Moments of Joy

Joy has been my constant refrain this last year. I've prayed for it, studied it, thought about it a lot. I shared with some friends that my goal for this time next year was to have a little more joy. I was thinking of what seemed possible in my own struggle with choosing joy amidst the drudgery and difficulty of life with two young kids. A good friend challenged me to not set my goal so low since our God is so good as to make my joy overflow beyond what I could hope or imagine. So I started to pray for a bigger, fuller joy that is impossible in my own efforts, but completely possible for the Creator of all things.

I'm not going to tell you that God answered my prayer and I am forever changed into a light-hearted woman of effervescent joy. But I can tell you about a precious moment of tangible, palpable joy that even a sleep-deprived, dull-brained mother couldn't miss.

A Christmas concert at my Mom's church. Harper playing on the pew next to me. Z standing in his Papa's lap, straining to see Grammy on stage- mouth open, eyes wide. An easy-going, family-friendly atmosphere in which I didn't worry about the noise my children might make. Music about the coming of God as a tiny baby boy to save us from our sins. Joy. Joy filling me up and spilling over. Joy bouncing off my smile into Z's clapping hands, ricocheting over to Harper's bobbing head and zinging back to the warm spot on John's shoulder where Z's hand is resting.

That's it. That's enough.

A Few of My Favorite Things

>Handel's "Messiah"
>Cookies baking in the oven
>Weather cold enough to wear a scarf
>Shopping online instead of trudging into stores with two kids
>Z pointing out every set of Christmas lights he sees, even in the day time
>Getting Christmas cards in the mail
>Z singing in his first Christmas program at church- "Gentle Mary Laid her child lowly in a manger..."
>Harper's cluelessness about the gifts at Christmas and her love for something as simple as a bowl to play with
>For the first time ever... the song "Feliz Navidad" because Z heard it on the radio (before I could turn it off) and told me that it was Mrs. M's song - the music teacher from preschool (imagine amazement in his voice that other people besides Mrs. M know that song!)

Quality of Life

I'm so pleased Harper continues to sleep soundly through the night! The sleep and one less feeding both have improved my quality of life significantly. I feel like a different person. I had forgotten how good it felt to put the kids in bed by 8pm and know that the rest of the evening is mine. Just a month or so ago we weren't able to do that for either kid. Z was still fighting hard against the tyranny of a 8pm bedtime (or a 9pm bedtime for that matter). He continues to do well staying in bed once we put him to bed. He still plays, sings, chatters in his bed but he doesn't get out of bed! And even when he occasionally does the discipline is effective and he'll stay in bed after that. I am so grateful to have our evenings back!

As for potty training, things have really improved there too. I honestly had no idea it was such a long process. Z is doing really well with peeing, except for the occasional miss when aiming at the toilet (which only this morning I got upset with him about). And just in the last two weeks he has gone poo on the potty every time. About half of the time we caught him in the poo-poo stance and reminded him to go to the potty. The other half of the time he went to the potty all by himself! Today he even tried to clean himself up, unfortunately, with disastrous results: poo smeared on the wall, door and all over himself. I gotta give him credit for trying but I was NOT happy about that clean up.

Looking back on the last couple of months I am realizing how God was teaching me to trust Him amidst difficult circumstances. I spent a lot of time begging God to take the circumstances away and, I'll admit, angry at Him for not doing that. A good friend gave me the book, "Respectable Sins" by Jerry Bridges. It's all about the seemingly less terrible sins we tolerate in our lives like anger, discontentment, jealousy, etc. That chapter on anger kicked my butt. At the heart of my anger was the belief that God didn't really want what was best for me. If I believe He ordains the path of my life and is in control of all things, then He was working through the sleepless nights and the poo messes too. And then I had to remember that He causes all things to work for the good of those who love Him. I knew that God was using parenthood to refine me like nothing else in my life so far, but I kept thinking God could choose to do it a different way, like with a decent night sleep or one less poo accident.

After confronting my anger and discontentment I was able to redirect my thoughts in the difficult moments. I often prayed for patience but now I know to pray for trust in God and for help to keep me from getting angry. It's a battle. Every day. But I feel better knowing what I'm battling against- my own sin, not the poo on the floor.

Re-Training II: Crying It Out

Here it is a week and a half after I last wrote and the crying it out for Harper continues. Even after she showed progress last time, the waking up started again- sometimes once, sometimes three times a night. I stopped feeding her, but I would still occasionally go to her and comfort her or give her some Tylenol if I thought it was the teething bothering her. After talking to my Baby Wise Guru and reading Chronicles of a Baby Wise Mom, I finally decided to listen to the nagging voice telling me that the dream feed was disrupting Harper's nighttime sleep. I kept thinking I didn't want to try until she was sleeping through the night, but the waking up at night and the fact that she wasn't that eager to eat at all feedings made me think she really didn't need it. I dropped the dream feed for Z when he was just over six months, so I knew it was long past due.

If I was going to drop the dream feed I had to figure out how to put Harper down to sleep at 7:30pm and not disturb her until the morning. I've kept that dream feed much longer than was really necessary because it was an easy way to move her from our bedroom to the living room for the night. After some cleaning and rearranging, Harper is now sleeping the night away in our laundry room. It's right off the kitchen but there are some curtains that hang half-way down to block some of the light. We kept the kitchen lights off and tried to be quiet when in the kitchen.

Last night was the first night and I can call it a success. After many nights of Harper waking up in the middle of the night and crying for an hour or more, I was prepared for the worst. But she woke up at 9:30pm, 10:15pm and 11pm and cried for anywhere from five to fifteen minutes. Then she slept the rest of the night! There are bags hanging in the laundry room that serve as a colorful mobile type distraction. And I added a soft lamb rattle for her to play with (advice from my BWG and our pediatrician). Sure enough, this morning around 6am I heard the rattle but she didn't make a peep. I didn't feed her until 7am!

With just a small taste of dropping that feeding I'm already feeling better. There will probably be more nights of crying, but at least I feel confident enough in the change that I can stick with it. Also, I think going to four feedings a day will start to slow down my milk production, which is actually something I want. I'm ready to be done with nursing, but trying to be patient since Harper is putting up a huge fight with the formula. That's another story. For today, I'm just happy to be making some progress that is good for Harper and for me.