Is it over now?

Well, we've all finally had it. Thankfully I only had a mild case of fever. Splitcat got a pretty good fever, but no throwing up.

So far today the children are doing a good job of keeping themselves entertained. I think we are going to cook out this afternoon. Yesterday the smoke was really terrible again. So far today it's okay.

I've been experimenting with my novel, changing from first person to third. It's helpful from a word count stand point, but I am undecided if it is better or not from a reader's view.

And to all my local friends, we are thinking of having a get together the weekend of June 23 since my birthday is on the 25th. Email me or splitcat if Sat. or Sun is better. My sister informed me it was my turn to host the party since I have a big yard. So the 4boydads are of course invited and the Longeneckers, too--if you read this. If 4boymom can think of anyone else(how about your sister?) let me know. And of course my dear sister and her family.

If you need more notice we can try in July, it's just usually hotter.

Have a good Memorial Day and remember to spend a moment reflecting on what today really means.

Poor P.

I was going to write an account of the last day of kindergarten, but he didn't get to go. He got the bug last night. I felt so bad for him, but he feels too bad to care right now. E. had a wonderful last day of school. She's totally worn out. They played in the water and had an ice cream party.

It's been a good year for the boy. He loves to learn and loves school. I am proud of the way he has learned to handle himself. When I would ask if he had a bad day he would tell me yes, but he didn't remember why because he only remembers the good things. I hope he has really learned to let go of the bad and embrace the good. He's a great kid. I am really enjoying watching him become a person.

Dorcas Smucker over at Life in the Shoe posted this link today and I had to share it, since splitcat and I are both introverts.

Caring for Your Introvert


Update: I took the babes to the dr. W. also has an ear infection. but they seem a little better today.

Untitled Lament

I think I have mentioned before how most days I feel like I'm treading through ankle deep mud. Today I have been wading through vomit. Baby vomit. The boys have picked up whatever the girl had, but they've been sick since this weekend and also have diarrhea. I will be giving the dr. a call tomorrow. They keep pretending to get better, then after eating perfectly fine all day, I get a lap full of partially digested formula. The fevers have abated, but their other symptoms have not.

I do seriously feel as though I am under attack from you know who. I read this yesterday about the enemy's attacks from Priscilla Van Sutphin

He will attack every relationship trying to bring division between people. He will try to discredit you in the eyes of others. He will try to keep you sleepless so you get tired and run down. He’s send pestilence so that you have to get busy cleaning up the mess from that. He will do ANYTHING HE can when you are supposed to be intimate with HIM, to try and destroy your time with GOD. You may thing those little irritations are just coincidence. THEY ARE NOT ! They are to test your peace, and steal your joy, and to try to make you tired so you don’t have energy to do the will of God, or to be intimate with Him, then he will unmercilessly attack you for NOT doing those things, trying to condemn you. (for the full thing click here)

Apart from the viral pestilence, we've had another ant invasion(I do take responsibility for the crumbs on the floor, but not for the drought). I found a different type of ant bait that came highly recommended and we've had a steady stream of ants for 2 days. Apparently word has spread among the colonies that there's good eating. I feel a little like a mass murderer seeing all these tiny little ants scurrying like they've found the mother lode, but ants do not belong in my house.

So anyway, Priscilla's word really caught my attention.

All I can say is my novel better sell really well to make up for all the crap I've had to go through every time I start making progress. --But as splicat always reminds me--

James 1:2-4:
2Consider it all joy, my brethren, when you encounter various trials,
3knowing that the testing of your faith produces endurance.
4And let endurance have its perfect result, so that you may be perfect and complete lacking in nothing.

On another subject--I was reading my Bible the other day and doing the random flip and stopped at Jeremiah 10 and came across this verse:

Jeremiah 10:12 But God made the earth by his power, he founded the world by his wisdom and stretched out the heavens by his understanding.

First of all I am still astounded that I come across wisdom and understanding everywhere I turn since this is what I am writing about. But this verse really caught me off guard. How did He "stretch out the heavens by his understanding?" I just couldn't make it make sense. So I did a little research into the language of the verse and found in Strong's that there were several meanings for the original word--(here's the full entry)

understanding, intelligence
the act of understanding
skill
the faculty of understanding
intelligence, understanding, insight
the object of knowledge
teacher (personification)

The word skill suddenly leapt at me. And when I looked up other scriptures with this word, many of them were describing the artisans God appointed to build the temple or others skilled in some sort of creative craft.

Therefore, we see that he stretched out the heavens by his skill. It gave me a picture of God as an artist carefully crafting the universe.

What really amazes me is that he has given me full access to The Spirit of Understanding(Isaiah 11:2) through the blood of Jesus. I John 5:20 We know also that the Son of God has come and has given us understanding, so that we may know him who is true. And we are in him who is true—even in his Son Jesus Christ. He is the true God and eternal life.

So, anyway, this is a little of what I've been thinking about. There's a lot more to it, but I just realized it is late, and I should try to get some sleep.

Please keep lifting up my family in prayer. You have no idea how much I appreciate it.

Congratulations!

I just want to send a Hoorah to Val for placing in the finals at the ACFW Genesis contest in the sci-fi/fantasy/allegory category.

I know she's excited. Good Luck Val!

Oh, what a night

I was woken up last night an hour earlier than the usual 2:30am cry-fest by the girl crying. This usually means she needs to go to the bathroom but isn't awake enough. So I got up to carry her to the bathroom before she peed all over herself and her brother, who was in her room with permission. Unfortunately that was not her problem. She had thrown up all over the chair in her room. I grabbed her and told her to get in the bathtub and got splitcat up.

This is my worst failing as a mother. I cannot cannot cannot deal with vomit. It took every ounce of self control I had not to add to her mess. I stood in the bathroom heaving while I rinsed her off. I finally grabbed my bottle of spikenard scented lotion and stuck it under my nose. I couldn't even look at her. Splitcat dealt with the other mess. This morning he said it was the hardest thing he had ever had to do as a parent.

I don't know why I can't do vomit. I have no problem with baby spit up, dirty diapers or diarrhea.

Of course with all the commotion the babies woke up. Oddly enough, the boy slept through it all even though he was in the midst of the action.

So please say a quick prayer for the girl, she has a temperature this morning so she has to stay home from school(I could use some prayer for that) and say a blessing for splitcat for being such a stand-up dad. I don't know what I'd do without him.

At around four-thirty, for reasons known only to himself, the boy woke up, went back to his room and started yelling at his sister for being in his bed. Which, of course, woke up the babies again.

I've had to give Baby M some puffs of his inhalor since the air quality is so bad from the wildfires in South Ga. So he has been whining and sleeping extremely lightly. Nothing is making him happy.

It could be a long day.

Kisses

baby w gave me a kiss today. I had him in my lap at the computer and when I turned him around to face me he leaned over and gave me a kiss. I wasn't sure if he meant it, so I kissed him back, then he giggled and kissed me again.

baby m is finally crawling. Well, it's sort of a frog hop and crawl, but he can move pretty fast. They go for their 9 month check up thursday. It's hard to believe they are 9 months already. Their first birthday is looming around the corner.

Swinging

I took the kids to the park today. We had a mostly good time.

Here are the twins on their first swing ride at the park.

Wedding Memories

The girl and I watched my wedding video this morning. She had been looking at my pictures, and I thought, Hey, I've got video of that! She liked it and found some white shoes and a white ballet skirt for a veil and had a wedding. It was a nice moment between us after an awful awful day yesterday.

I hadn't watched my wedding in a long long time. I forgot how thin I was. It's like a dream. It was somewhat sad when I realized how many people in my video are no longer with us. And I cried when we repeated our vows. It was a nice day. Here is me on my wedding day(note:to anyone who thinks I look good and might want to stalk me--I don't look like this anymore, it's been 11.5 years and 4 children since this was taken.)

Ironically, the people I'm talking to in this picture are splitcats two former love interests.



In some ways I did not recognize myself. In other ways I am more like my former self than I have been in a long time. I disengaged myself from my emotions some years ago for various reasons. Now I am relearning how to have emotions without becoming physically ill(that's how I got so skinny) and how to have emotions without them ruling my actions.

I am nowhere near the wife and mother I once imagined I would be. I hope to be that someday, though. Splitcat keeps reminding me to take small steps, not giant leaps. For every step I take forward I seem to take a step and a half back sometimes. But I continue to plod ahead through the mud, through the rain, and through the good days. I am ready for this dark night to be over. But I think I still have more to learn and unlearn before that happens.



I have noticed lately a change that the Lord has begun in me back to parts of my former self. I had become desensitized the the things of the world over the past 13 years, and lately, I am finding so much that offends me as a Christian. And so many things that make my heart break. I hope that this means that I am reaching the place where there is more of Him and less of Me.

Well, that's interesting

While splitcat was putting the children to bed last night I was downstairs trying to get M to go to sleep. I stood up to rock him and glanced out the window. There was a police car with lights flashing. Hmmm, I thought, that's interesting. There are police cars across the street at fairly frequent intervals. The most shocking was a few months ago when I looked out the window and saw a cop with his gun drawn and aimed at three teenagers. I found out later that a neighbor had called the police because they were shooting a gun in the back yard(which is very unsettling when you have 4 small children). This neighbor is trying to get them out of the neighborhood. She had encouraged me to call the police if we have any trouble. My biggest complaint is that they take up the street when their employees park in the morning and they let their dog out all the time. When they first moved in they would have loud pool parties. Anyway. The police have been there quite a bit. So I wasn't too surprised until I looked the other way and saw several other police cars. Then I saw several policemen leaving the house and they had on a lot of gear. Great big helmets, heavy bulletproof jackets. And one was carrying one of those odd looking small battering rams. I ran upstairs and got splitcat, he surmised it was a drug raid. I kept an eye out, but I didn't see much but the police going in and out. I didn't see if they arrested anyone, and they were gone in about two hours. They also had a big van they kept taking equipment out of. I want to know what happened. I'm hoping the aforementioned neighbor knows. Her brother-in-law is a cop. I suspect it is the teenage boy that is in trouble. We live in a pretty decent neighborhood, so it is somewhat disconcerting to have the police frequenting your neighbors house.

Baby M

It didn't seem fair to have a video of W without doing one of M. So here he is at five o'clock this morning. You'll notice that he is very aware of the camera and what he's supposed to do. I've always wondered how they know they are supposed to smile.

New Things

Trying something new. We have a new internet connection so I can do more fun stuff now. Here is baby W last month as he was just starting to try to crawl. Isn't he cute?

Oh No!

For the last month baby w. has been diligently honing his crawling skills. He now crawls wherever he thinks he needs to go. It has taken him approximately 2 days to go the next step. He can pull himself up. He doesn't want to sleep. He wants to crawl or stand up. He's quite a busy fellow. Fortunately his brother stays where you put him. For now.

In other news. We will soon be upgrading our internet service, so I won't have to worry about using up the phone lines and will hopefully blog more.