The Eclectic Dabbler

My dear friend Heather is due September 12 with her first: a darling little girl. She also celebrated the Big 3-0 last week!

But since we no longer live in the same state, I can’t be there for her birthday parties and baby showers. . . Thankfully, one of her best friends Erin has an amazing blog in which she posts every day about “hosting parties and home decor, cooking and crafting, dreaming and scheming.”

Visiting her blog is like flipping through the pages of a home decor/party organizing magazine, complete with breathtakingly beautiful photographs and riveting narrative, recipes, and tips that make me believe that I could do the same thing someday.

So grab a cup of coffee, and stop by 17 Dove Street. . .  And you will be inspired to throw a party like Heather’s 30th!

“Not Me Monday” answers the question: “Soooo, really. How was your week?”

There’s your “blog week”–sharing future goals, cute pictures, funny stories. And there’s your week. Your actual, down-to-earth, real-life week.

You know what I mean.

Tuesday was enough drama to fill an entire week! It was supposed to be low-key: A trip to the mall to return clothes I had purchased for Micah to potentially wear to my sister’s wedding. (Of course, I would never wait till the week before the receipt expires to return something. Not me. Just like I would never wait till the gas gauge read “empty” before I filled the tank!)

Since my sister-in-law had offered to come over Tuesday morning, I thought it was a great chance to have help taking my three kids to the mall. She met us at our house and rode up with us.

I decided to take the straight-through-the-northeast route, rather than the interstate. That way we could enjoy every stoplight in the city. (I was just following Google Maps.)

During this journey, our ever-so-reliable Crown Vic began this intermittent clacking sound. As I mentioned, the sound was intermittent. So every time I thought I heard it, I would stop and listen and then it would be gone.

When finally the clacking continued long enough for me to be sure it wasn’t just something in head, my first thought was, “Oh, no! We’re out of gas.” But, as luck would have it, the check-engine light came on, and I noticed the temperature gauge had suddenly shot up to the reddest section of “hot.” That meant it was more serious than running out of gas. Great.

I did need gas, so I stopped. I’d hate to compound the problem.

It was one of those pay-inside-first stations. Normally, I will get back in the car and drive to the next station. Yes, I will pay extra for the privilege of swiping my card at the pump! But today I didn’t have that luxury.

So I popped the hood to let the engine cool down–checked the coolant, looks good–went inside to pay for the gas, came back out and pumped.

I called my husband, and as close as we were to the mall, he said, if the temperature went back down and nothing else happened, to go ahead (we were almost there). The time we spent in the mall would cool the car down completely, and then we could take the interstate back, where the faster speeds could keep the engine cooler. A guy standing by the gas pumps told us if we didn’t run our AC, we would probably be fine.

So back into the car, with my sister-in-law, two toddlers, a baby. And no AC. (As my three-year-old describes it, “We were all screaming!” . . . No, honey, I think that was just the baby.) Thankfully, we were not far from the mall.

We got out of the car and began setting up: the double stroller, the single stroller with Carissa’s car seat popped inside, our bags of returns, the diaper bag. . . and as I’m bending over next to Micah in the stroller, I felt an amazing SPLAT! on my back–almost like being hit by a water balloon. But not.

It was a bird. He had left his mark on my back. In a BIG way. And on the stroller. On Micah. On my car. On our parking spot!

I was so aghast by the mere quantity of stuff that I never got a look at the creature that dropped it!

It was one of those “you just have to laugh!” moments. My sister-in-law and I just looked at each other, speechless. (And for the two of us, this was a rare moment indeed!) We burst out laughing! We really just had to laugh.

What was supposed to be a quick trip up-and-back was turning into an ridiculous ordeal!

My sister-in-law now insisted that I must buy a new shirt, before going anywhere. I agreed, though somewhat reluctantly. Part of me just wanted to go home and hide, before something actually catastrophic happened. . . Until I saw Ann Taylor was having their “40% off the clearance price” sale! And my wonderful sister-in-law bought me three shirts–for my birthday, she told me. Wow, what a “pick-me-up” for this three-pregnancies-in-four-years, I’m-still-wearing-maternity, post-partum mom! Especially after the car-overheating, bird-dropping morning. . .

We made it home. I started making dinner and found out that the “white sweet potatoes” I bought are nothing like orange yams. So I spent most of the afternoon trying to figure out what on earth you do with white sweet potatoes, since after all, that was what I had planned for dinner.

————

Later in the week, I was changing my son’s very nasty diaper. As I was changing him, he went #1 again! (That hasn’t happened during a diaper change since he was a little bitty guy, and he’s two now!)

In itself, that’s not such a big deal, but the crazy thing was that his head was cocked to the side, and as he lay there, he shot himself in the ear! It was puddling in his ear! I was incredulous. How is that even possible?!?!?! As I carried him upstairs to the bath, I found out he wasn’t finished.–Yeah, he finished all over the front of my shirt.

That was another day.

———–

Saturday I made End of the Line Ham Casserole, which is basically ham and scalloped potatoes. We were out of milk.

The car, which overheated earlier in this post, had been in the shop the day I had planned to get groceries. But I keep instant milk on hand. (My daughter says “Dry milk tastes like peanuts.” ?? She will ask for juice, KoolAid, water, anything.–She will even specifically request having nothing to drink, instead of instant milk!–But when we’re out of milk, she still has to drink it. . . That was all free, unrelated–but free.)

So anyway, I “made” a cup of milk for the recipe, stirring it up with a clear plastic spoon, and pouring it into the casserole dish.

[Notice that I never took the spoon out of the measuring cup. Oops.]

I would never bake a casserole with a clear plastic spoon inside. . . Not me.

Did you know that if you bake a plastic spoon at 350-400 (our oven heats inconsistently) for an hour, that it will largely hold its shape? Largely.

I learn something new every day.

I’m not kidding.

I was so excited about all the fruit on sale last week!

I got 2 lbs. of strawberries for 99 cents, 25 bananas for $3.96, and blueberries for $2.99. Peaches were on sale too, but I can’t remember what I paid.

From the bananas, I made five loaves of banana bread and froze some of them. There were plenty of bananas left for breakfast for the rest of the week.

Father’s Day breakfast was coffee with banana bread and fruit salad.

Mmmmmmm! This to me is a most delicious summer breakfast!

In full disclosure, this was my coffee and one of the kids’ plates. We didn’t eat breakfast together as a family on Father’s Day morning. We let Daddy sleep in.

But here was his:

Parenting is more challenging than I imagined. It all seemed so clear-cut before kids. (Ha ha!) But God tells us that His word gives us all we need “for life and godliness,” and it’s true! We just need to dig in!

Growing up in a pastor’s home, I heard a significant amount of Bible teaching on child-rearing and the home. While attending a Christian university, I took an elective class on God’s design for the home. And before children came along, we attended a church that led Sunday School classes or book studies on parenting. But now, with three children three and under, I sometimes–actually, daily–need a refresher, now that I’m trying to apply all these concepts to real life.

My former pastor, Eric Sipe, has several dozen messages on Sermonaudio.com. (A disclaimer: this is not an endorsement of all speakers/topics/messages on Sermonaudio. I’m just sharing my former pastor’s messages, knowing that he seeks to be God-focused and biblically-based in his sermons.) Recently on Sermonaudio, I discovered his messages at a parenting conference in California in 2006. I’m so grateful for all the technological resources we have these days!

So today, while decorating Micah’s birthday cake and wrapping presents, I also “attended” the first session of a parenting conference taught by my former pastor. If you’re interested in listening too, click on this link! Maybe it doesn’t work for you to listen while you work around the house. (Sometimes I have to listen two or three times before I feel like I actually heard the message!) But maybe after the kids are in bed or during their naps or room-time, you want to pull out your Bible and a pen and join the conference.

I will warn you though: If you’re just wanting to see change in your children, these messages start first with you.

So be prepared to let God show you some areas of your life where you as the parent might need to grow and change first! As each one of us submits to Him, our families and marriages will bring God glory.

Someone once challenged us as parents that we should not only be teaching our children memory verses, but we should also be teaching them, by our own example, the value of hiding God’s Word in our hearts. (In other words, what Scripture passages are you as a parent memorizing and applying to your life?)

I was convicted by that. I do value God’s Word, and I want my children to value it too. But as my former pastor used to say, “Time is the great revealer of the motives of the heart.” And often the way I use my time reveals that I don’t, in fact, value God’s Word above many other things in my life.

Last year, I had a goal of using Desiring God’s Fighter Verses to memorize one Scripture passage/week. A goal which I did not achieve. I won’t say that I failed  miserably though, because the passages I did memorize were alternately a blessing, encouragement and a rebuke to my heart.

We would like our children to memorize out of the English Standard Version, and I have found very few children’s memory resources written using the ESV. John Piper’s church has a ministry called Children Desiring God, and this week I was delighted to discover that there is a CD for the Fighter Verses (Set D only) set to music, using the ESV! This Works for Me! The songs begin and end with the reference, and repeat the text of verse a couple of times. Some songs have the verse text spoken in the middle of the song as well. The music is not particularly amazing–but certainly a helpful memory tool!

I was so excited! I’ve purchased this CD, and I plan to learn the verses with the kids this year.

My goal is to play the entire CD a couple times throughout the week, just casually, while the kids are playing. Mara memorizes most of the CDs we listen to, and Micah, the child who screamed through nursery every Sunday for months, now wants me to sing “The Wise Man Built His House Upon a Rock” and “My God is So Big” every night before he goes to bed. He can hardly talk, but he uses the signs and says “Wise Man” and “God. . . Stars!”  They learn so much, just being exposed through “casual” listening!

Then I want to focus on one verse each week. Listening intently to one song three times. Then trying to recite the verse without the song.

This week it is “Isaiah 41:10.” Before bed tonight, I sat with all three kids singing along with this song: “Isaiah 41:10. Fear not, for I am with you. Be not dismayed; for I am your God. I will strengthen you. I will help you; I will uphold you with my righteous right hand. Isaiah 41:10.” Then I said the verse (with Mara repeating after me and Micah trying to repeat after me).

Mara wanted to know, “What’s ‘dis-maid’?”

Of course, Carissa sat on my lap listening quietly.

As I sang along (“I will uphold you”), my little Micah climbed onto my other knee, asking, “Hold you? Hold you?”

“Yes, buddy, I will hold you,” I told him. He snuggled for the rest of the song, and before I turned out their lights, I sang it again to both Mara and Micah in their beds without the CD.

Even though Micah’s not really grasping the concept “God will uphold you,” I’m encouraged that he’s hearing. And someday, hopefully soon, God will work these truths in his young heart.

“Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the Word of God.”

May God speak to their young hearts through His word!