Category Archives: marriage

You’re so funny…

humor, marriage March 8, 2012 Comments: 3

Sometimes I fight with my husband. I know, it’s shocking, but there it is.  I read (“follow” to use blog lingo) all kinds of great blogs. Ones about being a Proverbs 31 wife and a fantastical homeschool momma and some about being organized. Most of them are really inspiring. If they weren’t I wouldn’t follow them. 

What I have realized as I’ve struggled to blog everyday this year (and failed) that I would rather write funny.  I enjoy all the blogs that make me laugh. The ones that are so real and raw (but not vulgar) that I almost spit coffee on my computer in the morning.

I’ve struggled to find my “voice” with this blog. I had even contemplated starting a second blog that would be just for me and then have this one for the family stuff.  I nixed that idea pretty quick since most of the time I am trying to blog with a baby hanging off of me (and not my hip) and a cup of coffee that’s perpetually chilly because it takes me so long to drink it. 

When I was little, I really loved to make people laugh. I longed to hear “you’re so funny” much more than I wanted to hear about how “cute” or “smart” I was.  I am sort of a laugh junkie. If I get you going it’s like a drug and I want to have more and more.

When asked the “what do you want to be when you grow up” question that every kid is asked 1,372 times, my response was a lawyer or a comedian. I know. A little bit of a gap there. But arguing with people and making people laugh (sometimes at the same time) were my strengths.  Don’t we always tell kids and teens to focus on their strengths when making occupation choices? Turns out I have ended up where both my lawyer and my comedian skills are put into use. 

Kids are great for laughs. The things they say and do are hilarious. And they laugh easily at me (which for now is ok but when they’re teenagers I’ll consider it disrespectful).

I actually get to win every case on trial because I get to use the “because I said so…” clause which is a precedent that was established about 463 B.C. (give or take).  Well, I get to win every case with my kids. Not my husband. That’s a different story. Well, it’s this story that I started with I guess.

I have been feeling really crummy. First a stomach virus, then a “strained lumbar” (that’s in your back), then a head cold, a breastfeeding induced plugged-duct breast of misery, oh and an in-grown toe-nail to top it off. I’m falling apart. I’ll be 36 next month. I guess it had to happen sometime.

Since I’ve been feeling so bad physically, it has really thrown off my groove.  I’ve been buying the wrong stuff at the grocery store and I’m running late to get everywhere with the kids. So when Chris came home from class and said “I thought you were leaving at 9:30?” I flipped out.

And that’s all he said. Really. Bless his heart.

What I tried to explain later, is how the voices in my head are constantly saying “what is going on with you?  Hurry up! You are going to be late. You forgot that kid’s bag, etc. etc.” So I don’t need him to point how I have failed again. He did good. He apologized. Although, how he could have known that that one question would have unleashed such fury is beyond me.

I can’t believe he has put up with me for almost ten years. Although, the child support payments alone would make his life as a single man impossible.

He’s stayed for the same reason I have. Even though we fight, we made a commitment. To each other and to God.

“Sometimes I lie awake at night, and ask, ‘Where have I gone wrong?’ Then a voice says to me, ‘This is going to take more than one night.’”

Homemaking with the Grubb Worms

homemaking, marriage February 1, 2012 Leave a comment

I am linking up with Passionate and Creative Homemaking today to talk about what homemaking looks like at our house. 

I’ll start off by saying that when I was growing up, my mom worked outside the home, yet it seemed almost all of the homemaking was HER responsibility.  Well, hers and mine.  From my perspective, my dad would work (sometimes late hours in retail) and then would come home, plant himself in front of the t.v. in his favorite brown recliner and still be there when I went to bed hours later.  Going back one more generation, my Mamaw (maternal grandmother), waited hand and foot on my Papaw.  I will always be able to hear him yelling “Mary Bell!” (pronounced Murr-bell), as he beckoned her from another room to hand him something that was less than 3 feet away. 

When my husband and I were engaged we went to pre-marital counseling with a Christian counselor.  She had us fill in workbooks that had a lot to do with our expectations and then we would calmly discuss scream and cry in her office until we came to some compromise.  It was really helpful.  But not because we worked all that out and had a plan as to who would do the dishes, who would wash the laundry, etc.  It was helpful because it showed us that he had one set of ideas about how things should go and I had a COMPLETELY different idea. Which really sort-of prepared us for the first few ten years of our marriage.

We will be celebrating our tenth year of marriage on March 22nd this year.  And at this point in our lives, this is what homemaking looks like.

  • We both cook. I cook breakfast and lunch for the kids while he is gone.  I cook most of our dinners but that is because he doesn’t get home until after 5pm and by then the natives are getting restless.  When Chris is home though, he enjoys cooking.  He really likes trying new recipes for meals and desserts.  I feel like if he had more time at home he would take a bigger role in this area.
  • We both clean.  Again, I do the majority of this because I am home but Chris and the kids do a lot of laundry and dishes and general picking up. Chris will scrub the tub for me because that is a chore I detest.  Most of the deep cleaning chores are done by me, but as long as I have a little time to do them I actually enjoy this.
  • We both make a menu, grocery list and do the shopping.  I really struggle in this area.  I hate making a menu for the week, I don’t enjoy cutting coupons or finding bargains (like some people I know).  I don’t mind the cooking, but it’s still a learning process for me!
  • We both take care of the kids.  Except for Jonah who is still exclusively breast-fed, Chris and I split the care of the kids.  We both give baths, help with getting people dressed, fed, cleaned-up, medicine or band-aids delivered and tucked into bed.  The one thing I do that Chris hasn’t ever done because he has no desire and I don’t mind it is cut fingernails and toenails.  That may seem like such a small thing but we have 5 children who need that done at least once a week. You do the math. (Dirty, long fingernails are a pet peeve of mine.) 
  • We both discipline.  We have our own tool bag of consequences from which to pull ranging from time-out to spankings to loss of privileges.  We try to respect and stay out of a disciplinary action as it is taking place. For example, if Parker hits Theodore and Chris is in the room, he will tell Parker to go take Parker to time-out.  When the timer beeps Parker is sent to speak with Chris, not me.  He will talk with him and Theodore and have Parker apologize.  It is extremely disrespectful of one parent to interrupt, defend or change the discipline of another parent in front of the child.  We are a team and try to present a united front.  That said, we both mess this up from time to time.  Either I think Chris is being too lenient or he thinks I am being too harsh, somehow we end up arguing with each other when we let our opinions come out at the moment in front of the kids. Better to wait and discuss it after bedtime.

It has taken us all of our marriage to get to this point. As our family has grown, as we have matured and our relationship and love has grown deeper, the way homemaking looks in our family has changed many times.  Thankfully, God loves us and continues to honor our desire to have a stable, Christian home.  The most consistent aspect to our homemaking is that it is always changing!

Date Night

marriage, priorities January 28, 2012 Leave a comment

Uh-oh, it’s 11:30 and I haven’t blogged today! I have a good reason though. I had a date tonight. 

My hubby and I don’t go out very often, but tonight we took Jonah and went for dinner and some shopping.  The date tonight was even better because of the past 24 hours.

Last night Chris came home from work and got the kids and took them for haircuts. I stayed home and was able to have a complete uninterrupted conversation with a girlfriend of mine.  Today he took Theodore and Parker with him to see his Grandfather, which meant more productive school time for Foster, Katie and I. Then he let me lay down and take a nap with the baby.  All this special attention and he’s been leaving me little notes this week in different places that tell me why he loves me. 

I’ll have to share those in a different post. Some of them are really funny.

I am thankful that I have a husband who isn’t perfect but who’s willing to try, who forgives me and tries to see past my temper tantrums to find out what I am really needing.

I need some sleep

baby, breast-feeding, Jonah, marriage January 24, 2012 Leave a comment

Remember when you had a 3 month old baby who slept 8-10 hours? Yeah, me neither.

 I have nursed all my babies, breast milk just doesn’t last like formula (apparently).  Also, when I had my first baby I followed all the rules for bedtime.  Well, all except the put them to sleep on their back rule.  I would get up and go to Foster’s room and nurse him on one side for approx. 10-15 minutes, change his diaper, nurse on the other side 10-15 minutes.  Then he would sleep another nice, long 4-5 hour stretch. 

Well, then came baby #2 and in our little 2 bedroom house that meant that Katie would be waking up her 2 year old brother in the night if she was crying incessantly (which she did).  Katie wanted to nurse for approx. 5 minutes and fall back asleep. Then she would sleep about 45 minutes and want to nurse again.  Enter, co-sleeping.  Chris was working 2nd shift then and so he would bunk on the sofa bed, while Katie and I had our bed.  And so it has been our routine for babies #3,4, and 5. 

I am thankful that I have a husband who is so understanding.  Although, it works for both of us.  He suffers from sofa bed uncomfort but doesn’t get woke up to feed or change a crying baby.

In fact, nobody hears the baby crying except mommy. 

Chris and the kids often say in the mornings, “I didn’t hear Jonah cry at all last night. Did he wake up at all?”  Ha, ha so funny.

I will try not to resent your long, peaceful night’s rest.

After all, it’s only for a season.  

Torn

choices, marriage, motherhood March 31, 2011 Comments: 3

I was really excited the first week of March.  The sun was out and there was so much to look forward to during the month.
However, just as my husband and I were leaving to celebrate our 9th wedding anniversary…my kids got sick.  Foster was first, with a nasty stomach virus.  It was really hard to leave him but my mom was here and I knew she would take good care of him.  Thank God for cell phones, I think I talked to her about 50 times between Friday and Sunday.  We went to Gatlinburg and stayed in a free condo, thanks to a good friend.  We ate out and shopped and had many uninterrupted conversations.  It would have been really perfect if it hadn’t been for the fact that I felt like my heart was torn in two.

Here’s the deal.  I love my husband with all my heart.  But my little boy was really sick.  And I couldn’t be here to hold him, to wipe his face with a cold cloth, to read his favorite book, to take his temperature and whisper prayers over him.  The reality is that my mom was taking wonderful care of him, and I was praying to a God who doesn’t care where I pray.  But to me, I was abandoning my child in his time of need. I was selfishly choosing time away over my duty and obligation as a mother.

So why didn’t we just stay home? Or come home early? Did I want to do that? Definitely.  But I had to stop and realize that what I was doing over the weekend was even more important than what I could have been doing for my child.  If you are a believer, if you try and do things God’s way, then you know His idea of priorities are lined up like this. Your relationship with Him, then your spouse, then your kids and then everyone else.  I could not get a peace about abandoning that priority.  I wanted my husband to feel that his rightful place is 2nd to God. Not just saying it, but actually showing him.  Because so many times as a  mother to young children, I am not able to do that.  I am either dealing with pressing, immediate issues – like puke on the carpet or toddlers sinking their teeth into siblings.  Or I am so tired and selfish that I put him off, again.

So I stayed, he did offer to bring me home several times.  I would cry and pray and God would say “I can take care of Foster.”  Oh…really? Sorry God, here I thought that if I wasn’t constantly in control of the things around my children that they would meet a terrible demise.

Turns out, we did have a great time, we connected and we shared and we showed one another that we are thankful that God brought us together.  I agree with my husband, he always tells me, “We’re a team right?”

We are a team. Thankfully, we have the greatest coach and leader, the glue that sticks us together is our Savior. Without Him, we would not have made it to 9 years.

Wife vs. Mother

marriage, priorities January 11, 2011 Comments: 2

There we are. Aren’t we cute? And young? And thin? Well, time passes, and with it comes all those ups and downs of life that you can expect.  Job changes, home changes, addition of children, loss of parents or grandparents. I am proud that we have been married for 8 years (9 this March). I love my husband.  This past New Year’s Eve was the anniversary of when we met 10 years ago. It’s a good story, I’ll have to share it with you soon, probably around anniversary time. 

What’s on my mind today, though, is this – being a wife vs. being a mother.  I have struggled with this for almost 7 years.  I know what kind of wife I should be, how biblically I am to put my husband first, second only to God.  We did some great pre-marital counseling where we talked all about our love languages and how hard it would be once we added children to our little family of 2.  So I really can’t say that I don’t know.  However, it’s kind of like losing weight. It seems to be a simple equation right? Eat less + exercise more = nice body. Well, plug in marriage variables. Affection + respect = happy hubby.

So why is this so hard? Of course, just like with weight loss, there can be many different roadblocks.  Here are a few things that I think get in the way of the equation factoring out well. 

1) Kids…their needs are immediate and never-ending, their responses instantly rewarding, they are extremely forgiving.
2) Time…again, it’s filled with kids or housework or bill paying or blogging
3) Resources…for dates, for vacations, for lingerie, for gifts. When resources are limited you have to make an extra effort to connect.
4) Energy…ummm I’m tired. A lot.
5) Desire…I desire my husband, but at the end of the day what I desire more is just sleep and food and QUIET.

So there it is, all my excuses.  I am reading a book now called Intimate Issues.  I am hoping to get some inspiration on how I can keep my husband higher on my priority list.

I want him to know how much I love him.  How much I appreciate how hard he works for our family and what a great daddy he is, how he makes me laugh and helps me come back to earth from my living in the clouds ideas. 

Mostly, I want us to look like this in a few years…