Try to listen past the voices in your head!

This is where we’ve spent the last two evenings… we’ll probably hang out there again tonight… my husband and my children put together this beautiful brick fire pit Sunday afternoon. Isn’t it great! I love this time of year… sitting out by the fire, watching the kiddos play… good times indeed!

Well last night we had a mini celebration at our house. My sweet baby girl FINALLY went #2 in the potty! I had decided sometime toward the end of last week that this would be the weekend that we would conquer potty training in earnest. So, Friday when we got home, off came the pull up and on went the undies (we still do pull-ups at nap and bedtime). She stayed dry all of Friday evening. I think she had one or two accidents on Saturday but stayed completely dry on Sunday. Monday she came home from daycare in the same clothes I sent her in so another dry day but in all that time, she hadn’t gone #2. I was beginning to fear that she was holding it in but last night we were all outside and she said she had to go potty. I thought husband was in the house so I let her go in by herself and she came back out and said she had pooped! I went in and sure enough there was a floater! So we hooped and hollered, she got 2 prizes, we called Mimi and Papaw…. It was a BIG deal! She is the first child I’ve ever had to potty train and really I’d been taking a very lackadaisical approach to it but I have been feeling the pressure of that 3rd birthday right around the corner and I know the number shouldn’t put pressure on the child learning something but I didn’t want to be THAT mommy… lol… so hopefully we have turned a corner and no going back… one day at a time… exciting times! So proud of my baby girl!

My sweet little boy is doing so well in preschool this year. There is a little girl in his class that is in a wheel chair. He calls her the sleeping girl. She has a lot of special needs and likes it quiet so he sometimes demonstrates how they have to be quiet and use soft voices around her. The teacher says Matthew is very protective of her. I think it’s a great learning thing for all the kids and I’m so happy to hear that my little guy does so well around her. He has been getting in trouble some on the bus in the afternoon but the other day I counted the list of children who ride the bus to the daycare in the afternoon and there are something like 22 rowdy girls but mostly boys going to the same place from school in the afternoon… umm that’s like a recipe for disaster in my opinion. They are supposed to have a bus monitor on the bus but I’m thinking with that many small kids, they may need more than one monitor. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not one of those parents who thinks my kid does no wrong either… I’m perfectly aware of his faults and have absolutely had several discussions with him about making the right choices even when no one is watching. My little boy is ornery but I love him so much and am so proud of him in so many ways!

So me and hubs… ok… about two weeks ago, while I was at work, I had decided that I was tired of living in a pit and deciding that rather than get discouraged about all the housework that needs to be done, I had stumbled on a website that had some basic house cleaning chores sort of charted out. So I had printed out a few of the charts hoping to get myself more organized and motivated to clean my house. This is not an area I excel in or even enjoy doing. I like a clean house but I can live very comfortably in my own filth for a long time. But I’m sure most of you can relate, as a woman, the constant balancing act and theme song running through our heads is we have to be the perfect mom, the perfect wife, the perfect whatever, and I firmly believe, we are our own worst critics. But when someone, say our husbands, says the least little thing even remotely negative about our abilities to clean, cook, etc., I can only speak for myself, but it just reiterates what is already going through our own heads and I tend to pop my cork. Put simply, I completely recognize my own flaws but do not want them pointed out to me, particularly by my husband; who, by the way, Biblically is the boss of me but I constantly rebel against him and tell him he is not the boss of me ever, but that’s a whole other topic for another day.

Anyway, in an attempt to make an excruciatingly long story short… blah blah blah, I had spent the day thinking on and planning on trying to be more organized and tidy at home. That’s the head space I was in when I got home. Jimmie was doing dishes and he’d obviously been tidying and scrubbing the kitchen. So, I get sort of settled in from just walking in the door and he says to me, I am going to start a fight. And I can’t even remember how he said it but it was the WAY he said it that hit me wrong. It was something to the effect that he was going to HELP ME keep the house clean, but the way he said it IMPLIED that it was MY job to clean and he would HELP me. Did I mention I have a rebellious streak? I was mad because of the way he said it even though we were on the same page – remember I had just spent a good bit of the day planning how I was going to get more organized and tidy and here he was telling me he’d help me – shoulda said thank you but instead I said up yours. I eventually calmed down and came to my senses and now we are using the chart to sort of remind us to do various little things every day. But something valuable I have been learning is that my husband and I have different languages. The whole Mars and Venus thing is so true. And after I calmed down that evening I explained to him what he said and how I heard it because of the own voices in my head. I also explained to him that I realized that he didn’t mean what I heard – does that make sense… hope it does because the next time you and your spouse have a disagreement, make sure you are actually hearing them and not getting what they are saying all distorted because of your own voices.

Well I’ve typed enough for today… thanks for reading my ramblings! I have been surfing other blogs and stuff (and found some very cute crafty spots!) since our little journal circle has seemed to be gone with the wind… I know some of you are lurking still but I do miss reading about your lives…love my girls always! toodles!