Fixing My Eyes on the Goal

Last week we didn't do much. Somehow the entire week went by without any trips anywhere and the kids roamed around the house wondering why they were so confined. Then they'd go outside and within minutes come back in, it was tooooo hot. We had friends visit on Friday but that was it.

This week I vowed to make up for my laziness last week. Monday. Zoo, great start! Tuesday. The ENTIRE DAY at Mom and Dad's swimming. Yaay! In the afternoon our friends joined us and it couldn't have been a better day, we were all played out by the end of the day. Wednesday, I know we did something but I can't remember now... Seriously, what's wrong with my memory? Too much sunlight or something. Thursday we visited another friend in her brand new home, awesome fun! And today, a visit to David's aunt and uncle, then back to the pool.

As we drove home I heard on the radio a message about Hebrews 12:1. "Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything that hinders and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race marked out for us." The person was talking about keeping your eye on the goal, and knowing what your goal is. And everything you do should take you closer to that goal. Jesus is the goal.

I thought about this, have my eyes been on Jesus? Was my goal this week simply to entertain the kids every day, keep the house clean and put them to bed with tummies full of food I'd cooked? Cleaning, cooking, playing, its all good. But is that my goal, or are those things that I simply do as part of the race, part of the journey to get closer to God? I've got to make Jesus the central focus, not the five minute devotion we do right before bedtime. I'd do better to plan God-time into our day than planning swimming, biking, walking around the block. Thank you Lord, for the gentle reminder.

Let us fix our eyes on Jesus, the author and perfecter of our faith, who for the joy set before him endured the cross, scorning its shame, and sat down at the right hand of the throne of God.
~ Hebrews 12:2

Holding On

I make my kids hold my hands when we're crossing the street or parking lot, unless my hands are full. Then I tell them "Put your hand on the cart" or "Hold onto my shirt" or sometimes just, "Hold onto something on me." Shelly often grabs Eli's foot. This is for safety, of course, keep us all together, the four/five of us in a little herd as we move through the world. But sometimes, when we're back on the sidewalk or safely inside the store, I hold on for just a little longer. Their hands feel so small and precious in mine. They're so quick to pull their hands away. I don't want to let go, I don't want to think about the day when their hands will be grown up, they'll be too old to hold my hand. Maybe that day won't come...

I remember holding my grandma's hand helping her get into the car, it felt so fragile. She was so small.

I remember laying my hand on top of my Grandpa's and praying.

Maybe we don't outgrow taking a loved one's hand, for safety, for companionship, comfort. I pray my kids learn this as they grow up. There's always a hand you can reach out to for help.

The Lord makes firm the steps of the one who delights in him;
though he may stumble, he will not fall, for the LORD upholds him with his hand.
~ Psalm 37:24

photo by FinkStudios

Guess What Guess What GUESS WHAT GUESSWHAT!!!!!

HE SLEPT IN HIS CRIB!!!!!!!!!! Ok, only from 11:25 to about 2:00. But its the first time EVER in eight months! I know we're supposed to savor the baby time, savor every moment because they grow up so quickly. Blah blah blah... when you go for eight months of baby in your bed and husband on the couch, you're not savoring those moments. You're wondering when they're gonna be D.O.N.E. At least sometimes you're wondering. And then you can go back to savoring, or whatever. My precious wonderful little baby slept on his own and its a miracle and I give complete credit to the Lord. As I stood there trying to put the baby down ever so carefully and then raise the side of the crib ever so quietly I silently pleaded, "Please Lord, please Jesus please let him sleep, please let him stay asleep..." And He did, so THANK YOU JESUS. THANK YOU!

A Little Bigger

Yesterday Shelly and I decided to reorganize the cupboard. (Reorganize implies it was organized to begin with, it wasn't. It was a big jumble. Anyway...) As long as it was empty, I told the kids to climb in, and I took their picture. The reason I did this was they've been in there before, and I couldn't resist the chance to compare. So here you are, compare. The first picture was originally posted in the blog way back in Feb 2008. Shell was one, Archer was almost four. Now Shell is four and Arch is seven. They're a little bit bigger, but surprise, they still fit!

Today's Promise

I recently read in another mom's blog that "Your best is good enough." God will fill in the gaps left by our imperfect efforts. I really needed to hear it, I usually feel so inadequate as a mom to my kids. I constantly question whether I'm good enough. The truth, of course - I'm not. None of us are. We can't be good enough. But all we need to do is ask, and God fills in the gaps, his grace covers over our weakness and sin. I've been asking a lot of him lately. "Help me please!" I cry out, and this week, I've seen the fruits. There have been many moments this week where its been so obvious, so clear that his hand was at work and maybe no one else noticed, maybe it wasn't a big deal to them. But to me, they were like rainbows, moments when God reminded me of his promise to help, to fill in the gaps, to fill us up with grace.

One of the kids lied to me about something little, but its an ongoing problem, this truth-telling issue, and I nearly over-reacted. Big lecture, big punishment, I don't know what. But I've been asking the Lord to help me slow down, "Please, God, remind me to ask you first before I say something I'll regret." And I did, I just kept my mouth shut, said a prayer, and something someone else had told me popped into my head. It was so simple, and yet not something I had tried before. So we tried it. I felt much better about that than how I've handled it before. Maybe I'll write more on that some other time.

Between Monday and Tuesday, around 1:30 in the morning, I looked around my living room and felt so dissatisfied with our home. I'm just unhappy with it. I love our home, its the perfect size for us and I know this is where God wants us to be. But the clutter. Laundry. Dishes. Why can't I keep up? I didn't even know WHAT to pray, other than, "Please help me!" I finished folding laundry and went to bed. So tired, I just want a rest. On Tuesday afternoon I was able to take a nap for an hour and after I got up the baby stayed asleep so I could get more done. He's been doing that lately, taking naps without me holding him. I know that's something that many other babies do, sleep without being within six inches of their mothers, but for E this is a new development. And every time he does it I thank God for the chance to play with the other two, or fold some more laundry, or whatever. Thank you Lord, for my nap, and for the baby taking naps.

There was one day thrown in there where the four of us just laughed all day long together. I don't know why, or what we were doing, but it seemed like every five minutes there was another excuse to laugh and we just smiled and laughed with each other through the whole day. We got to the end of the day and when David got home I couldn't tell him the silly things we said or did but I reported on our great day together. Just laughing. It felt so good, more refreshing than any nap could be!

Fast forward to today. We had plans to go with friends up to Mom and Dad's for some pool time but the weather didn't cooperate. They came over for playtime instead and I worked on little chores while the five kids (plus baby) all played together. I went outside to check the garden and spotted it - a rainbow. A reminder of God's promise. He won't flood the earth again, the way he did in Noah's time. But that clear, bright rainbow reminded me of his other promise, to fill us up with grace and love, to provide what we need. I went back inside smiling and realized something. There was NO LAUNDRY to wash, fold, put away. The dishes were all clean and back in the cupboards. I sat down on the floor with the four boys, my two plus two friends, and played Legos with them. I tried to figure out how it had all gotten done, and we'd still had time to laugh and play together. I couldn't work out the number of hours in the day, minus the playtime, minus the work load... it seemed like there wasn't enough time to have fit it all in. Somehow it worked, though. The girls came to play with us and I told the boys that these Legos had been mine when I was a kid. They were shocked. A girl playing with legos? We laughed and played and I praised God in my heart for filling the gaps, making it all work, and giving us rainbows in the sky to remind us of his great promise of redemption and grace.

Lord, I wait for you; you will answer, Lord my God.
~ Psalm 38:15

On the Move

LJ is on the move, he's crawling! He just started last night, he finally figured out how to get his knees up under him and move them forward, one at a time, and now he's mobile! Well, he WAS mobile but mostly just rolling around, or scooting backwards. Now he can face something and go forward and reach what he wants. And pull himself up... and walk along the edges of furniture... there's no stopping him! Lucky for me I have two eagle-eyed supervisors who know to call me if something's not right, or pull him back away from the electrical sockets. Isn't it amazing that with no coaching from anyone he was able to figure all of this out, all on his own? God is so awesome. He places the knowledge inside babies and once their bodies have grown strong enough and coordinated enough, they just take that knowledge and put it to work. Wow! Lookout, here comes the baby!
(I know this pic has nothing to do with E crawling but its pretty, isn't it? Straight from our garden, a month ago, before everything got dried out and dead looking.)

VBS. ER. Letter Soup.

This week is Vacation Bible School in the evenings with the cousins. I joked it should be named after our family, instead of "Cosmic Adventure" or whatever they're calling it. Seven out of the ten cousins are there. Anyway. The kids are SOOO excited about it, it doesn't start until 5:30 p.m. so most of the day is spent obsessing about how many more hours and minutes until we can go to VBS. This works out really well for me, the kids are accomplishing a lot of cleaning and organizing. They'll do anything to make sure they can go to church at night. And then I have three hours of calm while they're playing and learning about God. Except...

Not today. I dropped them off, walked home, sat down to do a little work on the computer and... Ring! "Amy, you have to come and get Shelly." Crying in the background. Hop in the car and race the half mile to church to discover my injured daughter laying in the leader's lap with an ice pack on her face. From what I can peice together, she was running and ran into the gate of the fence that surrounds the playground. I can picture her looking back instead of looking where she was going. But this is no time for lectures about watching where you're walking. She was sobbing. Screaming at moments. Her eye. I tried to wait it out, see if it would get better but two and a half hours later and I'd had enough. Emergency Room here we come.

Two hours after we walked in, we left in pretty much the same condition, Shelly still crying in pain and me wondering if it was worth it to go. They confirmed she has a scratch on her cornea, gave us some goop to put in her eye every six hours and sent us on our way. They put some drops in her eyes that supposedly numb it, but she was still crying. I almost was too. I hate seeing her in pain. I prayed and prayed for her, begged God to fix her eye, heal her pain, take it away, give it to me instead, anything so she wouldn't be tortured with it. He blessed her with stretches of sleep, she's been sleeping now for awhile, only briefly interrupted by waking with pain, and I'm thankful for the sleep.

As we sat in the ER, I sang to Shelly, and when she drifted to sleep I prayed silently. I remembered that the Lord tells us to praise Him, even in difficult times, and I turned my thoughts to how thankful I am for each thing around me at that moment. Thankful for Shelly in my life, my precious little girl. Thankful that we live in a place with easy access to expert medical care. Thankful that we have the money to pay for the care, to pay for the car to take us to the ER, to pay for gas in that car... I am so blessed. I am so thankful that a scratched cornea was the worst of our worries today. I know of so many families whose children are sick, burdened with much bigger problems than ours. And I hated to see Shelly in so much pain. But I praised God for His gracious gifts to us and I realized why He tells us to praise Him, even in the hard times. Because when we find a way to praise, the problem in front of us seems not quite so big anymore.

Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance. Let perseverance finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not lacking anything.
~James 1:2-4

Archer skinned his elbow pretty badly (I don't even remember how it happened now, probably a biking incident) and we had to visit the clinic to get things cleared up after the gauze I'd used actually became imbedded in the scab. It reminded me of rebar in concrete. Unfortunatley the primary care provider was not available at the time of the crisis so we had to settle for a nurse. Clinic report follows:

Operation Rebar Removal

STATUS: COMPLETE

Procedure Details
Gauze was trimmed neatly around the edges, leaving only a small mesh of threads embedded in subject’s right elbow scab.
Threads proved irresistible to subject who (as we know from previous incidents) could not resist tugging at each loose end until all threads were removed.
Triple antibacterialbiotic has been generously applied to affected area.
Subject has declined further application of gauze.

Discharge Instructions
Subject has been instructed to keep affected area from touching anything and causing the triple antibacterialbiotic to rub off on clothing, furniture, etc.

Follow Up Care
Subject has requested evaluation by Dr. Dad when Dr. Dad arrives at the clinic this evening.

Report submission by:
Amy F

Nurse Assitant to the Great Dr. Dad

Little Gems

When encountering a piece of machinery that refused to be fixed, despite Archer's best attempt to put it back together, he commented, "Why won't it participate with me?"

When talking to her baby brother in her best grown-up voice, Shelly says "How did you get over there, E? You're just a smart little mover!"

And last but not least, Elijah said something like "Arda!" this morning which we all agree is E saying his big brother's name. He's been saying "Dada" for a couple of weeks now but has yet to call ME, the one who carries him around constantly, feeds and takes care of him. Not that I'm jealous or anything ;-)

Tie Breaker

Before E we were evenly split. Two boys in the house, two girls. Two with brown eyes, two with blue, two lefties, two righties. Elijah Graham has thrown off the balance of everything... Three boys. Three brown eyed people. The last one left to determine is leftie or rightie. From the beginning Shelly voted for a girl. She lost, obviously, but she won out on the brown eyes. Shelly just told me that E said to her he's right-handed. Wishful thinking? I don't know, I'm hoping he's a rightie too. Only time will tell!

Honeymoon is Over

In two days David and I will celebrate our eigth anniversary. And the honeymoon is over, as evidinced by our little conversation this afternoon. We were in separate parts of the house doing our own things, me going through pictures on the computer and David rummaging around in the basement. I passed the steps and called down, "Do you need help?" "No!" I heard, so went on my way, back to the computer, with Eli sitting on the floor next to me. As I worked on whatever thing I was doing at the moment I heard a loud noise come out of Eli and looked at him to see that he was also looking around, also a little startled by the noise. Guess I'd better change him, I thought, and scooped him up. When I went into the other room I found David with crib pieces all around him, in the process of constructing the crib for the third time in our lives. "Do you need help?" I again asked. "Nope!" Fine.

Then I laid the baby on the changing table and discovered the front of my shirt was full of s.... stuff. I immediately started groaning and loudly complaining about my lot in life, how awful everything was and wouldn't it be nice to have some help? OOOHHHH poor me, I groaned. The s.... STUFF was all over Eli's leg, and then he waved his arms around and it was on his hand and arm, and then his hand headed toward his face... "NO!" I nearly shouted, grabbing his arm and now MY hand was... well, you get the idea. So as I attempted to undress him without spreading the mess any further I continued my moaning, which was met with smiles from the baby and complete indifference from my wonderful husband. "I asked YOU if YOU needed help," I prompted. "And I said no thanks," he replied. He wouldn't ask me if I wanted help. "Oh I don't want my beautiful wife to get her hands dirty, surely I'll rush to her side to offer my assistance!" I said to him. He wouldn't budge, he was busy with the tools. He had the nerve to make some comment about being busy with a man's work. "This is all going in the blog," I warned, but he kept up with his little comments and excuses why he wouldn't help me. "I turned down your help, I know you'd turn me down so I don't even need to ask if you want my help," he said.

Finally I had the baby undressed and took him to the bathroom to hose him off. Finally I escaped my husband's indifference and went off to laugh about the whole thing while E splashed around in the water. Honeymoon's over, I thought to myself, but somehow this feels like just the beginning. I guess eight years is a long time but its flown by, it somehow feels like just the beginning of our story, there's so much more to come. And if we can laugh off a mess like the one we had tonight, well, we'll be ok for the years to come, right?

P.S. Thanks, David, for setting up the crib (aka Baby Cage, according to Shelly). We'll get that baby out of our bed soon, or eventually!

Someone Needs...

New shoes. They're maybe a couple months old? And you can see his toes. What does he DO to those shoes? Ugh. Time to watch the rummage sales. This is another one of those moments when I hear Dad's voice... "I could have something for twenty years..." Nope, I didn't say that to Arch. I just laughed, because what else is there?

Fun Times Three

Three great days, with two slow-paced days between. Three great kids to share some adventures with. And this is what you get...

Monday
Zoo day with friends! When Angela told me you could buy a stick with bird seed on it for $2 I was a little skeptical that it would be worth it, but it WAS! So worth it, in fact, that I bought a second stick. Thanks Angela, Alayna and Carissa for inviting us along for Zoo Day!

Two out of five children did not want their picture taken. Guess which ones.

Neither was willing to get down so they managed to pass, amazing!

Wednesday
Fortier family lunch at the office with Dad and Uncle Todd.
Then the Fortier gang storms the pool and spends a few hours with Grandma and Grandpa.

David sharing his turkey sandwich with E. Shelly was NOT willing to share her lunch.

Friday
We kept hearing about the heat wave that was coming so we planned to go to the fountain downtown, but when it was only 75 at noon, with 50 mph winds, I decided we'd all get cold if we went to the fountain to get wet. So we went Geocaching instead. If you haven't heard of it, its when you put GPS coordinates into your GPS device and follow the trail till you find the prize. Three attempts, three strikes, we were out. Tired, hot (the temps finally started rising around 4:00) and hungry (4:00 and we hadn't eaten for a couple of hours, the kiddies were STARVING!). We gave up and came home.

Archer announced, "There's a treasure in this pile, we just have to find it!"

Eli is just along for the ride, he's happy with whatever it is as long as he gets to come!

"Archer this is a MAGIC stick!"

I threatened to leave him behind but he climbed over the gate. He's not so easy to lock up!

There are so many times that I have this exact picture in front of me, the two of them leading the way. And just when I thought I was in charge, I think to myself, "What adventure will they lead me into today?"

No Time for Sleeping

Today was sooo busy. Sooo fun! First the boat, then some time in the sand, then back to the pool. That wasn't enough fun, though, I promised the kids something REALLY BIG when we got home. David's coming home from a few days in California and I needed big help getting the house in shape in time for his return. So I made a big promise, one that was so big that the kids worked for two hours straight with smiles on their faces just cheerfully looking forward to earning the prize. The Prize: They would be allowed to stay up AS LATE AS THEY WANTED.

Oh it was so simple, genius really, and it worked. They worked. They truly earned it. As a bonus, not only did they get to stay up late, we brought their sleeping bags into the living room for a slumber party. And had popcorn. In the middle of the night. I really thought they'd both fall asleep half way through the movie we put on, after all, we had SUCH a busy day already, surely they must be tired! But the sheer joy of getting to stay up, having no one tell them what time to go to bed, kept them going until ONE A.M.! Whew! Now its 4:30 a.m. and approaching the time I need to pile everyone into the car to go pick up David. I wonder what Thursday in our house is going to look like with this strange little schedule we've had over the last few hours. Only time will tell!