Children Letters-April and Handsome Daddy

***Follow the blog circle...see link below****

 Beautiful children of mine,

We are so close to our relocation that things at (old) home are ending and kinda sucking and things at (new) home have not started and kinda nothing. It is a crazy long drawn-out transition that makes some things easier and some things so much harder. 

But through to all, your handsome daddy has been such a rock for our family. He has stepped in and been the "nester" for the new house. He has been the voice of reason and thoughtfulness. He has taken care of two homes for 4 months. And he has not complained about the tremendous pressure and work stress he is experiencing. 

I am so thankful for your beautiful daddy. I am overwhelmed so often with his tremendous love for us. I am so unworthy of him. 

I infrequently pray for your future spouses. I get very caught up in parenting through our daily trials and feel like I "win" if we actually survive the day. But sometimes I am all caught up, and these future people come to mind. And I hope it is a long way off and that your rock star dad gives you so much to look forward to and strive for. 

So, here is what I want you to know. I love your father deeply. Deeper every day. I only pray that you will so be in love with the hot spouse God gives you. When God gives you the person you are to marry, measure up to dad. Setting your standard so high will only bring overwhelming joy for your life. 

He loved me more than I could even understand way before I thought he would and when I was sure there was no way he should. He got "it" way before I did. He is the most unselfish hardworking person you will ever come in contact with. He is the most dedicated and trustworthy person we will ever know. He is the perfect man for me. 

I feel like it's important for you to know more about him this month. He has been traveling and has been away from us for days during the week. He hates this time away. He feels each minute he isn't with us and is jealous of our minutes and stories (and annoyances) he misses while gone. 

Take it easy on dad. This man would lay down his life for you and one day you appreciate how amazing he is. 

I love you guys. Thanks for rocking this month. 

Beat the crap out of the Staar test this week. You are my superheroes!

Joyfully loved,

Mom

***I am participating in a monthly blog circle with some amazing and talented women who also write letters to their children. Please follow the circle around until you get back here......Starting with Michelle here.

Letters to my kids: The beginning of Crazy episodes

To my little man and my sister-girl,

Surviving time change and a rainy spring break and the impending move has been challenging. Remember when I rocked this parent thing...and by "rocked" I mean, remember how you survived? I managed to keep up with you 8 and 10 years and keep you fed. Your "alerts" of hunger or pain or dirty diapers were monotonous but I knew how to fix those problems. Face it, we were quite a team.

Since the announcement of our impending move we have gone through all of the stages of mourning....denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. And I totally get these emotions. And I totally understand how the move makes you feel lost and alone and mad and upset. I get this. I'm feeling these things right along with you. These are hard, but logical to me.

But now? I feel like we aren't on the same team anymore. You have actual feelings that need to be addressed. You have the beginnings of a little bit of crazy. I have battled Crazy my entire life...how am I supposed to parent you two plus a little crazy with any success?

The beginnings of Crazy are hard for me. You will survive missing a meal (or gagging down a barely edible one). We will survive the bad smells you are emitting or at least fix them with a little body spray.  But, what if you really are jacked up because of my parenting failures during these emotional crazy episodes?

Crying for no reason.....I don't know what to do with that!  It was so much easier when I could check the back of your pants, address the "crap" and move on. This new "crap" isn't as addressable. It lingers longer than expected and leaves in the blink of an eye.

Yelling (a lot)....I don't know what to do with that. (Yelling back isn't helping...I'm at a loss).

Feeling overwhelmed because it is Wednesday..... I don't know what to do with that. Or how to equip you to deal with it.

I want you to know when you are crying, yelling, and feeling overwhelmed I am right there with you. I am so sorry. I miss the days you were easy to fix. I miss the days we rocked it together. I can't fix these crazy episodes.  Every other episode (crazy "alerts"), I feel like I fail. I just don't know what to do. And it feels wrong to tell an eight year old to suck it up. (And I'm gonna go ahead an apologize for that and offer to help pay for future therapy that results from this stage of parenting...I'll go half-sies.)

We will probably survive these pre-crazy years. We will look back and feel like we were on the same team in about 3 years (when you are full fledged crazy and switching teams again). I'm confident we will get back to loving and laughing most of the time again. I'm confident that this all very normal, no matter how much it sucks.

So, please remember that I love you with my whole self. I am so ready to look back on this and know that we rocked this season too. Until then, we'll hug and I get another box of kleenex.

Have a good day.
Be a good friend.
Put your smile on.
Remember I love you.
And be kind to someone today.

I love you too much.

Mom.

***I am participating in a monthly blog circle with some amazing and talented women who also write letters to their children. Please follow the circle around until you get back here......Starting with Terri's letter.... http://www.terricollinsphotography.com/letters-to-our-children-march/

The Adventures of Sunny

This is Sunny. He's alive and well...swimming and eating and doing all the other things fish do...

We were sure he would no longer be with us last weekend. In an effort to de-clutter my house, I decided that Sunny (K's fish...that didn't have a name until the fiasco) needed to move. So move he did. To K's room... It was a great opportunity to clean out and clean up her room and move the shelf from my kitchen. It was also a great opportunity to clean out his tank. 

I've never had a fish. I'm not a lover of animals. Any animals. So, the prospect of moving a fish tank and cleaning it up kinda stressed me out.  But I can do it. And teach k. And it will be a wonderful moment when we are finished and the tank is clean and we can sit in her room and admire our work.

Except that's not what happened. Did you know that you have to acclimate the fish to the water before you dump it out of your measuring cup back into the tank? Even if you squirt a bunch of fish tank stuff in the water.... Well, I did not know this. Handsome assumed I was knowledgable about not killing fish. I am/was not. 

The cleaned tank and fresh water was moved into sister's room. The shelf was organized and chair was placed perfectly for a reading/admiring my fish nook. Fish dumped. Checked off the to do list. Moving on the cleaning the house (or watching TV)...

As I sat on the couch "cleaning the house", 

K screamed: Something is wrong with Sunny. 

Me: Who's Sunny? 

K: My fish!!

Oh. Well ok. Now what.... So we sat on her perfectly placed reading/admiring fish nook chair and watched Sunny lay on the rock in the tank. 

Crap. I think I killed her fish. And we had just figured out a name for it after 10 months of ownership. I walked outside to Handsome to tell of the dramatic aquatic happenings when he asked about acclimating the fish. 

....

Whating the what? 

Handsome came in and concurred with K. I had indeed killed the fish. 

I apologized. Told her that Sunny lived a long time for a fish. And promised a shopping trip for Sunny Jr. 

K: It's okay mom. I think she's having babies. 

Me: ........(blank stare)..........

K: That's why she's about to die. She's about to have baby fish like in Charlotte's web. (please read that with growing excitement)

Me: ..........maybe..........

She continued to sit in her perfectly placed chair for reading/admiring her fish and I left the room to ponder the unexpected pregnancy and death of Sunny. (Where do we even go from here, you might ask...read on...)

A few minutes later I came back in to check on sister and Sunny. I found K in her perfectly placed chair for reading/watching the miracle of birth and she was crying. Because I had killed her fish. (Worst mother ever) We cuddled in the perfectly placed chair for learning about life and death. And she decided we needed to bury him. (please note: Sunny is still a "him" even though he's about to have miraculous babies and die....)

What a great idea! We can all sit crammed in our tiny bathroom and say a few words as we flush the fish. Nope. Unacceptable. We have to have a memorial. Katelynn got right on it. She decided the time of death was 2:30 and we would have the service at 3:00.  She got to work. Dug a whole right off the front porch so that every time we tripped and sprained our ankle in the hole off the porch, we could remember Sunny. 

We met at 3:00 on the porch...right beside the hole. (PLEASE NOTE THAT SUNNY IS STILL ALIVE,,,,THIS IS JUST A MEMORIAL SO WHEN THE FISH FINALLY DIES, WE CAN JUST FILL THE HOLE UNCEREMONIOUSLY) Handsome conveniently had to run to Lowe's and was excused from the service. Little Man tried super hard to get out of this but I explained in a compassionate and loving voice that he had to man up and stick this out with me. 

Sister created the "rip". 

I didn't know what that was either... Luckily, a week later, we still have it laying around...

The grave marker. His rip. MEMORIALIZED!

Michael and I had to write down what we loved most about Sunny. (And Michael asked who Sunny was during the service...was he not paying attention???) My words were picked to be said aloud. 

"I love that Sunny (is that his name?) was a good fish to Katelynn. I am thankful that he was a good fish for our family"

We had a moment of silence and then went about our day as if there wasn't a death in the family...because there WASN'T. But I feel like we have saved minutes of future time for when Sunny finally does get dumped in a hole right off the back porch. But we will have to dig another one because Handsome could no longer stand it and convinced K that the hole needed to be filled in on Monday. We gave the fish a good 2 days before we gave up on the burial.

Handsome has requested that K not be in charge of pulling his plug...

Joyful today for non-dead fish and for a sister girl that entertains *even while in mourning...

This is where the fish was... doesn't it look grown up (especially with the b-b gun on the ground...

Joyfully full of it,

Tiff

Life skills

Hip hop is a life skill. I feel very strongly about this. Sister-girl takes hip-hop classes because nobody uses jazz hands at the club in their early 20s...

Because this... (Please see Instagram video for the awesomeness that could not be blogged.)

And you can't learn real "street" without a little bit of shadow dancing. (Which won't upload here and I'm tired it trying to figure it out. Being tech-savvy is hard y'all...so I'm not. 

My people make me laugh. 

We do crazy here at this house.

You're welcome for the perceived normalcy I just confirmed at your home!

I love my peeps. My kids, my handsome, my holler mommas. 

Thank you and word to your mother!

Joyfully full of it...seriously!

Tiff

Her daily prayer

Sister. This mini-me God gave me. ThIs chick.....

This beautiful girl challenges me. I can't believe God trusts me with the girl. 

Every night she starts her short and sweet bedtime prayer with a phrase I think we should all use and live out...

Dear God, I love you and I always will. I will always love you because you are the best.

Every night. And I sure pray that she really always will. 

Try it. It's an easy thing to remember and a beautiful heart statement 

And then make this face and laugh....

Dear God, I love you and I always will. I will always love you because you are the best. 

I find these on the iPad. It makes me laugh. And snort 

Joyfully full of it (obviously)!

Tiff

Sintayehu

That's the name of a boy. 

And now my world has changed and grown and it's beyond anything I've ever imagined. He is in 3rd grade. He lives in Ethiopia. He has no idea who I am but I love him already. And here he is....

I don't know how to pronounce his name. I don't know where Ethiopia actually is. I don't know how old he is, what his parental status is, or if I will ever get to meet him. 

I do know that sometimes when you dig your feet in and avoid change at all costs...it happens anyway.  

You can read some books and blogs about changing the world and sit back, thankful that someone else feels called to do that so you don't have to. You can be supportive of people that have a world view even though you don't understand how they can see outside of their home much less their community. You can even tell your children that you only give money to your local church because "that's where you feel God wants you to tithe and the only place you've felt led to give money".

I don't want to be stretched and moved. I don't want to leave my safe life-bubble with eyes that see how broken the world is. I will buy the books (Interrupted by Jen Hatmaker, Chasing God by Angie Smith) and collect them like a good Jesus-loving girl but never crack them open...in case I'm moved and stretched by the words. I'm not ready for that. I can barely keep my kids bathed and dressed (thank you handsome for keeping us fed...). I like my size and scope and feel really at peace that my "mission field" is right here where I can see. 

And then you can haphazardly read blogs like www.rageagainsttheminivan.com or www.jenhatmaker.com/blog/ and think how cool it is that they are out changing the world. 

But what if you change the world. What if you scroll through the pictures at www.helponenow.org/kids and something in your heart stirs. 

I looked at the blogs and the kids. I looked through superficially and noticed the "cute" ones and decided that I had no business sponsoring....because I'm obviously not mature enough for that. Who looks for the cute one?? Seriously? I decided that it wasn't for me. I even prayed for God to open my eyes to one for our family if that's what he wants...but I continued to see "cuteness"... Clearly a sign! 

....right....

Then my sponsor BFF (sorry Michelle, we are in this for life now) mentioned casually as I closed my browser that she wanted to maybe sponsor a kid. Oooookay.  That's clear. 

His name is Sintayehu. And we love him. We love his toes and his snappy red pants. 

I can't wait to write him and find out how my family can love him and pray for him. And I'm so thankful for the stretching that I didn't even know I needed. 

Stay tuned for more... This handsome boy has a story to tell. 

Joyfully full of it,

Tiff

Silencing Crazy

Our summer bubble is officially gone and life hasn't quite amped up to full speed so I have a little time to blog. I often think about sending a little shout out to my mom and brother via a blog post. 

The boys are at baseball. Sister is preoccupied. I can sit by myself and tell you about silencing crazy. You know crazy, RIGHT? She's the chick in my head that says really mean (and sometimes inappropriate) things. She was pretty quiet all summer. I was able to lose a little weight over the summer and I kinda hoped that I starved her to death.... NOPE. She was just waiting to catch me off guard.

So, I sat in my chair. Quiet-timing my little heart out. On consecutive days... (what??) Feeling positive and good. Got my day going with Jesus. Ready to take it all on. And then WHAM. Crazy woke from her summer slumber and picked up right where she left off. She said all those mean things that make me feel inadequate and not good enough and just plain old crappy. 

Next morning...back at being quiet-timey like a good girl. But NOT feeling it. I started in on God. Why did you make me this way? Why do I constantly struggle with this? Why oh why? I can not possibly be used by You if I can't silence Crazy. 

LUCKILY God already knows crazy and came to my rescue. I'm confident that the time I have spent in the word and the things I have learned this summer have retrained my brain to go to HIM. 

A big shout out to Jen Hatmaker (www.jenhatmaker.com) and find her on facebook... for her book A Modern Girl's Guide to Bible Study. 

That's fancy photography when you use your feet to hold something up.

This particular morning I was told by Jen (Mrs. Hatmaker, I promise it's a very respectful first name basis)  to turn to Isaiah 45:8-12. I don't know about you but I wasn't really feeling Old Testament-y. I needed 1 Corinthians love and encouragement. Thank goodness He knows what I really need.

Isaiah 45:8-12

8 "Open up, O heavens, and pour our your righteousness.

Let the earth open wide so salvation and righteousness can sprout up together.

I, The Lord, created them.

9 "What sorrow awaits those who argue with their Creator.

Does a clay pot argue with its maker?

Does the clay dispute with the one who shapes it, saying,

'Stop, you're doing it wrong!'

Does the pot exclaim, 'How clumsy can you be?'

10 How terrible it would be if a newborn baby said to its father,

'Why was I born?'

or if it said to its mother, 'Why did you make me this way?'"

11 This is what The Lord says- 

the Holy One of Israel and your Creator:

"Do you question what I do for my children?

Do you give me orders about the work of my hands?

12 I am the one who made the earth and created people to live on it.

With my hands I stretched out the heavens.

All the stars are at my command.

HUH? Okay. Jen says to read it again. (I honestly read it about 5 times and read foot notes to figure out what the heck i was supposed to "glean from this passage"... God is speaking to the Israelites and reminding them that He is the Sovereign God. He set the earth in motion. Who do they think they arecriticizing  and questioning who he appointed as king?

Then it hit me. God made the earth and ME. Who am I to question the way that He made me? He made me perfect for my purpose. He made you perfect for your purpose! My "joke" is that God made me perfect, He just got a little off with His measurements. (Isn't this what the Israelites were doing? Kinda?)

God is preparing excellent things. I have no idea what Crazy has to do with it other than breaking me with her mean words so that the Creator could remind me...

Basically this is a "God don't make junk" quote that I've been looking for since Crazy started talking to me all those years ago. 

Do you trust that He loves you and made you for a reason with a clear calling on your life? YES!! So whatever that is - it's perfect according to His will and plan.

For me,  it was nice to hear Him and to have Crazy silenced. 

Joyfully full of it!

Tiff