The fruit of the Spirit

Galatians 5:22-23
But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, and self-control. Against such things there is no law.


Yesterday at church, our pastor mentioned these verses during his sermon. I've heard them many, many times in my life. I know that because I am a Christian, the Spirit lives in me and therefore, the fruit of the Spirit should be evident in my life. The sad truth is that most of the time, they are not. On a good day, several of these might be displayed in certain areas. On a bad day, though, very few, if any, are shown.

My pastor said something that I hadn't really thought about before. He talked about how if you are a Christian, these should be evident. Whether it is in your personality to be gentle, or patient, or peaceful, doesn't matter. The Spirit is all of those things and since the Spirit lives in you, you have no excuse to not display these attributes. If you are incapable of it, you probably should re-think whether you are actually a Christian.

Wow. It's so easy to try to get by with not being patient by just chalking it up to not being a patient person. But in Matthew 7, Jesus reminds us that good trees bear good fruit, and that we will be recognized by our fruit.

I guess I just needed this reminder that I should be producing "good fruit." All of the fruit of the Spirit are things I want my children to see and emulate, but it's difficult for them to do that if they don't see it in my life every day.

No pressure. :)

Rescue Pack! Comin' to the rescue!

Is it in your head now? Because I can't get it out of mine!!! Seriously, I've watched Go, Diego, Go probably 4 times total IN MY LIFE now, and that song is stuck in my head constantly!!!

Let me back up...

Cade is 2 years and 4 months old now. We have been adamant from the beginning with him that we were not going to sit him in front of the TV for the purpose of entertainment and/or a babysitter. And we haven't. For about the last year, he's gotten to watch about 5 minutes of whatever we put on (usually something we've DVR'ed for us to watch :) while he drinks his milk before bed. But that's pretty much the extent of his TV-watching. Well...except for college football season. But he wasn't really old enough last year to notice much about it, so I don't really count that. It was on, but he definitely wasn't paying attention. And that's one of the reasons we've held on as long as we did to the no-TV-watching rule. He just wasn't really interested.

I don't know whether I believe all the stuff about kids who watch TV before they're 2 being more likely to have ADD/ADHD, but I do believe that there's really not a good reason to plop them in front of a TV when they're a baby. I'm a stay-at-home mom. My job is to be a mom and interact with my children, not keep them entertained with something else so I can do what I want. .....And stepping off my soapbox now.... :)

(Disclaimer: if you are pregnant and/or sick, you have a free license to keep your child/ren occupied any way possible...if Cade had been willing to watch TV for hours while I was so sick with Ava, this might be a whole different blog post ;)

Anyway, so FOR US, that was the choice we made. No TV for our kids for as long as possible.

Last week, Ryan took off work for 3 days, giving the 4 of us 5 whole days to spend together. No plans except for a few things around the house. It was glorious.

However. We started noticing that Cade was getting crankier and needing more attention the more Daddy was around. Crap. I guess he had gotten used to Mommy not giving him her undivided attention anymore, but when he had all that time when one of us COULD give him undivided attention, he got spoiled. OK, not really spoiled, but came to expect more attention again. I started panicking. He was throwing fits every time I nursed Ava. What was it going to be like when Daddy went back to work and I had to deal with the monster by myself???

Seems like everyone I know advised us to let Cade have something special that he could only do while I was nursing so he wouldn't resent that time. We hadn't really done that because there hadn't been a need to. Sure, he had thrown a few fits here and there, but for the most part, it was manageable. But I didn't see that working much more. So we made the decision to try the TV. As a "only-while-Mommy-is-nursing-Ava" distraction. I honestly didn't know if it would even work. Oh, but it has. We've watched some Diego, some Dora, some Sesame Street, even some Ice Age and Madagascar.

Here are my thoughts: I like Diego better than Dora. Ryan hates them both :) Sesame Street is NOT the same as it was when I was a kid and I don't like it. It's fun to watch the kid movies with Cade (even if it's only in 10 minute increments...kinda hard to follow a storyline, but oh, well :), BUT I noticed that he was SO focused on them that he ignored me. With Dora and Diego, when they ask a question, I repeat it to Cade to see if he'll answer. A lot of times, it's still too hard for him, but most of the time, he at least acknowledges that I'm talking to him.

So for now, we're sticking to things like Diego that have at least a small amount of educational value to them. And I'm stuck with random songs in my head. Small price to pay for some peace while nursing ;)

Bathroom makeover

This post is for an entry to a giveaway, so don't feel obligated to read it, unless you just want to :) If you want to enter, too, head over to A Year With Mom and Dad. But you need to hurry. It ends soon! (It's for a $250 gift card to WalMart so you can makeover a room in your house!!! How cool is that?)

Here's a picture of our bathroom:



Please ignore the hanging laundry. And the stuff all over the counter :)
Our bathroom is the only room in our house that has not been redone since we moved in. It has wallpaper. We have already removed lots of wallpaper from this house (can you say built in the 90s??). I personally don't really want to touch this room. I think it looks fine. Well, fine, as in, not worth it to me to do anything about it :) It drives Ryan crazy. He despises the wallpaper. He wants it gone. The other reason I don't want to do anything about it is that it costs money :) So if we were to win, I would be much more agreeable to actually taking down the wallpaper and painting. Oh, and something else that would be nice...notice the shower. In front of it is a towel. Yep, we don't have rugs in our bathroom. The rugs that we got for our wedding are in the guest (kids) bathroom, leaving us with none. So I'd definitely buy some rugs, too :)

Playgroup

I love playgroup. It's a sometimes-super-chaotic time to let your child run around with other children and not worry (too much) about what they're getting into. And it sometimes is the only reason that said child is not locked in his room. For his own safety. :)

The group of SAHMs I spend most of my time with (when I'm not actually staying-at-home :) has been having playgroup twice a month for about a year now. We rotate who hosts it every month, and it's always unpredictable who will actually show up. We had one earlier this year with 3 moms. We had one earlier this month with about 12 moms. Which means about a million children. But we have a great time talking (read: yelling to be heard over the children) with other adults, and our kiddos just run around playing. It's great! Saves my sanity on a fairly regular basis.