Deal

 "Deal!" We all shouted at the one holding the deck of cards. It was Christmas and all of my 18 cousins and their parents and our grandparents gathered in Idyllwild in a great wood and stone cabin with a large granite fireplace. Grandma brought a project- ribbon necklaces with bangles that would be perfect for Valentines! She loved (loves. the beauty of being a Christian!) projects and celebrations and preparations. We sat together on the worn rug, spoons carefully placed, ready to spare no one in our joyful, competitive clawing. The thud of those floors, the heat of the fireplace and joyful laughter of the grown ups sharing lives gifted me with a cozy loving bedrock

Visioning

What is your dream for your family? The more clearly we define our vision, the more we will align our energy toward our goal. 

When we create a vision for our family, we clearly see the wins throughout the day and they give us deep joy and a boost to keep working hard knowing we are seeing our vision come true.

5 Basic Emotions

Happy

Sad

Angry

Hurt 

Scared

Our emotions are gifts that allow us to experience the fullness of life and connection! They are signals along the way drawing our attention to things that matter.

Empathy

Empathy

 ✨ Magic ✨ in a parent's tool belt. When our kids REALLY truly deeply believe we get them, peace fills their bodies and they are ready to learn and grow. 

Shame Shaking and Self Acceptance

 

🖐🏼How easy is it to sit in a puddle of shame and 

👉🏼self blame👈🏼 and how bad does it feel?!

I am not alone and neither are you! We are all on a journey learning and will continue to be imperfect on this side of heaven.

We are all kids before God. We can do for ourselves just what we want for our kids.

Acknowledge *I did that and wish I didn't and I'm sorry. 

Make up *Can I get you water? Make a sorry card? Take your dishes? Clean up the mess?

And then remain open for love and growth 💖. By speaking to ourselves kindly reminding ourselves that we are learning and of course we will make mistakes like everyone else and by sharing our failures with others who will say "me too" and I love you. 

Detachment

 

It is okay and good to detach from our children's problems. Detaching in parenting means deeply caring while allowing our kids to live their own beautiful and messy lives. When we detach, our kids get to feel their own feelings about their behavior instead of our feelings. Kids in touch with themselves--what feels good and bad are kids ready to learn and receive the daily lessons from life.

Our loving detachment is the first step in teaching self control.

Paradigm Shift

 They're not out to get you.

They're not just trying to get away with whatever they can.

With their behavior-good and bad-they are speaking to you about what they need. 

They need you to show them how to get it in ways that feel right and true...because they are right and true.

Reactivity

 If we can 

✨Notice ✨ our reactivity we are well on our way to learning to self calm.

When we are calm inside they feel SO much calmer inside.

When we can find calm we are then at choice about our behavior.

When they can find calm then they are at choice about their behavior.

✨We go first.✨

Common Fears and Misconceptions: True Power

 Positive Parenting has me feeling SO Powerful as I lead my family with tools that work and deeply connect us!

Compassionate Discipline: Positive Parenting: Discipline strategies

Positive Parenting strategies: This is what we use instead of blame, shame, humiliation, fear and punishment to teach our children because those things just feel so bad and will make us hate parenting.

Our teaching is received when we give it with humility (ex. I'm working on this too, buddy.), and when they see us go first. (ex. I don't like the tone I used with you. Can I try saying that again?)

When we choose to:

Make the time in our homes (first we're going to practice_____ and then we're going to the park!) and commit to implement teaching we don't have to parent from reactivity or permissiveness.

We can choose:

Natural consequences with empathy

*Calming breaks* (We go first)

Logical Consequences:

    Make-ups

    Re-dos

    Re-dos with toys

    Charts with practice

Preventative strategies:

    *Self compassion*

    Getting ready charts

    firm, kind, agreements

    Power preventative strategies

    Noticing and filling our own needs buckets

    and our kids' needs buckets ahead of time

Positive Parenting: 4 Types of misbehavior and how to sus out which it is

 4 Types of misbehavior (Thanks, Dr Dreikers!): Power, Inadequacy, Attention, Revenge

Just like we don't call the roofer when our sink leaks or the plumber when we need a tree cut down, we use different tools to lead and teach our kids depending on the type of misbehavior they exhibit.

Handy parenting tip! We can tell which type of misbehavior our kid is exhibiting by how WE feel.

Kiddo in Power misbehavior? I feel provoked and challenged!

Kiddo in Inadequacy misbehavior? I feel pity and like I need to save.

Kiddo in Attention misbehavior? I feel annoyed.

Kiddo in Revenge misbehavior? I feel hurt, angry, "how could you do this to me?"

Each type has it's own strategies.

We don't lead a kid in power misbehavior with inadequacy strategies or a kid in revenge misbehavior with attention strategies.

Positive Parenting: Root Causes of Misbehavior: Unmet Needs

 

Misbehavior is when we try to meet a felt need in a way that goes against our integrity. In the Bible, the word is, "hamartia" which is an archery term meaning "missing the mark." 

When we can get curious about our/our child's misbehavior and find the need behind it, we can learn/teach how to meet that need in a way that nails the bullseye.

Positive Parenting: Intentional Communication: Encouragement vs. Praise

 

Encouragement celebrates the people God created our children to be highlighting their gifts and achievements in order to bolster their confidence based on their own choices and God's goodness.

Praise says, "It felt good to me when you did that. Do it again." Kinda parent/self centered and not the posture we want to have toward our kiddos and their achievements.

The Day Annie was born

 

The Birth of Anna Shepherd "Annie" McNeese

I tried for weeks to clean the laundry, the house, buy the groceries, declutter despite our kitchen in chaos and all to no avail. We kept dirtying our clothing--we experienced a winter storm that left us without the capability to do laundry or clean much and the mud was building up in the house. We kept eating our food and it was tricky to get more without the Clicklist and with low availability. The kids were feeling the upset and Will was in a conference in our bedroom all day so we tried to be quiet-er. 

And then the sun came out, the water increased, the food trucks made it through, Clicklist was up and running again, Ms. Cynthia made it back to Jackson and was available to help clean, Friday Program opened again, and I had a chiropractor appointment! Hallelujah!

At 11:30 on Frida I returned home from my chiro appointment. I had told Dr. Molly that I hoped I wouldn't need to come again because the baby would have arrived. But, man, she sure did help a lot. I went in waddling and full of self pity and walked out telling Will that I was up for being pregnant for another week if I needed to be. Earlier that morning, we had taken the boys to school and Juni and I went on a 2 mile walk--the first in a long time because of the winter storm.

Mrs. Cynthia was just finishing up our house when I walked in feeling awesome. I snuggled Juni and fell asleep as she watched the episode about Daniel Tiger bringing home his little sister, Margaret. 

Around 12:30 Will and I started making plans to go get paint at Lowes, then pick up the boys together. I went to the bathroom and had bloody show. I knew that was a sign of the end of pregnancy, but it could still be a week or two. I had already been losing my mucous plug and having tons of braxton hix contractions. However, a few minutes later, I felt a contraction--and it was crampy and kind of painful. I called across the house to Will, "babe, a few minutes ago I had bloody show and now I just had a real contraction!" "Whoa! What should we do?" he called back. I decided we should just keep going with our plans and I'd let him know if it happened again.

10 minutes later, it did. "Should we call my mom?" he asked. "Let's just wait a bit more...but maybe we should pack up our toothbrushes and be ready." Soon after that I told him we needed to put our stuff in the van before we picked up the boys from school.

On the way to get the boys we kept track of contractions and called Will's mom. It became clear that this was labor and we needed to get the kids to her soon so we could know the kids were taken care of and could concentrate and feel at peace. 

We waited in the pick-up line for 20 minutes. We told Juni that we were pretty sure that our baby was coming soon. The boys climbed into the car and quickly asked," Why are we going this way? This isn't the way home." When we told them they started screaming with excitement. Ezra asked, "Is your belly squeezing right now? Does it hurt?"

We dropped them all off giving each enough kisses to last two nights.

"Where do you want to go now?" Will asked me. We had never been in labor during the day. Our other three started coming in the middle of the night so we had labored at home, until I decided I didn't want to have to travel with feeling much more pain. But, this was the daytime. We were close to the hospital and my contractions were still 10 minutes apart. The last thing I wanted was to go to the hospital. It seemed cold and harsh, unsupportive, dark and unwelcoming. 

"Let's go to the park and walk around and watch the kids," I said at first then a few minutes later decided I'd rather go to the nature path near the path. I was feeling more private.     

Touch::

Thank you, Kate for the Five Minute Friday prompt, Touch::

He washed my hair massaging my scalp then arranged a black cape around my shoulders and lead my back to his chair where I sat in front of a mirror and he brushed my hair--a rare beauty treatment--my first professional haircut in years. and I breathed and relaxed while my husband watched our two little boys.
And we talked about touch. About how some of his customers come in just for someone to touch them in a caring way. About our need at every age and season of life to be physically touched by another human.
My life is filled--overfilled even--with touch. I'm sustinance for my littlest, and base in tag, and my kisses heal their frequent accidents, and each needs a morning snuggle, before and after nap snuggles, before bedtime snuggles, and hurt feelings snuggles. As much as I love it, I get totally touched out.
But someone's grandma is walking around her house seeing her neighbors and the mailman and the cashier and craving the kindness given by the hairdresser, a stranger.

 Today, we are in a winter storm. Snow and icy roads and the water plant can't keep up with the freeze so we're making due with a little stream coming from the faucets and boiling or Berkey-ing.

I'm 37 weeks and 3 days pregnant with our 4th little one, Anna Shepherd. But, I've been pregnant since March of last year and am due March of this year. We lost one in April and officially in May and got pregnant with Annie in June so I will have been pregnant for a year.

And do I ever feel it. I've never felt this much of an urge to have a baby--my body screams that I should have had her in December as I sit full of child in mid February.

Will has an online conference all this week so he's using our bedroom from 7:30-6 every day. Tomorrow is his last.

We're living in separate worlds where I'm caring for kids, homeschooling, snow-wondering, baby-wondering, everything shut down and canceled. 

If Annie comes today, we'd have to find care for our kids in this icy situation when it's quite difficult to drive. Tina won't be able to come--or my parents. We'd probably have to bring her home to this as well and who knows if we'd have water...and yet I still want her to come, I'm still worn out waiting and wondering.

We're waiting on a baby

 We're waiting on a baby. I'm 38 w 1 d pregnant with Anna Shepherd McNeese. Our kitchen is quite unfinished. We've been "camping" kitchen since before Christmas. We hired a bum contractor and finally fired him a few weeks ago. Since then, Will has made good progress, but then had a week of being gone from 7:30-6. And we had a huge winter storm. We didn't know if we'd keep power and water. We kept power and our water got down to a trickle, but it seems to be slowly coming back, but it's still dirty and takes about an hour to fill the tub. We can't do laundry. We make a lot of laundry. Grocery pick-up was out and may still be out because of long lines and the last time I went, there wasn't bread, milk, or eggs and slim pickin's on the produce. But we have had enough/found enough/the slim pickins' worked for us. So I' grateful for that. We thought the baby was coming one night. I have had really poor the sleep the past few nights, Friday Program was cancelled, no dishwasher, no washing machine, dirty water/no showers, Ms. Cynthia couldn't come clean, our cat keeps getting out and in fights and has bad wounds on his back, camping kitchen got more "campy", Will's schedule became very full with the conference and every other moment with working on the kitchen, there's so much crap in the wrong place because of the kitchen, the kids have been exploding their bedrooms and emotional about cleaning back up, 

Next:: Five Minute Friday on Monday

Next:: Kate Montaung's Five Minute Friday

Next.

Two ideas come to mind: My eldest who always wants to know what's next. I feel powerless when he asks me because I don't know. and I feel like a failure because I think I "should" know.

And the other is the phrase used in recovery, "Do the next right thing" which is a phrase that brings me comfort when I want to escape into a book or (used to be) social media or I when I get overwhelmed by the thought of a whole day, week, month, year mothering and home making and wife-ing...

I can do the next right thing. I can say a prayer for kindness and for the Lord to see me and intercede when I want to yell, "I don't know! You figure it out!" at my eldest. I can wipe the counter, sweep the crumbs, start a pot of tea, sit on the front porch with s little someone in my lap, even take a deep breath.

I may not know next,  next right thing, but I can do the one I'm given, breathe a prayer with my good Father, and then do the next.

Lack

Lack:: Kate Motaung's five minute Friday writing prompt on Tuesday

What do you lack, I ask them as they head out the door. Jackets, boots..."I need gloves." We poke around the winter apparel basket for matching black gloves then I hold each out as he wiggles little fingers into particular spots, gives an apple cheeked grin, then states firmly, "okay. I'm wedy."
I crack open the door--a three-year-old sized exit then close it quickly behind him and watch as he hops himself off of the porch and runs to find his big brother.

What do I lack? Dramatically I answer myself, "If only it were a pair of black gloves in a basket."
I feel my lack keenly these days**

Courage, sleep, a plan for dinner, time alone, wisdom, compassion.

This brings me to what I don't lack:

Hope, ability to delight in small things, Legos, dear friends, giggles, children, a husband, money,
and right in this moment, gratefulness.

Offer

Offer:: Kate Motaung's 5 minute Friday writing prompt on Wednesday.

Offer. As a mom of 3 littles, I feel empty, like the dregs are perpetually drained, like I have nothing to offer.
But, I do have myself, my story, my honest presence.
Which is more than I've had to offer my whole life.
Just because I feel empty doesn't mean I have nothing.
And if we sit side by side each with nothing but honest presence, we will leave filled by that connection.