This and That

Random fact: We have a story in one of our kids books called "This and That." (blog post title, in case you have no idea what I'm talking about...and you might still have no idea but that's alright) It's about a mother cat on a farm who goes to all the animals and asks if she can use things like straw and feathers and such. And when the animals ask her why she needs the stuff, she always answers, "Oh, this and that." And the last page shows her with her two new kittens named This and That.

Anyhoo...

Potty training. Wow. It has been a process with our girl. I did one day last week where we packed away the diapers and I spent the entire day watching her closely and reminding her to "tell me when you need to pee." She did really well that day and I felt like we were going to have this pants-wetting thing nipped in the bud. BUT...nope. The next day I made salsa. And the day after that I made more salsa. And then it was Sunday and we were pooped (not literally...oh wait. maybe literally...). Monday came and I was helping Nathan with the ceiling a bit and doing stuff around the house. Tuesday I was busy around the house doing who knows what. And that was a lot of days when I wasn't watching her closely. Many accidents. Many, many loads of laundry. And a girl who doesn't seem to feel it coming, doesn't seem to mind being wet, and will NOT tell us when she needs to go or even when she's had an accident. It's quite frustrating to say the least.

me - "Kayden, tell me when you need to pee!"

K - "Alright."

me - "Kayden, doesn't it feel yucky to have wet pants?"

K - "Nopers!"

Alrighty then. I guess I'll just change your pants whenever I notice that telltale dark spot on the back. Ugh.

I'm thinking I'll need to change my approach. Perhaps tomorrow I will start setting a timer and she will be required to try to pee on the potty every hour or so. If she succeeds, maybe I'll give her two hours before she has to try again. Prizes haven't worked. She just says she doesn't want whatever it is that I'm trying to bribe her with. Potty celebration dances don't work. Huge amounts of praise don't work. Doing it because it just feels better to have dry pants doesn't work. (she loves all those things but will still choose to wet her pants if she doesn't feel like going on the potty) So I'm hoping that if I can get her used to the feeling of dry pants for a few days in a row, maybe she will start to notice that being wet feels icky and be more motivated to work at it. She's such a mystery, that girl.

Speaking of mysteries, Maddie. Sleep. Her sleep is a mystery to me. Why won't she close her eyes and sleep?? It seems like the only time she will close her eyes and fall asleep is when she is so tired that she physically cannot keep her eyes open any longer. I see her eyelids drooping and then I see her little forehead wrinkle and eyebrows go up in an effort to hold her eyes open just a few.seconds.longer... JUST CLOSE YOUR EYES AND SLEEP! You can lead a horse to water. You can even shove their face in it. But it looks like I've got a horse that doesn't drink, even when her throat is dry as a desert.

But as frustrating as Maddie's going to sleep habits are, I must say that she's a pretty good sleeper once she finally gives in to it. I don't know that either of our other kids gave us a 9 hour stretch by 10 weeks old. I'm pretty sure neither of them gave us a 9 hour stretch before they were 12 months old! (Who am I kidding..."us"? Nathan sleeps just fine. It's me who is up with the little lady multiple times a night! Forget sleeping like a baby, I want to sleep like a husband! - yes, I stole that from a shirt. But it's SO true)

So this is what my life is these days. Sleep, pee, kindergarten (but I know how shy Levi is and he probably wouldn't want me to post about him and kindergarten much so I won't...Maddie and Kayden...for some reason I just don't think they mind quite as much. Maybe by the time they're 5, they'll mind too and I'll pull back my recounting of their lives via blog). Sometimes I wonder if I should be a working mom. There are moments when I wonder if what I do is really profitable. Valuable. Maybe I'm wasting these years of my life by staying at home and not pushing myself more to get out of the house and use my brain in a different way at least a couple days a week. But you know...then I stop and think about it some more. Some people would feel like they're wasting away if they spent every day doing what I do. But who's to say that working a job or using your mind for something other than homemaking is more valuable? What's important here? Should I take my kids to daycare while I work a job I hate (or enjoy, but that's beside the point) just because I feel like I'm more valued in society if I do that? I think, when it comes right down to it, it's about what God has led each of us to do and what makes us feel fulfilled. What is life-giving to you? Is it to work a job? Then do it with everything you've got! Is it to work part time and stay home with the kids part time? Awesome! Or is what's most life-giving to you to be free to throw yourself into your home and family every hour of the day? Then do it and take great joy in it! No guilt. No inferiority. Just huge amounts of blessing in whatever you do if you're doing it for the right reasons!

I was wondering the other day about whether I was getting "dumb" because I stay at home. I loved maths and sciences in school. Math especially. Calculus was my favourite. It gave me headaches. It stretched my mind. And I loved it. Physics too. And chemistry. Equations. Formulas. Aah...the subjects where there is a clear right and wrong answer. Black and white. Everything can be neat and tidy when there are right and wrong answers. None of this grey business (though I recognize that there is a ton of grey in life and I embrace that there is - it would be wrong to insist otherwise...just wouldn't it be easier if everything could be put in a clean and organized pile? mmm...piles...) Anyway, off topic. I don't do any of that anymore (maths/sciences). But I realized that I AM still using my mind. I'm not using it in an academic way (who says academia is the only important place in the world?) but I am using it. I do problem solving every.single.day. I spend hours wondering why my baby isn't sleeping....still.isn't.sleeping...why isn't she sleeping yet? I analyze her schedule and her sleep cues and tweak this and that until it works. I pore over details of my two year old's personality, trying to figure out why she doesn't care to use the potty and what might motivate her to choose porcelain over fabric for her elimination needs. I wonder why my 5 year old is so shy and why he won't speak or let people see who he is and wonder how I can help him grow to be confident. (oh wait, he's just like me...) I search my mental database on a regular basis for the perfect stain treatment to get out various stains from my children's (and husband's) clothes. I am constantly learning new things about the best way to clean something or cook something or make something. I am no gourmet cook, but I have learned many things about cooking since I got married and rarely use recipes anymore - unless I'm baking. There's something about baking that just doesn't turn out quite right if you don't have the right amount of baking soda or flour or whatever...and I just haven't mastered the "feel" of baking without a recipe yet. Gardening...I'm still in the beginning stages of learning what works and what doesn't and all that is involved in getting a good crop year after year. How are these things any less valuable than things you learn in a classroom? I submit that they are not. I don't care that some people don't value home-making as a full time job. I am going to rock home-making out of this world!

So there.

Speaking of homemaking...our house is a disaster (though I do believe making a HOME and taking care of a HOUSE can be two different things...but I digress). Here's a random story for you...because it's late and I ramble pointlessly when I'm tired. We had someone stop by unannounced this morning (the risk of getting a new phone number and people still having the old number in their phone) and I was SO embarrassed at the state of our house. There was a pile of tomatoes on the kitchen floor because I'd just been sorting out the red tomatoes from the green to make pizza sauce today. There were dirty diapers on the floor because I hadn't taken them downstairs to the diaper pail yet that morning. There were crayons on the floor, papers from kids colouring all over the floor, half-eaten breakfast on the table, a random pair of ear muffs for mowing the lawn on the floor, a pile of random junk on a shelf by the door, some lawn chairs leaning against the wall in our dining room, the table covered with random stuff, socks on the floor by the door, plastic bags laying around, a drill, a broom, random furniture here and there. There was stuff EVERYWHERE. And that's often how our house is these days. I usually try to tidy up if I know someone is coming over but today there was no warning. And it was fine because I'm sure she (wonderful lady, has grown kids of her own) knows we're in the middle of renos (it takes so much more time and energy to clean up when you have to FIND a place for everything rather than just return it to it's designated spot, am I right?!) and have young kids who make messes faster than I can clean them up and am in the middle of dealing with huge amounts of garden produce and have a baby who doesn't sleep which means that my usual tidy-up time in the evening is spent bouncing an overtired baby. BUT...it was hard to let her see that. I always took pride in the way our house looked. I felt like it was a direct representation of how well I was doing my job. It's as if people were thinking "you stay home all day, why WOULDN'T your house be spotless?" To that I say, wouldn't a house be more spotless if nobody was there all day? Just sayin'. ;)

Anyway... Yeah. Messy house. It drives me nuts. I think of it because I'm sitting here typing in the midst of it instead of spending the night tidying up. Haha. Yup. But that's probably enough pointless rambling for one night. If you've read this far, nice work.

One last random thought for you this evening...why did Apple make such sharp edges on the bottom of their laptops? I'm using a MacBook and the skin on the inside of my forearms is raw from the edge of the laptop cutting into my skin. Seriously Apple, you do so many things well but that edge...make it a little rounder, k?