Challenging children

I read an article today about kids with disabilities, and it made me think of my friend's daughter, Mary, who has Down Syndrome. Mary is a sweet 4-year-old who believes herself to be in charge of everything. Recently, her Mom brought her to help with hospitality at a program we were leading, and Mary was just hilarious. She would march people up and down the stairs, babbling and gesturing to show people where they needed to go. I can understand about 10% of what she actually says, but it is obvious that SHE knows what she is saying. She is determined and headstrong and prone to tantrums, but she is also sweet and social and engaging.

The other interesting thing about Mary is that she is adopted. In other words, her parents consciously chose to accept the challenge of raising a disabled child. And they do so with grace and patience that overwhelms me.

I've seen many families who have been blessed with such a special person in their lives. I have often wondered if we'd be strong enough to open our home to a disabled child. Sometimes, I feel a little guilty for not having done that already. Then I start to feel a little guilty for thinking that, just maybe, our family might be complete with two kids. I mean, there are all these kids out there (especially special needs and foster care kids) who need good homes, right?

It's OK, really, to be happy with "just" two. It's OK not to think about the future and whether or not other kids might someday join our family. Simcha rocks, by the way, for reassuring me of this. Babies are hard. Even easy babies. Sleep deprivation sucks the life right out of you.

Additionally, I realize that we have some special needs in our family right now anyway. Always a challenging child, Olivia has ramped up the level of challenge since Marty appeared. She is emotional and insecure and attention-seeking and NEEDS every ounce of energy I can give her. Yesterday was a good day. She listened and helped out and did what was asked of her probably 80% of the time. There were no major meltdowns. There was relative peace in the household.

And by the time she went to bed, I was exhausted. Bone-tired. Weary. Keeping her at her best requires constant creativity and intervention on my part. Starting to melt down because Mommy needs to fix dinner and can't draw a dinosaur right now at this very second? Oh, wait, didn't we draw a dinosaur already? Look in your notebook...oh, that was a mermaid! Silly me! Can you check your notebook to see if we drew any other mermaids? Are there any with purple hair?  Why don't you draw a bunch of fish friends for the mermaid and see how many friends you can give her before I finish making the soup? I'll bet you can draw at least ten! No, don't touch your brother. No, honey, don't pick him up. He's fine right there. Why don't you show him your mermaid family. Tell him a story about the mermaids. He'll like that. Just don't pick him up. Please. You are doing a great job.

It's an exercise in distraction. And balance. And reassurance. Trying to keep her happy while keeping the baby alive...it is a lot. (And by keeping the baby alive, I mean keeping his sister from crushing him. She is not good at discerning what is "gentle touch" and what kind of touch will cause serious bodily injury to her infant brother.)

What I'm saying is that, for now, two is enough. Sometimes, more than enough. That may change as the kids get older and (please God) less needy. Or it may not. And I'm OK with that. If we are called to be good parents for these two kids, part of that is determining whether a new addition would, in fact, be good for these two kids. And being open to whatever God is calling us to do. Right now, he's calling us to keep Marty fed and happy while paying extra attention to Olivia's emotional needs. And that, my friends, is plenty.

Choosing Happiness - House

My husband drives by this newish log home on his way home from work, and he noticed recently that there was a "For Sale" sign in front of it. So he looked it up on the realty site. And then he showed it to me. And now I'm dreaming (as in, I dreamed about it last night) about this 4 bedroom beauty with the hardwood floors and the real wood paneled walls and the big kitchen with the island and the huge master bath and the loft and the walkout basement and the four acres and the ridiculously low (for this house) asking price that is still about $70K more than we could reasonably afford.

*Sigh*

See, he does this to me...finds homes that are obviously superior to our own in one way or another and then shows them to me on the internet and asks me if I want to go see them. Not that we are in the market or anything. Just for curiosity's sake. And then I obsess about them and compare spaces for DAYS.

I have been wanting to sell this house and move pretty much since we moved in. It's a nice little house, but there is NO STORAGE. That's rough. But over the years, it has become obvious to me that the best financial decision we could make would be to stay put unless/until we HAD to move because of a job change or an issue of too few bedrooms. Well, my husband did change jobs, but within the same company, and we are still working on expanding our family beyond ONE child, so we really don't NEED to go anywhere yet.

So, I've decided to choose happiness with this house. We recently made some decisions that made this easier. We rid ourselves of the stained and dirty carpet in our living spaces and put in laminate flooring. It's prettier and makes the house feel, well, less dirty. We are going to repaint too, just to give the living spaces a fresh feel (and to match the oriental rug which had to relocate from our bedroom to the living room to keep down the echo).

And, whenever I start feeling like I want to move, I look at my favorite features of this house and imagine how I'd miss them. The screened porch is so nice, especially in weather like this. We can eat out there and enjoy the sounds of nature from the wooded lots around us. And my backyard, complete with playset. I'm very happy with our backyard.

Plus, the landscaping is so nice. Don't you think so?

Catching up

There's something about this time of year...we aren't actually busier, but it FEELS like we are. As a result, I've been neglecting my blog. So here's a quick and rather random update.

1. Since my last post, it rained about a dozen inches, which is something like a quarter of our total rainfall average for the whole year. As a result, we were stuck in the house forever...first because of the rain, and then because the lawn was too wet to play on. And then it stopped raining for a few days in a row and everything came to life! Just in time for Mother's Day.

2. Mother's Day was pretty good. It was sunny and beautiful. Olivia slept in until 9:00 a.m! Then she behaved herself in Church. That itself would have counted for a lot, but we weren't finished with the fun. After lunch, we popped on over to Local Theme Park (which opened on Saturday) for a little park fun. Because it was SO warm and sunny (and because I remembered to pack her a change of clothes) we let Olivia run through the spray park in her clothes.

She was quite excited about that.

All in all, a great day was had. We are quite ready for Summer to commence.

3. In April, we re-worked most of our landscaping, splitting and moving plants and putting in rock. There is one bed that we haven't touched yet and intend to re-work in the Fall, but every time I'm outside I think about what to do with it. Every Spring, I think I'm unhappy with this bed because it is SO lopsided when it starts coming up. All the tall irises are on one side. Random plants are scattered along the other side. It sits on a slope, so it's kind of weird anyway. But my original idea was that it be a dimension bed with lots of tall plants behind small plants so it looks very full and makes a pleasing display.

Today, I looked at the blooms and I realized that it kind of already does that.
See, this is the view from my kitchen window (weeds and all, I know, I know), which is how I oriented the bed in the first place...so I'd have something pleasing to look at while I did the dishes. The problem, however, is that it looks weird from all other angles. So, what do I do? Move plants around to even it out so it looks normal from outside? Or leave it like it is?

3. My life is awash in primary colors.
Very soon, several of the wee ones wearing the primary colors will stop coming to visit me on a daily basis, and then it will just be me and my primary gal.
And that just says it all, doesn't it? Dear Summer, we are ready for you!

Choose happiness

Happy Holy Week! It looks like it will be a stormy week in these parts, but we'll be decorating eggs and attending services and making preparations to celebrate the resurrection nonetheless.

I've had this topic churning around in my head for awhile and decided to make it a post (or series of posts) because it seems to define my personal philosophy at this point in life.

I remember talking to a friend a few years ago about our storage woes in this house. This was before Olivia came along, so we had more space than we do now and were already starting to feel crowded in this house. We'd accumulated stuff and created weird and disproportionate attachments to things that we did not need/use/even know we had. I kept thinking, if we just had a basement, or a bonus room, or a storage room...something. THEN we'd be happy with our house.

A friend of mine had a huge, sprawling house that was necessary for her large family, but it was a uniquely designed house and the set-up made certain aspects of life inconvenient. Bedrooms were in weird places, the laundry was downstairs, there was no physical way to corral kids into one room in the house because of the layout...it just made life a little difficult. They spent several years renovating where they could. And then she made a statement that stuck with me. "I finally decided to choose happiness with this house. It's large enough for my family, has a nice sized yard, is conveniently located...so we made changes to make things easier inside and then decided to be happy with it."

Choose happiness. That stuck with me. So often people are dissatisfied with their job or house or car or whatever. People spend so much time and money and effort moving and changing and buying, and so often they are still unsatisfied with their circumstances. We spend altogether too much time being unhappy and not enough time enjoying the blessings of what we have.

I had intentions of adding more to this post, but the kids are whining to go outside and today is probably the only day this week that we can. More on this topic later.