bible memory

One of the things that we started this summer was bible memorization as a family. We decided that, since Ben is going to public school, that we need to be a whole lot more intentional about teaching Ben about our faith. Had we sent him to the private Christian school, that would have been part of the curriculum. Plus, bible memorization is not my forte, so I was looking forward to learning them as well.

We purchased the Foundation Verse Pack from John Piper's website. I like that there's a picture on one side and a verse on the other, so if they see the picture, they can recall what the verse is about. However, I was a little hesitant about it before we started. See, Ben and I can be like oil and water sometimes, particularly when I am trying to teach him something, so I was thinking that he'd fight me tooth and nail in trying to get us to memorize these verses. And I was also a little worried that Caroline was a little too young for it. However, she is excellent at memorizing song lyrics and we have a CD with bible verses set to music and she knows those, so I had hope that she'd be able to do at least a few.

Well, it has exceeded my expectations! I have been so surprised and delighted that my children genuinely like the challenge of memorizing the verses and are so proud of themselves after they do it! I sometimes have to give them a little nudge with the beginning of the verse or the reference (particularly Caroline). They have memorized (in order):

-Genesis 1:1 "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth"
-Matthew 6:24 "No one can serve two masters"
-Proverbs 3:5 "Trust in the LORD with all of your heart and do not lean on your own understanding"
-Psalm 1:6 "The LORD knows the way of the righteous, but the way of the wicked shall perish"
-Isaiah 30:15 "In quietness and in trust shall be your strength"

Do they understand what they all mean? Not really, except perhaps for Genesis 1:1. But will these verses be accessible to them for probably the rest of their life? Hopefully! It showed me too how I've underestimated what my kids are capable of.

*In the interest of full disclosure, I should note that I do sometimes reward them with candy if they recite their verses to me, which made the eagerness quotient much higher than it otherwise would have been :) However, they will recite them all and not expect candy these days!

summer fruit

Unfortunately it's been 3 months since I've last updated this blog! I literally have about 15 minutes all to myself each day these days with 3 needy kids at home all day long. This summer has been filled to the brim, it's hard to believe it's already August 24th! A truism about stay-at-home motherhood is that the years fly by but the days drag on... which is very much how this summer has felt. So much has happened this summer! In no particular order:

1. My little Elias just turned 4 months old!
I love this baby. He's so sweet and cuddly. He hates car rides (which is unfortunate as we're taking a loooong one on Friday) and cannot soothe himself (he wants either Chris or my finger in his mouth to suck on -- will not take a pacifier, or if he does, he will spit it out and then cry). He's still up 3x per night (boo) but will go right back to sleep once he nurses. He loves to give kisses, watch his older brother, and be scared.

2. We had a cataclysmic hail storm.


It totaled our car.


So, I joined the minivan set.


After all was said and done with insurance, we paid about $50 for our minivan. We totaled a 2008 Mazda5 with 45,000 miles on it and got a 2006 Toyota Sienna with 46,000 miles on it. I was feeling okay about keeping the Mazda, even though our family was outgrowing it. It's a fabulous car for 2 kids, pretty tight with three, particularly with car seats, and there is very little storage room. I am totally thrilled with our minivan!!

3. Death in the family
Our church is like family to us. Our family is 4-6 hours away, so having strong relationships at church is critical to us. One of the pillars of our church passed away at the end of June after a long battle with cancer. It was not unexpected, but the speed with which she declined was surprising to us all.

4. Vacation(s)
In July, my parents watched our older 2 kids while Chris, Elias & I went to the Washington DC area. We visited friends and enjoyed having a child that doesn't yet talk :) Chris stayed for a training conference while Elias and I flew back to Michigan.

A few weeks later, the 5 of us headed up to the Wisconsin Dells for our annual week vacation. Ben has proclaimed this the only vacation spot that he will accept. A few weeks after we went to Orlando in February, he asked me "When are we going on vacation?" and I told him we just went on a big vacation and he told me "No, I mean our REAL vacation!!" meaning the Dells! We have stayed at the exact same resort for the past 3 years. He looks forward to this week all year. We had a really nice time, though the theme of this summer for me has been sleep-deprivation and that did not change just because we were on vacation. It was nice to get out of the city though and the kids had so much fun.

5. Deck
Chris's brother and his family came up a few weeks ago and built us a deck!

It's going to be so nice to have usable space in our backyard -- our yard is really rocky and our deck was really small, so it's nice to have a space where we can eat outside and the kids can play! We also have plans to build a patio off of the deck for even more space.

Will try to update more once the kids are back in school. Ben starts Kindergarten in 2 weeks!!

my worst personality trait

So, we had our third baby a month ago! We are so thrilled with our little Elias, particularly his big sister, who told my husband that she was mad at me for having a boy when she first heard the news, but as soon as she held him in the hospital, it was love :)

He has been a pretty typical, textbook baby. With my oldest son, it felt like nothing worked with him to get him to calm down. With my daughter, everything worked. She was hardly ever fussy and slept through the night at 8 weeks old, whereas Ben was up every hour or two from weeks 3-12. With Elias, he seems to cry when something is wrong (tired, hungry, gassy), but as soon as you fix it, he's fine.

Something that I've known for a long time about myself but have not known how to fix it is my propensity to not want to be in the moment. I've always looked to the next thing, even as a child. When I was a kid, I couldn't wait to be an adult and have responsibilities and freedom (I am the child who asked her first grade teacher if there was going to be any homework -- I was so ready to pretend like I was a "big kid"!). When I was in college, I couldn't wait to leave Ann Arbor and be on my own (and oh, how I miss college life some days!!). When I was on my own, I couldn't wait to get married, when I was married, I couldn't wait to have kids. And now I'm at the married-with-kids point with nothing more to "look forward to" (well, except grandkids) and being in this stage of life for awhile. Looking back, I wish that I would have enjoyed each stage I was in more than I did. Ah, youth is wasted on the young...

Recently, God has shown me how quickly my kids are growing and how I'm going to miss it if I continue in the patterns that I have developed over my lifetime. For all of the sleeplessness, fighting, correction that is my life right now, I absolutely know that I'm going to miss this stage of life in 10, 15, 20 years. And I want to appreciate it, I want to enjoy the precious days left that I have with my children being at home. To enjoy how cute they are with their mispronunciations, their freedom to dance and sing, their joyfulness, their desire for affection and attention. These things are not going to last forever! Having Elias has only punctuated this feeling of holding onto this time while they're little -- he's 1 month old and has already changed so much since he was born. I don't want to wish this time away, I want to bottle it up and have it tucked away in the recesses of my heart. Yes, I am excited to sleep through the night again. But with the sleeping through the night comes a less cuddly, more active baby. And since Elias is more likely than not my last newborn, I am savoring this time with him.

All of this has made me more patient and more loving towards my children. I'm sad that it's taken my 5 1/2 years to figure this out, but better late than never...

Something that my excellent friend Colleen sent me has also helped me a lot. I've printed this out and put it on my fridge:

http://www.aholyexperience.com/10-points-of-joyful-parenting-printable/

This has just reinforced the things that God has been teaching me lately -- and it could not come at a better time as I could easily be driven crazy with a newborn in the house, sleep-deprivation and my kids on summer break from preschool :)

our CPS odyssey, part 2

We finally got our letter and found out that Ben got into Skinner West, a classical school. We unfortunately were not thrilled with Skinner when we went to visit their Open House in the fall, the only one they had. The gym was standing room only with parents. No one from the administration came to talk to us. Parents of current students who couldn't answer any questions led us around the building. It was very disorganized and discouraged us, despite the brand new building and its sparkling test scores (ranked #18 elementary school in the state).

Skinner West had another Open House for parents of students who were admitted. We were a little surprised to see how many asian parents were there, particularly first generation asian parents. The school is about 50% african-american, 25% asian-american, 20% caucasian and 5% latino. This, compared to the overall CPS statistics of 9.2% caucasian, 45.1% african-american, 3.6% asian, and 41.9% latino (source: Racial Ethnic Surveys).

Further, it was interesting to drill deeper into this data (if you click on one of the links, an Excel document will download with several different tabs) and see that, while the percentages of black & white students are approximately the same between gifted and classical schools, the percentage of asian students in classical students far exceeded the percentage of latino students, and it was exactly the opposite in the gifted schools. I would define a gifted school as a school for children who have exceptional reasoning/critical thinking abilities, things that can't be taught as easily, and a classical school for children who KNOW a lot of things, either naturally or through repetitive drilling and memorization. I'm very interested as to why this happens -- you could point to the cliched asian parent (i.e., Tiger Mother), but why is the asian attendance so low in the gifted schools?

Anyhow, the nice thing is that my son will fit in fairly well at Skinner, racially. As we live in a predominantly black neighborhood, as he gets older it is important to us that he has friends of all different races. We were much more impressed with Skinner during this last Open House. The principal seemed like she was on top of things, all of the parents had good things to say about it (though they did emphasize that there was going to be a LOT of homework) and we were able to take another tour of the school, this time with one of the classical Kindergarten teachers who was actually able to answer our questions. We really were impressed with her. She said that they start out with 30 students per classroom and don't add any more kids, but some kids end up moving or leaving the school. She had 25 kids in her classroom at that point. However, there is a neighborhood Kindergarten class that must take students who live within the boundary limits and they have 38 (!!!!) children in their class. 38!!

The kink in all of this is that we visited a Christian school where many of our friends from the neighborhood send their kids and we really liked it. It is reasonably priced and is committed to teaching children about God through bible memorization, chapels, bible class, and studying subjects via the biblical worldview. As I could not get Ben to memorize a bible verse without coercion and/or bribery, I would love for him to be able to get that at school! They also have daily recess, spanish, music, art, and gym class. Skinner offers either mandarin or spanish, library, music, art, and laboratory science (starts at 1st grade). No daily recess, though some teachers do take the kids out for recess on their own volition. Westside is not as diverse (mostly african-american), though there is currently a Korean boy in the preschool who I believe is going to be in the Kindergarten class next year. We also love the fact that Ben would already have community at Westside as a number of children we know go there and one of his good friends will be in his Kindergarten class. Plus, the Kindergarten class for this year has about 18 students in it, which seems very reasonable to me.

So, we're not entirely sure what we're going to do. We took the spot at Skinner because we would lose it if we didn't and this is our only CPS option as he didn't get into any of the magnets. He could always take the test again next year for 1st grade, but there are no guarantees. My heart tells me to send him to Westside Christian, but my head tells me Skinner... Probably we'll end up putting him in Skinner and if we're unhappy with it, we'll move him to Westside. In some ways, it would have been easier had he not gotten in anywhere at all!

My conclusion? CPS works if at least 2 of the following are true: (1) your child is smart (2) you live in the boundaries or a good neighborhood school (which are hard to find and housing costs are normally VERY high in those places) (3) the parent is motivated (4) you are politically connected (sad, but true) (5) you live within the boundaries of a good magnet school -- your chances of getting in via proximity lottery go WAY up. These factors hardly seem fair to the vast majority of students out there. It once again underscores the privilege of choice that wealthy, college-educated people have that most low-income people don't. Had Ben not gotten in anywhere, we could afford private school. I could (gulp) even homeschool if push came to shove. Watching Waiting for Superman (which in and of itself is an entirely separate blog post) really brought home the power of choice to me.

our CPS odyssey, part 1

Over 2 years ago, I started seriously thinking about Kindergarten options for Benjamin. My assumption had been that we probably would not be in the city long enough to really worry about navigating the system, but as Ben turned 3, I realized that we probably would still be here and I'd better get my rear in gear.

Chris & I talked extensively about all of our options -- (1) homeschooling, (2) private school, (3) public school and the implications of each. As Ben's personality started emerging further and his talent for numbers/math became evident, we realized (1) homeschooling was not an option for either him or me for a myriad of reasons, the chief of which is that it would be detrimental to our family because of our clash in personalities (read: grumpy, frustrated mom vs. unwilling student) (2) private schools cost money, and in some cases, LOTS of money and (3) the Chicago Public Schools (CPS) is a labyrinth of magnet, charter, classical, gifted and neighborhood schools, with sibling, proximity, general lotteries, tiers, testing, etc.

In order to give ourselves the maximum possible options, I decided to research CPS and figure out what exactly was involved and at least understand the process well enough to apply. It wasn't going to cost us anything (except time), so we were at least going to put our feet into the water and see what happens.

Well, little did I know HOW much time it was going to involve just trying to figure out the system. To be fair to myself, they did end up changing the way the magnet & selective enrollment (selective enrollment = kids must take a test to get in) schools worked as the Supreme Court (rightly, IMO) put an end to their race-based admissions policy. So then CPS implemented this complicated tier system, whereby your address put you in a tier (1-4, 4 being in the wealthiest neighborhoods) and your chances of getting into a magnet or selective enrollment school are partially based on tier, e.g., tier 1 requires lower scores than tier 4 to get into a school for selective enrollment -- magnet schools fill their spots through random lottery by tier.

Okay, I am a college-educated stay-at-home mom and this was complicated enough for me to figure out (and there is even more minutiae than what I have described), as well as finding and researching each school that we were interested in and finding out when open houses were! It's hard to imagine a single parent in my neighborhood with less time/motivation sitting down and trying to figure all of this out. The CPS website is not intuitive and it was sheer luck that I stumbled across the CPS Office of Academic Enhancement website, which was finally a centralized location for many of my questions!

We visited four selective enrollment schools and then ranked them on our application. We also applied to magnet schools, but those are a long shot since we are not in the higher percentage sibling or proximity lotteries. Ben took the highly secretive gifted & classical tests (kids take them both at the same time) in December. This test is the source of anxiety for many parents mostly because of the total unknown. The children go in to take the test with a stranger (a grad student at IIT, I think), are gone for about 15 minutes and then come back, seemingly with their minds wiped clean of the time in the room since they can't seem to remember anything on the test! Ben told Chris that he didn't know what the "pink thing was on the end of a pencil" but couldn't tell him anything else about the test.

And then we waited. I felt an uncommon peace during this time because we had done all that we could do and there was nothing else to do except forget about it until our letter came in March. I did a good job of forgetting until I mistakenly went to the www.cpsobsessed.com site and found out that the letters were going to go out a few days before I thought they were going to be sent out, so I anxiously waited each day for the mailman to come. I wish I wouldn't have seen that site because I got my letter when I initially thought I would!

to be continued...

the princess problem

After we found out that we were having a girl, Chris steadfastly eschewed any of the girl clothes that said "Daddy's Little Princess" because he didn't like the sense of entitlement or the insinuation that she was going to get anything/everything that she wanted.

I knew that I was going to get a girly-girl, as I was not and my mother was and always wanted me to be more girly. It was only just that I should get the girl who preferred pink and ballerinas. And boy, did I ever get her.

From a very young age (before 2) she made her preference for pink known. At one point, she would only wear clothes that had a sufficient amount of pink in them, as deemed by her. She discovered the Disney Princesses (DP) around the time she was 2 1/2 years old and immediately clung to Sleeping Beauty, not because she had seen the movie or knew anything about the character, but because her dress was pink.

My daughter is 3 1/2. I am okay with letting her like Sleeping Beauty because she wears a pink dress right now. I have sometimes wondered if feeding the DP monster (i.e., taking her to Disney World, buying DP books, merchandise, etc.) is a good idea or if we should temper it a bit. The old feminist in me thinks that this whole idea can be destructive to the way she sees herself as a woman as she grows. However, if she was really into Thomas the Tank Engine or Legos, I wouldn't discourage her, so why should I discourage her from this? I have never pushed her towards liking pink (quite the opposite, in fact), nor did I push her towards the DP. Though, in the interest of full disclosure, I really liked the DP when I was a kid, but I was older, like middle school when movies like The Little Mermaid, Beauty & the Beast and Aladdin came out.

My main concerns about her DP obsession:

1. The unrealistic standard of beauty. Though Disney has made concerted efforts to include all races as DP's, they certainly have focused on the European standard of beauty, including an 18" waist for all of the DP's. And, the marketing for the DP's is heavily skewed towards the European characters.

2. Where are the mothers in these stories? The only mothers that I can think of are Cinderella's wicked stepmother and Sleeping Beauty's mother who plays such a minor part that she's not really a mother. Flora, Fauna & Merryweather are her adjunct mothers, but even their relationship is not really shown.

3. The focus on the Prince/romantic story lines. My daughter isn't really old enough to understand all of this (I finally convinced her that she wasn't going to be marrying her brother, which was her initial assumption), but I don't want her to grow up thinking that getting her man is the focus of her life. Plus, all of the Princes fall in love with their beauty, not because of their personalities, and this supposedly enduring and everlasting love all happens very quickly. Understandably it has to be relatively quick in a 90 minute movie, but I think that can set up unreasonable expectations of what love actually is.

4. The undesirable characteristics of some of the DP's. Ariel is headstrong, disobedient and makes a really horrible decision for a foolish reason. Jasmine is also headstrong (which I can't really blame her for, given her situation) and runs away from her loving father. Princess Aurora is just meh -- pretty bland & vanilla. The only estimable characters (in my opinion) are Cinderella & Belle. Cinderella is kind and patient in the face of extreme cruelty. Belle is smart, strong, and willing to sacrifice her life for her father's.

Again, my daughter is too young to understand a lot of this and it's good because it gives us fodder for discussion as she grows older. We've already talked about being beautiful on the inside is much more important than being beautiful on the outside (which comes up because she is often told how cute/pretty she is and she is old enough to understand it now). But I need to continue the discussion with her.

I'm curious what others think about the DP's, especially if you have a daughter?

the name game

One strange fact about my life is that no one has ever been able to figure out *what* I am based on my name. My first name is basically made up and my last name is probably English -- my husband is the classic American-European mix. My maiden name was actually Ukranian, though in spelling it looked like it could have been Japanese. Suffice it to say, I had my fair share of people asking me "Uh, what are you?" in varying degrees of politeness. This is common to most adoptees, and it never really bothered me and still doesn't. I actually think it's nice that people don't know what race I am when I'm on the telephone or if I send in an application.

My father-in-law was recently telling me about a man he had met several years ago with the last name of Washington, who changed his last name, asking my father-in-law "Have you ever met a white person with the last name of Washington?", so when I saw this article online yesterday, I immediately recalled his story.

As we get close to welcoming our third child into the world, we are still discussing names. Last night we realized that both children had the same number of letters in their first names, and half-jokingly said that we should continue with that? I have been a proponent of "regular" names, having a name that I could never find on a magnet, sticker, etc. when I was young and a name that was constantly misspelled by one letter. My brother had it worse -- he has a seemingly normal name that has a letter missing that is common to 99% of the people with his name! So he & I have always vowed to spell our children's names normally.

What do we want people to think about our child when they first hear their name? Because of his/her last name, they will automatically presume that our child is white. My daughter has a Korean middle name and I'm thinking that I might want to give this child my maiden name. But as far as first names, I'm stumped. Chris & I haven't been able to agree on anything thus far. Oh well, neither of our other kids had names picked out until the week before they were born!

tiger mother

The debate over the Tiger Mother seems to have calmed down, at least for now. Most of the opinions have been negative, which is unsurprising as her methods are (were?) extreme by most people's standards. And certainly that is not the way that I would ever want to raise my children, no matter what the results turned out to be.

However, it has gotten me to think about parenting, both my own and those that our western society espouses. I am often sympathetic to my children's feelings and desires and try to work with them. If they don't want to go to the park, I try to find an alternate activity to do with them. If they want to play with a certain friend, I will contact that friend's mom and try to set up a play date. But, lately I have been thinking that I am catering too much to my children's desires.

A few examples:

(1) my 3 year old seems to have developed some kind of social anxiety, which peaked during the Christmas season. This isn't surprising as we were going to new places quite a bit with lots of new faces, or at least faces that we haven't seen for awhile, between Thanksgiving and Christmas. It's gotten better (and once we are wherever we're going, she's fine and has a great time), but she will still push back on us when we are going places from time to time, especially church. She will insist that she doesn't want to go and start crying, but we calmly explain to her that in our family, we always go to church on Sunday. Thankfully our drive to church is not long, so even if she is crying, she stops as soon as she sees her friends!

(2) We have enrolled Ben in music (Mon), golf (Thurs) & swim (Sat) lessons. He has started fighting going to all of them, though in the first 2 at least, he has a good time and participates like a champ. Yes, 3 lessons seems like a lot for a 5 year old, but I am learning that he needs a schedule or else he gets so bored and starts tormenting his sister or acting crazy. Even though he doesn't want to go to them, we make him go.

In my childhood experience, my parents were always encouraging me to "do my best" and if my best was a B (I never got a C on a report card until college), then that was okay. They put me in many different activities and let me choose what I wanted to do, for the most part. The one significant exception was when I was in 4th - 6th grade and they signed me and my brother up for the track team. I HATED it. I would hide the forms when they would be sent home so that my parents wouldn't see it, but they always found out and I always had to go. But you know what? I am so glad that they did it and that they didn't listen to what I wanted. It was good for me. It taught me discipline, perseverance and that I had another "gear" that I could kick myself into. These have become invaluable lessons as I grew older.

A negative example from my childhood would be piano lessons. I started taking them when I was in 1st grade and I really did not like my teacher. I don't quite remember why I didn't, but she was intimidating to me and not a particularly warm person. I did not like them and did not want to continue and my parents let me stop. I now wish that they would have made me continue them -- maybe with another teacher? But I wish that I would not have been able to give up on them so easily.

It's hard to know when to push your kids. My general rule of thumb thus far is that if you commit to something, you have to see it through to the end, with the exception of things that I sign them up for without asking them (which is rare). In those situations, they have to try at least one or two classes and if they don't like it, then they don't have to go. But sometimes I wonder if I should keep pushing them to try things that they don't like or don't think they'll like? I'm curious how others handle this? Though my kids have wills of their own, I am of the opinion that a 3 and a 5 year old do not always (or often?) know what's best for them...

birth

So, as the third trimester rolled around the bend a few weeks ago, my mind is increasingly turning to the way that I am going to get this child out of my body. As I do have experience with this, I'm approaching this one with little of the fear of the unknown that I had with my first one, in particular.

Many of you know the history of how both of my kids were birthed, but as a refresher:

Baby #1 - water broke 2 days before my due date. No contractions. Hooked up to pitocin immediately upon entering the hospital about 2 hours later. Labored with the maximum amount of pitocin coursing through my body, strapped to the bed, unable to move around. 26 hours later, I was barely at 7 cm and delivered him via c-section.

Baby #2 - water broke 1 week before my due date. Contractions light & irregular. Went to the hospital about 6 hours after my water broke and walked around and tried to get labor going. They started with a minimal amount of pitocin (OB was knocking down the door -- midwives were trying to hold them off) 16 hours after my water broke. 26 hours later, I delivered my daughter via VBAC. She was then put in the NICU for the next 7 days with a possible infection due in part to the fact that my water had been broken for so long before delivery.

Delivery #2 sounds better, right? It was. But her week in the NICU was the most hellish week of my life. Unless you've been through it, you can't imagine (1) not being able to hold your baby because s/he is in an incubator, (2) being told your newborn has to have a spinal tap to rule out meningitis, and (3) leaving the hospital without your baby. If I had to do it again, honestly, I think I would have scheduled a repeat c-section.

And so, that makes me wonder about this baby. It appears that I have a history of, if not premature rupture of my bag of water, at least my body doesn't like to go into labor on its own. I don't particularly want a repeat c-section, but I can't bear the thought of another baby landing in the NICU again!

I've never had the experience of giving birth and then keeping my baby with me afterwards, which is my rather modest goal with this one. With #1, they also took out some ovarian cysts, so I was in the OR longer and obviously couldn't hold him. With #2, they let me hold her for about 3 minutes and then whisked her off to the NICU, where I wasn't able to hold her again until the following morning.

saving money

We've been doing a bit of bill reduction in the past few months, not necessarily on purpose, but as we have looked at where our money is going, we are realizing that we could be using it more efficiently. At this same time as last year, January 2010, we are saving $88.34 per month, which breaks out to over $1,000 per year. By this time next year, we will be saving $115.84 per month over what we were paying in January 2010. Even with inflation, that is pretty good!

In case anyone else is interested, here is the breakdown (sorry there's so much space between -- not sure how to fix it):

Category	Were Paying (per month)	Now Paying	Start Up Cost	Savings
water	$65.24	$14.92	$0.00	$50.32
cell phone	$56.56	$27.44	$150.00	$29.12
cable	$47.19	$10.79	$180.00	$36.40
Totals				$115.84/per month after Jan 2012
				$103.34 after Sept 2011
				$88.34/per month, currently

By way of explanation -- the start up cost for the cell phone includes the cost of my new phone that I got in September, and the start up cost for getting rid of cable, which included the hardware that we purchased this month, which I will explain later. Both start up costs are amortized over 12 months, which I subtracted from our total cost savings.

#1. The biggest cost savings that we were able to realize was with our water and sewage bill. We were being charged almost $800 per year for water and sewage, with the amount going up every year. We received a flyer this summer with the water bill advertising that we should have our water metered instead of zoned (which is where they assume that you're using a certain amount of water based on how your property is zoned). So we signed up for the free program, two guys from the Water Dept came out and put a meter on and we even got a free rain barrel! I've been shocked at how much our water bill has come down because of this! We were paying on a semi-annual basis, but because we are using way less water than they were charging us for, we probably are paid up through the rest of this year just on what we paid last year.

#2. We were also able to save through replacing my cell phone service through AT&T with Virgin Wireless. I don't use that many minutes on my cell and we have a land line at home, so even the 450 minutes I was getting through AT&T were too many, plus a $5 texting plan. I switched to the 300 minute option through Virgin, which includes unlimited text and data for $25/month and I could not be happier with it! I haven't really noticed a drop off in coverage and the places where we travel the most (southeastern Michigan and the Cincinnati area) have fine coverage. Plus, Chris still has AT&T (through work), so if we're in an area where I don't get coverage, he will have it and we seldom travel without the other.

#3. As of today, we are a cable-free family. As we were examining what we actually watch on cable, it is fairly limited to ESPN and occasionally the Food Network. We mostly watch PBS when we do watch TV (which isn't that often, to be honest). The kids like the Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, but that's not a great reason to continue paying almost $50/month. Plus, with the rise of programming on the internet, and a subscription to Netflix (plus their instant access on many programs), there isn't much that we can't watch. The only catch (and it's a doozy) is that my husband has the expertise and know-how to set up the TV through the internet, as well as the resources through his work to be able to borrow a good computer that was not being used. We had to buy other things to make it work as well, which accounts for the $180 start up cost. But, there are distinct advantages to not having cable either -- I had been sad to not have access to WTTW Prime, which has a lot of shows that I enjoy watching (Masterpiece Theater, documentaries, etc.), and we now have an application called Boxee where we can download different apps like Pandora, Netflix, etc. I can also have my iTunes in the living room instead of connecting my iPod and having it drain the batteries.

These 3 things have been pretty painless switches to make and we will reap some significant savings from them!

Because I don't blog very much, I sometimes feel pressure to write only when I actually have something profound to talk about. Well, I don't really, but here's what's been on my mind lately (a random mishmash of things, I know):

pregnancy

Many of you know that I really don't like to be pregnant. I'm sick for the first 15 weeks (give or take a week), I feel out-of-sorts, I'm exhausted, I get huge, heartburn, as well as other maladies that I won't mention here. But I'm finding that I'm actually enjoying this pregnancy. It has been the easiest of the three for whatever reason, which isn't to say that it's not without it's irritations (can you say itchy, scratchy rash?), but perhaps knowing that it's most likely my last pregnancy is making me savor every little kick that I am feeling.

I think too that being pregnant over the winter is making this pregnancy more pleasant -- with my last pregnancy, I was enormous and it was one of the hottest summers on record (she was born the day before the Chicago Marathon that had to be called off early due to heat). I was so tired. I'm really excited to meet this little one and am fully intending on cherishing the time that I have with him/her (no, we aren't finding out the gender) because I have a renewed appreciation for how quickly they really do grow up...

compassion, or lack thereof

I had an epiphany the other night. I realized how uncompassionate I can sometimes be towards my children, which I think is a direct correlation to the fact that I stay home with them, which is completely counterintuitive! You'd think that I'd be more compassionate because I know them that much better. And in some situations I am. But I also think about the distinct advantages that my children have because we're in a position that I am able to stay at home, as well as having enough money and resources to more than take care of our wants and needs. My children have never really had another childcare provider other than me, so that makes me think that they should be more secure, more free, and less whiny than other children. But that isn't always the case, in fact, it seems like quite the opposite, which frustrates me!

And then I watch a film like God Grew Tired of Us about the Lost Boys of Sudan and the horrors that they have had to endure and it makes me even less sympathetic towards my own children. Boys as young as 5 years old had to leave their families and join with the rest of boys in a 1,000 mile trek through the deserts of Sudan! And my 5 year old son can't get off of his bum to pick up his jacket that he threw on the floor?!

My brother and I were in daycare and then afterschool care for just about our entire lives, until we were old enough to become "latchkey" kids. I believe that was one of the things that helped me become independent. It did have its drawbacks, but when I see my ultra-clingy children (i.e., I never have to worry about them darting off in a playground or in public, they are normally glued to my sides), I wish that they were more independent and I wonder if I have made them this way.

When I brought this idea up to my husband, he tells me that if I worked full-time, my emotion would be guilt, not compassion. He's probably right. But isn't there a fine line between guilt & compassion?

doc martin

Chris & I don't normally watch very much TV. We watch sports and Masterpiece Theater when we do watch, for the most part. However, our local PBS station started airing this British show called Doc Martin and we love it! So much so that I signed up for a hulu account just so we could watch and not be constrained by PBS. And then we signed up for Netflix so we could watch season 4! Yes, I am a bit of a self-professed anglophile, but even my husband who is not enjoyed it. Can't wait for season 5 coming out this year!

does a happy marriage beget a happy marriage?

I am a product of divorced parents, something that I seldom think about except around the holidays and we're trying to juggle 3 different families with mixed success. My parents always got along, there wasn't a prolonged custody battle and both of my parents have been remarried for 25+ years. I actually don't ever remember my parents being married to one another. Both of my parent's remarriages seemed to have the same ups and downs that most people have, so I did have examples of marriages that stay together in my life.

My assumption (and I think the assumption of a lot of Christians, in particular, based on the number of marriage ministries/books/seminars out there) is that if you have a good marriage, your children will see that and will tend to have a good marriage. I still think that assumption is a decent one. However, I was reading a fiction book called Let the Great World Spin, which is a compilation of many short stories all woven together. One of the characters comments on her parent's marriage and how happy it was and how she never felt that she could attain that level of happiness, so married the first boy that showed interest in her and divorced him shortly after.

Now, this is a fictional account, but it has got me thinking. I consider myself to be in a happy marriage. My children almost never see us in conflict (we don't have very much, admittedly, but what we do, we talk through after the kids are in bed). But, is that really the best thing for them? Are we not showing them conflict resolution skills or what unconditional love looks like because we don't fight or bicker? Will their expectation of their own marriage be unreasonable because they don't have that modeled for them? Now, I'm not suggesting that I manufacture conflict just to prove a point, but it does have me wondering. My kids don't like to see us even play fighting, it tends to really upset them.

I think my parent's divorce made me extra cautious about who I chose to marry and what kind of person *I* wanted to be. Will my kids be that introspective because they think that marriage is easy based on what they've experienced in ours?

Thoughts? Was your parent's marriage happy (happy does not mean perfect -- but overall, was it conflict-ridden or did they enjoy each other's company?) and how has that affected your own, or your thoughts about marriage?

I Demand My Rights (wait, but what are they)!?!?!

Lately I have been wondering: what exactly are "rights"? What are my rights, as a citizen of the United States? What are my rights as a human being? Why do these things seem to be different?

As the gay marriage debate is reaching a frenzy and I hear calls for equality and giving people their "rights", it's caused me to wonder what rights actually are. During the health care debate, there was much talk about how quality health care is a "right". Just yesterday I was vaguely listening to an NPR segment when someone announced that a good education is a "right".

Of course, you can hearken back to the Declaration of Independence, which declares that, as Americans, we have the right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. The Bill of Rights gives us protection over freedom of speech, bearing arms, not harboring foreign troops, due process, trial by jury, civil trial by jury, no excess and cruel punishment, protection of rights not enumerated in the Constitution, power of the states and people.

I'm not really seeing much here in our modern speak about rights. In modern times, we tend to equate rights with things that will make us prosperous and happy. So, if I have a right to quality health care, does that mean that I have the right to fly to the Mayo Clinic or Johns Hopkins to do my prenatal care (and have my insurance pay for it)? If my children have a right to a quality education, does that mean that that I should be able to have the government subsidize their tuition in order to send them to the British School? If I should be able to marry whomever I want, can I marry my sister if we're both of age and consenting?

I think that it's a slippery slope when you start to talk about rights, personally. It becomes something so personal and defensive that it's almost impossible to have any kind of meaningful conversation about it.

As a Christian, what are my rights? What does the Bible say about my rights? Does the Bible even talk about this concept? The definition of a "right" from dictionary.com is as follows:

that which is due to anyone by just claim, legal guarantees, moral principles, etc.

a moral, ethical, or legal principle considered as an underlying cause of truth, justice, morality, or ethics.

According to these definitions, I don't think the Bible does talk about rights. The verses about us being dust and worms come to mind and God certainly has His own justice, which will be revealed at the end. But does the Bible speak of rights? I'd be interested to hear if there are opinions out there on that.

pregnancy & weight watchers

So, for those who missed it, I'm pregnant again. I'm really excited to hold this baby in my arms -- but in the meantime, I have to endure the whole pregnancy bit again. It's actually nice this time around because both of my kids are in preschool and so I can be miserable on the couch in peace and quiet for a couple hours 3x per week. Unfortunately, this "morning" sickness is an on and off all day kind of sickness.

With my 2 other pregnancies, I was done with the nausea at about 15 weeks. I was terribly sick with Ben (partly because I was commuting 1+ hours each way and would get sick during the car ride). I wasn't as sick with Caroline, but still nauseous and had one really bad day of vomiting. I thought I was going to get off easy with this one because I had one day that was really bad of vomiting, and then I was feeling pretty good, on and off. But, around 9 weeks, I started feeling really exhausted and nauseous and that's continued on until now (I'm about 10 1/2 weeks right now). I'm worried that it's going to continue past the 15 weeks of the other kids, which was something I was banking on until now!

Ah well. At least now I have the perspective that it's totally worth it and to just endure through it. It won't be forever and it will seem like a small blip once I get to meet this little one.

Now onto my topic -- not to fret, I am not doing Weight Watchers while pregnant. I was musing to Chris the other night how strange it is to be pregnant after doing WW. I'm in a stage right now where food is simply unappealing to me. I'm not having cravings, it's more trying to find food that I can possibly tolerate to get down. I have to eat when I'm not hungry (which is a cardinal sin in WW) -- I'm eating when I'm starting to feel nauseated and I'm pretty much eating anything that I can eat quickly, which has meant carbs (pretzels, chips, crackers)!

When I was on WW, I meticulously planned out what I was going to eat the next day the night before. Now, I can't plan out what I am going to eat in 2 hours because what sounds good to me now may not sound good to me then, and in fact, it probably doesn't.

No wonder my eating patterns got so screwed up after pregnancy! And then comes nursing when I'm forever ravenous and eating whatever I can get my hands on. Before I started to feel sick, I really wanted to try to limit my weight gain (I gained about 32 lbs with my other kids -- I had no deigns on healthy eating with either of them), but I see now the pitfalls that I fell into. In these early stages, you just want to do anything to make the nausea abate. And after the nausea abates, having an appetite return is among the best things that has ever happened, so I eat with abandon. I'm going to try to eat a little more sensibly this time, but still indulge once I start feeling better!

good riddance summer

I must say that I'm not sorry to see summer go this year. While we have had some fun things going on (friends in town, vacation in the Dells), the majority of it has been stressful and difficult for me and my family.

Starting in mid-April:
-My maternal grandmother fractures her pelvis, has to go to a rehab/nursing home facility, for what appears to be about 8 weeks
-My aunt (mother's brother's wife) discovers that she has a rare and aggressive form of liver cancer
-My maternal grandfather has a stroke (mid-June), my aunts & uncles try to get both of them into a nursing home in southeastern Michigan instead of south central Michigan where they live
-The following week we find out that my stepdad has Parkinson's Disease
-In July, my grandfather suffers from many infections and winds up in the hospital two or three times
-In July, my stepfather starts to noticeably decline from depression and fatigue. He is hospitalized three times (turns out to be the meds -- he got off those and is doing much better)
-My mother's drinking spirals out of control and she checks herself into a rehab/detox facility at the end of August
-Labor Day weekend: my paternal grandmother is admitted to the hospital with chest pains.

So summer 2010, I'm done with you and I'm hopeful that fall and winter will bring some much needed stability.

changing the vocabulary of adoption

As a rule, I'm not a person who is easily offended. I try to consider the motives and perspective of the person who says something questionable and take those into account and try to give them the benefit of the doubt. However, this one thing has bothered me since childhood and as I get older, I hear many well-intentioned, sincere people saying these sorts of things and I want to set the record straight, no matter how small my audience.

I've heard people say the following many times over the course of my life:

(1) "I think we'll have 2 kids naturally and then adopt another one."
(2) "We have 2 kids of our own and then are going to look into adoption."
(3) "Is your brother their real child?"
(4) Various newspaper or magazine articles denoting which child(ren) is(are) the adopted ones and which ones are aren't (see: Jolie/Pitt children)

As an adoptee, these comments/questions are offensive. They insinuate (1) I'm an unnatural child, as if I came by my family in a strange or irresponsible way (2) that I don't actually belong to my parents (3) that I'm just a placeholder for the "real" child that my parents were supposed to have, or that I'm in some way an imposter (4) that because I'm adopted, somehow my parents love me less than a non-adopted child that I need to be categorized as adopted.

I would propose changing the vocabulary to "biological" vs. "adopted", and using those terms only when necessary. If you're introducing a family, is it really necessary to say "these kids were adopted and these weren't?" unless it's for a specific purpose? In no way am I ashamed of being adopted. I'm rather quite proud of it. However, this has always bothered me to no end because it makes adoptees feel like second class citizens! Christians, in particular, should know better than to do this. In our adoption into God's family, does He loves us as second class citizens?

"According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love: having predestinated us unto the adoption of children by Jesus Christ himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he hath made us accepted in the beloved." - Ephesians 1:4-6 (italics mine)

As Jesus purchased us with His own blood (which cost way more than even international adoption), I'd have to say no. We are "accepted in the beloved" as believers! What an amazing promise. Why can we be so insistent in our culture of dividing and separating that which is not meant to be divided and separated? This goes for many things above and beyond the concept of adoption, but adoption is one of the unfortunate casualties.

*Sorry that it's been so long since my last post and I'm posting a downer topic :)

can't win

Lately I've been feeling like I cannot win when it comes to the health of my children.

Disclaimer: my children are very healthy, are seldom sick, have zero allergies (Ben has a touch of seasonal allergy). Chris & I have hearty constitutions as well.

As a mom, I want to do the best for my children. I want to feed them good food, exercise their minds & bodies, and most importantly teach them about God and His love for them. Seems not too difficult, right? Well, here's a typical day and what I feel I'm up against in parentheses:

We wake up around 6:30 am. I go for a run while Chris feeds this kids breakfast, usually chocolate milk (that organic milk was too expensive at $6/gallon last week, so I bought conventional) for Ben, orange juice with calcium for Caroline and non-sugary cereal. I come back from my run and get everyone ready and eat breakfast myself, lately it's been organic yogurt with frozen blueberries, honey & sliced almonds (all non-organic). It's not even 8 am and my family has ingested like 100 pesticides.

I have been trying to limit their TV time to 1 - 2 hours per day, so we go outside to the park so they can run around and not succumb to the childhood obesity epidemic in this country. I put sunscreen on them (crap, I can't find my organic sunscreen and all I have is Aveeno, which I read on the label has ingredients that can cause skin cancer). I guiltily slather some on so they don't get sunburns and head out to the park.

Kids run around and we eat a healthy lunch, which consists of turkey sandwiches (turkey with nitrates and non-organic cheese), pretzels (high fructose corn syrup) or nuts and apples (non-organic, part of the dirty dozen). Go home, Caroline takes a nap and I do a quiet time, take a mini-nap and then start on dinner. Since I've been trying to switch us to a less meat-dependent diet since the way we produce meat in this country is horrendous, so it will be tofu stir-fry (tofu is made of GMO soy and stir fry contains non-organic vegetables). Dessert will be homemade popsicles made with orange, peach (non-organic, on dirty dozen list) & mango juice.

At the end of this day, they've probably consumed thousands of pesticides and exposed to lots of harmful chemicals. We belong to an organic vegetable CSA (which starts in 2 weeks), as well as an organic meat CSA. This is a LOT of money for our one-income family and yet my family is still exposed. Everything on the dirty dozen list are things we eat on a regular basis so converting all of that to organic is going to add $30+/week to our grocery list! I already buy potatoes, lettuce & peppers organic, but can't bring myself to buy organic apples because I don't think they taste as good and have to be imported from Chile and Argentina.

I'm the type of person who worries about what I can't control (i.e., plane crashes, tornadoes and the like) and so I try to control as much as I possibly can in the meantime. But it sometimes seems impossible to control the chemicals and pesticides that go into my family's bodies without spending all of our money. Plus, I think that we eat pretty healthy!

It's frustrating to me as I live in a community where children live off of pop and chips and other junk food. Is it not better to give children fruits and vegetables instead of junk food with zero nutritional value? But then their pesticide level in their bodies goes up as well as most people on food stamps cannot afford organic produce. Heck, most people with middle class incomes can't afford it. Does that mean that good health is restricted to only the wealthy? Food, Inc. gave an alarming statistic that 1 in 3 children born after 1990 will develop type 2 diabetes. If you're a minority living in the inner city, that statistic jumps to 1 in 2.

Boo. The older I get, the more cynical I am about our government (that they actually care about the people and aren't completely beholden to lobbyists -- in this case the food industry), corporations who only care about money and their shareholders and just capitalism in general. I am sick of feeding my children a piece of tofu and worrying that they are going to get cancer! I feel like it's never enough.

Food, Inc.

I recently watched the documentary Food, Inc. and am still processing it and how I want my family to eat and view food differently.

I was shocked and appalled by it while watching. However, after thinking about it for awhile, I've decided that while the truth of it is disturbing, the movie itself is fairly alarmist and meant to be shocking. If you have not seen it, you should! It is important for us to think about how our food is produced and processed, particularly since we are so far removed from the process, unless you are raising your own meat and growing your own vegetables.

One of the particular evils that is being committed is our reliance on corn. Corn by-products are in so many processed foods! Corn is heavily subsidized by our federal government and therefore cheap to produce. Because of its low cost, it is also put in many processed foods instead of sugar or other natural sweeteners (read: high fructose corn syrup). Corn is also fed to chickens, cattle, pigs to fatten them up more quickly for slaughter. So, if corn is being used to fatten up animals, what is this reliance on corn in our food supply doing to us? Fattening US up.

Since corn is just about the only crop we produce and we produce it so cheaply because of these government subsidies, we basically control the world's food supply since other countries cannot compete with us in corn, so they end up importing it from us. This, in turn, makes them vulnerable to oil shocks, due to the cost of shipping the corn overseas, which we saw when oil spiked to $4/gallon, which it is also forecasted to hit again this summer. There were food riots around the world because of the shortages. So, we continue to get fatter while the rest of the world starves.

So, what this means for our family is me trying to cut the corn syrup and other by-products out of our diet. I've been making my own sandwich bread and significantly cutting down on our snack foods and making substitutions, for example -- instead of pretzels and chips, snacking on nuts. If we want cookies or other treats, I'm making them from scratch. I'm blessed with a son who loves vegetables and accepts those as a substitute. I'm reading the labels -- not perfectly since shopping with 2 children isn't the most efficient way to shop. I don't want to be crazy about it, but I think this is a good next step for us to take as far as healthier eating.

Anyone else seen Food, Inc.? thoughts?

the elderly & immigration

My grandmother recently fractured her pelvis as a result of a fall. She couldn't walk and is in a lot of pain, but seems to be recovering. She's in a rehabilitation center/nursing home for anywhere from 6 to 12 weeks, and while she's unhappy there and would rather be home, she seems to be getting good care from attentive and kind staff.

I went to visit her this past weekend and while I was walking through the antiseptic corridors, I couldn't help but think that: (1) getting old is hard; (2) I'm going to have to go through this, or something akin to it, in about 25-30 years; (3) the effects of modern medicine on our society; and (4) who is paying for all of this?

In regards to thought (3), I recently watched a Frontline episode on this man who traveled to Germany to commit assisted suicide. He was suffering from Lou Gehrig's disease that had left him a paraplegic. He still had full presence of mind, but his body was failing and he did not want to end up with a mind fully intact and a body that was not. To his detractors, he made the point that if not for modern medicine, he would already be dead as the only way he was currently alive was because of the respirator that he was on day and night. While I disagree with the decision he made to end his own life, I do wonder about modern medicine and how God sees it. I think that in many, if not most, ways modern medicine is a miracle that God has allowed to happen. There have been countless numbers of people whose lives have been saved because of modern medicine. There are many people's lives who depend on prescription drugs in order to stay alive and those numbers swell as people get older.

Because we can keep people alive longer (which is a good thing! I have all 4 of my grandparents and am so blessed to have them), our population is aging at an alarming rate. I was recently listening to Robert Reich in a segment on Marketplace (one of my favorite NPR shows) and was incredulous to learn that 30 years ago, there were 5 workers for every retiree. In a few decades, there will be 2 workers for every retiree. Though it's not in the article, there are currently 3 workers for every retiree.

It doesn't take a genius to figure out that this is unsustainable. His solution? Get immigrants paying into social security. Immigrants tend to be young and have many children, which will get more workers paying into the system.

I personally have never seen the social security taxes that were taken out of my paycheck as something for me -- I've always seen them as something for those currently retired. I don't honestly expect to see any of that money in my elderly years. I'm glad that my grandparents have it and that my parents, most likely will. I think I need to plan on having lots of kids to take care of me in my old age (that and careful retirement planning now)!

Sunday Night Dinner

A few weeks ago, Chris & I took a trip to Washington D.C. (sans kids!) to do some sightseeing, visit with friends and refresh and recharge after Chris finished his Masters degree requirements, after 6 long years.

One of the friends we stayed with are friends of mine from college that we've hung out with quite a bit. It was great to see them and see how their family with 3 children worked in contrast to ours. One thing that they did that we really enjoyed was "Sunday Night Dinner." My one friend has choir practice around dinner time, which left her husband in charge of dinner. He can cook, but with 3 little ones around, found it difficult, so started a tradition of popping popcorn, cutting up cheese, apples & vegetables and putting out crackers or bread. They ate it in the living room and then played games afterwards. Their kids loved it, it was easy and a fun family tradition.

Chris & I decided to incorporate this idea into our family. In addition to the reasons above, I love the idea of not cooking one night, having one less meal to plan, and it also gives our kids a sense of the principle of Sabbath rest (something we're admittedly not good at). We have done it for 2 Sundays now (well, one Sunday was Easter, so we did it the Saturday before) and it's something they are already looking forward to.