Potential Facebook Statuses for Today

These all could have been facebook statuses of mine today.

1.) I just told my children to "go pray in your room." I meant play. Oops. Prayer might be a good idea also.

2.) Sometimes a third hand would really be nice/necessary.

3.) My child just took a free joy ride through the parking lot in a free-rolling, runaway cart. Why are parking lots slanted away from cars?

4.) I just bought three boxes of organic granola bars and one thing of All laundry detergent for the price of 1 box of granola bars not on sale ($4).

5.) Why is it when you are trying not to wake up a child, a whisper will do it, but when you are trying to keep them awake, screaming and singing at the top of your lungs does nothing?

6.) My daughter just sat on the potty, got a really concentrated look on her face, and then successfully peed in the potty! She did it a couple of times and got really excited. She then told me "all done" and got done!

7.) Getting ready to go to Disney World for vacation. Seriously considering getting "leashes" for my kids. Hope that doesn't make me evil.

8.) My kids don't drink water very well. They just don't. Don't judge me. I would like to take some kind of drink mix with me to Disney World to mix in water throughout the day. Any suggestions of something that doesn't have artificial sweetners?

Those were some of my thoughts today - at least some of the ones that are worthy of sharing.

Prayer for those presenting His Word

This may seem like a strange post, but it was born the first time that my husband was able to preach in both morning services at our church. He has frequently been given the opportunity to teach in the evenings, but the crowd is much smaller and just different in the evenings. I had a great burden to spend the first service praying for him and his ministry, and then go listen to him during the second service. However, having a burden to pray, and knowing how to pray are two different things. I easily get distracted during prayer and find my mind going a thousand different directions, or I take the easy way out and say "Lord, help Curt" and then I don't know how to fill the 44 other minutes that I wanted to spend praying. I, thankfully, thought of calling my mother-in-law and asking if she had any resources. Curt's dad is a traveling evangelist, has been for most of Curt's life, and is an amazing example of a prayer warrior. He has taught me a lot as I have seen him praying for hours out in his parked car in the driveway. Curt's mom was able to email me a list of things that his dad prays for before he goes to a church and that she uses to pray for him also. I know that other people out there also have loved ones who minister the Word, and I thought this list might be beneficial to you as well. I made some changes to it as Curt's ministry is different from his dad's (he is in one church, not traveling to new churches each week), but the original list is still pretty much preserved.

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Prayer List for those Presenting the Word

1.      Remember that the battle is the Lord’s

2.      Grace not to be intimidated

3.      Grace to meet intimidation by God’s power with the right heart attitude

4.      Moral courage to preach against sin

5.      Uprightness before the Lord so that preaching is not from hypocrisy

6.      Take away from heart & head what Satan & old nature put there

7.      Humility & meekness of Christ

8.      He will say “Will & work in me for Your good pleasure”

9.      Remember “Faithful is He that called you, who will also do it”

10.  Spiritual power—lead him not into temptation

11.  Restore confidence if needed

12.  That God would take away anxious fears

13.  Pure motives

14.  Grace to use his mind, emotions, will, body and spirit

15.  That the Holy Spirit would have complete control of his mind, emotions, will, body, and spirit

16.  Give him a renewed zeal to serve you

17.  Grace to give You the glory

18.  Give him the compassion of Christ

19.  Grace not to be derogatory in the flesh

20.  Grace with colaborers

21.  Opportunities to minister in other’s lives

22.  Wisdom with finances/keep from greed

23.  Put love in the hearts of the congregation for him and his family

24.  Ability to get prep work done during the week

25.  Trust the Holy Spirit’s leading in choosing a sermon text

26.  Organize time wisely

27.  Speak clearly and articulately

28.  Sensitivity to know the right words to say

29.  Clear and logical progression in sermon/that it would flow well

30.  Words would accurately express intended thought

31.  Good eye contact with congregation

32.  Hedge about him as he preaches

33.  Grace to trust the Holy Spirit’s leading when speaking

34.  Boldness with the Word

35.  Preach with wisdom, love, authority, power, inspiration, liberty, simplicity, fluidness 

36.  Words to express the thoughts

37.  For him to be himself, be surrendered, be a channel

38.  Grace not to be rushed

39.  Grace to keep people’s attention

40.  Anoint his voice as he preaches

41.  Give him tact

42.  Give him wisdom to make decisions while preaching

43.  Give him clarity and the ability to not lose his train of thought

44.  Break down all the hindrances that are blocking the work of the Holy Spirit

45.  Be well received by those ministering to

46.  Real moving of the Holy Spirit

47.  Receptivity/Open Hearts of those hearing

48.  Father to draw some to be saved

49.  Good attendance/God would bring those that need to hear

50.  Freedom from distraction for those listening

51.  People to be encouraged in Christ

52.  People to be challenged/admonished in Christ

53.  People be honest about their spiritual condition

54.  People respond to the convicting work of the Holy Spirit

55.  Unbelievers be attentive to the Word

56.  The Devil to be defeated

57.  Work in people to pray, work, give, apply, respond, obey

58.  That the church be better off spiritually because of message

59.  The Holy Spirit convict audience of sin

60.  Permanent results

Preach leaning on the promise that “I can do all things through Christ which strengtheneth me.” (Phil 4:13)

Preach leaning on the promise that “He that is in me is greater than he that is in the world.” (I John 4:4)

     

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(I may be updating and changing the list. You can access a current version of the list here.)


See anything that the list overlooks? 

Have any questions?

Either leave a comment or email me at laurasharbaugh-at-gmail-dot-com

I Heart Faces - Smile

I decided to go ahead and take the plunge and enter the i heart faces photo challenge for the first time this week. Here is one of my favorite smiles:

Go check out all the other smiles at i heart faces.

Tot Activities this week

~ Micah and Mackenna are 21 months old ~

I have been working on some more intentional, stimulating play activities with M and M. I'm not sure where we are going to go from here. I don't plan on getting extremely structured, but the planner and teacher in me is hard to beat down sometimes. I would like our times at home (specifically wed - fri) to be engaging, stimulating, enjoyable times for all three of us.

Here are some things we have tried with the limited resources that I have found around the house:

~ We attempted a real object matching game where I found pairs of objects around the house (clothespins, play hot dogs, legos, etc.) and put them in a container. The kids then dumped out the container and tried to put the objects back in, a pair at a time. I intended to see if the twins would take turns doing this back and forth. That didn't work. Mackenna kind of got into this and did it successfully maybe 1 and a half times. Micah really only wanted to take the container and put his own cars in it and carry it around the house (anything that can become a car holder - will become a car holder).

~ I saw an idea here to play a "too big/just right" game with varying objects and an empty 2-Liter bottle. This was a hit. They loved putting things into the bottle. I loved observing their different approaches to this. Micah quickly learned what objects were going to be too big, and wouldn't even attempt to put those in, they stayed in the bag the whole time for him. Mackenna seemed to know what was going to be too big, but she still liked to attempt it and say "no, big" to herself as she was doing it. Dumping it out was a big hit also.



(Here is proof that Mackenna was involved in some of these activities this week, even though she wasn't pictured above or in the next part. She is helping get the bottle ready.)



~ I purchased some pom-poms and some magnet discs with the intention of making pom pom magnets so that we can do activities like this. I definitely have not gotten around to it yet. I decided the other day to get out the pom poms and see if they could do some color sorting with them. They had other ideas. They loved playing with them, throwing them, touching them, squishing them, holding them up and hearing what color they were (they would then always say the color we had just said for the next pom pom they held up - but they were never right!). I got the 2-liter bottle back out and they loved putting the pom poms into the bottle; they actually took turns with this one pretty well. Shaking it out was fun as before.

~ Today Micah was home with me from church. I used our alone time to see if we could do a little more structured play with the pom-poms. After modeling it for him a little bit, he got really good at sorting four colors of pom-poms into clear glasses. He would even say "no" as he would start to put one in the wrong glass. He also would go in and pick out any that had gotten put in the wrong glass. He also had fun pouring the pom-poms between glasses some too. (And stacking the cups and wearing them on his head as a hat.) It was encouraging that even though we are a long way from really knowing our colors, he can make some matches for now. He also got some colors right when Daddy played with him after church.









See what I mean about everything becoming a container for cars!



For more tot inspiration - visit the link up at 1+1+1=1

Goals

One of the blogs, Intentionally Katie, that I have recently begun reading in my {beloved} google reader account has been showing her progress working her way through 101 goals in 1001 days. I've really enjoyed seeing her progress, and seeing the types of things that she is committed to accomplishing. Here are some goals that have come to mind in the last few days as things that I would really like to accomplish. Maybe this list will grow, and maybe it will just remain these five. (5 goals in 50 days doesn't sound as impressive, huh!?)

- Run a 5K. I think I'm going to start the Couch 2 5K plan while on vacation next week; I plan on downloading this app soon. This is a majorly scary thing for me. I don't like failure. It's not that I never fail at things, but I like to believe that when I fail it is because I purposefully chose to quit or that it wasn't worth me trying my best. (I remember having a conversation with my sister before student teaching about failure. What if I actually failed at being a teacher? Not because I didn't try hard enough, but because I just actually couldn't do it. That was something very scary to me and felt very out of my control comfort zone. I do thank the Lord for his blessing of my teaching career. Now the same for running!? haha.) Running is something that I really don't have much confidence in myself with. I've never been successful, never been an athlete, never run 3 miles. I don't think I really think it is possible for me to do. I'm going to do my best to put that out of my head and believe that if these other oofs can do this, I can too. There are some beach 5K's this summer that I should be able to do at the end/middle of the nine-week program. (Traveling and the Heat are two potential obstacles here - although the one may help alleviate the other!)

- Finish the twins' baby books - I'd say they are at 60% completion and have sat at that level for the last 8 months.

- Paint our bedroom. Get new curtains/blinds. Revamp our furniture. This is a 8 month overdue birthday present to myself. I want the look of a peaceful beach cottage...not a depressing clutter fest! (I'll look for some link inspiration on this one.)

- Complete a quilt-along. From start to finish - including the binding and the quilting. Not sure when I'll be able to do this one as I really want to join in on one that is just starting and be able to follow along on schedule with everyone else. The collaboration and community is part of the appeal to me.

- And this one I stole from Katie - get up at 6 am for 30 days in a row

"Reading"

A few months ago I made a list of words they could say. Now I don't think that is possible. I did want to mention a few of the more shocking things from the past few weeks. First of all, there are four books or so that the kids can "read" with us now. What's Wrong, Little Pookie? is a board book that goes through a series of questions between a mother and child about what is wrong. (It also happens to be the book that Audra read to Mackenna a year ago)

Each time the mother makes a guess, the child says "no." Both of the kids can now say "no" at all the right parts of the book. They can also do this with Do Zebras Have Spots? . They can say "oops" in all the right places in another Boynton book, Blue Hat, Green Hat. My favorite is reading Thomas & Friends: Go, Train, Go! with them. They are getting really good at different parts. If I stop reading and wait for them to fill in words, they can fill in many of them - such as hat, fast, slow, go, cow, moo, peep peep, dog. It is really fun.

They have also gotten a LOT better at puzzles. I'm shocked at the rapid improvement in this area. While doing a number puzzle with Mackenna yesterday, I decided to count with her. I said "1" and she filled in "2, 3." I then said "4, 5, 6, 7" without her really saying anything, but when I got to "7" she finished "8, 9." Craziness.

I've also seen big improvement (especially with Micah) in doing look and find activities, such as Elmo & Friends. A few months ago they didn't get the concept of matching objects at all - now he loves to look for certain items and find all of them in a picture. I especially like going through this book, because I remember a certain neice of mine also enjoying this book!

Hmmm....edit from yesterday?

I will report that I got up at 7 today. Better than 8. Not as good as 6.

I will also report that one majorly discouraging factor in my quest to get up earlier and be more prepared (physically and mentally) for the day before me, is the fact that when I get up earlier - so do my precious cherubs. Can I out-early them?

It's official

There is no longer any debate or choice in the matter. I HAVE to start being fully prepared for my day before the kids get up. I just HAVE to. No more wimping out and not getting up. What follows in those situations is keyboard keys getting ripped out and food getting thrown on the floor - and more importantly and more directly connected - my frustration rising to an unbelievable level when those kinds of things happen. I think this is a two-fold issue...both of which require getting up more consistently.

1.) My kids are at an age where I really can't leave them alone. And I really need to have a prepared home for the day. (i.e. clean dishes so I can quickly make meals and find cups)

2.) I have to be more mentally, emotionally, and spiritually prepared for the draining task of training my children. If I don't commit to this task each morning, and daily ask for God's help, I am going to continually fail - like I did today.

So yes, tomorrow I will get up before the sun comes up. I will not decide to shoot the birds outside or ignore my alarm clock. I HAVE to get better at this battle.

Picking back up with 1000 blessings

5. Not needing a phone last night when I was home alone and phoneless

6. Having a phone when I needed help today

7. Kind, generous, and caring neighbors who rushed to help when they heard a little girl's leg was stuck in her crib.

8. Being invited to lunch by a compassionate, gracious, and Godly woman who has so much to teach me about being a wife and mother

9. M and M getting to feed the chickens and get their eggs (and breaking a few in the process)

10. The feeling inside when a toddler brings you a book and wordlessly climbs into your lap for a snuggle and a story

A study in contrasts

This week was the polar opposite from last week. Last week found us struggling to get over the flu, and then coming down with croup. That meant no being with other people, no playdates, no reprieves, no long stretches of sleep...and really just no fun. I found myself thinking - wow, being an actual "stay-at-home" mom is really really hard. It is one thing to be a "full-time-with-your-kids-mom", but staying at home - Oh my. Not for me. I thrive on being with other moms, sharing in their journey, laughing at their kids, them laughing at mine. I get really down when I'm alone with just my kids, and their tempers.

Even in the midst of last week, there were a couple of high spots. Mackenna climbed a ladder thing at the park, all by herself. I can't believe the independence and crazy climbing abilities that she is finding recently. Both kids jumped like crazy, with such HUGE smiles on their faces, on the bridge thingy on the playground. We also cleaned up the backyard a bit, to make it more readily available for cookouts and playing. While we were having our first grill-out meal of the season, Mackenna casually walked by and pointed at the "t" on the little tikes basketball goal and said "t" - Curt and I looked at each other incredulously. Micah then walked up and pointed at the "e" and said "e". Not sure exactly what was going on there - but we laughed pretty hard about their abilities. Micah also had a big individual accomplishment that night - he ate his first big boy bite of real corn on the cob. Makes his Indiana mama very proud. (That, and his ability to differentiate between a tractor and a combine, will hopefully endear him to his papa this summer.)

I must say, that in a week as long and as daunting as last week, those high spots only somewhat brightened my mood!

This week started with a trip to Busch Gardens. In the five years we have lived here, we have never purchased Fun Cards (stripped down season passes which provide you unlimited access until Dec 31st, for basically the cost of a one-day admission). Sesame Street just came to Busch Gardens, so we decided it was a good time to join. We are going to try and take the kids at least once a month, and we plan on going a few times just the two of us. The kids were really good. The enjoyed giving high fives, kisses, and nose honks to Elmo. They bounced and climbed like crazy in the rope tree house. They enjoyed riding the train. They kind of enjoyed a few rides, and of course only wanted to really ride the ones that they are not yet tall enough for :) Here are a few pictures.



Curt stayed home with the sniffly kids on Tuesday, and I was able to go to work. I was then able to go out with some girlfriends on Tuesday evening for a wonderful night of sitting out in the gorgeous weather and eating some yummy dessert. Good for the soul. The last three days of the week were broken up by music class, playdates, and a wonderful lunch with a wonderful family, and enjoying my kids WHILE being with other people. In a week like that, there were so many more times that I found myself holding one of the kids and kissing their sweet heads, and almost being overwhelmed to the point of tears at my gratitude for getting to be their mama. There were still meltdowns, still many corrections, but having a family weekend and conversations with other adults gave me the fuel I needed to totally change my perspective.

Fresh Resolve

I've been making some changes to my routines recently - choosing to renew my commitment to good habits.
- Going to bed early
- Getting up at 6 - showering/getting ready, spending time with the Lord, having some coffee, preparing the house for the day
- Staying on top of the housework (decided to try the FlyLady emails for awhile...we'll see)
- Doing more active, purposeful play with my kids

In some ways, I know that my resolve will wane in the coming days...but I also have fresh hope that I may be able to see real progress this time. Why? Because I'm not doing this alone. For this fresh start, I have the support of my husband. He has been a enthusiastic co-laborer in many of these things. I'm so thankful. He also wants to get up early. He is more committed than usual to keeping a chaos free house (seeing it as a benefit to the family, not just a concession for me). What a gift.

A few of my new tricks

I am in NO WAY any way close to be any sort of domestic wonder woman (less blasphemous than saying domestic goddess I suppose :) - especially in the area of cleaning and keeping the house straight. However, I have been inspired recently to grow in this area - partly by some of my friends who are much more disciplined than I am (you know who you are). I thought I would share a few of my household tricks, and hopefully some of you may share some of your own.

Two things that I will no longer live without -
1.) Laundry baskets. A stack of cheapy white laundry baskets has really transformed the battle of the daily kid clutter that quickly piles up in the living space of my house. I was starting to dread the minutes after naptime started and after bedtime came because of how much I hated picking up all the stuff that had gotten pulled out of place already that day. However, I've found that if I do this cleaning with two or three laundry baskets with me, it goes much faster. If I'm in the living room, then I use one laundry basket for everything that should go in the kids room and one laundry basket for everything that should go in the back family room. As I'm straightening the living room, I don't make extra trips out of the room, I just put things in the baskets. Then I move to the next room, dump out its basket, and put that stuff away, adding to the baskets as necessary. I've found that this goes MUCH faster for me
2.) My swiffer sweeper vac. I seriously love it for "daily" use on the floors and the battle (war) against crumbs, sand, pet hair, dust, yuckiness. It really helps me keep things looking nice, and if I maintain a level of cleanly sanity in the household, it is much easier to keep it from getting out of hand. For me, once one thing goes, everything is quick to follow. (It is easier to keep a clean house clean than to keep a somewhat messy house from becoming a wreck.) Also, swiffer only advertises using the sweeper vac with dry cloths. I have used it with their wet cloths, and I've found it works quite well - as long as you make sure that you are always leading with the vac part, and then retracing your path, and going to a new section leading with the vac part (so that you aren't getting an piece of floor wet before you suck up the crumbs). This maybe doesn't work as well true sweeping and true mopping - but much better than being so overwhelmed by the two steps that you do neither

A couple of small ideas that help me
3.) I've always been frustrated by how wet my dishes are when they come out of the dishwasher, even after the heated dry setting. Marcia gave me this suggestion, and I've found that it really works. (May be old news to you, but it was new to me.) If you open your dishwasher right after the actual washing stops and quickly run a towel over the top of the dishes, sopping up the big puddles of water, and then close the dishwasher and let it go through its drying time - it will get your dishes MUCH dryer than before. When I do this, I rarely have to towel dry anything before putting it away...my least favorite part of the process.
4.) It's all about saving steps for me. My washer/dryer is on the far side of the garage, so a million trips out there a day can be really frustrating. However, I don't really want to put dirty dishtowels in with my regular dirty clothes. I went ahead and hung a reusable shopping bag on the back of my garage door handle and use it for putting kitchen towels in throughout the week. When the bag starts to get too full (or smells to bad), I know it is time to wash it.

These have been good goals/housekeeping principles for me to strive for
5.) If I start the day with no dishes in the dishwasher or in the sink, I have a much higher chance of keeping the kitchen clean throughout the day. This allows me to load dishes into the dishwasher directly after using them. And have an actual sink to use for meal prep. This is extremely important to me in my small kitchen. What this means for me is that I have begun loading the dishwasher throughout the day and then immediately after dinner (before the food gets crusty on the plates). I should say that I have a husband who is often willing to help with this. The new part is this - even if the dishwasher is not completely full after dinner, I go ahead and run it anyway. This allows me to do the drying trick usually and to get the dishes put away before I go to bed that night, so that I can start the day fresh the next day.
6.) I'm trying to work on picking up the toys BEFORE naptime and bedtime WITH my children instead of for my children. This is hard. They are young. However, even if they don't help somedays, they do "get it" and help on otherdays. Also, on the days where they aren't helping, they are at least seeing me setting a good pattern of picking up throughout the day, a habit they will hopefully one day develop. This also gets this chore accomplished before naptime starts, so that I don't have to waste precious naptime minutes picking up their toys!

What are your home management tips?

Parenting Overdrive

So maybe it is just because we are on the march to 2 years old, or maybe it is because I was getting too comfortable in this current toddler phase, but in the last week, my dose of parenting has had to step it up a notch or few (thousand). Here are some of the things that I've been faced with the last few weeks...

Micah learned to climb out of his crib. Yup. Wow. It all started on a day where the morning (for Mackenna) held a squished hand in the door (accidentally, but forcefully, done by me), an eaten orange crayon (that really does come out the other end looking orange), and a cracked head on a concrete slab. The doctor was having me wake her up every few hours, so I decided to put her down to bed in our room so that waking her up wouldn't also mean waking Micah up. (Keep in mind that Curt was not home that evening - of course.) This absolutely, positively, infuriated the little guy. And I don't just think that he was concerned that she was still up and playing and he was missing it; it did actually seem like he just really wanted to be with her. His screaming in the next room prompted her screaming also - so I closed both doors, came out to the couch, and listened to their screaming for awhile. I started doing something else, and her screaming calmed down. I decided it was time to go check on Micah (my plan was to go show him that she was sleeping in our room). I opened the door to the room and was greeted by my sweet boy, thumb in mouth, frog in hand, just walking confidently, calmly toward me. My eyes did a double take. I second guessed whether or not I had remembered to actually put him in bed. I was totally shocked...and a little gitty about the whole situation. Part of me wanted to laugh, part of me wanted to congratulate him, part of me wanted to cry because my life was over, and part of me wanted to yell at him for messing up the perfect April Fool's day joke/picture about Micah climbing into Mackenna's crib that I had been plotting for weeks (this was the 31st). Anyway, he proceeded to do this two more times in the next 15 minutes - each time without hurting himself and each time as happily as could be. I gave up and decided to sit with the kids and read books until Curt got home. Marcia then called to check on plans for the week, and I told her about my evening. She came down and we re-did the bedtime routine, putting both kids to bed in the same room, and they both happily stayed in their crib. The reaction on Curt's face when I told him later was priceless. I really should have taped it -- it involved him hitting his head and opening his mouth WIDE in surprise! So that is the story - the parenting part of it involves a decision to possibly turn his crib around so that the high side faces out and the lower side faces the wall. I will also respond much better and actually correct him for this in the future (I already have had to twice), when I'm not completely overwhelmed by shock. We will go for a mixture of avoidance and correction on this one.

Also, Mackenna has decided that it is fun to ask to go potty and to sit on the potty about 5 to 10 times a day. I feel bad turning down this request, but neither am I really ready to go down this road - at all.

Micah went on a binge last week where he was throwing all of his food on the floor - unless it was fruit or cookies.

Micah is also getting really demanding. His vocabulary is growing (more on that in a few days - 21 month post) and he is really quite clear with his words. He consistently points to where he wants to go and says "that way" or points to what he wants and says "that one." Yup, that is special. He also has transitioned into violence when he doesn't get his way. This may mean hitting (or even biting) his sister if she is nearby, or it may mean throwing a toy or slapping mom or dad. Last night, Curt told him he couldn't move the slide onto the driveway from the "grass" and Micah proceeded to stiff arm push the little tikes basketball goal over that Curt was shooting baskets into, and then giving Curt a look that says "what now!?" Wow.

Mackenna is getting less violent - she hadn't bitten for months...until today. (This does keep in consistency with the pattern so far that they pendulum swing on behavior patterns - one is good, one is difficult, and then they flip flop on lots of things, lots of the time. Not sure if it is twin related, or just toddler related.)

So yes. Not for the weak at heart. And sometimes I feel VERY weak at heart.