Mommy Brain

I just received this in my e-mail from Special Ops Media, the company that occasionally sends me DVDs to review:

Have you seen every “Lord of the Rings” episode ten times? Were you in line at midnight to go see “King Kong”? What would you do to win a phone call from Academy Award winning director, Peter Jackson?

To celebrate the release of the King Kong DVD, one lucky fan will win a 15 minute phone call with Peter Jackson…

King Kong is being released on DVD on Tuesday, the 28th, and I will have a copy on the way to me to review. We didn’t make it out to the theaters to see it, so I can’t wait. Anyone out there seen it already? What did you think?

So funny – check this out.

Hat tip: Lisa Samson.

I found the links to the two posts I had written before about our issues at church, in case you’re interested:

Good Enough
Good Enough, Part Two

…Kevin and I have finally made a decision about our church situation. We’ve decided to find another church home. I think it’s been almost a year since I posted about our struggles over the direction our church had taken (I tried to find the post and couldn’t and I’m too tired to continue wading through).

I know we’ve made the right decision – it’s been prayed over and discussed for many months, so this isn’t a quick decision made on the fly. But it’s still hard.

We’ve been in this church for nine years. Natalie, our oldest, was six months old when we moved here and started attending. The people love our kids and our kids love them. My best friends are there. I have such a topsy-turvy of feelings right now – relief to have finally made the decision, and sadness that this part of our life is over. Wariness at having to find a new church – and excitement over what God has for us.

I will still be attending the women’s Bible study, because it meets in my best friend’s home and is open to ladies from any – or no – church. That is what is holding me together emotionally – that I will still have my support group. And to be honest, much more real relationship stuff happens there than is ever able to happen at a Sunday morning service.

Change is not easy – even when you know it’s a change that must be made. I’ll be glad when we’re on the other side of this and I stop running into people who don’t know yet or want to ask why.

Be sure and check out the latest Carnival of Homeschooling being hosted by Phat Mommy. Lots of good stuff there! It includes my post on negative attitudes toward homeschooling.

….of a clean house? The house has been very neglected this week, what with multiple trips to the doctor and homeschooling and not sleeping well, etc. So this afternoon the whole family spent an hour and a half in frenzied cleaning mode. Kevin cleaned the downstairs family room and the boys room, including vacuuming. The boys helped me clean the living room, including the dining room table. It’s totally bare for the first time in months and months. Noah dusted, Jonathan vacuumed under the edges of the couches, Josiah washed baseboards, Natalie swept. Kevin did dishes, I cleaned the bathroom, swept and mopped the kitchen. Lots and lots got accomplished and the house looks wonderful – and bigger, I might add.

I was getting really overwhelmed by how much needed to be done just to get it into decent order, let alone spring cleaning. I forget that the kids can help more than they do. I am a pushover sometimes and find it easier to just do it myself than fight the kids. Not anymore – especially not after I saw how much they were capable of today and how quickly it went from disaster to clean.

I spent all day at the doctor’s office yesterday doing a glucose tolerance test. It made me feel pretty horrible, but the results were good: no diabetes, no hypoglycemia. In fact, most of my tests had come back: thyroid, liver, kidneys all good. The results of the adrenaline production test (the 24-hour pee collection jug) won’t be back until Friday because our little tiny lab doesn’t do that test and they had to send it to Spokane. They’re testing for an over-production of adrenaline, which can be caused by a few different things, including a couple different kinds of cancer. I’m trying to trust. I really don’t think that’s it – the timing is too suspicious for all of this to start happening right after I had the horrible reaction to the Bactrim. The timing is just a little too coincidental. So I’m not worrying – mostly.

I also have an appointment for one of those lovely women’s physicals in a week and a half. I haven’t had one of those in a few years. I’ve never had an abnormal one, so my doctor said I could wait two years for my next one. He looked in my chart this week and told me it was closer to four. Not good. Again, I don’t think they’ll find anything as everything is pretty normal in “that” realm of things.

In three weeks I go in and get a heart monitor that I’ll wear for several days – if I’m still having symptoms by then. I’m hoping my body is just still reacting to getting off the Bactrim, off caffeine, and off Prilosec. Yes, I went off Prilosec, too, after reading some yucky stuff about long-term use. I’m treating my acid reflux with aloe vera juice and papaya enzymes – so far so good. I just want to get anything pharmaceutical out of my body and hopefully it will get back into whack.

It looks like my trip to my sisters across the state will have to be postponed. Kevin’s not thrilled about me driving across the mountains with the kids if I’m still having these weird symptoms – and I don’t like the idea either. Or the idea of sleeping on my sister’s couch and then in a hotel room with all four of the kids when I’m not sleeping real well in my own bed. My sister is bummed and the kids are still praying that God will just miraculously heal me before then so we can still go. Who knows – stranger things have happened.

We’re off to take the kids to the pool- I hope everyone’s having a good weekend.

Josiah, our four-year-old, was sitting on the couch drawing this evening while Kevin and I were watching a Seinfeld episode on DVD. (Have I mentioned how much I love Netflix?) When we were finished and Kevin headed downstairs, Josiah brought his paper over to me and asked me to draw a puppy for him. I looked down at his paper, on which I assumed he had been drawing his favorite spiders and monsters, and found row after row of this:

JOSIAH
Josiah
JOsiaH
JOSiah
josiah

I have written his name before when he’s asked me to, but I’ve never before seen him try to write any letters other than J. How cool is that?

If we are unable to go to our homeschooling class on Thursdays, the kids have to send in an e-mail report to our teacher, since we’re affiliated with the public school. (Which we won’t be doing again next year, but that’s another post.) Here are Jonathan’s comments on this week:

Hi, Mr. Ramos. Mr. Ramos, I have done my schoolwork all by myself at the table without mom helping me. She goes over the ‘structions and then I do it all by myself, Mr. Ramos. And then I even played with Lucy our hamster and she got on my arm and it tickled so bad. I want to tell you something, Mr. Ramos. I watched a movie called Really Wild Animals and it had muddy muddy fish that walk in mud. And it was very interesting. You should go to the encyclopedia and you’ll see a frilled lizard and they’re not poison and know what? They just scare enemies off by putting their neck thingies out and then running. And that’s it.

“Paddock ordered Michael and Debi Pearl’s books and started spanking her adopted children as suggested. After Sean, the youngest of Paddock’s six adopted children, died last month, his older sister and brother told investigators about Paddock’s spankings.

Sean’s 9-year-old brother was beaten so badly he limped, a prosecutor said. Bruises marred Sean’s backside, too, doctors found.

Sean died after being wrapped so tightly in blankets he suffocated. That, too, was a form of punishment, Johnston County Sheriff Steve Bizzell said.”

You can read the whole article here.

I know that many people, especially homeschoolers, use the child training and marriage materials written by Michael and Debi Pearl. However, after reading the controversy over Created to Be His Helpmeet, which advocates taking Biblical submission to an unhealthy level, and now this tragedy as a result of their parenting book, To Train Up a Child, someone needs to be holding these people accountable for what they are writing. It may be well-intentioned, but the examples of their principles being taken to an abusive level should cause them to stand up and take back their discipline advice rather than defend it. This is so sad. The picture of little Sean Paddock breaks my heart.

Natalie asked me today how ballerinas are able to twist their feet around into all the different positions.

“Practice,” I said.

“They must be really flexilated,” she said. ~grin~