Life is great and we're sooooooooo blessed. A dearly departed friend of ours used to say, "too blessed to be stressed." Unfortunately, I still find ways to stress even when I'm really blessed. Let me explain: Scott was at a conference this week and we were getting ready to have new siding put on the house on Saturday. (Yea!! We're so excited and thankful to be able to do this!)The twist is that we had to get the old siding off ourselves. We sent out emails to friends but so many had out of town plans. Well, for some reason I took on this stress as if I was to do it single-handedly while nursing and caring for 4 children. This stress pretty much stole any peace I could have had!! Saturday morning came and only one side of the house had all the siding off! I think it was about 8:40 AM when 4 or 5 guys (seemed like 20) showed up from the siding crew to remove the old siding. 1 hour later, the job was done!!!!!!!!!!! What!!?????? Unbelievable! All that stress was chipped away in one hour? I should have known God had a special plan when all week, my plans to remove siding were thwarted by children/babies who didn't sleep or eat at their usual times. I'm sure we'll have to pay for the siding removal and that wasn't in the original estimate. Sooooooooooooo what!!! Can we say WORTH every penny!! They did it so fast it can't be more than $200. Why do I do this!!?? I can't promise that I'll never do this again, but I do know that I'm processing through a new level of serenity, letting go, releasing things (looking for a better word but can't figure out where a thesaurus is on this computer). Surrender! That's it! My prayer is that God helps me to really surrender everything - the good, bad and ugly!! (I'd like to "get it" this time and not have to go through such agony again!) I also know that this issue of thinking I have to do everything is so related to my eating problems. A sort of "control thing" frame of mind. When I feel out of control, not able to manage all situations and circumstances and outcomes in my life, I usually turn to food. I even want to control what others think about me and if I'm misunderstood, well, I'm all sorts of frustrated!! Well, that is crazy thinking! No wonder I feel out of control and have struggled so much with food! Nobody but God can manage situations, circumstances and outcomes. For me to try and do that is not only not trusting God but sort of subconsciously believing that my idea of how things should go in life is supreme/superior. OOOH, that's pride even a form of idolatry. The next thing I see is that this is based on fear! I'm afraid of what will be if I stop this "god-like" attempt to control/manipulate. I might experience pain of some sort. My worst fears - worst case scenario might be experiened. Then again, it might not! If the worst case scenario happens, I guess I'll see/experience God in a new and wonderful way (the way we did with coleman's surgery) and that is never to be feared.
It's been a long time since I've blogged and now out comes this whacked out stuff. Sorry if I've somehow offended or confused anyone. This processing has been cathartic. I guess the counselor in me is not gone yet.
Now for news about the kids: A few weekends ago, we went to Asheville to visit the church up there. Seacoast has a campus up there. We got to stay in a hotel and eat out every meal. Very exciting for the boys and pretty relaxing for mom and dad. We let the boys pack their own toys in their back packs. After we had driven for a while, I looked back at Cooper and saw all these clothes and shoes everywhere, that I had not packed. What? Turns out these were his "toys." Basketball shoes and outfits, soccer shoes and outfits etc. What a nut!! This is his "thing" right now. I've found all sorts of awesome sports clothes for next to nothing at our local thrift store. One outfit is a Michael Jordan basketball shirt and shorts. Pretty cool cuz' Cooper's middle name is Jordan after this most excellent b-ball player. Cooper is madly in love with Drayton and he likes to cuddle and roll around with her on the floor. Drayton loves it too and smiles and laughs so sweetly. Cooper has also taken on Tradd's imaginary house thing so he's always talking about life at his other house. The other day he was so insistent about his other house that he got upset that I wouldn't let him go across the street and climb the fence to his other house and other mom. I told him his other mom would have to come get him. It makes Tradd pretty angry that he stole this imaginary house thing. Tradd says it's cute and he's tired of his brother being cute. Well, cute is like a swear word to Cooper. He does not want to be cute!
Coleman's favorite past-time is taking things from the boys and even Drayton. She really enjoys that chase that ensues. She still has 3 different therapy sessions each week and is doing really well. She especially has delays in speech but no worries, she'll talk some day. She certainly makes lots of sounds/noise!! What a delight she is. She certainly is a smart little thing but who knows where her IQ is. Her EQ (emotional quotient) seems to be very high. She's so social and interacts with everybody. She too loves Drayton and asks to hold her all the time. She also likes to sit on her which we try to discourage.
Drayton will be a tough little girl I think. She will be 6 months this week and I'm desperately needing to take pics of her. Since we were so busy with the Thorn, I really haven't taken pics in 2 months. She is a wonderful baby. Most of her time is spent rolling around on the floor. Sometimes she's in the Bumbo but she loves to be free to roll. Found her with her head sticking our from under a chair the other day. Woops, rolled too much. She's a good sleeper and eater but I will say she likes to see what's going on around her so much that she doesn't get a full feeding in and, therefore, she often eats more frequently than every 3 hours. These crazy social children!!
Been trying to teach Tradd "The first shall be last and the last shall be first" so he'll begin to learn to serve others. So, although he's our first, the last one for me to talk about is Tradd. He's soooooo smart and doesn't miss a thing. He says he doesn't like school but what he means is that he doesn't like to have to sit down and do traditional school things. Most of the learning he does is hands on but he does do reading every day which he enjoys but it's the initial disappointment of not being able to be playing outside that bugs him (bugs are definately among his fave things so therefore the pun). Sometimes we read outside and we even read about bugs but it doesn't replace the unstructured outdoor time. He's doing really well with reading and math, science and spanish vocab and Bible memorization. He's even doing fairly well with writing but this is his least favorite to practice. He's growing so tall. Unlike Cooper, Tradd doesn't give much consideration to his clothes. This usually means that his clothes are on inside out and backwards because it just doesn't matter to the bugs and slugs how he looks. He went to the beach with some friends the other day and they weren't there 5 minutes before he'd found all sorts of live sea creatures. They were so impressed! Tradd loves our salt-water aquarium so he's very tuned into aquatic life at the beach.
My computer time has run out so I will have to post again some other time. I think I pretty much said all that needs to be said for now anyway. Happy Sunday!!
