's bedtime so it was bath and then sleep.

A Touch that Heals

This morning after daddy left, we went and did our grocery shopping. J got pretty antsy toward the end of the trip wanting to get out of the cart. Then I forgot that my credit card was closed out because of two fraudulent purchases (kinda scary) so I have no card until the new one comes. They put my cart in the cooler and I went to the bank and back to pay the bill. I also stopped by the post office to mail out an EBay package. I just started selling items there (due to buying the wrong thing) and had my first sale. It went well so I think I'll do more.

The day was just bing-bing-bing nonstop. J had an abbreviated nap and we had just enough time to eat and go. We had a neat activity planned. I signed up as a volunteer for a study day at our church. Every year the college students are invited and they open up the whole church so the students can study, eat, hang out, eat some more. I didn't want to get a babysitter to go volunteer, but since I wanted to help out I decided to bring J along. I thought it would be a good experience to serve with him. We were greeters and handed out a study day info sheet and J got into handing them out a bit too. Most of the time he colored or played with his car and played ball with one of the ladies. The college students and other students thought he was so cute. I'm glad we did this.

In my devotional time, I continued in Luke 5 where Jesus healed a leper and a paralytic. The man with leprosy came to him with complete belief that Jesus could heal him. Verse 12-13: When he saw Jesus, he fell with his face to the ground and begged him, "Lord, if you are willing, you can make me clean." Jesus reached out his hand and touched the man. "I am willing," he said. "Be clean!" And immediately the leprosy left him. To me this account is so moving. This man completely trusts that Jesus has the power to heal him, humbly comes to him, and Jesus's first response was to reach out his hand and touch him. In that time, touching a leper was completely unheard of. Lepers were shunned. We see Jesus' love, his compassion in his gentle touch, a touch that heals. Just writing that brings to mind again how thankful I am for God's healing touch in me bringing me out of a dark depression (see Feb 20 post, "We like our books and taste of Africa"). A friend sent me wishes for a happy Mother's Day on Facebook saying how wonderful that the HAPPY part is true. This past week I've had a lot of difficult memories resurfacing from that time period. I look at it as ways the Lord wants to continue the healing, by being able to accept the past and the memories that are there. Thank you, Lord. Later, it says that often Jesus withdrew to lonely places and prayed. If you follow closely in the gospels, you see that although Jesus' ministry was so busy with so many followers, he would often get alone to have times of prayer with God. I thought about my prayer times and it would be good to take more time to pray. To just sit before God, quiet my heart, and pray the things that come to mind. I enjoy times of praying for others, yet it isn't always as in depth as it could be.

This was Y night and it was a challenge doing my regular workout. It felt harder on my knees and overall I was just more tired. I had to really push myself. These last two nights I got to bed at 12:30am since we've had a lot going on but it's just a reminder that I need to get more sleep. So I'm going to hold to that. When we got home, J wanted to play outside. He walked over to daddy's side of the car and took his hand saying he wanted to play with daddy. So we kicked a ball around for a bit before taking J to bed.