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JDaniel4s Mom

growing & learning with him

Pausing Life for a Moment- My 3 Little Ducks

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I loved reading MyLittle  3 Ducks maybe it is because I was one of three little ducks a long time ago. It maybe that Dana takes amazing pictures and write wonderful prose to go with them. I love getting to see glimpse into the wonderful family she is raising with her husband when I stop by. I know you will too.

Pause Life for a Moment

 

When the amazing JDaniel4’s Mom asked me if I would like to write a post for her Pause life for a moment series of course I said yes! When I sat down to write the post for her I thought…

Do I pause for life?

What if something happens while I’m paused?

That was back in October.

Since then amazing things have happened that have helped me understand myself better.

Understand why I have to always be moving.

Understand why reading a book to myself or to my kiddos has always been so painful.

Understand why my writing never flows and my spelling is always awful.

I now know Dyslexia plays a huge part in all of those things and starting the process of overcoming it has changed my life and my family’s life.

Now I am able to…

Sit.

Sit with my kiddos and read to them.

Sit and listen to them read.

Sit and do crafts with them.

Sit with my husband and enjoy our time together.

Before October I never understood how precious time was.

JDaniel4’s Mom asking me to write this post came at the perfect time. Trying to write this post before I got help was painful and made me realize I never pause.

Did I even want to?

And did that make me a bad mom? (Of course not!)

Sitting down to write this post after I got help made me realize just how far I have come.

Now my answer would YES! Bring on the pause!

Pausing Life for a moment is such a gift and I am so grateful that I can now see that.

I had no idea Dana was working through this when I invited her to guest post, but I know Someone who must have placed her on my heart. I am so happy I listened to His still small voice.

 

Why Deciding to Sleep at the Airport was a Bad Idea!

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When flew home from your family reunion on Saturday, we had a layover in Chicago. We had done the same thing when we headed to the reunion last Tuesday. In fact we had to take a shuttle from one terminal to another on Saturday just as we had last Tuesday.

When we boarded the shuttle on Saturday, JDaniel was really upset. He clung to my side and said, “If you get on this bus, you have to sleep at the airport!” I pointed out that it wasn’t the shuttle that forced us too sleep there and that everything would be okay.Thank goodness it was.

What had happened on Tuesday?

Last Tuesday we tried to make to our family reunion in Arkansas knowing that our flight in Chicago might leave without us due to a short layover time. The ticket agent in South Carolina where we live said all the flights were booked for Wednesday and if we didn’t leave on Tuesday we won’t make it to Arkansas for Thanksgiving. We decided to take the risk.

Our flight left South Carolina an hour and a half late. That meant the connecting flight left forty minutes before we landed.

After talking to an airline employee at the help desk, my husband decided we would stay at the airport instead of looking for a hotel. My husband said it couldn’t be that bad and that is what the employee said he would do.

Here are  things that made it bad:

We were sent to a very busy gate area to wait for our flight out the next morning that turned out not to be the right place.

Christmas music was turned on at midnight. It played over all the other airport noises.

The air temperature is set at chilly at night.

We were reminded all night long to remember not to bring in bottles containing more than 3 ounces.

The cleaning lady assigned to our area vacuumed under the benches we were trying to sleep on and then said, “ I’m sorry!”

The television monitors replayed the Republican debate until after midnight.

A flight left for Mexico City from the gate right beside the one our three year old was sleeping in and passengers were be invited to get on the plane by sections.

Bright lights shone down on us.

A security lady decided to  chat with the cleaning lady in Russian.

The rain that delayed your flight continued pound on the windows.

The thin blanket the airline gave us was better than nothing, but I did try steal a corner of my three year olds lovey and he tugged it back. My husband “borrowed” JDaniel’s teddy to use as a pillow and got away with it.

The Starbucks across from your gate opened at 4:00 a.m. to be ready for the red eye flight from San Diego to arrive at 4:30 a.m.


We hope that we never have to stay in an airport overnight again.

Have you ever spent the night at an airport?


This post is linked to Mama Kat’s Writing Workshop!

Three Attempts to Make a Dessert

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So, we were asked to bring snacks to our community group on Sunday. It meets from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. to discuss the sermon and it is always nice to  have a snack for the group members and their kids.

We are going to be at the beach on Sunday and won’t be there, but the host family served everyone dinner last week. I really wanted to do something for them.

I forgot to send them a thank you note. I thought this would be an easy way to show them how much we appreciate them. It won’t take long to bake something and take it to their house early.

It has not been easy.

Why?

I made a chocolate Bundt cake this morning and even though I greased the pan it stuck to it. Really stuck to it. I tried to loosen it with a knife, but it remained in place. The only way to get it out was pry it out in big chocolaty chunks.

Jdaniel wandered into the kitchen and commented on how yummy the kitchen smelled. It did smell wonderful. Chocolate cake can really fill a kitchen with a wonderful scent.

Guess we will have cake crumbles for dessert at our house.

Then I thought I would throw together some brownies. I read the directions carefully and again greased a pan. They were so soft and moist that they kept falling apart when I tried to cut them and put them in a cookie tin. Some made it into the tin. They aren’t in nice pretty squares, but they taste wonderful. I tested them out while Jdaniel was upstairs playing.

Guess the ones that fell apart will be brownie crumbles we can have for dessert.

Finally I took out a package of slice and bake sugar cookies I had purchased for a muffin tin project. These had to come together. We didn’t have any other things to bake in the house.

Whew! They came out of the oven looking and smelling great!

Guess we don’t be having sugar cookies for dessert at our house.

I don’t usually have this much trouble with cakes or cookies. I guess God decided what they really need for snack on Sunday is cookies and we really need to have chocolate crumbles.

I think my guys will thank God!

Over Near the Tree Sits a Memory

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Mary Lee sat on her favorite white rocker watching the day turn to dusk. Her grey curls has begun to hung down low on her forehead. The summer air was still warm. The temperature earlier in the day had been hot and steamy.

Beside sat Frank her husband of fifty years. He had starting to doze in his rocker. Mary Lee loved to listen to the crickets chipping and Frank’s light snore fill the air around her.

She loved this time of day when things slowed down and she could just remember.

Mary Lee had such wonderful things to remember.

She and Frank had met in college. He was football player and she was the math tutor that helped him pass the required math classes for his major. Frank was actually a very good student. He just needed someone to go over things with him a few times. Frank loved to say that had met over the pluses and minuses.

After college they had gotten married and moved to Simpsonville, South Carolina. It was a small factory town. Frank had gotten a job in the business office of one of the factories and Mary Lee had worked as a bookkeeper for the local elementary school.

They had lived in a small house and saved money for several years to move to this big old Victorian on main street. On Sunday nights they had walked by this house and dreamed it would one day be theirs.

Mary Lee had fretted about the train tracks that lay only 100 yards away. Would it be a dangerous place to raises the children they would have? Frank had assured her that the picket fence around the house would be a deterrent and the backyard is where their children would want to be to play ball and chase butterflies.

Chiildren came quickly once they had moved into their dream house. First Sarah arrived and then Martha. They had hope for a boy too, but God closed that door and they had just the two girls.

Sarah and Martha had become their world. Mary Lee stayed home to raise them. She loved taking care of them.

On laundry day she enjoyed hanging their little dresses up on the clothes line in the backyard. The girls loved to grab onto the drying clothes and spin the circular clothes line around and around.

There had been many hours of creating special cookies and pies for dinner along with tiny cookie bites or fruit tarts made with the leftover dough.

The girls had loved to ride their bikes and trikes all over the yard. One would have thought the hard Carolina dirt and lumpy grass would have been hard for them to ride on, but it hadn’t held them back.

Mary Lee slowed her rocking and shock her head sadly remembering how quickly time has passed.

It seemed to her one fall that the girls had been in elementary school and by spring they were all grown up and beginning families of their own. How that had happened? Mary Lee couldn’t recall. It seemed like they went from little girls to ladies in mere minutes.

Each of the girls had stayed in town. They lived with their husbands and children not faraway. Mary Lee and Frank saw them often.

Mary Lee loved being a grandmother. She loved getting to see her girls as moms. They were wonderful moms.

Rocked slowly back and forth again. Mary Lee glanced across the yard at a tricycle covered in green by the tree near the front gate. One of the girls and forgotten to put it away one night and there is had stayed.

Frank had offered to take it out of the green tangle that surrounded it and Mary Lee had insisted that it stay. When he had asked her about it ,she had replied that it was a lesson. Frank had wanted to know about the lesson the tricycle had taught her. He loved to listen to her share her thoughts.

“The lesson,” she replied, “is that time is fleeting. You need to enjoy each moment and cherish each memory. That tricycle reminds me of our girls when they were little and loved to ride. It makes try to guess what must have caught their attention and drew them away from it and on to something else. It reminds me that for a time the white picket fence contained their whole world and they couldn’t bike beyond it.

Frank had a tear drop slowly from his eye after she shared the tricycles importance and agree that it needed to stay right where it was.

Mary Lee now wiped at tear from her eye. What a wonderful memories she had to think back on! What a wonderful lessons she had learned from them

End Note:

We walked a house on the 4th of July and I snapped a picture of this tricycle tangled near the tree. I had know ideas what story I would be able to weave based on it. I just knew there was one. It took most of this month to find Mary Lee and glean what reason there might have been for tricycle to be there.

I have no idea who lives in this house or why the tricycle is there. I am thankful that it was. I have loved getting to know Mary Lee and her story this month.

This post is linked to Mrs. Matlock’s Alphabe Thursday!

Pause Life for a Moment- My Thoughts on Fear and Swimming

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Pause Life for a Moment

I sat against the wall in the pool area watching JDaniel participate in his first big kid swimming class last week. We had take the Mommy and Me class when he was about one. Now he declared he didn’t need me. He was one of the big kids.

He maybe one of the big kids in the age 2-4 swimming class, but he also one of the most fearful of the water. I am not sure why he is afraid of it. I have a fear of water, but I have tried really hard not to pass it on to me.

I don’t fear water totally. I just fear having it in my eyes and ears. It first filled me when I was sent tumbling in waves at the beach when I was little. It interfered with my learning to swim well in Girl Scout Camp as a 3rd, 4th , and 5th grader. I would try to learn to swim identifiable strokes. By the end of camp as a 5th grader could identify my elementary backstroke but the other strokes continued to allude me.

I ended up having to take a swimming class in college . The teacher’s college I attended required you pass a swimming test to graduate. You had to dive in and perform four identifiable strokes . I passed the test given at the end of the class, but only because they counted the froglike cannonball I performed as a dive. After a semester of practicing I had finally learned those four strokes.

Now I sat watching my little guy fussing at the instructor when she pried his hands away from the wall to practice making ice cream scoop hands while she held him like a football at her side. He was supposed to be trying to kick that the same time, but it was hard to scoop, kick and fuss at the same time.

When he was returned to the wall he was supposed to practice kicking while facing the wall. Every now and then one little foot would lift high enough to create a small splash in the water. The other children had tsunamis flowing from the wakes of their kicks. JDaniel never seemed to notice them.

I wanted to jump up and encourage him. I wanted to praise the tiny kicks and challenge him to create big splashes , but I remained by the wall. It wasn’t time for me to teach him. He needed to learn from his swim teachers and the other children around him.

As class wore on they shifted from stroking and kicking on their bellies to lying of their backs when it was their turn with the instructor.

JDaniel struggled to trust that the teacher would hold on to him. He would pull his head up and try to twist onto his belly. The patient teacher would turn him back over and carefully pull his head back. While I am sure she wanted him to kick, she slowly glided his still tense body around the pool encouraging him to relax.

When he once again return to the wall, he would look towards me and I would give him virtual high fives and thumbs up. I wanted to him to know I acknowledge the small victory he had achieved by laying in the teacher’s arms and relaxing if only for a few minutes.

During JDaniel’s time in the pool I had a chance to pause and think about this fear of water that I have and the other fears that I have carried at various times in my life. They are just like JDaniel learning to float on his back. He tries to hand over the fear to the teacher and trust that she will keep him safe, but he can’t completely. He ends up with one arm wrapped around the teacher’s neck. He ends up trusting himself and the his ability to hold on tight to her.

I hope for his sake and for mine that we can both let go of this fear and the others that come up in life. I hope we will trust that we will make it through them and be able to let them float away.

I am linking this post to Pour Your Heart Out on Things I Can’t Say!

Trying to guide so, he will thrive!

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“To create a little flower is the labor of ages.”- William Blake

We planted sunflowers in a shallow plastic container so that it would be easy to see the roots form.

We moved the two small thriving plants to a bigger container so that they would grow. They had narrow stems, but seemed to be growing and reaching for the sun.

We moved them one last time into the ground. They continued to reach for the sun. They grew leaves and a small flowers.

These are the flowers a week ago.

We watered them everyday. When they started to get top heavy and droop, we provided stakes to give the support.

The taller flower still developed a crack in its stem. We taped the crack and hoped it would be okay.

Both plants withered in the Carolina sun. Both slowly lost their petals.

I took this picture on Tuesday.

They won’t be displaying their glory.

We will try growing sunflowers again. This time we will plant them directly in the soil.

I hope they will grow deep roots there. Hopefully they will grow thick enough stems to support the flowers they will grow.

The wilting flowers remind of dreams I have for JDaniel.

I so want JDaniel to have deep roots. I want him to be fed nutritionally, spiritually, and emotionally things that will help him grow towards the Son and thrive.

Each day I look back at the events from the day before. I reflect on the lessons I have learned as a mom. Sometimes I need to set aside gardening tools that are not working. Sometimes I need to prune areas that will prevent him from thriving. Sometimes I can sit pack and take in the glories of his growth.

This post linked to Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop!

Pause Life for a Moment- Love Makes Family

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Lauren of Love Makes Family is a new mom with a very dear and adorable little boy adopted from Ethiopian. I started following her blog just as she and her husband were finding out they were going to be parents. She has a easy flowing writing style that allow her to weave words around her amazing pictures..  I love to read updates on her life and learn from the her about the joy of being a mom.
Pause Life for a Moment

Hi, I’m Lauren from “Love Makes a Family.” I am so thankful for this opportunity to be a guest here at JDaniel4’s Mom.

In my short 27 years of life I have learned that it comes in seasons. There are seasons of prosperity and seasons when you look at the bills and your bank account and the numbers just aren’t working in your favor. There are seasons of joy and seasons of mourning. There are seasons of rest and seasons when you feel like one of those hamsters running just as fast as his little legs can carry him to keep that wheel spinning. I have found myself in that season lately and it’s caused me to be more intentional about pausing my life for a moment… because sometimes a moment is all you get!

In the past two years my husband and I have picked up our life with everything we built in one city and moved four hours south. We started over from scratch… new jobs, graduate school, new church, new home. In fact the only things that remained the same were the fact that we were still married to each other, our two cars, and our two cats. As soon as we arrived in the area we hit the ground running. The moving van hadn’t even arrived before I started working. John started a new job in full time ministry and seminary within a week and we were moving into a new home. We hadn’t even had a chance to get remotely settled before life took off at warp speed. I felt scatter brained, overwhelmed and exhausted for months. Wouldn’t you know that during the first few months of our transition God would call us to adopt a little boy from Ethiopia?

John at his new job.

There were all kinds of good reasons why we shouldn’t. The timing was awful. We needed to get settled. John was so busy with school. We didn’t have the money. But there was one reason we should: it was God’s plan for us and it became clear His plan was right there and then. So we put in our application and started the process. So now added to our already crazy lives was a mountain of paperwork, home study visits, adoption education, and fundraising planning and events. I was barely treading water.

Filling out more adoption paperwork

One day I just stopped everything. I felt like I was on the verge of a breakdown. So I took the day to pray and think about all the “stuff” in my life. I got a pen and paper and wrote it all down. Then I went through and circled everything that was a priority and crossed the rest out. If it wasn’t something that I had to do then it was off the list. I looked at what I had left and put it in order of priority.

Here’s what I ended up with:

1. Cultivating my relationship with Christ

2. Cultivating my marriage

3. Bringing our son home (adoption paperwork, fundraising, prayer)

4. Youth ministry (especially with the teen girls)

5. My job

I realized that the thing that I cared the least about and the thing that was the least important to me was the very thing I spent the most hours a week doing. So I went to my boss at the end of the week (after talking and praying with my husband) and I gave notice. Six weeks later I worked my last day. Again, there were plenty of reasons why this was a bad idea. After all, we needed the money to bring our son home. But God showed his blessing on this by providing every cent we needed for our adoption and for daily life.

The next several months were just as busy, but less stressful. Within 11 months of my last day at work we pulled into our driveway with our brand new five month old son. That was four months ago.

I believe that a large part of why God led me to quit my job so far in advance to motherhood was that it gave me the time to cultivate my relationship with God,and to actively pray for my son. It allowed my husband and I time together to just be the two of us. It allowed me to prepare as much as possible for motherhood so I didn’t walk straight into it completely stressed out.

The days are busier than ever now. Added to everything else in our lives is our little boy (who just started crawling), and my new blog design business. But, I’ve found a couple practical ways to pause for a moment and take a time out…

I always pray and worship while I rock my son to sleep. I do this for each nap and at bed time. I will start by praying for him and our day and then I sing worship songs to my Savior. My son loves the singing as it soothes him to sleep, and I am able to connect with my God while loving on my son. It’s refreshing and nourishing to my soul.

The second thing I do is always take the first 15-20 minutes of his naptime for myself. The temptation to run around and get chores and such done is strong. But, I need the time to pause. So I don’t answer my phone or return calls, I don’t do any work, I don’t do dishes or laundry… I do something I want to do. That may be just sitting on the couch with a cup of coffee in silence. I might read a book or my Bible. I might blog or read other blogs. The important thing is that I am relaxing and not worrying about anything for just a bit. I get to do this twice a day and it makes a world of difference.

The last but most important thing I would share from my daily life is that I have found morning time with the Lord to be crucial. It sets the tone for the whole day. I know many mothers wake up before their children to get alone with God, but I need the sleep far too much! Instead, we get up when our son does and make the coffee and his bottle. He snuggles in bed with us for a good 30 minutes before we head out to the living room. At that time I get his toys out and he plays on the floor while I sit nearby on the couch with my coffee, Bible, and journal. I read a chapter of whatever book of the Bible I’m in and then I write my observations and how I can apply the truth I’ve learned to my life in my journal. Then I get out a small list I keep and pray. This puts me in the right frame of mind for my day. I am encouraged and motivated to be a Godly wife and mother. I am nourished and fed to spend the rest of the day pouring out… and by giving the day to God I am able to keep the hamster wheel spinning for one more day.

Please take a moment and visit Poppie Lane. You will be so glad that you did!

What do you do in your quiet moments?

 
 

Instructions Needed the Right Tools to Follow

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So, I bought a wading pool for JDaniel and his friends to play in when they come over for playgroup. The directions that came in the box suggested that the pool could be blown up in 10-20 minutes by two adults.

Playgroup would arrive at my house on Monday so, on Friday I tried blowing up one section of the pool for 10 minutes and got very little of the pool inflated. I was left huffing and puffing.

I then tried using a bicycle pump to inflate the pool but, found that the nozzle won’t fit in the air hole of the pump.

Finally I called my next door neighbor to see if she had a pump that would work. She checked with her teenage son and he offered to pump up the pool using their air compressor.

Guess what? When you use an air compressor, the pool can be inflated in less than 10 minutes. I guess the directions were right if you have the right tools to make them work.

You might need the right boots to fill the pool too.

 
 
This post is linked to Mrs. Matlocks’ Alphabe Thursday. 
 
 

Have you ever has a set of directions that were difficult for you to follow?

He has geeky feet!

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We live in the land of flip flops here in South Carolina and JDaniel wears socks with his sandals almost every day. Thankfully there are people from all over the world that live in our area. My husband says that if people notice they will just think we are from a European country where socks with sandals are fashion trend in the toddler set. (I am pretty sure that that unspecified country probably would probably frown on wearing socks that have bright red toes and heels. )

If we visited them in their unspecified country, they would probably think we were geeky Americans. I sure they wouldn’t think we were displaying a new American sandal trends. With the advent of the internet people can now see in a split second what the American toddler set is wearing this summer.

Why does he have socks on with his sandals? He has them on to prevent his feet from having contact with grass. JDaniel has topical allergies that can give him an extremely itchy rash on his feet and legs in the spring and summer.

Some people may look at his feet and think we have missed the summer sandal fashion boat. I look at his feet and think they are protected and itch free.

This post is linked to Mama Kat’s Writer’s Workshop. The prompt was “In honor of the “white” after Memorial Day rule, name a fashion rule that you either break or enforce.”
 

Better Than Aladdin’s Wishes

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One evening as the day drew to an end a mother sat with her son on his bed telling him an ancient tale about a boy named Aladdin.

“Aladdin,” she said to him, “was a young boy who was sent to search for a magic lamp in a dark and eerie cave. Once he found the lamp he realized that the man who had taken him to the cave was going to take the lovely jeweled lamp away from him. Aladdin knew that this special lamp maybe magic and he wanted the magic for himself so, he found a way to keep the lamp for himself.”

“Was it magic?” asked his mom.

“It was magic. Aladdin discovered that it contained a genie while trying to clean the lamp. In a puff of smoke the genie was released from the lamp,” his mother replied.

“What did the genie want?” the boy wanted to know.

“The genie was grateful to be free from the lamp and gave the boy three wishes. He could ask for anything and it would be his,” his mother told him.

“What did he wish for?” the boy asked.

“First he wished for food to eat. He and his mother didn’t have a lot of food. Next he wished gold plates and they were sold by his mom to get money for their family. Finally he wished to be with the one he would love and he married a wonderful princess,” his mom answered.

“I’m not tired. Can I have one more story?” the boy asked looking up at his mother with hopeful eyes.

“Yes, I have an even better story about someone who gave people more than three wishes that would be gone in a short time,” the mother said wrapping her arms around her son to cuddle him close.

“What was his name?” the boy wanted to know.

“We call him God. Remember how we pray to him at meal times and in the morning to start the day?” the mother asked him.

“Yes, we have to thank him for the things he is doing in our day and we can ask him for things too,” the boy responded.

“Well, God has told us in the Bible that we can ask him for things whenever we need them. He didn’t say that we could only ask for three wishes like Aladdin did,” the mother explained.

“He doesn’t answer every prayer the way we want him to the way the genie did,” the boy said adamantly.

“No, he doesn’t answer every prayer the way we want him to, but he does hear our prayers,” he mother answered slowing leaning her son back until his head hit the pillow.

“Thank goodness! If God were like the genie in Aladdin, we might end up with things that we wouldn’t want in a short time or things that we would want to change later. God seems to know what we need and when we need it,” the mother stated pulling the blue blanket her son favored up to his slowing dropping chin.

“Right now I think God thinks it would be best if I got a puppy,” the boy announced.

“Let’s pray about it,” his mother said slowing standing up and walking to the door of her son’s room silently praising God that a puppy hadn’t just appeared at the foot of her son’s bed.

This post is linked to Mrs. Matlocks’ Alphabe Thursday. It is “A” week.
 
 

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