you and noah

There's a boy in our new play group. His name is Noah. I'll just say that the two of you have definitely hit it off. You are beside yourself, comfortable outside of your usual comfort zone, and oh so very very sweet with this new friend of yours.

His Mama and I love to watch the two of you head to head, 

shoulder to shoulder, 

mirroring one another's stances and movements. 

It's awesome to listen to you communicating with hearts for each other like you've been friends all your lives. We are so happy to have brought the two of you together.

Although, both of us are pretty sure it was far more God than us. :) 

"play"ing

Last weekend you, your Daddy and I went to see the play The Very Hungry Caterpillar, at an area theater. We liked it a lot. But in the end they did something that I thought was a little unreasonable for a room full of children who had just out-sat their sitting capacity. They demanded a further 20 minutes or so to "questions and answers" about the production of the play.
Questions and answers for a room full of 0-5 year olds who were all more than happy believing that what they'd just seen was mostly likely real.

Little did I know yet that this was your favorite part of the whole deal.

Monday morning came with the usual school work scheduled. Near the end (during math) you said, "I want to do The Hungry Caterpillar play."
My first thought was maybe after we finish math. My next thought, a second later, was a reminder that we are HOMESCHOOLING for a reason. Homeschooling you who's worked your way into mostly a first grade curriculum by age four and can certainly afford to skip math... all week if need be.

And so we stopped the show -to start another, of course.

I got out all the construction papers, pipe cleaners, feathers, pom-poms, beady eyes, markers, crayons, colored pencils, scissors, and glue I could find. And the Eric Carle book itself. Then plopped down at the dining room table, pencil and paper in hand and said, "let's do it!"

You sat down at your chair and blurted, "MOM, I'm the creative director because I'm in charge of this play." and then began going through the book telling me everything we would need to make to do the play as I wrote as fast as I could.

That's when I realized that you soaked up EVERYthing they spoke during questions and answers after The Very Hungry Caterpillar.

You went on to astonish me, knowing what you would need to use for curtains, a black box to keep all the props behind, and how you would have to wear all black so no one would see you. You assured me that if anyone had questions you could just show them how you did "the production" at the end of the play. Such words and such understanding!

You worked hard and long at creating your own pieces and parts. When you asked me to step in and help you with the tree you made sure to color every square inch of it, leaving your mark regardless of who had to help you. :)

We are planning to do this play on video so that away family and friends can see it as well (and because you like to tape and watch back everything you do these days). I'm hoping to be through with "rehearsals" by the end of the week.

I can't wait to see what you have up your sleeve as to how you will present the story.

Another point for homeschool and all it's flexibility. I can't imagine how much you will learn and truly retain when you are able to chase your own passions and interests rather than follow suite to someone else's idea of what, when and how. It's so exciting to be a part of.

Sometimes I feel like I'm learning more than you are. And, like today when you told me point blank after correcting what you called a mistake in your language arts book, sometimes YOU are the teacher. ;)

Faith

You woke up with dinos on the mind again. I was enjoying listening to you. I was watching your four year old-ness, breathing it in, eating it up, knowing it will be gone before I know it.
You really wish that you had been around when dinosaurs were here, and you wonder if we might be fibbing for your protection... as if there might be a dinosaur around the corner. You claim that you saw one once (confusing dreams with reality I'm sure). And again this morning you asked why you weren't here when dinosaurs were.

It's funny, your Dad wants to live in the far future of technology and you want to go backwards (like me).

I explained to you that if it had been a time for us (the dinosaur time) then we we would have been there. I suggested that God was protecting us by not putting us together with giant creatures, half of which would have considered us a tasty snack.

I was beginning to explain to you the reason I believe God allowed a jurassic period of which there is very little biblical reference to; why area for doubt is so important to our Faith.
I asked, "you know that I'm real. why?" You replied, "because I'm looking at you, you're right here".
I asked, "how do you know God is real?" And then just as plainly you said, "because I look at Him every day." You looked up and said, "see, like right now I'm looking at Him. He's everywhere." and you smiled.
and that was the end of that conversation.

He has brought you a long way in Him, little guy.
Thank God.

change

I'm not jumping into anything. But I am slowly and prayerfully moving into what seems to be a new season and stage for us. I knew something was up, and we are SO ready for it.

I'm falling in love with homeschooling all over again. I'm learning so much about our endless possibilities. I'm getting more and more excited, looking forward to what we are setting off to do over the next 14 years together.

I'm starting to realize that (just like my Mom has always said) Zeek's smarts have a lot to do with his circumstances. The fact that I am here with him always. That we make learning fun of everything we do. That he is so thoroughly taken care of in every way.
I'm also starting to see that along those lines, and others, having an "only child" does have it's advantages, and I'm ready to leave my pity party and start celebrating our life.  

We have decided to take Zeek out of the play/pre school. It is time to steer back in the direction of what we believe and what we feel is right for us at this time. There are so many things that we could/should be doing in our position. So much to explore and be a part of. We are grateful that he did play school. It has been good for him. He has grown so much in it. We have all learned so much from it and are grateful to the wonderful hardworking teachers who took such good care of him while he was there.

Zeek has been asking to play soccer again for...ever, and we are looking into where and when he will be able to start.
We also joined an AMAZING mom's group that we met with today for the second time this week. They are incredible. This is parts of the intro on their website:

(We are) a parenting playgroup that combines small age specific home groups, family weekend events, Mom's night outs, and larger events for kids of all ages within a safe Christian environment for kids and parents to learn and grow in their relationship with God and eachother.
This is an environment where it is ok to talk about God if you want to, where there will be others that understand and want to hear about what He is doing in your life, where community will be built, and our kids can grow with the foundation we are comanded to raise them with...
...We hope in this environment we can encourage, teach, learn, grow, build relationships, and watch our cherrished gifts, our children laugh, play, and learn together. 


I mean, HELLO! Does it get better than this? 
Well, it turns out, after the amazing time we have spent with this group, IT DOES!!! They are incredible. Their vision for the group, the community aspect of unity and whole family involvement, the behavior and expectation of the adorable well guided children, the calm and relaxed, open and loving embrace is unbelievable. AND the majority of them are homeschoolers!!!!  
We had high hopes, but I never expected this. 

I have also never seen my son so at ease. He approached kids, talked with them, made up plans and did things with them. He laughed and played and behaved and didn't get hit or threatened or hear any trash talk or bad words. He even played with a 10 month old baby on his own! He was doing peek-a-boo and laughing with her! I had to check his head for a fever more than once. :)


I'm so pleased to have a refreshing new path in front of us. It feels so good and right, and that's saying a lot these days. 


Thank You God for putting up with me. Always.   

My Son,

Tonight, you threw a toy at the dog, again. I told you to give me the toy, that it was now mine. When you handed the toy to me I walked to the kitchen and put it in the garbage. You cried. For real. (You don't cry very much, and it was a junk toy that would have ended up in the garbage soon anyway)

I watched you for a while as you genuinely cried tears down your face, asking me to give you your toy back. I felt hope that this might actually matter enough to teach you a lesson for once.

A few minutes later I went upstairs with you (still crying) to get your room ready for you to sleep while you brushed your teeth. Once in bed I was a little concerned because you were still crying, real tears. I asked you if you were upset because you threw your toy at the dog. You said "yes" and cried harder.

So, I walked you through asking God for forgiveness, retouching on why we are forgiven and that it is a sure thing when we come to God sorry for our mistakes. (this is not a new topic for you)

But taking this action did not have the effect I expected. You were still very very sad and began to squeeze your chest with your fists (you tend to want to hurt yourself when you are mad).
I decided to teach you to redirect your need to let out this anger-energy of yours. I was telling you that you should punch your pillow instead of taking it out on yourself, and that's when I thought of something...

I asked you if you had forgiven yourself for throwing the toy at the dog. You said,
"no. i don't forgive myself."
I asked you why not and you said,
"i never forgive myself."
I asked you why and you said,
"because i don't like myself."

You went on to explain to me that you (think you) are bad. That you are not important or valuable.

And this should have been shocking for me to hear you say. It might have been if I didn't live with your Dad, who also doesn't like himself, and never forgives himself for anything. ever.
And I don't know if it's genetic, spiritual, learned, or what...but mark my words, it will not happen to you, my son. It. will. not.

We did some affirming Truth spoken out loud stuff. You repeated after me that you are good, you are special, you are worthy, you are a child of God, He created you and loves you very much, etc...
it was very hard for you to do, and every time you spoke the Truth about yourself, you cried and squeezed a little harder.

I asked you who told you that you are bad. You told me that you tell yourself that.
I told you that is not true, and when you say that in your head, heart, or out loud, you are speaking against yourself and the Truth. I reminded you that the devil wants you to believe lies so that you won't feel safe with God. I asked you to be very careful about what you believe. I told you that the Bible and the Spirit are full of lessons of Truth about who you are.

And tomorrow I will show you. We will start working on this; praying and speaking Truth about who you are. I will find everything the Bible says about you. I will read those Truths to you everyday. We will pick a few simple scriptures for you to remember. We will not let the enemy have this.

I'm so sorry that you don't like yourself. It's a knife in my heart that I can't describe to you. But I get it. And I know that your Heavenly Father will heal you and teach you through it.

Thank You God for showing me this. Please, have Your Way here.  

"good things come to those who wait"

That's what the card I made for Greg eleven years ago said. It was in reference to the way our time together had begun whether we liked it or not, and it's proven throughout our life together to often be the case, time and time again.

In a positive light, when we've waited for things in this life we have seen the benefits far outweigh the momentary joys of instantly getting what we've wanted.

It seems like our knee jerk reaction is usually stimulated by what other people tend to do and in what time frame.

If it's the way of the majority we find ourselves striving for status quo and thinking, "everyone else has a baby right after they're married" or "most people who ever leave their starter homes do it between five and six years" or "only strange people have just ONE child"...

That's where it starts, and then we move onto our own thoughts, "we aren't everyone else" and "we've never been held back by cultural or worldly standards" and "we ARE proud strange people"...
and then we do our very own patented brand of unusual, which usually amounts to waiting.

We don't LIKE to wait. But we know that we could jump and HAVE- or wait and RECEIVE. And we're loving on the gifts that God brings to us when we sacrifice having and wait on Him. In His time. In His Will.

From valuable safe vehicles and a starter home, to many of our belongings that we purchased for silly low prices far below what they sell for, to the precious miracle of Ezekiel, to this amazing house, to making further additions to our threesome, we have waited.

This is all relevant right now because another LONG waiting game in our life is about to expire.

Greg loves to ride motorcycles. He has wanted a Harley Davidson BADLY for the past seven years.

He could have gone out and bought any other bike 100 times over the past 7 years (i would have) just so he could at least fill his heart to ride. But he's wanted a Harley forever, and he knew anything he spent toward anything else would only delay his dreams that much farther. So he committed to waiting.

And yes, everyone we know who's wanted a bike has gone out and gotten one in the meantime. And I know how much that can sting. But in all of our experience on the waiting side we have learned that pain only proves to add motivation to the goal.

And as you may have guessed by now, in three days my husband is going to buy his first custom Harley Davidson bike. He has spent the last fourteen months searching. And he's spent the last couple of months considering, sitting on, smelling, feeling out, praying about, making arrangements and all around loving on one motorcycle in particular.
He has found "the one" and he will be making his big move on Tuesday!!! (it sounds like a wedding)

I'm so happy for and proud of him. I know what this means to him. I expect that he will be a completely changed man by the end of this summer, and scared as I am of that, I'm looking forward to it, for his sake.

Congratulations baby. You have waited this out like no one I know could have, and your reward is just around the corner.

G Force

We are working on you sleeping in your bed all night long, as I've written before.

I have been brainstorming ways to help you feel good in your room in the night. Enough that you will want to stay there if/when you wake up before morning.

We started with a CD player. You and I went shopping and picked out a nice Sony CD radio with a large digital read clock-front. Then we picked out a couple of books on CD for you. One was Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, by Judy Bloom (which we are going to see at the weidner center in a couple of months), and a dino-story-filled set as well.

YOU LOVE THEM. You spend a lot of your free time, rather than playing with cars anymore, laying in your bed on top of your covers listening to your CDs. Adorable.

But not quite good enough as you still come down in the night.

I tried to get Yuki to stay in your room all night. She loves to fall asleep in your bed when you are tucked in next to her listening to us read to you. But she comes right down to be tucked into her cage when we got to bed. So that doesn't work.

You watched and loved G Force a couple of weeks ago (a new movie full of action hero guinea pigs). We also went to see and LOVED The Chipmunks squeakuel over the weekend. So I had small fuzzy rodents on the mind in hopes and wonder of making your room more stay-able and cozy for you.

AND your fish tank needed a real make over. BAD.

So, after your first day of Friday morning play school I took you to the pet store to have a little looksee. :)

We got eight new baby fish, an awesome Horton-Hears-A-Who-gone-sea type algae ball thingy, and... ta-ta-da-da!!! A new sweet baby girl guinea pig!!!

You picked her. I told you that you could have rats, mice, hamsters, gerbils, or a guinea pig. You picked "Guinea". That's what you named her.

With new books on CD, an awesome looking fish tank, and an adorable little baby girl nibbling away you would think that you would stay put...

well, not quite. yet.

keep workin' this angle, kid. we'll see how much you can get out of this deal. :)

we'll get there.

Thursday: Date Day

You and I are going out together on Thursdays. We haven't been doing that a lot since we moved here, and it's time to start. So Thursdays are date days.

You don't much like to leave the house. I tried to get you to go to the library and out for ice cream with me the other day, and you were horrified. :( We waited for the next day. You are like your Mom and Dad. And this huge fully stocked "vacation-like" house does not help matters.

So, for our first outing we invited our friends, Afton and Miss Bethany. They met us at your favorite bowling alley in town for some bumper bowling. You bowled a lot last year with some boys from your YMCA gym and swim class, and you've always liked it.

You and Afton were SO cute. She looked like a Chipette from the Chipmunks. She was dancing and twirling and wiggling like crazy. She is SUCH a girl! :)

You were, well... such a boy. If you didn't knock down what you wanted to you would turn around with a display scowl and grunt "that wasn't supposed to happen." :) Your ball rolling throwing was great, too. Once you started doing well you were VERY happy with yourself.

You were polite and humble and let Afton "run the show" without any complaints, which I loved.
And then we all went over to Hardeez (your favorite) for lunch and some more play.

Afterward, you got your hair CUT. You haven't let Barb cut only "trim" your hair since we moved here. This time you wanted a mohawk, again. I refused (because you never want it once you're home and you made me cut the last one out a week after you got it). But you did get a stylish little JCrew, runway looking cut, and it's adorable. :)

We went to "war-mart" after that. You fell asleep in the cart! Got a lot of attention from people in the store for that trick. And then we went and bought your cd clock radio at Best Buy.
It was a fun day.
This week I'm hoping we can do something outside!

kitty said what?

So, one day Greg said we should get Zeek a cat. He has loved them SO much for SO long, it's almost wrong that he doesn't have one.
My response.
no way.

Then Zeek watched and loved The Lady and the Tramp... and the husband gives the wife the little dog in the Christmas package...and i got to thinking.
So, I brought it back up with Greg. How sweet it would be to have a little kitty in a wrapped gift box for our cat loving boy on Christmas morning. How excited and surprised he would be.

And then we realized that Becky, Mark, Levi, and Cedar are all very allergic to cats. :( And for all we know, other people who we like to have over are allergic as well.

So, we decided that we need to continue to prioritize the humans over the felines. To keep the house open, available, and suitable to everyone. Thus, no cat in a box for baby big boy. :(

The pooping cat (candy dispenser) was the best I could do. And my brilliant Mom gave him a purring mewing stuffed cat, too.
I kept open the thought process of an outdoor Tom cat rescue in the spring as an option (we have an obscene amount of chipmunks here), and for the time being, that was pretty much that.

Then, somewhere around three days after Christmas a grown grey and white cat showed up at our door. She was so definitely an indoor cat, plump, fluffy and of course, wanting to come indoors.
My response.
NO WAY.

But it was 18 bellow zero. So I decided to at least send out a little can of tuna for her. She loved it and went on her way into the night.

A couple of days later she showed up again (no doubt looking for tuna). This was the first time Zeek got his eyes on her. I went outside and pet her a little (no food this time). And on her way she went again.

The third time she came we decided to give her some of Yuki's wet food to see if she'd like it. She did.
Zeek pet her. She ate, putted, and off she went.
Zeek was worried about her in the night (i was not because she has survived the first VERY cold evening just fine). But we put a nice thick box outside under the deck with blankets and water for her...just in case.

I still don't know if she uses it to this day. We kind of tucked it in a safer closed in area, and Lord knows we don't go out there very often in this weather.
But we did buy our cat some cat food. We did delegate her a bowl of her own. And we do put food out for her.
She eats about a cup every other day. Sometimes we even get to see her and play with her a little.
OUTSIDE, where she will stay.

Zeek loves having a cat. And i feel like it was a little blessing for our obedience to sacrifice having this for Zeek so that we could remain welcoming with open doors.

God must have wanted him to have a cat too. Minus the gift wrap. ;)

Closet Gaming Mama

Last night I played Xbox360, The Kingdom of the Keflings, cooperative, live-online with Tony for about six hours. It was the best time I've had in a LONG time.

I love video games, but I'm particular about what kind. I don't like the average war/gun/racing/sports game type. I love most games that are creation-based: Sims, Sim City, Restaurant Guru, Tetris...

In the morning Greg and Zeek were playing and they found this awesome Keflings game. They called me in to check it out, assuming it was up my alley. 10 minutes later I was finished with the tutorial in the demo and purchasing and uploading the full version to the system.

In. Love.

So, when my brother called me, hence walking right into my snare last night, it was all over!
I throughly enjoyed my Mom's famous cookies fresh out of the oven, pajamas, pizza, water, Tony, live chat, co-op village building, on 65 inches with surround sound until 12:30am bliss!
Who could ask for more?

One Seriously Satisfied Closet Gaming Mama