Looking up

Well, after the chaos and awfulness that was Monday, the rest of the week was much improved. Jeff stayed home on Tuesday, ran a few errands, I helped our church's after school program, and we had a quiet evening. We made pilgrim crafts and decorated for Christmas for our party happening on Sunday. We had friends over on Friday and had 6 kids running around our house. It was great! We are planning a brief getaway for our family just before thanksgiving and we are looking forward to it. Getting out of the house with just our family and going out of town just to relax.  Of course it's supposed to rain and be super cold, so we won't be venturing out in the weather much, but hopefully we are able to entertain the kids and keep them occupied for 2 days.

I'm praying that all of these positive things indicate an improvement on the up and up and that after a week of Jeff not having to go to work and the holidays coming up, we are getting to a new healthy normal.

I have heard a few things or had people ask me questions and I just go, "Really?"  Questions like are you going to homeschool through 12th grade? I'm not sure what my response to them should be. Or for others who say, this is what happened to this person in a situation like yours. I'm not that person. I guess that's just a couple of the things that I heard that just bugged me a little this week.

Life's Callenges

Everyone deals with different challenges in life. For the past seven years, we have dealt with my emotional roller coaster. I have been either pregnant or breastfeeding for almost all of our married life. This has created a difficulty in my hormonal stability and makes life a bit rough at times. With some of the kids I have had some postpartum depression. Lately I have been feeling very angry and frustrated, but I don't know why. Today after a pretty calm start to our morning, (we were going to be kind of crafty and do a couple of projects) a few small kinks in my plan made me really upset and threw my whole day off kilter. I'm hoping I can stop allowing the little things to become big things or just making them big things when they don't really matter much.

In previous posts I had written about being lonely and not being able to talk to many people about struggling. In the homeschooling world I feel as if I'm not cut out for the job of teaching my kids because I am a perfectionist and I'm trying to be more creative and letting things go. Now this doesn't mean we stop disciplining. Through all of this I had forgotten about a good friend of mine that had dealt with postpartum depression and I haven't been doing a good job of keeping in touch with her. I think I have found someone who might take my calls that understands what I'm going through. I don't know why I didn't think of it before.  Maybe I will also start to make friends locally that we can get to know better that will encourage us in our walk that we can do life with. I'm off to get some sleep, because I think lack of sleep might be part of the problem. Night, night.

Learning never stops

In the natural flow of life learning never stops. You can be walking along the road or driving down the road, or just be working at home and a learning opportunity will come along.  Either for you from hearing news or random facts on the radio to having a lively discussion with a friend or special someone, or for your kids who still have lots of knowledge to gain as they go through life. 

Today while digging up a bush in the flower bed and then again when attempting to dig out a tree from the back yard, we found worms and other bugs and learned why they are good or bad for the soil/ground. At dinner we discussed that soy sauce was salty. Earlier in the day the girls were fighting over their blankets and they were explaining to Julia (2) that hers said J-U-L-I-A and she said no, "A-B-C-D". It was quite cute. She is almost able to count to 10, but she doesn't like to. She starts with 1,2,3,4 and skips 6 or 7 and says 9,10,11,12,13. The big girls try to get her to count to 20 with them, but she only recites 14 when prompted.  Last weekend while we were painting a room in our house, the girls were reading books (actually reading books) and doing math on the computer, all on their own accord. 

This is why I love homeschooling. Even if we don't get all of our lessons in during our "school day", we can still teach and learn at other times during the day, like when Jeff is home, or on the weekend. Life is continuous, so I'm not sure why we have to tell kids that they need to be able to learn between 8&3 or something close to that. I'm sure it's a schedule that works well for the teachers, but not every student is the same. When you homeschool and you have to take a test, you can take it any time during the day that you want. Now, as they get older and start taking the SAT or ACTs you don't just get to pick a random start time, but in general, tests can be given whenever you feel I like it. 

We also don't have to worry about getting some of the illnesses kids get from being around so many people at once. Don't worry, there's still plenty of social time. Of course as I say that I am reminded of a few cancelled play date because of sick kids by one of us, so we're still waiting for the right moment to come along so that we can get together. Of course I could use a quiet weekend away, completely BY MYSELF! 

Lump Sum

Things in life aren't fair. Do you remember telling your kids that life isn't fair for the first time? I don't. I'm sure I've said it before, but it probably didn't have anything to do with an injustice happening outside of our home. Over the past year my husband has been under attack. It doesn't seem fair, and it isn't, but change happens and new people come in to replace them. This part of life that isn't fair involves politicking with his bosses who seem to not like him and his former boss that hired him is no longer working for the school, so now there is no one to stick up for him but me. I've decided that since one of his bosses was new, I was going to send him an email. It is still sitting in my mailbox so that it can be sent at the appropriate time to coincide with other events involved in this process. My husband loves his job and respects his bosses appropriately. He even loves teaching. He comes home at least once or twice a week and tells me about the interactions between him and his students or the experiments he's been practicing and doing with them. Because of events that happened during the last school year, my husband is teaching the lower performing students. In his 5 class period, he is technically teaching 8 classes, and last week they added 2 more, but he never sees those students. They are now his responsibility, but he doesn't teach them or give them any kind of assignments. Sorry for getting sidetracked, on with my story. He is enjoying teaching, and he has his typical students that give him fits, or want to purposely fail his class, or just plain don't like school and it doesn't matter how interesting you make the class. There are also students who won't like him. I remember having a few teachers I didn't like that other students did. I think he's doing a great job and I just pray that his bosses have/get an accurate view of who he is. I also want anyone who reads this blog to be in prayer for him.

Lovingkindness

I think I need some work. Of course, we all do. If our work on earth were done, God would be calling us home. I have been thinking about our friends and family this week who have adopted or had trouble getting pregnant. I absolutely love seeing pictures of their kids growing and changing and surpassing milestones. It just amazes me how much kids change in such a short period of time. Disclaimer: I really love these kids and praise God for answers to so many prayers over the years and mean no disrespect to any friends of family in the following statements. They are simply observations (and maybe a little soap box) and make me wonder about how my life used to be. When I see pictures of these sweet kids I just wonder what my life was like with only one kid. Did I take a thousand pictures and upload them all to Facebook? Did I change her outfit 4 times/day just so she would wear all of the clothes we had at least once? Were we too uptight because we didn't give her any sugar until her first birthday? Are we crazy to not indulge our children just because they want something? Even though I am a nurse and worked in a pediatrician's office before my kids were born, does not mean I know everything about kids and how to take care of them. Are they portable? Yes! So why not take them with you on whatever trip/outing you go on. Some of our friends and family took their child to the zoo at least once to the zoo before they were 6 months old. Others have taken pictures with a sign and a specific animal monthly to document how much they have grown. Still others deck out car seats with toys and strap covers that don't allow the parents to properly place the chest clip on the chest where it belongs. Soap box moment: Our new car seat actually tells you where to place the chest clip on the child. Please read and follow directions-it's not difficult. Children, especially babies, are not supposed to wear coats while strapped in their car seat. The belts aren't tight enough to hold them in the car seat and often sit off their shoulders just in case you are in an accident. Also, by adding things like said strap covers or headrest to a car seat that didn't come with the car seat, you are voiding the car seat's warranty. They will not honor it if anything happens to the car seat or your child if the car seat is not used as it came from the manufacturer or as instructed in the owners manual. Now on with it.. I need to be more thankful for my kids. I didn't struggle to get pregnant. I haven't had a miscarriage, or pregnancy complications. We have had several friends who have been unable to have children or who have struggled with infertility treatments and/or miscarriages. Many of them have adopted or were eventually able to have kids of their own in the past year or so and now are doting on their wonderful children God has provided. They have prayed for them for so long and once they found out about the child God would give them, they began praying for the kind of person they would be. Each one has been blessed beyond measure with multiple baby showers, and lots of love and support from friends and family who have been praying with them. I keep wondering how they have that kind of time on their hands and if I wasted mine because I don't remember taking a 100 pictures a week, and I certainly didn't get multiple showers with lots of gifts. I don't remember holding her all the time, or watching her sleep. Our friends and family are taking in their kids and enjoying every second they have with them. I don't think I have had that kind of appreciation for my kids because I didn't struggle on that end. We are very thankful to have healthy kids and hope that they remain healthy. I don't know how I would view life and what kind of thanks I would give if we had a child get diagnosed with cancer, or if one of them got pneumonia or meningitis. To date I haven't been fully acknowledging God for just how much we have been blessed with. I guess it's really easy to forget that God doesn't promise us tomorrow. I just hope that the more I get to see these precious children that God has blessed each one of us with that I will continue to give thanks for each moment I have with each of my kids. Maybe that will spur me on to make the most of the time I have with them because I may not have a lifetime to give them all I want to say or teach to them. May God give each of us a heart of thankfulness that we will recognize each gift He gives and that we would want to love and obey him in return for the love and kindness he shows to us each day.

Lifeline

My husband is always joking/complaining that I am addicted to my computer and I probably am. I usually am on my iPod, my desktop, or stealing my husband's laptop when he is home, which is what I'm doing now. My day today consisted of frustration, overeating because of the frustration and overall malaise. I'm not sure if it's a postpartum issue or the fact that I don't interact much with adult females. I have been trying to be out of my comfort zone and call someone when I am overwhelmed by the filthiness that is my house or frustrated by my 4 1/2 year old that is unable to keep her pants/panties/dresses/shorts/and sometimes shirts dry. She'd had 3 accidents by noon, and that was after I took her stinky overnight diaper off of her around 8:30. I was behind. I went to bed early last night instead of staying up with my Bible study and planning this week's school lessons. I still am, and I doubt I will catch up this week. We were supposed to have a homeschool field trip tomorrow that got cancelled because the scheduling people at the arboretum dropped the ball. It's very sad, so now I am going on a field trip with just my family and no adults to talk to. I have a lot to say. I had a baby almost 3 months ago and I no longer live kind of close to any of my friends, so I just need to talk. I mentioned in my last post that no one talks at Bible study. When talking about prayer requests several people just say "unspoken." I don't have a clue how long it's been since I've heard that term, but it's been a while. Now, I understand that God hears all our prayers, but is God really supposed to know what "Jane's" unspoken request is? What if she's had 5 different unspoken requests with 3 different groups on 4 different days. How is God supposed to know which one we're talking about? Couldn't it just be that you're too embarrassed to mention it out loud, or afraid it will hurt your pride, or maybe you think someone in the room will go tell someone else? I thought Bible study is a safe place to mention our problems and let others pray with us and help us through them. Things that are said there, stay there, kind of like Las Vegas. Not that I would know because I've never been, really. I'm sure God really does know about these unspoken requests, but He wants us to be specific, because He wants to give us our desires. Jeff's (husband) cousin went on a girls weekend with some of her friends and I was thinking I need to do that. I really need girl time. Usually the only time I get away for a weekend is for a women's retreat, which is great and all, but I'm thinking I need a weekend to just get away with the girls, just to talk and do nothing, and that includes no television. I doubt that will ever happen, because like one of the ladies from our homeschool group said, if I ever get a couple of days to get away, I'm going with my husband. Isn't that so true, but I just really need girl time. I'm not getting it, and somehow my husband thinks that I'm connecting with people on Facebook (God love him). Facebook is not a means of making real connections. Maybe tomorrow I will vent about my lack of exercise and how that (and my overeating) is contributing to my malaise and clear lack of motivation.

A Long Time Coming

Well, it's clearly been a long time. I think facebook, twitter, and instagram took over for blogging. I know there are blogs out there still active because I find them on pinterest regularly in my search of new recipes, hints about homeschooling, insider information about trips to Walt Disney World (WDW) and others. Where should I start? We had planned to go to WDW this past summer with my parents who had a conference to go to, but God decided to change our plans and give us a son instead! I (Teri) gave birth to Nathan Earl Lehmann on July 29th and he is a cutie! It was a little weird having a boy at first, but he hasn't peed all over the place like I've been told. It's only happened 4 times on my watch (not including baths of course), and I swear my girls would pee without a diaper on a lot more than he has so far. He's super sweet and a pretty content and happy character. He sleeps really well, which I love! The girls are getting bigger and we have been homeschooling the past (almost) 2 years. I can't believe Rachel will be 6 tomorrow. Julia turned 2 in August, and if her height is accurate and she really reaches double her height at 2, which will be 6'2"! Crazy tall! Of course I was supposed to be 5'5" and look how that turned out (I'm shorter). Bekah is just Bekah. She has a personality all her own, stubborn and bull-headed, but she has the heart of a servant at her core. She will be able to do anything she sets her mind to if she can channel that strong will in the right direction. Since we lived in a fairly small house, we moved! We were planning on moving closer to church without moving too far from Jeff's job. Just in case, we also kept our eyes on homes in Rockwall. Most of the homes in the area of our church were too expensive or too small, or both. Rockwall had some decent prices occassionally, but they were usually tiny yards, or needed too much updating for the price. One day I panicked and looked on the other side of Jeff's work in Forney. The first house I saw was perfect and a decent price per square foot. We ended up buying in Forney, but not the house I wanted, it was the house I nearly discarded because there was a view of the middle school football field from the house. So far, the lights haven't bothered us, and you rarely hear the crowd. We even get peewee football games on Saturday night that we watch occassionally from the upstairs window, or we at least check the score. Because I went crazy and we decided to move to Forney, we have had to put ourselves out there. We have found a church we like, have joined a small group, and are starting to find friends. The big girls are playing soccer and we joined a homeschool group. We have been hearing about lots of families in town that homeschool and have met several of them. They just don't seem to live in our neighborhood. I feel very alone and isolated. I go to Bible study, but we don't eat food, no one talks. They only mentioned their names once, so I don't know many of them. Of course there are only 14 total if they all show up and we are usually finished 15-30 minutes early for a 2 hours Bible study and Beth Moore talks for an hour. People are starting to chat with us at small group, but it still feels a little like we're the visitors. It seems so weird that we've been gone from our other church for 4 months. It feels like forever and like it was just yesterday at the same time. We're busy most days of the week and yet I feel like I'm stuck inside all the time. Not sure when this feeling will end.