A Conglomeration Of Thoughts

Firstly, I’d like to say thank to all of you readers who commented on my last post. Wow! I wasn’t expecting that many comments. Some of you are people I don’t even know. That’s scary! But thanks for reading anyhow. I guess I’ll keep writing.

Some of you said you liked my posts about motherhood. And I asked myself, “Do I write about motherhood?” Then it occurred to me that since I am a mother and being a mother takes up most of my life, then it would be only natural that I might write about motherhood from time to time.

My motherhood tidbit for today is to day that Jubilant seems to be coming through the tantrum stage. Now, he’ll settle for wailing, but I don’t like that either. Why would a child chose to sit on a chair and wail piteously, when he is fully capable of not crying? So, the “You sit on this chair until you can be quiet,” thing doesn’t really work if the goal  is for him to be quiet. Oh, dear. But at least he’s more cautious about screaming and kicking. After some discussion as to the cause of these fits, my wise husband concluded that regardless, the answer would be the same. Prayer and discipline. The episode did drive both of us to some prayer and soul searching though. But why do kids do that?

Dru said this morning that we’re going to go home and be mortified at our children’s behavior when we compare it to their cousins'. And he said it will probably be good for us. It really is hard to lose your bearings. Should this child know better? How do I handle this situation? How can I shepherd this two year old today?

Thoughts on food: I’m very thankful for the food culture of this city. The ability to buy your food ready-made for nearly the same price as you grocery shop has saved my bacon more than once. Dru says it’s a bit more, but it’s close enough that he doesn’t mind buying a rice meal a couple times a week to help his wife out now and then. He’s going to buy supper tonight. I’m going to clean the house. Maybe when Havilah is weaned I’ll quit getting these freak tired and lazy feeling streaks. I want to do stuff but my brain won’t tell the rest of me to wake up. It’s the biggest pain.

Right now I’m enjoying Thai food. I still maintain that Thai people eat some weird stuff. But they know how to have fun with flavors. Dru bought me a Thai cook book for my birthday. It’s actually simple enough that this farang might be able to pull a lot of the recipes off if she exerts herself. Thai cooking is simple. Most Thai women don’t use/own recipe books. I bet there are more Thai cook books written in English than in Thai. There was one thing I found to be interesting about this new cook book. One recipe called for Greek Yogurt. Can I even find that here? The cook book is written for westerners, so I have a feeling it was using yogurt to mimic something else it could have called for. 

Pastor Kiat’s in the US right now. He told Dru the other day via skype that American food is boring. I guess it is. I’m sure it is quite bland. But I like bland food. And I’ve also discovered that I don’t have to eat spicy food if I don’t want to. (It took me about three years to figure that out.)

Yesterday was my birthday and Dru took me up the mountain. Do you ever get tired of pictures of my kids?

 

I truly feel sorry for my children. Everywhere they go they are mobbed by people adoring them and wanting to take a picture. Don’t do this to every foreign kid you see, okay? It gets old and Jube is waxing rude. What to do?

Jube loved the rocks. Up and down and up and down and around and around. I made the decision not to be mother hennish and paranoid, but to let him play as long as he didn’t get out of sight.

I like to go up the mountain. It gets me out of the city. I always enjoy it. Even with having to chase children. Love it.

Curiosity Killed the Cat…

…And satisfaction brought it back. I’ve been wondering who reads this blog and why and if I know you and all that good stuff. So just this once can you humor me with a comment. I’m dreadful at commenting on other people’s blogs, so I don’t fault you for not commenting on mine. But please, just this once?

There, now that I have that out of my system I’ll post these pictures of Havilah and the mop bucket:

And these of our afternoon with Mae Wahn last Sunday.

Notice the bear in the back ground leaning way in to kiss his forehead?

Okay, now you can comment.  

Thanks for reading, my rambles and keeping me in your prayers.

Monday

I’m dragging today like I haven’t for several Mondays. Dru gave me a hug and asked me of I was okay. “I’m fine, I’m just having a Monday.” And he replied that I hadn’t had one of those for a few weeks. I haven’t really, not this kind of Monday. I finally just gave in. My house is very untidy and dishes need to be done. I’ll try to have the dishes done by tonight. Dru said he’d buy supper. I’ll pick up the pieces tomorrow. Today I rest.
We woke up to cold this morning. No, nothing like cold in Wisconsin, of which I’m used to. It’s an unhandy kind of cold. Just cold enough to make Havilah’s nose run and the floors too cold for her to play on unless I put a blanket down first. Still, she wanted to be held, just because it was warm and cozy that way—and she’s a bit of a cuddle bug. Out of desperation I went upstairs and dug out Jube’s old clothes. I found a few of the warmer outfits that we had deemed a tad sissy anyway, and wore one of those on her. All four of her pairs of sweat pants are in the dirty wash.
At the moment I’m sitting at the picnic table soaking up as much outdoor nice weather as I can. For some reason right now I’m craving the outdoors and have been spending a lot of time out here. My freckles are abundant, but I’ve grown out of caring about them. Jube has been rediscovering the out side as well. I have to keep an eye on him or I find him threatening to put dirt into the gas tank on the car and that sort of thing. Otherwise, I love it when he plays outside. Havilah likes it out here too. She refuses to sleep for more than a half hour at a time so, since she woke up from her nap, I put her beside me and she’s happily playing with a toy elephant. Make that an airplane, she just flung the elephant.
I had an incident with my son on Friday that made me totally rethink my child training strategy. Actually, pretty much pitch it altogether. That’s okay, it wasn’t really working anyway. I was operating out of anger and ended up feeling like a terrible, awful mom and Dru had to keep reaffirming me all weekend so I’d believe I wasn’t a total loss. I think I can do this Mom thing maybe now after all, but I’ve taken a step back to watch my self and my little boy for a couple days.
I had this idea that Jube needed to obey me just because I am the Mom. Reason enough, right? Well, it just felt like a great big power show and since I’m not consistent enough—still working on that—and a bit of a pushover at times anyway, it wasn’t a very joyful experience being a Mom. Mike Pearl teaches a lot of the how of raising children…and I needed some why. For some reason, I was pretty sure that following his magic methods would work. (And although I still think he has got a lot of good to share with pushover moms like me, I need a step back from that right now.) I picked up the “Shepherding a Child’s Heart,” book and took a good look at my motives for wanting this kid to obey me. It comes down to realizing that my son is a sinner and the ultimate goal is to bring him to Jesus and put a desire in him to follow Jesus as he grows older.
I’m the kind of Mom who would see other kids acting up in public and I said to myself, “That child is too old to behave like that. When Jube get’s that age, he will not act like that!”  A lot of incentive for having a good kid was to make sure he behaved well in public. No more of that. So if I appear inconsistent in my child training to you, now you know what’s going on. I refuse to publicly bully my little boy into obedience. It doesn’t save anybody’s face. I'm tired of that pressure! Very poor motivation for wanting an obedient child.
For some reason it hadn’t clicked with me that just because I can make him obey me now, doesn’t mean that somehow this will automatically make him want to follow Jesus. I’m sure I knew all that, but I didn’t feel it in my heart and understand what that really meant. I still don’t. I felt/feel so humbled! I had to realize again that I’m only a sinner saved by grace. I am truly nothing without Jesus. I feel like I’ve come nose to nose with this reality again and I’m so thankful. I’ve been spending more time in the Word too, and it’s been refreshing. I guess I’ve been learning that the love of God is faithful and kind, I just hadn’t anticipated learning like this.
Another thing about all of this is that I’ve realized how good my man is. When I told him what had happened with Jube, he forgave me. And as I spilled my heart he listened and talked with me.  I heard myself telling him the things that he’s told me before. But he didn’t say, “I told you so!” like I might of. He just hugged me, held me while I cried, and helped me pick up the pieces. God is good.
So in one way, it’s been a hard weekend, while in another way, it’s been so good. I am thankful, so very thankful.

These are my favorite little giggle boxes. I was going to upload pictures but this will have to do for now. This is one of their favorite things to do. Needless to say, Havilah was soaked by the time they were done.

It’s kind of funny, but I’ve been realizing that my children are becoming rather dependent on each other. Jube likes to know where Havilah is at all times. They play together well. I’m so glad.

Some Rambles

The children are playing happily. Havilah just woke up from her nap. Jube is ready for his. I don’t have the heart to interrupt and put him down.

I  just found myself in a complicated situation again. Dew came over and wanted to take Jube to her house for 10 min. to take pictures with him. I said no, even when her mom came down and asked too. (Her mom came down in search of her.) Havilah was sleeping and I didn’t want to wake her to go with them. When we first moved her I just had a bad feeling about Jube going to Dew’s alone. One of those, I can’t describe it but it feels bad in my bones, types of feeling. I still don’t feel real good about it and we’ve just decided that as policy, Jube doesn’t go to the neighbors alone. Anyway, I’m feeling bad for being such a worry wart but not feeling good about changing policy at this point. He’s only two! We haven’t been able to teach him all of the, “We don’t do this because we’re Christians and we love Jesus,” things. And what about his physical and moral safety? Every time this comes up again, I end up feeling bad, but not at all willing to “fix” it. Any input on this would be welcome.

Today I’m keeping my life pretty low key. I worked too hard the last few days and although it feels nice to have a cleanish house, it’s time to take it easy for a day. So I want to pot the flowers my man bought me last night and make a nice supper and do dishes, but that’s it. Oh, and I’d like to bake up the cookie dough in the fridge and take it down to Pii Phone and Nong Dew’s. It’s time to do that again and today would be a good day to reaffirm our friendship with them, considering previous events.

New Year’s resolutions are to learn the faithful loving kindness of the Lord. Not sure how to explain this one other than to say that right now I’m struggling with understanding how God can be just and also loving and I have concluded I don’t understand God’s love as I aught. This conclusion comes also because of the lack of faith I have in God in my personal life as it relates to family. So maybe I just want to grow in faith, but really, it’s more than that—it’s about trusting God’s love for me and my family in a personal way.

Also working on being more consistent about keeping caught up around here. Reading Amy’s blog on her resolution sounded scary close to my own. For me though, it’s taking care of things when I notice them. Not procrastinating. It makes a huge difference for me.

Oh, and another one. I want to give my man more back rubs and listen to the sound of his voice more. Maybe you could just say, I want to be sure to enjoy him. I get so busy with kids….you all know that story too.

Again, Happy New Year!