Sorry it was a depressing blog yesterday. Thank you for your encouraging comments; I really appreciated them.

It seems like whenever I have a really hard, discouraging day, then the next day is really idyllic to make up for it. This morning, we started out by Jacob writing half the alphabet in his writing tablet, then we all put on hats (two firefighter helmets and one bike helmet) and Jacob and Ethan saved me from the fire and bad guys upstairs. After that we played with blocks and trains, and then I let them use my new dry erase markers on their dry erase boards. Here are some pictures to illustrate. Please excuse the desk mess - everything I don't want them to play with gets thrown up there.

I had a horrible time at Superior School Supply today. I had been wanting an alphabet line and a number line or chart, as well as a phonics chart and/or flashcards. I knew that it is always more challenging to take the kids with me somewhere. I have had enough difficult experiences to make me want to never take them in a store with me again, but there is still a part of me that says I am a major wimp for feeling that way, and that I have to just be matter-of-fact about it and do it. So, I thought, I'll just go in, get what I need, and we'll go.

However, it wasn't that simple. I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for. I kept finding things that did look helpful in locations I didn't expect them to be - so that prompted my continued search for exactly what I wanted (thinking it was probably just hidden away somewhere). The kids meanwhile were roaming the store a bit. The stayed on the east half of the store with me, but I couldn't keep them in sight for more than a few seconds. I would go to where they were, or bring them to me, but the minute I started to look at the racks to try to find what I wanted, they were off exploring again. I mean, come on - they are little boys, and this was a store filled with things designed to be engaging and interesting to them. On the other hand, haven't I been training them to obey for these last 4 and 2.5 years? Why were they so thoroughly disregarding my directions?

I was trying to just get out of there without making a scene. But alas, it was not to be.

It was taking me forever to find anything, because whenever I started looking through the racks, I had to stop and rescue the merchandise from my children's hands again. So, finally, the lady at the counter tells me that the display shelves are not very sturdy, and I need to make sure the boys don't touch them because they could fall on them. Okay, I get her point, keep the kids away from the stuff. I've been trying, but it is very hard. I have two of them to watch, after all, and I'm trying to use my eyes to decide what to buy, too. (Ugg, I hate how whiny I sound here already!) So, I grab Jacob's hand and go searching for Ethan who has wandered off again while I am speaking to her. She finds him first, unfortunately, and brings him to me. She is holding some small object, and she says, "See this is what I'm talking about. He was trying to eat this. You really need to keep them with you...." And I don't remember the rest, something about how it wasn't the type of store where kids can just explore etc. etc. Now, what she said about him eating it is very unlikely, he never puts anything in his mouth. We could barely feed him when he was little because he didn't even want a nipple in his mouth. But nonetheless, I'm sure he was messing with it, and it was not a good thing. I don't blame her for not wanting my kids to wreck havoc in her store.

So, I put away all the stuff in the cart, because I am not capable of deciding that quickly what I want to get for sure. The whole time I am doing this I am holding Ethan, originally on my hip but then under my arm like a football because he twisted around trying to escape. And he is shouting, "No! No! I wan down! I wan down!" And I am trying to get Jacob to stay right next to me and touch nothing, but he's not really obeying (but at least not throwing a fit like Ethan), and he's starting to pout as my voice gets more strict.

After putting every item back where it belonged, I put away the cart, and I usher the kids out the door. Jacob says, "Are we going to McDonald's now?" Of course the answer is no, I can't reward them with McDonald's playground after this incident! So Jacob starts to wail in the parking lot while I'm buckling in Ethan. I remembered then that I needed to see about the item Ethan had supposedly tried to eat - if it was damaged I wanted to pay for it. I leave the kids in the running car, which is right in front of the glass-front store (but I'm still thinking the store lady will probably say in horror, "Did you just leave your kids in the car?!?"), and run back inside to ask about the item. She says "don't worry about it." So I head off to the McDonald's drive-through, because it would be punishing myself more than them to not at least get food (it was the playground that would have been a reward).

Jacob stopped crying on the way home before I did. Shortly after I handed him his hamburger, he seemed to forget anything had happened. Meanwhile I was quietly sobbing ("Mommy, are you laughing?") all the way home. I mean, what does this incident say about me? Why wouldn't the kids obey me? Do I just ignore too much at home because I don't want to deal with it? I know we are relaxed parents; we don't have a lot of rules or worry about a lot of issues that others might consider a big deal. Our boys run and wrestle and throw balls in the house. They pretend to duel with sticks as swords outside, and we let them climb high things and jump off of things. We want to let them be boys and conquer their world. But I'd like to think that we do have boundaries that we enforce. But maybe not, if they can't obey when it matters. I was just so saddened by the incident. I feel like I have a lot to think about this afternoon, but I feel like it is all a muddled mess in my mind.

Here is Heath's newest album, pictures from our beautiful day yesterday. :-)
http://picasaweb.google.com/nattyman512/ItSABeautifulDay

I have been thinking lately how working moms really get a rough deal. I used to think it would be easier in a lot of ways to be a working mom. I had a tough transition from being a wage earner with tasks, responsibilities, and social status similar to my husband's, to being an unpaid member of society, with tasks and responsibilities divided along gender/role lines, losing social status and the surety of knowing I was doing a good job through annual reviews and pay raises. I thought it was rough to suddenly be stuck with all the housework, instead of splitting it 50/50, and to deal with the intensity of caring for children all day with no back up and little adult interaction. I knew that I didn't want to work, that I desperately wanted to be with my babies all day, but I thought that if I could have dealt with the emotional and psychological element of them spending more than half of their waking hours with someone else, then working would have been easier than staying home.

However, now I know I was wrong.

I recently saw some data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics about people's use of time (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/atus.toc.htm). They surveyed 13,000 people about how they used their time in a day. Then they made tables of all of it, divided by households with children under 6, with children over 6, or with no children; and further divided by sex of the surveyed person and by employed/unemployed. According to the data, unemployed women with children under age 6 average 7.53 hours of housework and child care each day (only counting child care when it is the primary task, not concurrent with another task). Employed women with children under age 6 average 5.34 hours of housework and child care per day and 4.41 hours of paid labor each day. Employed men with children under age 6 average 3.24 hours of housework and child care each day (this includes outside upkeep and repairs) and 6.12 hours per day of paid labor.

Now, I know it is hard to interpret this data, because it is averaged out over the entire group surveyed - it doesn't represent what each individual did in a certain day, but more what the group of people with children under age 6 accomplished as a whole. (For instance, since some people had their day off work on the survey day, it lowered everyone's daily average for hours worked.) I like to think that the employed men's average hours of childcare and housework is thrown off by the fact that some employed men have stay-at-home wives. So, maybe those men with stay-at-home wives (40%) do just 2 hours of housework and childcare per day and are able to do 6.73 hours of paid work, while those with employed wives (60%) do 4 hours per day of housework and 5.71 hours of paid work. That would even up the distribution of labor between the sexes in two-income families - about 68 hours for each parent. That's how it would play out in a fair world, anyway.

But I know for most employed women, the husbands do not cut work hours to do more housework, and they don't share in the housework as much as they could. So the conclusion is still the same - for the group of people with children under age 6, employed women as a whole have the heaviest workload, equalled only by their husbands if those husbands decide to share in the housework. Unemployed women, and probably their husbands as well, have less work overall. Sigh. I feel very blessed to be home, and I hope I bless my husband through it, too, by taking care of most of the indoor housework and leaving just the outdoor and handyman work - which he mostly enjoys - to him. I still contend that my hours of work are especially intense because the children are always here, always needing me, even when I am doing other tasks, and I have no one to take over while I take a bathroom or coffee break. But I realize now that me working would not have made our lives less stressful, because while the hours may have been less intense, they would have been longer.

Ethan went with me to buy paint Sunday night. He thought it was fun to use the paint can as a drum - but then again, he uses anything he can as a drum. The last picture is the wall after I painted - I did 3 walls in the entryway where we had ripped off wall paper. Sorry, I know the pictures are grainy; I didn't have much light and couldn't get Ethan to hold still for the flash.

I recently lost two checks worth almost $800 together. I had received the checks as we were frantically packing up to leave GC last weekend, and my brain just lost the memory of where I had put them. I had a vague memory of putting them somewhere I thought was safe, and I had checked all the safe places I could think of. So, I emailed my mother-in-law and my aunt-in-law to see if I had left the checks there, and my mother-in-law emailed me back and said, "Pray, God knows where it is. Ask him to reveal it to you or us."

So, that night as I lie in bed, I prayed and asked God to help us to find the checks, to bring to mind where they might be. An image flashed in my mind of a white folded paper that I had seen in my wallet earlier, when I had pulled out the insurance cards to pick up Jacob's prescription. At the time, I had thought how it didn't look like a receipt (because I couldn't see the type on the other side), which is the only thing I usually put in that compartment, and I wondered absentmindedly what it might be, but then I was immediately distracted by talking to the pharmacy tech. So after seeing this image in my mind, I immediately called to Heath, who was still up, and asked him to please bring me my wallet. Of course, that white paper inside was the envelope containing the checks.

I was just so amazed. And I shouldn't be, because I know the power of God (as much as my limited mind can at this point), and I know He can do far more than show me a picture to jog my memory of where a check is. But it was just such a great reminder of how if God can handle the little things, then He can certainly handle the big things. If he can show me where my checks are - checks, which could have been replaced, not even cash which would have caused a considerable loss - then surely he can take the extra weight off my body or preserve my health or smooth over a relationship or grant Heath favor at work.

It reminds me of something that happened while I was fasting, and only drinking hot tea with sweetener and a little milk. We were going out of town, so I had grabbed a handful or two of Equal packets to put in my box of tea bags. I finished the box while I was out of town, and as I got down to the last tea packet, there were exactly the right number of Equal packets to go with it. "How strange!" I thought. But as I was standing there at the counter with them in my hand, God spoke to me and said, "If I can arrange such a small thing as this, don't you think I can arrange to give you this house?" It was an amazing reassuring moment. We had a contract on the house that we are now living in, but our financing was far from secure. We both felt like God had told us we were going to get this house, so we felt that it was surely going to work out somehow, but it was hard to see how that was going to happen. It was a very stressful time. At any rate, we were sure that whatever happened, it (we) would be fine, even if we had heard God wrong. (Like the Hebrews in the fiery furnace, "We are sure our God will save us, but even if he doesn't, we will still praise him!") Getting this reassurance was balm to our souls and strength to keep our faith and comfort in Him.

blog trails

Sorry I haven't blogged much of real substance lately. Since I started blogging again, I have started reading all of my friends blogs again, too... and following the blogging friends trail is amazing. I started out at the site of a close friend, clicked on one of his friends' names to see who it was, recognized an acquaintance, clicked on two of her friends' names and found another acquaintance and an old friend, whose site lead me to another old friend. So I get a peek in on the lives of these acquaintances and friends that I haven't seen in years. The internet is a crazy and amazing thing, how it lets us be involved in the lives of so many people that we otherwise would never connect with on such a level.

Anyway, I think I have been too caught up digesting what I had soaked up of their lives from their blogs, so I couldn't post to my own blog. I remember these friends in a certain way, as I knew them 8 or 10 years ago, and their voices sound the same even now. But all of our lives have moved forward so much. I wonder if we all hung out in person, would they think that I was the same? Because I feel like an entirely different personality than I was 10 years ago. The only thing that is unchanged is the very core of me - I guess the spirit part of me. And some of these friends were close enough to connect with that part of me, so I guess in that way, maybe I would seem the same. And maybe that is why they seem the same to me.

Okay, this is getting too sappy even for me, so I'm going to stop. My next decision is whether to post comments on any of these blogs and let them know I am listening in.

RIP

Apparently we killed the most industrious mother mouse in the world. Look at this house she built in our storage closet! It even has a doorway (see the piece of paper folded at an angle). We felt sick when we found this last night.
 

For some reason, I think if I had two daughters instead of two sons, I wouldn't have been hearing this morning, "Can I see the mouse Daddy? Please can we go out and see the mouse now?" This, referring to the dead mouse with his head still squished in the trap, which Heath had temporarily disposed of on the porch. "Wow... cool! Now I've seen a real mouse!"

So, how did the mouse get into my basement? And does he have 10 or 20 friends down here, too? ((Shudder))

My two boys love each other so much. :-) I was cleaning the bathroom, and I thought, "Wow, this is amazing - they haven't come to bother me, and I can hear them playing in the bedroom so nicely together...." I was already thanking God for giving me a chance to clean in peace, but when I saw that this is what they were doing, then my heart was really full with the blessing of my children. 

Well, I haven't done so well at posting every day, but I'm back now. I do have a sort-of excuse... we were gone to GC for 5 days, which was a lovely, busy time.

As often happens with our vacations, we brought back a cold. I hate colds. I understand why we haven't been able to cure the common cold, seeing as it is actually 200+ different viruses, but I still feel put out whenever my family is knocked down by one. I still find myself thinking, "All these technological advances and inventions to make our lives easier and virtually pain-free, and really? We can't cure the common cold?"

On a lighter note....

Ethan's speech development has been a source of constant amusement for Heath and I. He has a pretty sizeable vocabulary of words he seems to have just made up. "Dute-doo" was popular for a while - it seemed to be a generic term for any human being. As in "Dorry, dute-doo" in apology, or "Hi, dute-doo!" to family, friends, and strangers in the parking lot. Then there is dee-one. Which at first observation would seem to mean "this one," except it doesn't always fit. Again, it seems to be a generic term for any sort of object or person that he wants to "name" or draw attention to. So, the obvious use is "Dee-one! Dee-one!" meaning he wants us to get him the object he is pointing at, or wants us to notice that object. The less obvious use is, "Ethan, what kind of animal is that?" "Dee-one."

The crowning achievement of his language creation is a certain sentence he repeats over and over, exactly the same each time, and we have no idea what it means. When we couldn't understand most of what he said, we would just nod and say "Un-huh, yeah," like we did to everything else. But now that we understand most of the rest of what he says, this sentence stands out. He seems to be asking something about Daddy, because that is the last word, but the first 3-4 words I don't know. I'll try to listen closely today so I can post the phoenetics of the sentence on here, and maybe we can analyze it. I suggested to Heath that we record it and slow it down or speed it up or break apart the syllables to see if we could figure it out.