The sunny days these last few weeks have been beautiful and the girls have really been enjoying the time outside. Their insatiable appetite for digging in the dirt has kept me on the lookout for a sandbox. I found one last night on Craig's List for $10 so Jeff went and picked it up this morning.
The girls played in it all afternoon into the evening, stopping only to eat dinner and then go right back in. We loved watching them. It was a beautiful day for family time.
Today reminded me of the song "Forever Young" by Bob Dylan. A gorgeous song that shows my most cherished wishes for my beautiful children.
This version by the amazing Norah Jones captures the beauty well...
May God bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young
May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young
May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
May your song always be sung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young
My morning was full of baking and cooking...not sure what came over me but my family is very happy about it. For this recipe I referred to the tried and true, good old Joy of Cooking. If you do not own this cookbook yet I highly recommend it, it is a staple in my kitchen. This recipe was a hit with my family.
Orange Loaf with Dried Apricots and Pecans
from Joy of Cooking
Have all ingredients at room temperature
Position rack in lower third of oven
Preheat to 350 degrees
Whisk together thoroughly:
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
Combine in another bowl:
1/4 cup milk
1/4 cup orange juice
Grated zest of 1 small lemon
Grated zest of 1 orange
In a large bowl beat on high speed until lightened in color and texture, 2 to 3 minutes:
6 Tbsp unsalted butter
2/3 cup sugar
Gradually beat in:
2 large eggs, lightly beaten
Add the flour mixture in 3 parts, alternating with the milk mixture in 2 parts, beating on low speed or stirring with rubber spatula just until incorporated and scraping the sides of the bowl as necessary.
Fold in:
2/3 cup coarsely chopped pecans
1/3 cup finely chopped dried apricots
Scrape the batter into the pan and spread evenly. Bake until golden brown and a toothpick inserted in the center comes out clean, 45 to 50 minutes. Let cool in pan on a rack for 5 to 10 minutes before unmolding to cool completely on the rack.
If I have learned anything about parenting in the last few months it is that nothing is constant. My children, my husband, and I are always changing and learning from eachother. These last few months we have faced a lot of discipline challenges. Nothing crazy just the normal preschooler stuff like not listening, being too rough with her sister, talking back, not eating her dinner, etc. But all of this little stuff had been adding up to a whole day of arguing, crying, yelling and overall pretty frustrating days. The previous use of the good ol' time out wasn't working anymore and we found ourselves yelling more and more every day. We were headed in the wrong direction.
So one night as I was trying to sleep (annoying that my brain always picks this inconvenient time to give me my best ideas), I was mentally making a shopping list of what I needed to start a reward chart...a kind of list of behaviors expected with spots for sticker rewards. I wasn't totally sold on the idea and then the idea of behavior beads came to me. It seemed a lot more straight forward, effective, and fun for a 3 1/2 year old. So the next day I headed off to Michael's to get my supplies...
-Colorful beads
-Princess stickers to decorate the beads received jar
-Stickers to represent rewards
I already had these supplies on hand
-3 mason jars 1 to store the beads to be gained, 1 jar for beads received and 1 to hold reward "coupons"
-Ribbon to decorate the beads received jar
So this is how it works...
She receives beads for all good behavior, getting dressed by herself, brushing her teeth, staying in bed, eating her dinner, doing something nice for her sister etc. The number of beads depends on the good deed and we involve her a lot in the decision process of how many she gets...this is helping to further develop her already excellent negotiating skills.
Once all the beads are received she "cashes them in" for rewards. The rewards include things like new crayons, princess crown, slushy drink from wawa, cupcake, new nail polish, ice cream etc. I used cardstock scraps of paper with stickers on them to represent the various rewards (cupcake sticker, nail polish bottle sticker etc)...since she is not yet proficient in reading this makes it easier for her to understand how the whole process works. The average time it takes to receive all beads is about 1 week. We try to stick to this time period because for my daughter, I believe it is long enough for the positive behavior to be reinforced while still keeping her interested.
At the end of the process all the beads are dumped back into the "beads to be gained" jar and the process begins again.
I cannot tell you how much this has made a difference in our house! It feels much better for all of us to be reinforcing positive behavior on a consistent basis rather than yelling all the time at what she isn't doing well. We have been using this method for over a month now...we have also adapted it to include consequences for negative behavior by taking beads away. However, 99% of the time the mere threat of taking beads away creates the change in behavior without any further discipline needed.
As with any parenting "technique" or tool this isn't the need all end all and answer to every situation. But, I can tell you that for our family this has made an extremely postive impact on our daughter's behavior. As I said we are a month strong with this but I am still on my toes waiting for the next change and midnight idea to a happy healthy family.
Happy girl!
What tools or techniques do you use for rewarding good behavior for your children?
Tonight Jeff and I had our first Latin dancing lesson. We have really been trying to do more date nights and we thought this would be a great way to have weekly dates and learn something new. It's a little scary to do something outside of your comfort zone but also a lot more exciting than the normal dinner out. So I knew we would have a lot to learn but when I think of Latin or Salsa dancing I figured by the end of the 10th week we might look something like this...
At this point after the first class we are a little more like this...
We have a lot of practicing to do. This is what the instructors told us. But they also told us they have seen worse so that gives us hope. Yep.
But seriously, I am so glad we are doing this together. Besides learning a new skill I think I will be learning a lot more about our marriage, about Jeff as an individual and about myself. I already know that my urge to want to "lead" is not how it works with dancing. The man leads, the woman follows his lead. I am also learning patience. Patience with eachother to learn something new that we both are doing for the first time. And if we can learn how to do this together someday we might even look like this...
My life growing up was a lot different than my life now…as it is for most I think. I have a feeling that both the people that I have known my whole life and the ones I just met sometimes look at me and wonder…”How did she get to be all “Jesusy?”
Without going into too much detail (the whole story is definitely for a different rainy day) I will tell you that….
I grew up in a loud house. Not the good kind of loud. The kind of loud where everyone has something to say about everything…with their mouths, or their hands or whatever is in their hands. There was not a lot of love going around all the time.
We did not read the Bible growing up. We did have one though. As a child this is what I remember about it…
it was a very large book, the biggest one I had ever seen. It had gold lined pages and it was on display in a room we never used and no one ever touched it. Ever.
I did go to Catholic school where I learned when to stand, when to kneel, when to sit, and how many Hail Mary’s it took for me to get back on the good girl list after hitting my brother.
Anyway, not a lot of Jesus talk going on in my life growing up. I really didn’t know who he was, what he said or what he did besides being born in a manger and dying on a cross and being a good man in between. Especially as a teenager and while in college I believed Jesus was for the “good kids”…the ones who didn’t smoke or drink or have boyfriends or do anything against the rules. Honestly, I didn’t have time for it. I was not good enough anyway and it was too boring to be good ALL THE TIME!!! (and impossible Romans 3:23, Isaiah 64:6, 1 John 1:7-9)
So I spent the next few years having fun, living in NYC, meeting the man of my dreams, crying while he sang to me on a mountain in front of 100 of our closest family and friends. And most of all I was busy falling in love. Meet my Husband….
My husband works at an American Embassy as a diplomat. In real life he is a banker but in my eyes he is an extremely talented and successful diplomat. He has this ability to see things from others points of view yet you will be helpless in leaving his presence without a sense that this guy knows what is really going on…
As I was (and still am) falling in love with him I wanted to know more and more and more…why does he act that way? Where does this come from? Like others you may admire I wanted to know if I could find out what his secret was….I knew faith was a big part of his life, I knew he read the Bible (more than once, gasp!) And I knew from our conversations that all of that was the biggest influence on the person he is today.
So…the year we got married I started to feel all grown up and wanted to do “grown up” things. So I said, “We are going to church.” And we did. We went to church and another church and another church and another church. And then….I was all churched out. To be honest I was completely discouraged, a little freaked out and even disgusted at one of them. So we gave that up for awhile.
Then I decided I would read the Bible. So like any other well educated English speaking literate woman would do I opened the first Bible I could find and started reading the first page. I remember asking myself just then why so much time has passed between when I knew this ancient and most famous book ever written existed and when I actually sat down to read it. Then about three pages in I quit. It was too hard! Seriously?! People read and understand what they are talking about with all the whoeths, and thougheths, and giveths??!!! Nobody talks like that!! So I gave up again.
But, I still couldn’t shake that feeling of what I call “wanting to be all grown up.” It involved things of wonder…the same ones I believe all of us have…What is the purpose of all this? Why are we here? Does God care about me? About the poor? About the suffering? These questions were in my heart for a long time and they were not going anywhere. I just pushed them down deeper or swatted them away like an annoying fly that just won’t get out of my face. It was too hard.
I am not talking about immaculate conception here. What I mean by this not being a coincidence or by chance is that I truly believe that the beauty in all the science that explains how it comes to be that we as human beings develop and are born onto this earth is so amazing that in my personal view could only be designed by God. Some people believe that science serves to discredit a maker. For me science has shown to prove and strengthen my faith. For example, a few years ago I read a book called A Closer Look at the Evidence by Richard and Tina Kleiss. If you are someone that wants to know more and is at all skeptical because you think Christians base all faith on lack of scientific knowledge I highly recommend this book. This is an excerpt from one of the first few pages...
Evidence from Biology
Although the original world was created perfect and without death,
our fallen world requires creatures to adapt to difficult situations in order to survive.
Even in the current world full of death and competition, the smallest of creatures exhibit amazing capabilities for survival in harsh environments. The female snowshoe rabbit is one such creature.
During extreme drought or harsh winters, the stress of finding food triggers a chemical process in the pregnant female that stops an embryo's growth. Her body then responds to this condition of physical weakness with a process called resorption. In this process, the mother completely reabsorbs the growing embryo. This mechanism allows the rabbit to survive by replenishing her own strength. She can later become pregnant during more favorable conditions.
The number of chemical and physical changes required for a rabbit to reverse a pregnancy is mind boggling. There is no scientific evidence which explains how this remarkable resorption process could have evolved. The creativity of God to have provided for the common rabbit in this way is truly amazing!
This book has short one page examples on topics in biology, botany, chemistry, fossils, anatomy, prophecies and on and on. No matter what you believe I think you will find this book very informative and interesting.
Anyway, back to me...
Having a child really helped me to understand what it meant for God to send his son to us. I understood that we are humans and our finite human brains understand only what we see around us. But love, love is more than what we see. Love is more than what we say, or read, what we understand, what we feel or who we are. God is Love. He loves us so much and wanted to help us to understand and he wanted to communicate so bad with us that he sent his son. This could be the only way, the best way to help us understand.
We have since found an amazing Bible based church whose focus is on feeding the poor, taking care of the sick and many other acts of love that Jesus has taught us. I am learning every day honestly, every single day I am amazed at what I learn about this man.
I used to worry a lot too that I didn’t know all the “terminology” that people toss around at church. I never belonged to that sort of “club” and I was worried I wouldn’t fit it. I learned that none of that matters, there isn’t a club…as one of my favorite bloggers says “Everybody’s In, baby.”
It doesn’t matter who you are what you do or don’t do….nothing, nothing, nothing changes his love for you. Like a great poem I heard the other day said “Now that I know Jesus I boast in my weakness.”
My faith is just that; a belief and trust in all that is possible through God. Not one person can prove or dissprove my beliefs. Some think it is crazy to believe in God, in Jesus and in an afterlife. However, since neither you nor I have yet to experience death, neither you nor I can say that we know the truth simply because we've been there. Based on this, and given the choice I choose to believe because I truly have nothing to lose and everything to gain. I choose to have faith in something bigger, something amazing and beautiful. Something full of love.
I began reading the Bible again only this time I approach it in a way you may approach a dictionary or an encyclopedia a manual or even Google, I “look it up.” I even have a Bible app on my phone that I find extremely useful.
Along my journey and in between his trips to the Embassy my husband held my hand and walked alongside me. He never lost patience nor “insisted on his way.” This Bible verse reminds me of him more than anything I have ever heard or read…
Love is patient and kind;
Love does not envy or boast;
It is not arrogant or rude.
It does not insist on it’s way;
It is not irritable or resentful
It does not rejoice at wrongdoing
But rejoices with the truth
Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things
Love never ends
1 Corinthians 13:4
As I said before, as humans we tend to admire others may it be your husband, your wife, a favorite actor, football player and on and on. God knew what he was doing when he sent his son. He knew it was in our nature to admire another human, to want to know their secrets and what makes them who they are and learn from them. He gave us his son.
