Motherhood

For the past seven months or so, my life has been way too full. I haven’t devoted my time to things that keep me sane: reading good books and writing drivel in my journal.

I’m a natural introvert which means I derive my energy from being alone. Interacting with people ALL. THE. TIME. can drain me. This is a considerable challenge since I have small children at home. However, I can honestly say God has graced me with an inordinate amount of patience and staying power when the house feels a little to crazy for my introverted ways.

He’s also recently opened up space in my time to do those things I love, things I crave. What did I do with this freed up space in my schedule? I hopped on over to the library and checked out a bazillion books to read. I spent more time at the computer wrestling with nouns and verbs. I hung out at the park and slid down the slide with my two year old. I read “Curious George Takes A Job” with my four year old a thousand times!

I’d like to spend less time feeding my Facebook addiction and spend more time in literary/writerly pursuits. I also want to spend more time with my kids. You may think it odd I say this because I spend all day with them already, but I haven’t been intentional about my interactions. I haven’t taken the time to see the world as they see it, or really listen.

As spring approaches, I am also approaching a new season in my life. A season where I’m learning to embrace what God has already placed in my hands, instead of fretting and worrying over what I don’t have. (The grass may not always be greener.) A season where I’m accepting of how He has created me and the experiences, both good and bad, which He has allowed in my life.

In this new season, I want to learn how to live life as it happens, moment by moment. I don’t want to look back with regret on what could have been or worry about what could be in the future.

A daunting task, but a worthy one.

My name is Preslaysa, and I am a neat freak. Being a neat freak can be a troublesome trait when you have small children.

My neat-freakness was exposed this week when I volunteered in the children’s ministry during my weekly Bible Study Fellowship outing. They sent me to the four-five year old room where the kiddos happily stamped their papers with blue ink.

Can you believe my dismay when I noticed they also stamped the table?

If my children did this at home, I would have flipped. Actually, I know my children would have done the same thing which is why I purchase washable paint, washable crayons, washable markers, washable water (kidding about the washable water part).

The ink in the 4-5 year old room, however, wasn’t washable. I tried to scrub it off. It remained. The stains on an otherwise perfect surface irked me.

The teacher in the room took one look at the table, smiled and said: “Looks like we have a job to do.” Then she laughed, a pure joyous laugh.

My mind got all tangled up. How is she happy in the midst of this disaster?

But it taught me a lesson. I need to go with the flow with my children, and not get so upset when their childlike antics sully my plans…or my house.

When I get up in the morning, I usually feel like the clock is ticking. I have a ‘to do’ list to tackle and a precious few hours to tackle it: weekly chores, dishes, exercise, laundry, updating checkbook, making calls, responding to emails, getting in my writing quota, doing the day’s lesson with the kiddos, etc. At the end of the day, I’m usually tuckered out from my race against the clock.

I’ve realized that I plan my days to leave little room for mishaps, and small children are cute little packages filled with mishaps.

They’ve taught me the importance of grace. And they’ve shown me how beautiful ink stains can be.

We are on the family trip of a lifetime!! For the next week, we will be taking a car trip across multiple states. The day before we were set to leave, I felt unprepared for the journey. We had yet to pack and it was getting late. I then remembered the power of a list.

So, I hopped on over to one of my favorite blogs and printed out Simple Mom’s packing list. I finished our packing in an hour and a half. I felt confident we had  everything for our trip. Without that list, I would have been lost.

By trial and error, I’ve learned that list making, planning and goal setting enables me to do things simpler, quicker and with greater peace. I would have been spinning my wheels for hours without my list.

This concept applies to our lives as well. We have a limited amount of time on earth. Without a set plan, we can spin our wheels for years on fruitless pursuits. Decades can be wasted and purposes can be left unfulfilled without our plan.

Questions for You: Do you like to make lists? What would you like to accomplish in your lifetime? Have you put it on a list?

“To be Queen Elizabeth within a definite area, deciding sales, banquets, labours, and holidays; to be Whitely within a certain area, providing toys, boots, cakes and books; to be Aristotle within a certain area, teaching morals, manners, theology, and hygiene; I can imagine how this can exhaust the mind, but I cannot imagine how it could narrow it. How can it be a large career to tell other people about the Rule of Three, and a small career to tell one’s own children about the universe? How can it be broad to be the same thing to everyone and narrow to be everything to someone? No, a woman’s function is laborious, but because it is gigantic, not because it is minute.”

-GK Chesterton

Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise (18^th Century Proverb)

When my first child was born, adjusting to life at home with a baby was chaotic. After reading many books on sleep theories for infants, I settled into a method which helped my infant son sleep through the night at three months old. But there was one problem.

Mom wasn’t sleep trained.

I used those quiet night time hours to blaze through tasks I had neglected during the day…or just dawdle on Facebook. By midnight or so, I’d crash only to wake up groggy and to the sound of my baby waking up. He was on a schedule. I wasn’t.

To effectively manage a home, we need to have proper rest. This can be tricky for mothers, especially those who stay home with their children. There isn’t a pressing need to show up at the office at 8am. No one dictates our schedules. C’est la vie.

But to properly govern a home, we must first govern ourselves. I learned this the hard way, after months of fly by night sleep times and trial by fire morning routines.

Here are six ways I learned to sleep train myself so that I can wake up earlier (before the baby wakes up) and be refreshed and prepared for another day:

1. Set your alarm for your desired wake up time. Proverbs 31:15a says: “She riseth while it is still night.” I advise making your wake up time earlier than the time when your children are up, preferably a half hour or more. This will give you plenty of time to mentally and spiritually prepare for the day ahead. If you have important tasks which require focused concentration apart from the children, this extra time can give you the opportunity to accomplish them.
2. The first night of sleep training, go to bed at your normal time. It doesn’t matter what time you actually fall asleep, just ensure you don’t toss and turn in bed trying to fall asleep. This is a waste and you’ll wind up mentally berating yourself for being unable to sleep, only to wake up late the next morning again. When I tried this, I went to sleep at 10pm, then 11pm, and even at 3am. Wait until your body is ready to nod off, then hit the sack.
3. When the alarm goes off in the morning, get up. This can be tough and requires self-mastery on your part. If you go to bed at midnight and your alarm goes off at 5am, there will be a million voices screaming in your head telling you to sleep in. That’s just the lazy monsters. Ignore them. They are detrimental to your well-being. In fact, before you go to bed say this to yourself as you fall asleep: “When the alarm goes off, I will get up, make my bed and start the day.” Say it a couple times before you go to sleep to combat the lazy monsters.
4.  Resist the urge to nap the next day. You’ll slog through the next day, but that’s okay. Roughing it the next day is part of the sleep training process. You will have tired out your body in preparation for a good night’s rest. If you had went to bed at a set time instead of falling asleep when you were naturally tired, you would have slept in again, defeating the purpose of sleep training. So just slog through it and don’t push yourself to work, work, work the next day. Keep the final objective in mind – don’t take a nap.
5. When you get tired the following evening, go to bed. This is crucial. Now you are tired, you want to sleep. But those lazy monsters have been used to you staying up till the wee hours of the morning. Temptations to surf the internet or do the dishes or fold laundry abound. Ignore them. Go to bed. You’ll get tired earlier in the evening. Go to bed. (Did I mention, go to bed?)
6. Wake up again when your alarm goes off and continue this process for seven days straight.Don’t stop the sleep training on the weekends. You need to reinforce this method continuously in order for it to be effective. By the end of seven days, you will have settled into a natural sleep and wake up time, an early morning time.

So start training.

Today, I am excited about tomorrow. Tomorrow, I’m attending a homeschool conference. I went to the conference last year when my son was only one years old. (Yeah, I’m the type that likes to be prepared.) And I’m going again this year. I’ve never homeschooled before, and we plan to “formally” homeschool a few years from now. The decison is a huge step for me. It’s kinda overwhelming when you have to decide:

1) what to teach

2) what not to teach

3) how to teach what you teach, and

3) how to measure that they are actually learning something!

But I don’t think these issues are specific to homeschoolers. All parents have to grapple with these questions, important questions, weighty questions. Many times, we teach our children by example. My two year old is a parrot. He repeats 95% of what we say. (Doesn’t means he listens to everything we say. But he sure does repeat it!) He definitely keeps me on my toes. And I’m glad for it.

He’s learning now. I call it learning through osmosis, something all people do. We pick up on our surroundings and form beliefs and values based on it. Some good, some bad. Some neutral.

This concept hit home when I saw an ultrasound of my son for the first time.  I thought of all the junky stuff I had done and experienced in my life, and I was in awe. In awe of a God who would still entrust a human life to me, a cracked vessel. It speaks of His grace towards me, and His trust in me.

Whether I show myself trustworthy is up to me.

Sometimes it’s scary to think I have such a huge responsibility. I’d like to chalk things up to “fate” or “God’s will” but these phrases only serve as a Bandaid to what I know to be true: God’s will is that I follow His will, but following His will is up to me.

Before I had children, I used to think being an at home Mom would drive me stir crazy. Today, when many realize that I spend the majority of my time with small children, they sometimes give me looks of pity, saying stuff like: “I couldn’t do it.” or “You are a brave woman.” or the biggie…

“Don’t you need to get out of the house?”

Nope, I don’t.

The days are long, and yes, the days are sometimes rough, but I’ve settled into a rhythm at home. A rhythm which I liken to a moving stillness. In the midst of the busyness, I find spaces of peace which ground me, and show me that I’m on the right track.

These “peace spaces” are often found in the most mundane activities: stopping to nurse the baby, washing the breakfast dishes, washing the lunch dishes, washing the dinner dishes, wiping the poopy butts, folding a load of warm clothes fresh out the dryer. The mundane provides me with predictability. Since children are often times unpredictable in their behavior, engaging in the daily, the montonous, the seemingly dull disciplines of home life provides serenity amidst the noise.

Besides these philosophical reasons for why I don’t dream of  jumping into the minivan and driving away to The Land of Domestic Liberation. I’ve also found some practical ones. Here are a few:

1) I don’t want to lug all that baby equipment into the minivan: car seat, stroller, diaper bag, car keys, toddler and baby (I have to make a conscious effort not to forget to bring the children, something apt to occur in the midst of all the ‘get out of the house’ frenzy.)

2) If I want to be at ‘said place’ on time, that often requires meticulous preparation the night before. This includes: ensuring there’s enough breastmilk in the fridge for the outing, packing snacks and perhaps lunches depending on the duration of the outing, refilling the diaper bag with wipes and diapers, etc., getting directions if it’s a new place. All of this is in addition to the regular nightly evening routine of baths, bedtime stories, dishes, straightening up, etc. By the evening time, I’m ready for bed. Anything extra just means more…extra. (I don’t like unecessary extra.)

3) My baby needs her naps and getting out of the house often disrupts them, especially when I need the baby to nap the most. (‘Nuf said.)

4) By the time I return home from the outing, I feel more frazzled and need to mentally decompress…but I have to unload all that stuff from the minivan and so who has time to decompress?!

There you have it.

Question for You: If you’re an at home Mom, do you feel the need to get out of the house? If so, what do you do to cope?