Blog award confusion

Ok, so in the comments of this blog post I received a blog award during NaBloPoMo.

I had every intention of responding appropriately, as outlined here.  BUT, I can't seem to manage to do so.  I have to give awards to 5 blogs that I follow that have less than 200 followers.

Ok, my first dilemma is that I'm not sure if I do follow 5 blogs that have less than 200 followers.  And to further complicate matters I cannot find the number of followers on most of the blogs that I do follow.

I am sorry, but I always struggle with computer stuff.  Back when I was in school & I was on computers with classmates I learned lots of little tips & things that always made me scratch my head & wonder how on earth they learned such a thing.  But I've been out of school for over 4 years now & am all alone in my computer use, so I don't learn things anymore.  I am so very limited in my computer savvyness (or lack thereof actually). 

To make matters worse I have a toddler.  A nonstop high energy little boy that no longer even naps.  So that leaves me ZERO time to even try to figure stuff out on the computer.  What little time I do manage to find always gets filled up with a long list of "to dos" that have been needing to get done for quite some time by the time I get to it.  Hence why it took me so long to get around to posting this.

So first let me say that I am extremely touched & honored to have recieved the award.  But secondly let me apologize for not being able to follow through on my end of it. 

NaBloPoMo in review

This is the first year I've ever taken on the NaBloPoMo challenge.  And I am proud to say that I've succeeded!!  I didn't miss a single day!

I am quite glad that I took the challenge.  Part of me was dreading it.  I already feel overworked, trying to fit everything in each day & oftentimes failing & being overdue for lots of stuff on my to=do list.  Oh how I hate to look at my to=do list when there's all those bright red, ugly, overdue items on the list, in addition to the current ones!!

But I had fallen into a rut of not really blogging anymore.  The blog just sat here & I would occasionally post updates on my son, but that was about it.  This reminded me how much I love to write, to blog.  How therapeutic it is for me in a sense.

Hopefully this means that I will continue to blog, at least somewhat more regularly than I have been.

I will definitely continue with the "Respectable Sins" blogs chapter by chapter.  That one is just too good to not share.  I do hope that anyone who is enjoying those blogs will get the book.  I can't possibly share everything in my blog, you will be beyond blessed if you get the book.  I had started with these because I was afraid I wouldn't be able to come up with enough topics to finish out the month, but as you can see I certainly did.

So here comes December & getting ready for Christmas!!

Parenting Books

I would prefer to study up on parenting early on & have a gameplan than to just try to wing it & end up with a mess that I have to try to correct later on.  I think it's harder on the child & the parents to have to try to make huge changes later on.

Add that to the fact that I am a bookworm & I love to do research & it equals me reading lots of parenting books.  So this is my list of the best parenting books in my book.

"Shepherding a Child's Heart" by Tedd Tripp.
My cousin recommended this one to me.  I like this one A LOT.  It really emphasises to not focus on changing behaviors, but to focus on where the child's heart is at & changing their heart.  I think this is so true.  I have a bit of a sneak peak into the future with my stepchildren that are much older than my toddler son & I can totally see with them that you can try to force them to change their behaviors but if the heart doesn't change it's pretty pointless.

"The New Dare to Discipline" by Dr. James Dobson.
I have a tremendous amount of respect for Dr. Dobson.  And this book is really great advice on basic discipline instruction.

"The New Strong Willed Child" by Dr. James Dobson.
I added this one on later on because my son sure does seem to be a strong willed child & my hubby says that his oldest, my stepdaughter, was also a strong willed child.  Just a little more on discipline.  Choose your battles decisively & make sure you win is a big factor in this book & I keep it in my mind daily.

"Raising a Modern Day Joseph" by Larry Fowler.
Alright, since I pray daily that my son would be a "true modern day Joseph" I felt like I needed to read thi book.  However, this book seems to be geared more towards a person who oversees a children's ministry.  It's REALLY great for someone in that position.  However, I still liked it a lot & the fact that it had this great contrast & comparison between Joseph & the prodigal child.  I found it really interesting & I do wish ALL churches would consider it's advice for children's ministry.

"The Five Love Languages of Children" by Gary Chapman & Ross Campbell.
I haven't read this one yet.  I read the original five love languages book.  I thought it had some good advice on relationships & did help me & hubby to be able to better show love to each other in the way we each receive it best.  So I got this book also.  As I started to read it, it said that you won't be able to determine your child's love language prior to the age of 5 so I put it aside for now. 

Specfic to boys:

"Bringing Up Boys" by Dr. James Dobson.
This book was really good for understanding boys.  I think especially as a mom, a female, the world of males is a bit foreign to us.  I hadn't realized just how foreign it was to me until I read this.  I highly recommend this for anyone with a son.

"That's My Son" by Rick Johnson.
This seemed to be geared towards single moms, but I read it anyways because someone recommended it highly.  I did find that once again I learned some valuable insights into the world of males in this book.  I actually feel like it helped me understand my hubby & stepson a little more as well.  I was a little unsure of the accuracy of some of the suggestions in how to deal with your son, but when I ran it by my hubby he totally agreed & said that's how males are.  So maybe MEN don't need to read this book, but I think women do, so as to better communicate with their son.

"Surviving, Teaching, & Appreciating Boys: Raising Real Men" by Hal & Melanie Young.
I just recently finished reading this book.  I thought it was really great, right up there with Bringing up Boys.  BUB does recommend homeschooling a boy for at least the first year or two, but this book was written by a couple with SEVEN boys & they homeschooled all of them.  So since I'm planning to homeschool my son I liked this book a lot, since it included a lot of things that might only pertain to those who homeschool.

"5 Conversations You MUST Have With Your Son" by Vicki Courtney.
I haven't read this one yet, will start it soon.  But it sure looks good.

And that's it for books that I felt have helped me as a parent.  I do actually want to keep the list short so I should probably stop reading any others, LOL.  This way I can continue to review them for each age range in the future.  You can't just read the book once & think you're set for the next 18 years obviously.

Motherhood (parenthood) Reflections

I can remember the days prior to having my son.  I would see people have babies & I never really understood why they were so frazzled in the early days. 

And then I had my son.  My hubby & I were beyond exhausted during over 24 hours labor resulting in emergency c=section.  At the time I honestly didn't realize how tired my hubby was.  It wasn't until later on, when I was looking back at the photos & I saw his face.  I could see the exhaustion on his face so clearly in the photos.  I felt bad not having realized how exhausted he was at the time.

And then after I got home from the hospital I was soooo overwhelmed.  All that exhaustion & there was no chance to catch up.  It was constant non-stop feeding & tending to the baby.  And for the life of me I couldn't seem to figure out how to comfort him!

Of course he was colicky, which made things worse than usual.  But somehow I had imagined that all I had to do to console my crying son was to simply have him in my arms.  No such luck.  Of course my hubby already had two kids so he seemed like a total pro at it.  And although I know it wasn't, it sure felt like my son was rejecting me back in those days.

I remember always hearing people say that having a baby changes EVERYTHING.  And I could never understand how.  While I wouldn't actually say that it changes everything, per se, it sure does change a lot.  And suddenly you look back at yourself with other people & their kids & you realize things that you did or didn't do that you now feel bad about or regret.

Although maybe that's just me.  I can remember in the early days my sister in law (who had no children at that time) always offering to hold Lil J at get-togethers, just so I could eat or get a break.  Prior to having kids I never would've realized just how much of a relief that is, yet somehow she did even though she wasn't a mother yet.  I am forever grateful & admire her for that.

At this stage I am unsure how much I'll be able to offer to hold other people's little ones, since Lil J just might get jealous about it.  But as time goes on I'll be able to & I'll remember to offer that.

And now that I have my son I always end up feeling bad when I go to people's houses.  Back before I had my son I would always offer to help clean up afterwards after get-togethers.  I would pick up & do dishes, etc.  Now I'm constantly watching my son & am unable to do that.  I do feel bad about it, even though I probably shouldn't.  And then there's issues of my son making messes in people's houses.  I do my best to clean up after him if anything happens.  But some things that I allow at home are not welcomed in other people's homes.  Like his sippy, for example.  It has a valve so it won't spill,but when he sips, he usually leaves a little bit in the spout & it will drip a little bit out.  Some people don't like it dripping in their house & I can totally understand that, but it makes it hard, that's a tough one to try to teach to a toddler.  And then I feel bad about the mess in their house.  I clean up his mess at my house all the time so I don't think about it much, but other people aren't used to that & don't want any extra cleaning to do. 

I'm sure each person's individual situation varies, but I do think after you have a child you look back on things you did in the past in regards to people's kids so differently.  I would bet that that's pretty universal.

Utilities

I'm blogging about utilities.  Yeah, the gas, electric, water.  Not SUVs, LOL.

As a young child I grew up with a father that had grown up during the depression era.  He always said it affected him greatly & he couldn't change that fact.  Whether or not he had the power to change that is beside the point.  But he was always super thrifty about EVERYTHING & said it was because of the depression.

I can also remember him turning off the heater, not wanting the air conditioner running, turning off lights, conserving water, those sorts of things.

My mother was born in Arkansas. She moved to California when she was still a baby I believe but I always heard stories about Arkansas. The fact that most people had no indoor bathrooms really made me realize how priveleged I was to have indoor plumbing.

I often stop to ponder the utilities.  It seems to me that so many people these days take them for granted.  They expect that life cannot go on without them.  I feel like we are all taking them for granted & should be more appreciative.  We should be conserving more.  And we should be able to survive without them. 

There's a blog I follow because the woman homeschools her kids with the same curriculum I plan to use, so I follow the blog interested in the homeschooling posts.  But she recently moved "off the grid" as she calls it.  They have a generator, propane, & I'm not sure about their water supply.  I am absolutely fascinated as I read about life like this.  And she mentions how much more you think about the utilities & conserve them when you know that you are at risk of running out of them completely & then there's no more.  (That & the fact that it costs a whopping $800 to fill the generator!!)  She says they even use candles frequently in the evenings to conserve.

Now sure life is less convenient without utilities.  There's a lot of modern conveniences (like this computer I'm on right now) that are nice.  But I still want to be prepared to just have the plug pulled & to be ready to survive it.  A few months ago our power was out for a day, SCE was doing some sort of upgrading work in the area.  And we knew ahead of time & I was prepared, but I forgot that I couldn't use the oven.  And the lighter I had planned to use to light the burners on the stove was missing.  So it was tough to get by without cooking. 

That's another pet peeve I have.  A lot of modern conveniences that are gas driven have made themselves dependant upon electricity as well.  That really irritates me. 

I would still love to have at least a small generator just in case of an emergency (not a few hours emergency, but if something were to happen & power was down for days type of emergency).  But I also try hard to know how to survive without in case that situation arises.

What are your thoughts?  Do you value your utilities & view them as a privelege?  Or do you have another viewpoint?

Discontentment

Anxiety is a fearful uncertainty over the future, whether short term or long term.  Frustration is usually the result of some immediate event that has blocked my plans or desires.  Discontentment, the subject of this chapter, most often arises from ongoing & unchanging circumstances that we can do nothing about

First, know that there is a place for legitimate discontentment.  All of us should, to some degree, be discontent with our spiritual growth.  If we are not, we will stop growing.  There is also what we might call a prophetic discontentment with injustice & other evils in society that is coupled with a desire to see positive change.

The most frequent warnings in Scripture against discontentment concern money & possessions.  A more common form of discontentment among committed Christians is an attitude that may be triggered by unchanging circumstances that are trials to our faith.

Examples: an unfulfiling or low-paying job, singleness well into midlife or beyond, inability to bear children, an unhappy marriage, physical disabilities, continual poor health.

The cause of our discontentment may even be trivial at times.  However good our overall circumstances may be, there is often some small thing over which we can become discontent.

It is our response to our circumstances rather than the degree of difficulty that determines whether or not we are discontent.

We need to recognize that discontentment is SIN.  We are responding no differently from unbelievers who never factor God into their situations.  We are back to our ungodliness as the root cause of our sins.

We tolerate them in our lives with hardly a second thought.  Discontentment, for example, can easily lead to resentment or bitterness toward God or other people.

Whatever your cirumstances, & however difficult they may be, the truth is that they are ordained by God for you as part of His overall plan for your life.  God does nothing, or allows nothing, without a purpose.  And His purposes, however mysterious & inscrutable they may be to us, are always for His glory & our ultimate good. 

We can resign ourselves to circumstances we know will never change but still harbor in our hearts a smoldering discontentment.  It is neither in resignation nor submission but only in acceptance that we find peace.

Acceptance means that you accept your circumstances from God, trust that He unerringly knows what is best for you & that in His love, He purposes only that which is best.  "God, how can I use  my disability (or whatever the difficult circumstance may be) to serve You & glorify You?"

The importance of a firm belief in the sovereignty, wisdom, & goodness of God in all the circumstances of our lives.  Whether those circumstances are short term or long term, our ability to respond to them in a God-honoring & God-pleasing manner depends on our ability & willingness to bring these truths to bear on them.




These are excerpts from "Respectable Sins" by Jerry Bridges.

Cleaning

Yeah, that's right, I'm talking about cleaning house.

Every single week I dust the whole house, I clean the bathrooms, I sweep & vacuum, & I dust the kitchen & detail the stove area.  I usually have to sweep & vacuum twice a week, actually, but my goal is always to do it once each week.  But my biggest pet peeve is feeling crumbs or hair on the floor as I walk through the house, so by the end of the week I'm usually feeling crumbs & have to do it again before I lose my mind.

I used to mop the tile floors & clean the wood floor at least once a month, but I honestly don't get it done that frequently with Lil J around.  It's tough to do I must admit.

And at least once a week I try to find something that doesn't get cleaned in the weekly process & do that.  I call that my "deep cleaning" & I try to do at least one thing each week hoping that eventually the whole house will end up spotless, but somehow it doesn't seem to work that way.  The "deep cleaning" can consist of cleaning baseboards, the top of the fridge, under the oven or fridge, the top of the armoire (we have 2 of them actually), things like that.

And so I'm curious, what do other people's cleaning schedules look like?  I feel like I clean A LOT, yet my house is never as spotless as I'd like.  I know a lot of that is because of the toddler, prior to his arrival my house was much cleaner, but I do still clean A LOT, or at least it feels that way.

I've never have a maid, but would love to learn from them.  My hubby always says he would love to hire a maid at some point, just to give me a break, but I honestly don't want one.  I mean, trust me, I would love to have the break, but part of me feels uncomfortable about it.  I feel the same way about having a gardener or getting a pedicure actually.  I guess it's just me, but I feel uncomfortable, as if the person (the maid, gardener, pedicurist) thinks that I think I'm too good to do that stuff myself. 

My hubby's only issue with maids is hygiene.  He says that a lot of them use the same towel for everything.  There's a big differenc between making things look nice & clean & about being sanitary & hygienic.  For me (& hubby) we care more about the hygiene factor than the looks actually.  We do like a neat home, but we clean to kill germs, etc.

Comment away, please about your cleaning schedules please.

Giving Thanks

I have a couple of Canadian friends that I know read my blog, but here in the States it's Thanksgiving day today.

I try to be thankful every single day.  Thankful to God for His undeserved faithfulness.

I try hard to live in a continual state of Thanksgiving actually, although I do fail at times.

But though we've had a rough few years with the economy & all, God has continued to take care of us & see us through it all.  And as we wait to have all of this stuff done & over & behind us we still have oh so much to be thankful for. 

I am thankful for the roof over my head, the warm bed to sleep in every night.  The food in my tummy.  My amazing husband & kids.  All the rest of my family & in-laws & extended family, nieces, nephews, the list goes on & on. 

But I love Thanksgiving & believe it's important to set aside a day to stop & ponder all that we have to be thankful for.

The Mouth

People are probably gonna see the title on this blog & assume it's all about the book of James in the Bible & that sort of thing. 

But no.......it's simply about the mouth.....

When I was pregnant with my son (late 2008/early 2009) I was doing a lot of research on baby formulas, etc that led me to learning about a man named Weston Price.  While I'm not sure if I agree with everything he has to say, I do find it quite interesting.

Since he was a dentist he knew a lot about mouths.  He pointed out that in olden times you didn't see people needing orthodontics like they do nowadays.  Granted there were people with crooked teeth out there, but not nearly as many as there are nowadays & the problems with people's mouths were also not as complicated as they are nowadays.  It's not just crooked teeth, but palates & jaw bones & structure that is inadequate that is causing the crooked teeth.  People's faces are more narrow these days than in our ancestors days.

He attributed this to poor nutrition.  Now before you go thinking that you eat healthy & yet you needed braces, just hold on a second.  As with most things it's not quite that black & white. 

I do like Michael Pollan a lot.  I've read a few of his books & have seen him interviewed many times.  I think everyone should be required to read his book "food rules"--it's a short read in case you're interested.  But one thing that I've heard him say in interviews (& possibly elsewhere, I think maybe in the film "Food, Inc") is that the way we eat has changed more in the last 100 years than ever before.  I probably don't have the wording exactly as he said, but that's the gist of it.  And again, this goes back to what Weston Price is saying. 

It's not necessarily that we are eating poorly, at least in our eyes.  It's that the way we eat & the foods that we eat & the way foods are processed is so very new & different. Some of the foods we eat have been eaten for a long time, but it's now made a different way.  Science is now so intertwined with our foods.

So this got me thinking about my own mouth.  I had a MAJOR overbite.  I had braces for 7 years.  And yet
my teeth STILL move back if I don't periodically wear my retainer.  (I usually wear it 1-3 nights/month)  The thing I've noticed is that it's not actually my teeth that move, it's my palate.  It seems odd to me that at the age of 39 my palate is still so pliable, but it is.  I've even had dentists question me & doubt me, but it's true. 

But recently I was considering the fact that the orthodontist simply moved my palate to correct my overbite (I'm sure it was a bit more complicated than that, but that was definitely a large factor).  That doesn't necessarily mean that the problem is fixed though, especially when they just want to keep on moving right back.  I then started considering the overall structure of my mouth & I noticed that either my mouth is very small or my tongue is quite large.  With my mouth closed I realized my tongue is crowded.  It goes up the backside of my front & rolls it's way up to the palate area behind my front teeth.  Of course I don't know if other people's mouths are like or not, but I have a strong suspicion that they are not.  I asked my hubby & he says his tongue ends right at the back of his lower teeth, so I know that at least one other person is not like me.

I believe it takes generations to completely reverse this as far as passing on the bad nutrition problems to our kids, grandkids, etc.  But I do hope to help Lil J not have problems, if that's at all possible.  I need to look into Weston Price's recommendations some more.  And I am giving Lil J some Mexican vitamins that are for teeth & bones, which specifically address the whole mouth bone structure situation.  I personally know someone who has absolutely perfect teeth & they told me it was because they were given these vitamins when they were a toddler. 

I just find it an interesting subject to ponder, sorry if it's boring to everyone else.

And just one more thought: this is just my personal thought, but it goes along the lines of poor nutrition causing narrow jaw structure.  I have to wonder if the fact that so many nowadays have narrow pelvises & can't deliver their babies vaginally isn't possibly due to poor nutrition.  If poor nutrition can cause narrow jaw structure, couldn't it also cause narrow hip structure??

Anxiety & Frustration

[First I must add that this particular chapter really convicted me.  Each & every week I am so anxious about finding time to get my Bible study done with a toddler in the house.  Wow!  What a slap in the face this was, a good slap though.]

Difficulties usually occur in the ordinary activities & responsilbilities of life, wheras pain is likely generated by extraordinary events.

In the New Testament LOVE was taught some fifty times.  HUMILITY was a close second with forty instances.  TRUST IN GOD in all our circumstances was third, being taught thirteen or more times.

The opposite of trust in God is either anxiety or frustration.  Jesus had a lot to say about this. 

In Matthew 6:25-34 He uses the word ANXIOUS six times. 

Also see Matt 10:31, Luke 12:7, Philip 4:6, 1 Pet 5:7

In other words, it is the moral will of God that we not be anxious.  To say it more explicitly, anxiety is sin.

Anxiety is sin for two reasons. 
First, it is a distrust of God.  So when I give way to anxiety, I am, in effect, believing that God does not care for me & that He will not take care of me in the partcular circumstance that triggers my anxiety of the moment.
Second, it is a lack of acceptance of God's providence in our lives.  God's providence is defined as God's orchestrating all circumstances & events in His universe for His glory & the good of His people.  We tend to focus on the immediate causes of our anxiety rather than remembering that those immediate causes are under the sovereign control of God.

Will I succumb to the tempation to anxiety & fret & fume, or will I believe that God is in sovereign control of my travel & accept His agenda, whatever that my be?  I have come to the conslusion that my anxiety is triggered not so much by a distrust in God as by an unwillingness to submit to & cheerfully accept His agenda for me.

We are prone to fix our attention upon the second causes & immediate instruments of events; forgetting that whatever befalls us is according to His purpose, & therefore must be right & seasonable in itself, & shall in the issue be productive of good.

And acceptance of God's providential will doesn't mean we are not to pray about the eventual outcome.  Paul's command to not be anxous is accompanied by the instuction to pray about whatever situation is tempting us to be anxious.  So it is appropriate to pray for relief & for deliverance from whatever circumstance is triggering our anxiety, but we should always do so with an attitude of acceptance of whatever God's providential will may be & a confidence that, whatever the outcome, God's will is better than our plans or desires.

Ask God to give you faith to believe that His providential will for you in these circumstance comes to you from His infinite wisdom & goodness & is ultimately intended for your good.  And then ask God to give you a heart that is submissive to His providential will when it is contrary to your own plans.

Worry is synonym for anxiety.  The kinds of circumstances that tend to keep a person awake at night "worrying" about what to do while realizing there is nothing one can do. (Matt 6:34)

We do have the promises of God & the ministry of the Holy Spirit to help us in these difficult times.

It's true, however, that oftentimes the situation at hands looms larger in our mind that the promises of God. 

Instead of believing that God is sovereignly in control over the actions of my computer & that He has a good reason for allowing it to act up, I get frustrated.  This type of reaction has its roots in my ungodliness at the moment, for at that time I am living as though God is not involved in my life or my circumstance.  In the heat of the moment,I tend not to think about God at all.  Instead, I focus entirely on the immediate cause of my frustration.

Pslm 139:16  "Days ordained for me" refers not only to the length of my life but to all the events & circumstances of each day of my life.  "This circumstance is part of Your plan for my life today.  Help me to respond in faith & in a God-honoring way to Your providential will.  And then please give me wisdom to know how to address the situation that tends to cause the frustration."

Specific applicable Scripture & dependence on the Holy Spirit expressed through prayer to enable me to respond in a godly manner.  And then pray for practical wisdom to know how to deal with the situation.

It is also beneficial to ask God if there is something I need to learn, or if there is something I need to be attentive to.

Both anxiety & frustration are sins.  They are not to be taken ligtly or brushed off as common reactions we have to difficult events in a fallen world.  Whatever in our lives that isn't like Jesus is sin.  Granted, we will never achieve complete freedom from anxiety or frustration in this life (at least I don't expect to).  But we should never accept them as just part of our temperament any more than we would accept adultery as part of our temperament.



These are excerpts from "Respectable Sins" by Jerry Bridges