Staying Home part 2

So, last week I posted about how being a stay at home mom is really difficult. I forgot to say that it's all SO worth it. It's worth it to be the one your child sees all the time, to be his or her rock and security. It's worth it to get to see them roll over for the first time, to take their first steps. It's worth it to be able to discipline them the way you want them to be disciplined, to teach them, to watch them learn and grow.  It's beautiful, it's hard, it's incredible, you will shed so many tears... tears of joy, tears of frustration, tears of I-don't-know-what-in-the-world-this-child-needs-right-now. It's been the hardest thing I have ever done in my life, and yet the most fulfilling. 

Okay, so all that aside. I'm going to give some advice. Yes. 

Lord, You know that I am only speaking out of my own brokenness here. I am only wanting to communicate what I did wrong and maybe a few things I happened to get right. In no way am I speaking out of perfection. I struggle with this and I want other moms to know that it's okay to struggle... its good to struggle. Life in this world will never be perfect. There is no such thing as the perfect mommy and there is no such thing as the perfect child. We all mess it up and that is why we need the blood of Jesus to cover us and cleanse us. 

So, yeah, I am just trying to speak from the little that I have learned in the past two and a half years as a mommy. 

1. You are your own stinkin' boss. I have struggled a lot with time-wasting. When my husband was gone, it was easy to sit around and waste time. My baby certainly couldn't say anything, so it felt like I had no one holding me accountable for my actions during the day. 

2. Turn off the TV. I went through a phase of watching different shows. I've watched Desperate Housewives (I know! It was TERRIBLE for my marriage), Gilmore Girls (just kind of a waste of time), Laguna Beach (strangely addicted to that one). You can see what I have to say about television here. I just have to say that I have wasted too much of my life in front of the TV. It has given me a false sense of community, skewed my perception of reality, given me a crummy attitude at times... I just had no self control when it came to turning the thing off.

3. Learn from your mistakes. When I first got married I had no idea how to grocery shop, meal plan, all that stuff. No i-dee-ah. It has been a four year process of the first grocery trip getting all "fun stuff" like Cheez-Its and Cocoa Puff and randomly buying cans of green beans because I had seen them in my mom's pantry and I knew I could put them with certain things. I look back and I was pretty naive. It was overwhelming to me to think that I had to fix a meal EVERY night. I had worked so hard the night before, did I really have to do it again?! But really, it has been a process of learning, growing, adapting, planning, listening to others and what they do, asking moms who are further down the road. It doesn't happen overnight that you suddenly become a homemaker. It's a process. 

4. Go for a walk. Every morning if you have to. Make it as simple as you can and no pressure to go super fast and get your heart rate up and all that junk. I learned that I could go for walks in my Chacos. I could just put on some socks and slip on my tennis shoes (yes, I never tie my shoes except when I decide to run, I just slip them on and off). Seven or seven-thirty in the morning is the best time to walk for me. It's after my time with the Lord, the air is still cool and clean and I'm pretty much awake and alert by this time. I remember last summer when Levi was about 15-18 months he went through a phase of refusing to sit in the stroller. It was a battle, but in the end I won. I'm bigger and stronger and I will give you a cup of apple juice if you would just sit in the stroller so I can get some exercise. I want my children to have a love for the outdoors, I want to engrave it on their little souls. 

I was going to write 5, but I think this is long enough for now. When I think of more mistakes I've made (ahem) lessons I've learned, I will post them. 

Staying home: not for the faint of heart

I just recently saw a post on Facebook about a friend staying at home with her baby. She asked for prayers and said she was excited. I clicked on the comments thinking that I would see a lot of "You're going to be an awesome mommy!" and "You can do it!" Which is perfectly true, of course. But sometimes I feel like others will over simplify this very difficult job. Honestly, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. I mean, it's good to be encouraging and uplift but in the back of my mind I was thinking, "It's a lot harder than people think it is."

And so I will write.

Disclaimer: I am not wanting to compare working moms to stay at home moms. I think comparison kills. If you are a working momma I am not knocking what you do at all. That is not why I am writing this post. I am simply writing about being a stay at home mom.

I guess what I want to say is that staying home is a difficult thing, but is well worth it.

Why is it difficult?

Living off of one income in the midst of a culture of two-income families, budgets must be strict and lattes can be few and far between. Ben makes plenty of money, but it just means we won't be doing and buying the things that other around us are doing and buying.

Relationships are difficult. I'm going to be very honest here. I'm not good at just picking up the phone and calling a friend. Usually because I'm tired of being interrupted every two minutes or by the time nap time rolls around I am too exhausted to think about carrying on a conversation.

Okay, I don't want this to sound like complaining. Lord, help me. It's difficult sometimes to be able to get together with other moms. Nap times will be different, finding a place where kids can play and then once you do get together interruptions are inevitable. Being a mom means, absolutely means that your life will be interrupted. It's like this big humbling process that God gives you. You just thought you were flexible before, but having babies will help you see how far you can bend.

I feel like I'm in a constant fight against ... I don't know what to call it. Gravity? Laziness? Intertia? (I looked that one up on Dictionary.com) If I had it my way I would be sitting at home watching TV all day and eating sweets. I have to fight against it. I have to fight against being so sucked into FB or Instagram. I have to make "To Do" lists, I have to get myself out of bed and be my own stinkin' boss because no one is telling me what to do.

Okay, I have like a million more things I want to say on this subject but my eyes keep closing as I write this. I'm thinking I'm going to make a list or something... Also, Aria is telling me to put her to bed with her little whimpers.

Good night. 

Losing Weight

I was just trying to read my Bible and have a quiet time but I felt this overwhelming need to post a blog. Holy Spirit, I hope this is You because if it's not this thing will be worthless.

I was advised last week to go through some of my old journals to see how God has answered prayer. I have always dated my journals and I'm very glad I did. I picked up one from May of 2004. I was nineteen. Hello nineteen-year-old self. Some thoughts are profound and I can't believe I thought that at such young an age. "I have no idea how to trust You. I cannot fathom You. I cannot imagine Your holiness, Your perfection, Your plan." And then some things that I said/prayed are absolutely ridiculous.

"God, help me lose ten pounds a week."

What?!

It's kind of embarrassing to read old journals from this time in my life. My high school and college days are a blur of wanting and trying and obsessing about losing weight. I tried my hardest to get out of the junk I was in, but in all honesty, I was just insane.

So what has brought me to sanity? I still have insane thoughts from time to time, Lord, please give me discernment in this. More than anything, it's been prayer. Realizing I cannot do this on my own and just taking it to the Lord. Laying down idols of television and overeating. Both of those were huge idols in my life.

The word "idol" is weird because it is so old-fashioned and sounds a bit ridiculous, but I think it's completely appropriate. I worshiped the idol of becoming thin. I worshiped the television and all the thin, perfectly happy people, and then my comfort to go along with these starving people as my friends was ice cream. And chips. And cereal. And whatever else that sounded good that I could put into my mouth.

I remember reading in 1-2 Kings in the Bible with each King of Israel they would not destroy the high places where people would sacrifice to false gods. I think the Kings were afraid of what others would think of them, they were afraid to close the back door just in case God would leave them hanging.

Really, the idols and the high places need to be destroyed. Personally, my destruction was just flat out getting rid of the television. For a time I had to lay exercise down completely and just stop any and all diets and attempts at diet. There was also a season where I felt like I needed to completely cut out sugar and sweets because they were my comfort.

I am discovering every day that losing weight is not an outside-in fix. It's an inside-out solution. It's my heart and my attitude about food that needs to change.

Lord, only in You there is freedom.

Being a mom of two

Okay, so why have a blog if you're never going to post anything? That's what I keep asking myself these days. The main problem is that I have two kids now and I never want to blog while they are awake. It's very difficult to finish a thought when you get interrupted what feels like every couple of minutes. It's like an adult ADD. I was telling Ben the other day that I was just trying to chop up an onion and I kept getting pulled away (disciplining Levi, Aria crying, phone calls...) I could have sworn I came back to that stupid onion about 6 times. This thing still isn't cut up?!

I'm learning the power of focus and planning. I have to keep telling myself what I will that day. Vacuum the living room, vacuum the living room... I put it on my "to do" list and have to rip myself away from wanting to put in a load of laundry just so I can do what I planned on doing. Laundry in general should be done on Laundry Day, deep cleaning on Deep Cleaning Day. I was at my SIL's house the other day and saw on the door of her pantry a list of every meal (and snacks) for the next MONTH. It was super simple, but still, it was PLANNED. So many times I'm staring into the pantry at 11:30 (we haven't had snacks because we were too busy playing or cleaning or wandering around the house) and Levi is whining because he's starving and I'm wondering what the heck am I going to feed this kid?!

So I decided to do it. I wrote out a plan of everything we would eat through Sunday and put it on our fridge. So far, so good. I noticed that this morning seemed unusually stress free and I realized I have spent a lot of time and energy worrying (in the back of my mind usually and I don't even notice it) about what I would fix for breakfast, lunch and dinner.

Aria is still sleeping TONS. I'm not sure if this is normal for an almost 5 month old, but she is usually only awake for 1-1.5 hours then has to go back down for a nap and then naps anywhere from 1-3 hours. On top of this she sleeps through the night... maybe 10-12 hours. It's crazy. I keep telling her that she is spoiling me, but she seems okay with that.

Oh yeah, for a little while I was running low on milk for her and we had to give her a bottle at night. I started taking Fenugreek (two capsules three times a day) and it amped up my supply. Now we don't need a bottle. I just wanted to testify that that stuff WORKS. I bought it at Whole Foods in the Prenatal Health section.

I gotta go, a friend is coming over to visit this afternoon and I am excited to see her. Gotta put some coffee on!

Aria's Birth Story Pictures

Okay, so I have been wanting to post these ever since I got them. It's been a lot since I have received them from Debbie. I honestly don't know what to say about all of it. I'm kind of overwhelmed with wanting to put in captions but not sure if I actually can right now. I'll do my best. Here goes.

These are from Friday night. I had gone into "early labor" around one in the morning, so this is the next evening. I had no idea what was in store. Seriously. No idea.

Sometimes I'm just not good enough.

Okay, so I realize now that sometimes I hate reading blogs. I'm a blogger and I hate reading blogs... what?! Jody, you are crazy. Why is that?

You wanna know why? It's because they are too perfect. I'm talking about certain ones that are always thinking of ways to have these beautiful parties and perfect art projects with their kids. The ones that are growing things and baking cool things that are healthy and everything. I start to get really depressed about my life. Does anyone else do that? I sometimes think that if these bloggers would just read their blogs they would get depressed because they could never measure up to themselves.

So I guess that's why I'm so desperate to reveal my imperfections. Because I want other people to know that they are not alone.

I feel like people are always wanting to put their best forward whether on these social networks and I think it causes us to sink into this sort of fake comparison with each other. I can put really good looking pictures of myself and my family on these websites. I can post witty remarks. I can write deep thoughts. I want to be cared about so I want to post trivial things about my life, like the cool oatmeal raisin muffins that I ate for breakfast or the fact that my kid is the worst behaved kid on the planet or my baby is the cutest ever. But all this comes from the fact that I want to be cared about, I want to be noticed. I want to be seen.

Out of the overflow of the heart...

All of this is coming from my heart, my selfish desires, my fears of not being enough.

God, give me discernment. I'm thinking about when Jesus was talking to the Pharisees and he said that they were like whitewashed tombs which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside were full of dead men's bones. Father, let me not be prideful. Please let me be real and honest. Help me to live openly and freely in You. I get so distracted by little things and wanting to be seen and heard. Help me to be content in You.

Losing Weight part 4

Wow, I kind of don't even want to post about this right now. That's a horrible way to start out a blog post isn't it? I think there are several reasons. One is that there's not much to report. I don't have a scale so I don't really know if I have lost much day to day, my clothes maybe feel a little bit looser, but that's hard to tell... I don't know. I think another reason is because I was having this great morning accountability partner. Every morning we would call each other, I would go on my morning walk and she would be on her way to work (she works pretty early, leaves around 6:45-7 range) and we would talk about what we ate and why and if we had exercised and stuff. Well, of course I messed things up. I was pretty forward with kind of telling her to do stuff. Not just weight loss stuff, but life stuff. I am hesitant to write this because she will probably read it, though I'm not 100 percent sure. ... so how do I explain this? I messed up. I am big on speaking truth and speaking into others lives. I could name a few people that I have kind of crossed the line with in this area. Some of them have come back and told me that it hurt and I am so thankful for those people.

Over time I have realized that I'm not very good at flowering up things and putting them in terms that are super kind. I'm just not. I remember trying to tell one of my roommates in college that I had a problem with what she was doing, it was kind of a confrontation and she was like, "Jody, just tell me." I think this ability, trait, I don't know what you would call it, has cost me a few friendships and honestly, it kind of sucks.

Lord, help me to speak the truth in LOVE. I am really good at the truth part, but not so good at the love and seasoning my words with salt. I know I can be overwhelming sometimes and that's why I sometimes back off, that's why I'm afraid to say ANYTHING sometimes. I don't want to be afraid to speak, but I just want to be led by You. This is a hard thing to learn Father, I'm really bad at it. I want to hear the Holy Spirit's voice as if it were audible. Just TELL me what to say and how to say it. Please let my words and my heart be pleasing to You. Let me glorify You in my friendships. Teach me to love others and listen to them. I'm really bad at listening and just asking questions. How often do I just pass up what other people are saying or disengage so that I can think of what I want to say next? Please let me view others as more important than myself.

Yeah. So maybe this post wasn't as much about the outside of my body as it was about the inside.