To the Mom Who

There are a *lot* of "To the Mom Who" posts on blogs lately. To the Mom Who Works, To the Mom Who Stays at Home, To the Mom on her iPhone, To the Mom that Put Her Phone Away, To the Mom the had the Nervous Break Down and Pretended to Bake a Cake in the Middle of Walmart....  These posts are everywhere. People seem to love them. No longer do we have to worry that we are insufficient, over protective, too fat or thin, have too many kids or too few kids. We don't have to worry about what people will think or even what we will think of ourselves. There is a blog post out there to tell us it is okay that we left the kid in the car for a second or that we have never, ever, and will never ever let our kids out of our sight. Validation - it is everywhere.

I think its getting ridiculous.  Sometimes the validation of others comes in really, really handy. But we have cheapened it to the point that now every action is okay and excused. Feel free to feel great about yourself after you yell at little Johnny. After all, you were stressed and angry and we understand. We who are on the interwebs know nothing about you but we know you are a great mom. The internet mommy bloggers are here for you, to take away your guilt, your burdens, and your own self governance.

Why do we need validation? Is it to assuage our guilt for a mistake we have made? Is it permission to be lazy? Do we need the consent of others to make parenting choices that are right for our own family? Is it a way to circumvent getting the blessing of our spouses for a decision on which we may disagree?

The need for validation is a real thing. Feeling like we are making a difference in the life of a child and our family is important to keep us going. It is like a bit of extra fuel for our busy life. But, all the pats on the back in the world are not going to truly fill the void we feel when we are not meeting our own standards or when our spouses or our children fail to recognize us for our contributions or when we truly screw up.  Perhaps there is too much of a good thing here.

Too much validation can prevent us from making necessary changes. That guilt you feel after you make a parenting screw up? (Like when I snapped at my kid for asking me a math question when I was clearly busy writing this blog post...) It is there to tell you that you did the wrong thing. You have to rethink your behavior and make a change. That involved me apologizing to my kid. He was told to do his math. He had a question - it doesn't matter if I think it is a silly one. He needed my time and I snapped at him because he was encroaching on my time.  Do I need a mommy blogger to tell me that was okay? Nope. It was not okay. I only needed to pay attention to my own guilt for snapping at him.

Feel badly about how clean or unclean your house is? Instead of looking for someone to tell you it is okay, ask yourself why you feel the way you do. Why do you feel guilty? Is the Holy Spirit trying to tell you that you need to do better? Or is it an irrational expectation - which only you can change? Either way, validation is not what you need. You need to follow through on the emotions you are feeling and deal with them appropriately.  Maybe that is confession and repentance.

We feel like failures because we 1. failed or 2. have higher expectations than necessary. If you failed, deal with it and make things better if you can and apologize if you can't. But then move on. If your expectations are higher than God's - deal with it. That is pride. Maybe you just need a big cup of suck it up instead of validation.

Be wary of the need for validation, particularly when we are looking to excuse sin, poor behavior and bad choices in the name of "everyone else does it". Furthermore, Romans 8:1 already tells us that there is no condemnation to those which are in Christ. And really, that is the only validation we truly need.

What Downsizing and Moving to the Country has Taught Us

From as long as I can remember after the children were born, I had this dream; we would move out to the country, have land and animals. We would plant gardens and raise our own food. I would own chickens and collect fresh eggs every day. My kids would run wild in the pastures, free to get dirty, and free to yell and play. We would escape the wild hectic life of living in suburbia. We would escape the clutches of home ownership debt. We would free ourselves from the oversized house that by nature of it's size kept us so far apart from each other. We would live free. Free to make memories and spend time together, free to enroll our children in whatever pursuits they desired since we would no longer be house poor. Free from the anxiety of "what if" my husband lost his job, or we had a major medical expense or whatever. We have learned so much in this past two years. Some of it great, some of it not so great.

We have learned that we can live with less. Not only can we live with less, but we don't really miss what we no longer have. There might be a few things here and there, but cutting down from 3,200 sq ft to 1,700 will really make you take stock in what things are important. Not only did we have to get rid of some things we already owned, we had to stop buying so much. Christmases, and birthdays are now about a few really special high quality things and family experiences than about one million cheap things. I like it.

We have learned how to live in smaller spaces. Let's be honest, in a house the size of ours you aren't ever going to be more than a few steps away from someone. On top of that, the girls are sharing a very small room. Having a large back yard has definitely been helpful, but there are things that have been harder to adjust to. I really miss having a dedicated school space. We have a room, but the size makes it difficult to keep it clean and organized and so many times we just end up in the dining room. My husband misses his office where he could keep all of his vintage computers displayed and his electronics in whatever order he pleased. I miss the kids being able to keep their toys in one room and their sleeping arrangements in another. I miss my living room having no TV because it is in the entertainment room.I miss my house looking clean even if there were a few things strewn about. There are also things I love. My small kitchen means that from anywhere in the room I can be one step way from the stove, the fridge, and the sink all at one time and even when my house it at its messiest, it rarely takes more than a few hours to clean from top to bottom!

We have learned that people are going to judge us. Friends, family, strangers, we have gotten it from everywhere. There are those who don't understand why we sold our big beautiful house to move to this small one. There are those who judge the location. There are those who judge how we chose to go about getting out of debt. There are those who took our moving as a sign that we were in debt and had to sell. There are also those who have supported us and even those who have lived vicariously through us. There are others who are working towards doing the same things we are doing. We have just had to learn that no matter what life decisions we make, someone is always going to have their two cents.

I have learned that I need to be around people. I am extroverted. I gain my energy from being around people. Not necessarily with my house full of people but just near them. It makes me feel good to know that I can get up, walk a few feet in any direction and find a person. I know not everyone is like that, but I am. I miss being able to call up a friend and visit. I miss being able to "run down to the store". Everything is such a massive undertaking here. No one wants to visit us here and because of the children's activities I rarely have the energy to drive to them.

We have learned that living in the country is not as cheap as you would think. Overall the move has been good for us financially, but it has not been as big as we had hoped. Price of propane are off the wall and the first winter we were here we didn't quite realize how fast we would go through it. Let's just say we learned to love our winter clothes and the fireplace after that little experience. Also, because everything is so far away we spend quite a bit on gas.

We have learned that we are not country people. This is the hardest one to admit. This was my dream. Yeah, I romanticized it a bit. I was naive, but many many families do what we have done and love it. I had lived doors down for over 10 years before I got married. I knew what things were like and I didn't mind it growing up. We went into the decision informed and felt good about it. We hate that we dislike it, but we have come to terms with the fact that our lifestyle just doesn't suit it. We want our children to be able to participate in activities they enjoy, but where we are means that we are constantly traveling or sitting at those activities. I sit for 3 hours 3 days per week at the gym with my other two children while my younger daughter does gymnastics. Why? Because she loves it and the drive to and from our house is too far to allow me to go home during the practice. I know what you are thinking, but our children enjoy their activities enough that we have decided to prioritize them. Besides my own drives, my husband is driving 1.5 hours to and from work each day and it is exhausting him. We have learned that this time is going to be seasonal for us because of our busy lifestyle.

We have had to learn to be joyful even when we weren't necessarily happy. We are wildly aware of how blessed we are, truly. We have often reminded each other on our rough days that not only are we safe, in a good home, surrounded by family that is healthy, have a stable income and free to do many extra activities, but that we actually chose to be here. When we step back and really look we are able to at the very least experience joy even when we were not necessarily happy.


Here we sit two years in and while I sit in the sunshine watching my children do exactly what I described above and loving it, I can't help but contemplate whether this adventure turned out like we had hoped. If nothing else we have had to really take a step back and look at ourselves. We have found some amazing parts of us that we really enjoy, but in honesty there have been some parts that have not been as they should. The experience has been one of growth and even though this isn't looking like a forever home, I am not sure I would have changed if I could.

But I Can't be with My Children All Day Long Every Day!

  I have heard it too many times, "I could never be with my children all day", "My child fights me while doing homework there is no way I could teach them all day", and every variation of the two you can imagine.

  At first the statement confused me. I have never been away from my children so I have no experience with what it is like to have several hours a day, several days a week without them. I wondered what made us and all of the other homeschoolers I know different. I wondered why suddenly at 5 parents no longer wanted to be around their children for long periods at a time when quite a few of them had just spent the last 4 years being there.

 Most homeschooling parents who pull their children out of the government school system or even a private school struggle with the idea of being together all the time and don't get me wrong, there is some major togetherness that happens with homeschool. Sometimes that togetherness causes conflict, but overwhelmingly it is a joyful experience for most homeschooling families. So what is going on here?

First, it is normal. This one won't go for all families, but my own, having homechooled since the beginning of my children's formal education, just doesn't know any different. My kids did not suddenly become a separate part of me at 5 and so when 6, 7, and rolled around, we just carried on as usual. This is normal for us.

For those that pull out of the system, there is usually an adjustment time and maybe even a bit of de-schooling, but in general, homeschooling is such a natural extension of parenting and life that it takes no time at all for it to become normal.



Second, I am the one teaching my children how to behave. When children are thrown in with other children we get to witness a real life "Lord of the Flies" with kids fighting for top spot in the pecking order. There will be children who reach the top, there will be children in the middle and there will be children trampled on by the school yard hierarchy. The kids will be teaching each other how to behave and that is never a good thing. My children are pleasant to be around because their main influences for proper behavior are adults. My kids don't bully, don't care about who has the coolest clothes, don't make fun of those different from themselves, aren't disrespectful to adults or mean to those not popular. Why? Not because they are perfect, but because I am able to constantly train them on appropriate behavior. Because they are not in the everyone for himself world of the classroom. Because they are interacting extensively with adults who have (for the most part) learned how to behave! The Bible tells us that the heart of a child is foolish so imagine sticking 25 of those foolish hearts into a room and expecting the result to be well behaved children. It just isn't going to happen.

Thirdly, they don't have to bring school work home after putting in a full day at the school. I mean seriously, who wants to spend all day long doing school work and then have to do more when they get home? Where is the time to play and relax? If you have to bring work home do you not complain? Does it not sometimes make you cranky? Comparing homework to homeschooling is like comparing a day at the beach to a day doing hard physical labor. They are just not the same. My kids get to do school when they are refreshed and then they get to be done. There is no working for 7 hours and then bringing home another 3-4 hours worth of homework. I would complain about that too!

Last, because they aren't constantly exhausted. None of these parents seem to take into account the chronic sleep deprivation that kids suffer from these days. A quick Google search will bring up any number of articles on the taxing schedules that traditionally schooled children carry. If my kids were up at 5:30am to catch the bus, spending large amounts of the day sitting, then coming home with homework plus having sports practices until 9pm or later only to get up and do it all again tomorrow, they would be cranky too. Because my children are well rested and get plenty of time to break during the day, they generally stay in good moods and are much more pleasant to be around.

This is not to say my children are angels. They are not. We have had plenty of days when I would have almost considered putting their sassy hineys on that big yellow box on wheels, but I know that once I calmed down, I would be chasing it down and bringing them back home.

10 Day Real Food Challenge Day 2

   So I spend a good majority of my day busting on Jessica about her eating habits, then I tell her ask her every so sweetly to do challenges with me. The truth is skinny doesn't equal healthy and I have plenty of my own unhealthy habits I am wrestling with. My major one being Dr. Pepper and the truth is, I am highly unlikely to make it the entire challenge without one. I am hoping that I can start weening myself off of them and that at the very least, they can become the rare treat rather than my go to comfort food (or drink if you want be difficult).

  Unlike my dear friend, I knew straight up that I needed the easy way out or I just wouldn't follow through. We are out too often for me to be cooking up my own tortillas. One step at a time, right? So I hit up our local Kroger, which happens to be pretty spectacular and managed to find most of the items on the shopping list; including the whole grain sandwich bread, tortillas and pitas. They aren't the perfect solution, but they are a good start.

I did make up the breakfast foods from scratch and while we are following the recipes given, I told my kids they could pretty much pick from what I made for breakfasts. We ate the whole-wheat honey sweetened waffles yesterday and today we are having whole-wheat muffins, honeydew melon and raw milk yogurt. The yogurt isn't on the menu plan but I feel it is important to have and it is what I add our probiotics to. Plus, it is just yum. Also made up is some granola cereal. We will try that tomorrow. The kids can either pour it with milk like traditional cereal or they can mix it into their yogurt parfait style. Today's snacks will be finishing off the honeydew melon and dried apricots. While I love her menu plan, because I have very active children (and my gymnast requires about 3,000 calories per day) and we need a bit more food than what she has in the plan. Easy to adjust that though!

We followed up by having chicken enchiladas for lunch. The recipe called for a tomato based sauce but I knew from experience I would want a white sauce. Now, if I had been a good little whole foodie, I would have cooked my own chicken, but since I purchased the chicken already cooked I didn't have broth. Turns out white wine can be substituted for chicken broth in this case and I had that. Go figure. The sauce was a little...winey (?) so I would cut back on that next time, but over all it was delish and I had so much left over that I reheated it for dinner and still have some for lunch tomorrow. My husband whom I love dearly, but is the world's pickiest eater got some hand breaded cod which I flash fried in olive oil and then baked. He said it was the best dinner he has ever had. I think he might have been exaggerating, but when you have a picky eater you take the compliments where you can get them.


PS. I will be going back and adding recipe links in all of the Real Food Challenge Posts.

10 Days of Real Food Days 3-5

The hardest part of this challenge has been how to work it into my "real" life.  The theory is awesome, make everything from scratch as much as you can and your family will be better for it.
I actually agree. :)

The problem is life has a way of throwing you curve balls and when you are expecting regular fast balls, it can really throw you for a loop.

Anna wrote a blog post about her day 2, which she may or may not get around to publishing - she wants it to have pictures and links and stuff that I rarely make time for. hehe...  Probably why her posts get read at a higher rate than mine. hmmm... So, I will just skip ahead and tell you about my 3rd and 4th days.

Day 3,  I had used homeschool curriculum sale to attend in the morning. We whole wheat muffins that morning and the kids LOVED them. I just made them with a bit of extra cinnamon and nutmeg and bit more honey since I did not feel like chopping an apple up for the them.  The plan for lunch was to have peanut butter and homemade jelly for lunch. I even had the loaves of bread baked.

While we were at the sale, we got a flood of rain. Literally. A flood.  If I had an ark, I could have made it home, but because of the amount of rain, I knew that the 2 ways to get to my house were all going to be flooded. This is not my first time with this amount of rain. So I was *forced* to go wait for the waters to recede at one of our local mexican restaurants.  It was like I was being held hostage or something. It was terrible to think about having to sit there with my chips and salsa and fajitas while that peanut butter and jelly was just waiting for me at home.  I am sure you can feel my pain there.  

Wednesday, my son came down with a fever.  It was 103.2 at its highest.  He was in bed all day and when he finally woke up hungry, he asked for a grilled cheese. I had one lone piece of processed american cheese in the fridge so I slapped that on two pieces of my home made wheat bread with butter and made him a grilled cheese.  He had 3 bites, but he was the only one to eat anything processed that day.  It was good!

Since I was at home all day, I took the time to finally beat the corn tortillas.  Youtube videos are your friend for that one.  But they really looked beautiful!  I was quite proud of them.  My arms and upper abs were sore the next day from the work out I got while pressing them!  It was a bonus!  Hopefully it counteracted some of the calories from the *fantastic* enchilada's we ate for dinner with them!

Thursday  we had a great breakfast. They had left over waffles with smoothies. My kids loved those smoothies, did not even know I snuck spinach in them!  We had the pb&j's for lunch and did fine until dinner. My brother cooks every Thursday and he did not want to cook what was on the plan and we had tacos (packaged taco seasoning - eek) with white flour tortillas (except me and dh, we ate the left over corn tortillas - they were great) and queso dip out of the jar that you get out of the chip aisle. I know. But, again, I had *no choice* - that is my story.

I have to say, we have liked everything we have eaten so far!

Have any one of you tried to go 10 days without eating out or having something that is processed?  If so, leave a comment telling us how it went!  If you have not, what do you think your biggest hold ups would be?

10 Days of Real Food Challenge - Day 1

Anna, in all her skinny person wisdom, asked me to take the 10 Days of Real Food Pledge with her.  I am fairly certain I may be a bit of a project for her as she often suggests whole food this, organic food that, "Crash dieting is not good for you, Jessica!"....  It is really cute!  Since I am always up for a challenge and a bit of a follower she spoke so eloquently about it, I decided that I could do anything for 10 days.  We eat a mostly whole food diet (when I am not ordering pizza) so I thought it would not be too hard.

The 100 Days of Real Food Facebook page has 4 weeks worth of free menus. Anna asked which ones I wanted to do.  Since I did not respond right away, she messaged me (again and again) and eventually said how about week 2 and 4 and I think I said something like, "Fine, week 2 and 4." Truth be known, I was glad to not have to make the choice and have to take responsibility for any disasters and icky recipe choices (hehehe).

Because of the *insane* amount of completely from scratch cooking, we started cooking somethings in advance on Friday.  I made the granola. Anna, I think, made about half the menu and sent me messages on my facebook wall like, "Did you make your wafflles yet?!?!?!"  Why make waffles today if you can put them off until tomorrow?  I actually canned 24 jars of chili in the pressure cooker, which took stinking forever so I did not have time to precook anything but the granola.

I went shopping Saturday. To my surprise, it was not nearly as expensive as I thought it would be.  I did not try to convince my family of the venture. I cook, therefore they eat, right?

We started yesterday. Or shall I say, we tried to start yesterday.

We all had the whole grain, sweetened with honey waffles - AH-MAZE-ING - everyone agreed it was the best waffles ever.  My kids and my dh rejected my real maple syrup, which I actually only use because I love it - and dug out the now contraband artificial maple syrup from the pantry as soon as my back was turned, the traitors. I forgot to cut up and serve the cantaloupe (could not find the honey dew at the store) with the waffles since I tripled the recipe and was busy making 10 extra waffles. So that was the first fail of the day.

Then came lunch.

Anna forgot she had a church dinner and apparently, they don't serve real food there. I forgot my mother in law had a birthday dinner at a local restaurant and there is no telling what my salad and my mushroom swiss burger were *really* made of.

It was a good think too, since I completely forgot to put the stuff in the bread maker to make the bread for the sandwiches at lunch.  I brilliantly decided to make all our bread for the week instead of buying a loaf at the store - me - whose menu last week consisted of ordering take out 4 times....

Supper rolled around. Again, another brilliant decision made by me to not buy a premade item on the list but make it from scratch as well. Because, you know, if you are going to do something, you may as well give it 110%! The item is corn tortillas. I had Maseca because, hmmm I don't remember why I bought Maseca, but I had it and it needs to be used. I read a few blog posts and decided to give it a try, it did not look hard.

The dough refused to make itself into dough. it was a lot like crumbly mashed potatoes.  I added more water. And more water. Then it was too sticky. So I added more Maseca.  The dough and I danced for a bit until I finally had something that slightly resembled the pics in the blogs.  I don't have a tortilla press so I used a plate instead. Not a pie plate but a regular plate. Not the best move. The regular plate has a lip and doesn't sit flat and therefore doesn't press the tortilla as thin as you need it.  I unearthed the rolling pin and attempted to use that. It mostly worked and I got a couple of tortillas that I put in my cast iron skillet.  I cooked them. They were awful. I rolled it out thinner. I could not pick the stupid things up off of the parchement paper without them falling apart. When I finally got one off and into the pan, it was still awful. After an hour and a half of messing around with it and only 3 cooked but terrible tasting corn tortillas later, I called for pizza at 7 p.m..  We ate dinner at 8 p.m.

Thank you Marcos Pizza. Sorry 100 Days of Real Food.

No Parental Involvment Required

There are many beautiful things about homeschooling. One of those things is the independence that it fosters in our children as they learn to learn. But, I fear there is a movement within homeschooling that is making it too easy for parents to be lazy, the No Parental Involvement Required movement.

Ok, so there really is no official NPIR movement, but there is something going on within the homeschooling community that is alarming. When my family, and I believe most families, chose to keep their children out of the traditional school movement, a major part of that decision was the ability to be in control of what our children are learning. The increasing number of homeschoolers has given us access to numerous curriculum options. Having choices has meant that homeschooling parents are able to cater curriculum to their own families in a highly customizable way. But it has also bred a new type of curriculum, the no parental involvement required curriculum and I fear an increase in lazy hands-off homeschooling.

Picture Credit

As I have browsed the various social media sites that I am involved in, I have noticed a steady increase in the number of parents who are not only just looking for low involvement curriculum, but are also unafraid to admit that they simply do not wish to teach their children! No, there isn't anything inherently wrong with using some low parental involvement curricula. I quite enjoy the fact that I don't need to stand over my children through our entire school day, but I am afraid that there is an issue here that need to be addressed. If we are removing parents from the role of teachers are we really doing our kids justice? Where parents were once forced to be hands on with their children, they now have the option to step back completely. When a parent is not involved with their child's schooling it comes close to leaving them right back where they were before homeschooling. What benefit is it to our children when we remove ourselves from the roll of teacher?

I believe as die hard homeschooling families, we have a tendency to only show the happy part of homeschooling and as a result, give off the impression that homeschooling is easy. It isn't, at least not always. We have really great days where everything runs smoothly and the kids are having fun and learning, but most days are hard work, really hard work. We have created this illusion and curriculum companies have perpetuated the idea of a hands off education by producing NPIR curriculum. Sadly, there seems to be quite a market for these types of curricula as more and more become available each year.

There are some seasons in which a low parent involvement curriculum can be a great blessing. New babies, moves, extended illnesses all interfere in a way that make homeschooling all but impossible without them. Children get older and naturally need us less and less. However, these curricula should not be the norm. They should be the exception. Our children need us to be involved. The homeschooling movement needs parents to be involved. God requires us to be involved.