Jun. 13, 2009 - She's Hired
I'm kind of excited. Since Ben is out earning the big bucks with all the yard work stuff this summer, Lydia has gotten the itch to "have a job." God bless her. She wants to mow lawns, too. But she's just about to turn 11, and just doesn't have the stamina for that kind of stuff yet. Darin and I did not want to discourage her, so we thought about what she could do here at the house that we could pay her weekly for. After all, *I* need the help! I don't want to send her off to some other family when I could use a helping hand. :-)
The three things that I can never keep up with are laundry, cleaning the bathrooms, and doing school with Henry, our 3 year old. He sees Ben, Lydia and Jack doing school and wants to do it, too, and asks me every day if we can do school together. I just don't have the extra minutes! I've done a few lapbooks with him, but find it hard to be consistent. So here comes Miss Lydia. We are going to pay her $15 per week to do some schoolwork with him. Should be less than an hour each day.
I do struggle a little bit with the need to do everything myself. I mean, I want to be the one to do schoolwork with Henry! But this will be good for Lydia. She's such a natural with the littles and I know she will do very well with Henry and earn every penny of her salary. And my time will come.
Of course I'm making all the plans for Lydia. With the older three, I used Readywriter for Handwriting Readiness. But ya know, that costs $$$, so I thought I would do a Google search to see if I could come up with some free printables instead. I found some printables as well as some good tips on Handwriting Readiness that should be a lot of fun for Henry and Lydia to work on together. Here are those links:
http://www.activityvillage.co.uk/handwriting_readiness.htm
http://www.donnayoung.org/penmanship/redines.htm
http://www.otworks.com/otworks_page.asp?pageID=711
Activities suggestions for working on strength for fine motor skills
http://members.tripod.com/~imaware/fmotor.html
More fine motor activities
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Oct. 7, 2008 - Sowing Good Seed
From Elsie's Children - Book 6 of the Elsie Dinsmore Series. How important it is to read books such as this that encourage us to be Godly parents. Lydia and I go to Starbucks or Marble Slab every Sunday and read a chapter together. :-)
The mother had to teach patience meekness and forbearance by precept and example, ever holding up as the grand motive, love to Jesus, and a desire to please and honor Him.
Such constant sowing of the good seed, such patient, careful weeding out of the tares, such watchfulness and prayerfulness as Elsie bestowed upon the children God had given her, could not fail of their reward from Him who has said, 'Whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap'; and as the years rolled on she had the unspeakable joy of seeing her darlings one after another gathered into the fold of the Good Shepherd; consecrating themselves in the dew of their youth to the service of Him who had loved them and washed them from their sins in His own blood.
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Jul. 8, 2008 - Brush! Brush! Brush! Brush!
I believe that one of the requirements when one has a daughter is long hair. I have spent many hours sitting on the floor in front of the couch while my daughter sat behind me with a spray bottle with water, a brush, a comb, hair barrettes and pony tail holders. She would spray my hair until the water was running down my back in rivers. Then my hair would be so thick because of all the water, she would jerk my head back with every stroke of the brush. Pain!
We have cut countless ponytail holders out of my hair. I have begged her to start brushing from the bottom and work her way up rather than starting at the top and creating huge knots that had to be cut out. I have been embarrassed to walk out to the mailbox for fear the neighbors would see me. I mean, come on, how many ponytails can one head hold?
Long hair is great with a niece as well. I used to keep my niece and when she outgrew the afternoon nap thing, while the others were napping, I would recline on the couch with my hair hanging over the end (how nice for me) while my niece brushed and brushed and BRUSHED my hair. She would go on forever! I have naturally curly hair and by the time she was done, I usually looked like the bride of Frankenstein. Really, I'm okay with that. ;-)
Today I was sitting at the computer doing somethingorother with First Daughter when she started fixing my hair. I thought, "Oh, man. What hair style will I end up with today?" ;-) 
But I was pleasantly surprised. A pretty braid down the MIDDLE of my head - as opposed to the side or top. My girl is growing up! Learning how to do hair! I never thought I would miss those days when she was yanking my head around with the brush, but I did get a little nostalgic today.
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Aug. 29, 2007 - 2007 Goal Update, Part 4
In January, I made a New Year's Resolution. I don't usually make them, but did this year because it was for a worthy cause.....my daughter. :-) The link to the original post is above. You can go HERE to read the other updates I've posted about this. Just scroll to the bottom and start from the January 15th post.
In a nutshell, my goal is to make a connection with my daughter through some of the chores I have to do around the house every day. I chose to focus on doing laundry together this year. My success with this goal is mixed. Part of that is due to the changing dynamics in our family. Back in January, Third Son was usually in bed by the time we were ready to tackle the laundry. Today, at 17 months, he's wide awake and into everything! I have found myself falling back on my Daughter as a babysitter for him so I could get the laundry done without having him into everything in my bedroom, where we fold and iron. She is so good with him. She's the sweetest Little Mama I think I've ever seen, which makes it easy to have her take up the task of keeping Third Son entertained. But then that leaves her doing her thing, and me doing my thing, and there's not much of a connection that way, eh? So the last few weeks I have had to make a conscious decision to have my Daughter come fold laundry with me and bring Third Son along so he's not into the dishwasher and garbage can as my Husband and two older sons clean the kitchen from dinner.
We are constantly distracted in our conversation because of Third Son's antics, but I've found that even that brings us together in our work, and it's all good. And we've had some interesting chats! Well, lately, my Daughter is doing all the chatting. She has taken to telling me stories while we work. Man, that girl can spin a yarn. We also play a casual game of hide and seek. Whenever one of us has to leave the room to put something away, or go get hangers, the other hides. So it's fun. :-) I plan on this being our job together for forever, and I hope she looks back at this time together when she's doing the laundry for her own family, and decides to reach out to her own daughter in the same way.
I think next year we'll start scrubbing the kitchen floor together.
heh heh.
No, seriously. ;-)
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Apr. 1, 2007 - Fashion Experts
I was browsing around Target today, looking for a few shirts for my daughter. I've just about given up on trying to find her skirts and shorts there - or anywhere - clothes today are definitely not modest. When I buy her shirts, I buy her a size too big so that it will fit her like a "real" shirt rather than the skin-tight imitation of a shirt that is being sold these days. Up on one of the walls, they had a display of shirts that had pithy little sayings such as,
"But DAD said it was okay!"
"1. I want it.
2. You buy it.
3. Any questions?"
"#1 Heartbreaker"
"I tried to fool Mom once....it didn't work"
"Fashion Expert"
It breaks my heart to see stuff like that, and I hope I never am around to see a mother allowing her daughter to choose a shirt like that. There were a lot of other shirts like these, but I can't remember what they all said.
A couple of weeks ago, L and I went to the mall. She wanted to eat at the Rainforest Cafe for our special time together. It was packed, so we walked over to the food court to eat. We sat in a restaurant that looked out over the rest of the food court. It was a Saturday night, so all the young teens without driver's licenses were there doing their thing. I looked at all those girls and boys that were sitting all together, filling up a big table and my heart broke for them. The girls all had on extremely tight clothes with lots of make-up. They didn't realize what they were doing when they freely gave out hugs to their "boy" friends and then continued to stand there with their arms around the boys. They probably thought they were behaving as "just friends" but those boys were loving every minute of the attention the girls gave. I'm sure the girls thought that it was so KEWL to have all these boys who were "just friends" with them. I used to think the same thing when I was their age, but now I know better.
I looked at those kids and felt so sad for them. To me, they were a deserted bunch. Their parents dropped them off at the mall and left them alone to fend for, and figure out for themselves the intricacies of the big, wide world. And what were they going to learn from each other??? Their eyes told me everything. None of them looked content. None of them could sit still. None of them could sit and hold a conversation that took longer than a minute. They spent their time trying to impress each other with their clothes and hair.
So what does all this mean for my daughter? I am going through a period of calling out to the Lord on this one. We certainly aren't raising her to behave as the girls at the mall. We are raising her to be a young lady who seeks after God, and to be a wife, mother, and faithful daughter. Our biggest problem is that we don't really know anyone that is following the same path we are. We feel as if we are the only ones in the world who has listened and taken to heart the great things that Doug Phillips of Vision Forum discusses on his CD's. We have also read So Much More, Home-Making, and many other books on raising daughters. We feel God has led us to these books and to this life we have chosen, but man, is there anyone else out there who feels this way besides the people who write these books? :-)
I've noticed while surfing blogs that there ARE others out there who are taking the same path that we are with our family, and I have especially noticed some of the young ladies from these families who are blogging about this stuff. Do they even realize their influence? I am making plans to cruise some of these blogs with my daughter to give her some long-distance role models. At this point, I'm not sure what else to do. I am trying to be available for her in every way I can and to be a godly role model for her as her mother, but I don't want her to feel we are raising her in a vaccuum.
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Mar. 13, 2007 - Narrow and Fettered Minds
About two years ago, I read Shirley, by Charlotte Bronte. One particular passage from the book has been echoing through my mind since I read it. Here it is:
Old maids, like the houseless and unemployed poor, should not ask for a place and an occupation in the world: the demand disturbs the happy and rich: it disturbs parents. Look at the numerous families of girls in this neighbourhood: the Armitages, the Birtwistles, the Sykes. The brothers of these girls are every one in business or in professions; they have something to do: their sisters have no earthly employment, but household work and sewing; no earthly pleasure, but an unprofitable visiting; and no hope, in all their life to come, of anything better. This stagnant state of things makes them decline in health: they are never well; and their minds and views shrink to wondrous narrowness. The great wish - the sole aim of every one of them is to be married, but the majority will never marry: they will die as they now live. They scheme, they plot, they dress to ensnare husbands. The gentlemen turn them into ridicule: they don't want them; they hold them very cheap: they say - I have heard them say it with sneering laughs many a time - the matrimonial market is overstocked. Fathers say so likewise, and are angry with their daughters when they observe their manoeuvres: they order them to stay at home. What do they expect them to do at home? If you ask, - they would answer, sew and cook. They expect them to do this, and this only, contentedly, regularly, uncomplainingly all their lives long, as if they had no germs of faculties for anything else: a doctrine as reasonable to hold, as it would be that the fathers have no faculties but for eating what their daughters cook, or for wearing what they sew. Could men live so themselves? Would they not be very weary? And, when there came no relief to their weariness, but only reproaches at its slightest manifestation, would not their weariness ferment in time to frenzy? Lucretia, spinning at midnight in the midst of her maidens, and Solomon's virtuous woman, are often quoted as patterns of what 'the sex' (as they say) ought to be. I don't know: Lucretia, I dare say, was a most worthy sort of person, much like my cousin Hortense Moore; but she kept her servants up very late. I should not have liked to be amongst the number of the maidens. Hortense would just work me and Sarah in that fashion, if she could, and neither of us would bear it. The 'virtuous woman,' again, had her household up in the very middle of the night; she 'got breakfast over' (as Mrs. Sykes says) before one o'clock A.M.; but she had something more to do than spin and give out portions: she was a manufacturer - she made fine linen and sold it: she was an agriculturist - she bought estates and planted vineyards. That woman was a manager: she was what the matrons hereabouts call 'a clever woman.' On the whole, I like her a good deal better than Lucretia; but I don't believe either Mr. Armitage or Mr. Sykes could have got the advantage of her in a bargain: yet, I like her. 'Strength and honour were her clothing: the heart of her husband safely trusted in her. She opened her mouth with wisdom; in her tongue was the law of kindness: her children rose up and called her blessed; her husband also praised her.' King of Israel! your model of a woman is a worthy model! But are we, in these days, brought up to be like her? Men of Yorkshire! do your daughters reach this royal standard? Can they reach it? Can you help them to reach it? Can you give them a field in which their faculties may be exercised and grow? Men of England! look at your poor girls, many of them fading round you, dropping off in consumption or decline; or, what is worse, degenerating to sour old maids, - envious, backbiting, wretched, because life is a desert to them: or, what is worst of all, reduced to strive, by scarce modest coquetry and debasing artifice, to gain that position and consideration by marriage which to celibacy is denied. Fathers! cannot you alter these things? Perhaps not all at once; but consider the matter well when it is brought before you, receive it as a theme worthy of thought: do not dismiss it with an idle jest or an unmanly insult. You would wish to be proud of your daughters and not to blush for them - then seek for them an interest and an occupation which shall raise them above the flirt, the manoeuvrer, the mischief-making tale-bearer. Keep your girls' minds narrow and fettered - they will still be a plague and a care, sometimes a disgrace to you: cultivate them - give them scope and work - they will be your gayest companions in health; your tenderest nurses in sickness; your most faithful prop in age.
I think, and think, and think about this passage. We are in a time where especially many homeschooling families are rethinking the role of the woman in the home, and are focusing their attentions on their own daughters. So many seem to be looking back to the Victorian and earlier ages as some sort of glorious period of time for womanhood, but I can't imagine that Charlotte Bronte included the passage above in her book as part of the entertainment. She was obviously trying to say something to the generation of her day, and it's something that I hope that our generation listens to.
We must be careful not to raise our daughters to be nothing but mere ornaments in ours or their own households. We, as women, have so much to contribute, and by the number of women bloggers, so much to SAY! ;-) We must be careful to raise our girls to have more interests than knitting and playing an instrument. They need to have a true-blue occupation until they are ready to leave our home to start their own homes.
With that said, my own daughter is still quite young. She is only eight. So what does it look like for a daughter to stay under the protection of her parents until marriage, while living a fulfilling and meaningful life? Of course I didn't grow up to think this way, so I am still trying to figure all this out. I'm not sure what it looks like, but I am earnestly praying that God will reveal to my husband and me what the proper path is for our daughter as she gets older. Heaven forbid that we keep her locked up and ineffective.
If you are reading this post, and have thoughts on this issue, PLEASE post them! :-)
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Mar. 1, 2007 - 2007 Goal Update #3
I blew it tonight. My daughter wanted to spend some time with me "to talk" and I was stressed out with DH being sick with a cold, the baby needing to get into bed, the spaghetti we had for dinner turning crusty on our plates which were still on the table.........it probably would have taken ten minutes for DD to let me know what was on her mind, but I blew her off. And as I walked out of her room, I saw the disappointment in her eyes, but kept going anyway.
Something I constantly pray for is for God to continue to reveal to me the vision He has for me as a mother. And so tonight I ask for forgiveness for letting go of His vision and beg for the grace to reach out to my daughter the next time she asks.
Here is the original post about the goal I have made for this year concerning my daughter.
Here is update #1.
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Feb. 7, 2007 - Goal Update
I made a goal at the beginning of this year to try to connect more with my daughter. The original post is titled Girls Day Out. Then I have an update here. And now for another update. :-)
I'm realizing that as I go through each day that there are ways that I can better connect with each of my kids, but have just been to distracted with life to notice. Something that L can always be found doing is singing. Today when we went on a walk around the block, she made up a song for each season, and then started in on her own originals for each month. She's no master musician. She just likes to carry a tune with her wherever she happens to be.
If this blog were a t.v., you would see me standing in front of you with a far-away, dreamy look while the picture gets wavy, and I remember back to my college days. I was a Theatre major. I was in the lobby of the theatre building one afternoon all by my lonesome self, and as one of my professors came around the corner he said, "Must be Becca because I hear singing." Awwww, shucks. I took that as a compliment, and I think he meant it that way.
I'm not sure now that anyone I know would think of me in that way. I think I have let the worries and chores of motherhood and marriage distract me and now I rarely belt out a tune. So today I vowed to start singing with L when she breaks out in song. She had "Just as I Am" and "It Came Upon a Midnight Clear" going through her head today, so we sang them a few times and shared some smiles with each other as we sang.
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Jan. 23, 2007 - Older Brothers and Sisters
I've decided that every baby should come with an 11 year old brother, or an 8 year old sister. Even a 6 year old brother is a good thing to have around when there's a baby in the house. Since having our new baby boy 10 months ago, life has been amazingly less stressful than I was imagining it would be. Part of that is getting the baby on a good schedule, but a huge part of that is my older children who do so much to help me out around here when they do their chores and when they go beyond the chore list. It has been such a blessing to me! Because they are so helpful, there have been a few times when I have had to let them know that I'm the Mommy! ;-)
I just read a great post by Laurie Bluedorn that touches on this subject. She wrote about the role of the older daughter in the home. It's a must-read for all of us with up-and-coming girls.
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Jan. 15, 2007 - 2007 Goal Update
I wrote about my goal for 2007 being to connect more with my daughter through chores done together. So far, this is going well!
To start, I kept my eyes open for an opportunity. It's not logistically possible for L to do everything with me, or me with her. But I found an opening with my laundry chore. I have to do 1-2 loads of laundry per day to keep the dirty clothes from taking over. During the day I wash and dry the clothes and when they are done, I just pile them on my bed until I can get to them after dinner. So now instead of L disappearing into her room to play with her dollhouse, she comes with me to fold laundry. We have been having a great time together! It has turned into a fun game and today when I told her to come with me so we could take care of the laundry, she said, "YES!" I never thought I would hear that in response to a chore around here!
The game is this: when I leave the room to go hang up something in a closet, L hides. When I come back, I have to find her. So simple, but she loves it, and is she GOOD at hiding! I keep thinking that there is no way she can find a new place to hide in my closet, but she keeps finding new places! I have walked right past her many times. Yesterday she left the room to go put on her sweater, so I hid. She wasn't expecting that, so when she saw that I was nowhere to be seen, she also hid! I was hiding behind the bathroom door when I heard her go into the closet. I could barely contain my laughter, thinking she would find me at any second. When she took longer than I thought she should have, I couldn't control it anymore, and I laughed out loud and L said, "Come and find me!" That made me laugh even more, which got her laughing, and we couldn't stop. So there we were, both in our hiding places, laughing uncontrollably, refusing to leave our spots to look for the other. It was hilarious. We both finally left our hiding spots vowing to use them next time we had a chance to hide.
And yes, we are getting the laundry done!
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