When you have the flu you?get out of bed one day or the other and you are grateful that your two oldest children can go to school all day. You anxiously wait until your baby goes to bed and then crash in your own bed. You drink tea because you’ve got to get something in and although you’re a big fan of super duper tonic which involves garlic, onions and apple cider vinegar, you forego it this time because it just wouldn’t stay in your stomach.
You moan when your baby is awake and are happy that you don’t fall down with him while walking down the stairs and you survive the two hours before he goes back to bed. You drink more tea because milk has to be made, says baby.
The laundry pile gets a little taller and the dishes stack up but not too many, since you aren’t really eating. This is a great dish-saver.
You thank God profusely for your sister-in-law who takes the children to her house for another hour-and-a-half after school and your are oh so happy when everybody goes to bed.
When you have the flu the day moves slowly and you squint […]
Life is beautiful. Not glamorous. Glamorous magazines want us to look at all the perfectness, want more, want that. Want there.
We can buy some things from the magazine, but we can never buy it all. Neither do the people in the pictures or the ones making the pictures have it all. Magazines, adds, they sometimes make us discontented with out lives. Except my grandmother. In her own words ‘I just love to look at all the pretty things’.
I will most likely never be as good as she is.
Yesterday I was reminded again how life is beautiful, how we don’t have to have the perfect-picture life.
We went on a walk with my family in the Flemish Ardennes.
It was cold and rainy and I forgot my coat. I nearly threw a fit and purposed to sit in the car all day. But my mom had extra sweaters with her, because she’s a mom. Moreover, she is my mom.
Then I decided that I never ever wanted to go for a walk again, because I had to go to the bathroom. And there was none. Of course I could go into the hotel we were parked […]
I’m doing Rapley with my baby.
A year ago I did Rapley-Bashing.You see, in?a mommy-group on facebook, someone as opinionated as myself stated an opinion on something I was not opinionated on, I automatically had an allergic reaction to it, therefore suddently gaining an opinion on the matter that was the oposite of the other person’s opinion. Because ?I couldn’t possibly go and agree, could I?
Exactly.
Therefore.Since someone said Rapley was awesome and seemed to think everybody should do Rapley, at least in my humble and unjudgemental perception, I was NOT going to do Rapley. Not on your life. Not even gonna think about it. Rapley is ridiculous and evil.Just the name. Have you ever heard such a silly name? I Haven’t. Stupid philosophy, really. And then my baby was born and I wanted to breastfeed as long as possible and I wanted to not do what someone told me about starting my baby on solids for sure by 6 months.
So in my efforts to NOT start my baby on solids before 1 year, I ended up doing Rapley.
Burn. I know. I Know. I will better myself. I mean, really. This week, I made an appointment for […]
I’m tired and uninspired today. I’m not getting anything done. Sleep Deprivation, it’s a thing. I read a verse and pray and still feel uninspired. AndI yet I feel inspired. Because I realize that I can glorify God just as well on a day in which my brain is foggy and I get nothing spectacular done. Even such an unspectacular thing as finishing the laundry that has been decorating the pantry for a week. Glorifying God, living for God, can be so normal and mundane, that you miss it. Today I don’t want to miss it.?Instead of feeling sorry for myself and beating myself up in my little pity party about not getting anything done, I enjoy holding the baby, again, when he whines because his mother PUT HIM ON THE FLOOR. I enjoy the atmosphere the rain outside gives us inside. A slow day, an unordinary day, a tired day with dishes in the sink and laundry in the boxes. The floor is clean because I cleaned it yesterday and I gaze at it in wonder and
Mike went to pick up the boys from school. I welcome?them home with eggs and hot chocolate. My men […]
Once upon a time I deleted my facebook account. I was spending too much time on it, and it mostly made me unhappy. And what do you know. I gravitated towards the news websites. And then those made me unhappy.
The problem was that it was my attitude that needed to be changed, and not the symptoms.
It’s so obvious, really. Simplicity.
If I get unhappy because of social media, the reason and the cure are very easy to see. ?I’ve been spending more time on those then time with Jesus.
Simple.
Not easy, that one. I try to memorize the Sermon on the Mount, but I have to pull myself from my tea, my novel, instagram, the cookie cabinet, or my thoughts.
Everything in me resists. The more I do it, the more that relationship with God grows, the more I go to God. The more I look forward to spend time with Him.
But out of myself, if I’m just going along without thinking?
It seems more work, it seems more boring, it seems harder. I’ll do it later. Not right now. Later is always a good time.
Some days the words delight me. Some days?they don’t […]
So I think I’ve got it figured out and I’m enjoying motherhood and I never ever want to go back to the land of Growing Up. Or the Land of the Free. And then I go to the Breeze Launch Weekend.Big mistake.The going was great. The boys behaved like the little angels they are. Arriving was okay, although we had to wait an eternity for the key, according to Gabri?l. Abel had fun running on a stone wall. We told him he shouldn’t and that he would hurt himself, but he felt very capable of it, being that he is 4 birthdays old.Apparently 4 birthdays-old-boys do need kisses after they fall of stone walls from which their parents warned them they would fall off.We got installed in the little house and all was merry and jolly when my sister and her husband arrived with their crew of 3. The sound level might have been destructive, but it so joyful that it was acceptable.?All stayed merry and happy really. We tucked the children in bed and my sister stayed there and we went to the meeting. Which was like a mini date, because we only had 1 kid with us. Enjoying […]
So I’m back from the training in which I learned to put more God in my days, and here I am in my house with the children and the laundry and the normal days.
‘it’s ok to enjoy a calm life’, I read.
I will.
The boys are home today, because teachers have to go to school sometimes, too. Gabriel does not get this. His teacher is destined to spend her days and nights in school. She has no right or reason whatsoever to leave school. And so when he wants to go to school at night or on sunday or on this day, he does not understand that there will be nobody there. He giggles and tells me in a voice that tells me what he thinks of my intellectual capabilities ‘Juf Cynthia is there mama’.No, darling. No. Believe it or not, even teachers have lives outside of the classroom.
Should you ever become a teacher, I very much hope that you will come and see me sometimes, and that I will not have to go to your classroom to go see you. Although I do think you might think you lived there, the first year or […]
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