Home sweet home

We are home and tired, but I wanted to do a quick post. Like all kids, my kids can come out with some pretty funny sayings, and like most moms I foget them about 10 minutes later. I wanted to get a couple on here before I forget them. Yesterday we were sitting in the car waiting for Mike to be done with his client golf outing and Jonathan said, "How much of this car do you think I could take apart with a screw driver?"

Today at a typical Cracker Barrel stop on our ride home, I bought a little yarn cross stitch handiwork activity for Jake. It was for ages 6 and up and only $2.
I sat with him in the backseat to get him started on it. I was telling him how it was a good idea to do some work with his hands that wasn't a video game. He was less than excited but humored me a little. When I realized we wouldn't be able to do it in the car because we didn't have scissors he did is usual fist pumping "YES!" and said to me, "Mom you don't know my life, you just know your life." He later explained that I didn't know his thoughts only my own. I thought it was quite profound though and it really made me think. I want my kids to love books and crave reading because I do and because to me that is the mark of a good homeschooling family. I want them to spend time doing useful things like handiwork, house work, yardwork etc. I want Jake to be nice to people and to care what they think because I am a people pleaser...this doesn't matter to him one lick. He's got tons of gifts, but pleasing other people is just not one of them. The gifts he has will be useful in "his life" and he is right I don't know his life (his future). He will be the Jake that he is meant to become, the one that God created, not the one that I am trying to create. I'm not going to stop trying to get him to be nice to people and he will do that yarn-work, but I am also going to try to give him a little more space to grow into the person he is meant to be.

Madi went home from Georgia with my parents on Thursday. She's coming home tomorrow...I miss her. It was weird going into a restaurant and just needing a table for four. I felt like I wanted to tell everyone that we saw (all strangers) that we have another child too. When Jonathan was 2 years old and I was pregnant with Madi I worked a few nights a week at a store in the mall near where we lived. The store sold products for babies and young children. I was pretty far along in my pregnancy so it was evident that I was expecting. I felt bad for Jonathan though because while everyone could see I had "one on the way" there was no visible sign of the one I had at home. I often felt the need to tell people, "I have a two year old!" Why do I always feel like I need to explain myself? The other day a facebook friend who happens to be a girl that I used to babysit for (she's now 30 and a mother of 2) posted that her 16 month old kept waking up in the night. Many people commented that he was "manipulating" her and that she needed to let him cry it out. I felt the need to go out on a limb and offer another option (a more attachment approach), but I was sure to include the fact that my kids are now almost 14, 11 and almost 7. I also think I was commenting not just for my friend, but for all her friends who were so sure about themselves and the crying it out. I don't like the idea of a 16 month old crying alone in a dark room, but I sometimes question my motives...was I really doing it for the toddler or to prove to these young moms (which I don't think I am anymore) that I know what I'm talking about?

I think I'm getting incoherent here so it's time for bed...good night!