Learning to Leap

Today is one of those days the Deceiver is working overtime. Thoughts like,  " someone else would do such a better job homeschooling my kids" "my friends who are mothers probably never lose their cool like I do" "I'm a lousy wife" "wonder how many issues I'm planting in my kids' hearts that they will have to go to a therapist to work through someday..." "no one is really buying this act I'm trying to sell.  Everybody sees right thru me and knows what a wonderful, homeschooling mom wanna be I really am" "I will never be the wife I should be.  It's hopeless."   have been after me all day.   Guilt.  Big time.  Failure is all I can see today.    So I tried to do something to make myself feel better.  Something a good mother would do.  I pulled out their American Heritage Girls handbook and we began working on earning their cake decorating badge.   We worked togeth...

Siblings. (they look pretty angelic in this picture, don't they?) You love 'em.  You hate 'em.  You adore their every move, you hit them with a hairbrush (not that I'd know anything from personal experience about this from my childhood with two sisters...ahem.  Sorry, Suzanne.). Sometimes my girls just can't take it.  The pressure gets to them.  The little annoyances of living with each other occasionally just builds up to an aggression that no one but God could hold back.  I don't think my kids are violent, but I suppose if I kept records of the biting incidents, the pinching, hitting, and shoving that has gone on throughout the years, I guess I might change my mind.   Sibling violence is not a pretty thing, but this is exactly what happened with my middle daughter a few weeks back.  My husband and I were very relieved that the incident did not involve actually hurting a sibling this time, but it was still pretty bad. I unders...

It's swim lesson season. This is an activity that evokes quite dramatic responses in some. Let's face it, parents.  Sometimes we just make our kids do some things they really, really hate.   Vegetables, bedtime, hair brushing, and bed making are a few at the top of the list at our house, but for some mysterious reason I will neither question nor take for granted, swim lessons have never been one of the hated activities.  My girls kinda like them, in fact.   This is not the case for many parents out there.   Take my niece, Helen Kate, for instance.  She's the one on the right.   She just finished private swim lessons with a fantastic, experienced teacher by her side.  This is a woman who's seen it all, dealt with every personality type out there, and has a great track record of helping kids succeed at conquering their fear of water and having fun in the pool.  She's great at it.  The patience of Job and ...

Every once in a while, I get adventurous.   I start relaxing and thinking I am just about out of the days of chaos with little ones around.  After all, my baby is four years old (gasp)!  Gone are the days where I have to constantly keep a watchful eye to make sure my children aren't going to hurt themselves somehow.  I don't have to worry that I forgot to close the baby gates on the stairs or put covers on the electric sockets. Just this past weekend, the kids actually closed our bedroom door so we could sleep late on a Saturday morning!!! Aww, my babies are growing up. We're past all the craziness. And so, with my newfound freedom from the constant vigilance required by young children, I decided to do something special.  A friend of mine had recently had baby girl #3.  I could remember that so clearly and I had no doubt she could use a little break from cooking.  My kids were older, so it was only fair that I try to help her out, r...

The search is over. Finally, at long last, I have unlocked the secret!  A new beginning for a whole new life!!   Never, never again will the impossible task of getting my mommy body into some kind of shape seem quite so impossible.  The answer was right under my nose all the time!  Here I've been turning down my favorite foods and trying to keep up while working out alongside skinny minnies at the gym, and now I come to find out I've made it much, much too hard to lose weight and be fit. I'll bet you have, too.  I'm serious.  This is a new beginning for all of us this year. Look no further, mommies of the world.  Throw out those diet plans, those lean cuisines, those food scales, maybe even your gym memberships (except for some of us the thought of giving up childcare and time to catch up with friends at the Y is just too painful...on second thought, keep the memberships).   But what is this new beginning for our health progra...