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Showing posts from 2013

Toddler Storytelling and Alayna is Alive Day

Isaiah has a newfound joy for story telling.  He asks John and I to tell him stories, and he also enjoys retelling stories that he hears and loves.  So we have told him the story of how mommy and daddy met, the story of when he was born and when his sister was born, and about the time that he drove mommy crazy when he was a colicky infant and wouldn’t stop crying in the backseat when mommy was stuck in rush hour traffic on Route 51.   That one was a nailbiter... ;) Just a few weeks ago, while he was taking a bath, he asked me to tell him a story, a new story.   And, well, I remembered a whale of a tale that he hadn't heard yet.   It just so happens that this story began eight years ago, one day late in August.    It’s a crazy story about a young woman who walked out in front of a minivan that was going at least 25 miles an hour.   She got hit, flew 35 feet in the air like a rag doll, landed in oncoming traffic, and survived to live another day.   But she was b

A Week of Tears...

I have now cried most of my week away.  Staying up late crying.  Crying with the kids at home.  Crying while I'm cleaning.  And just so everyone knows, it's not because I'm pregnant... John is looking to make a career move that would include purchasing two car washes.  In Youngstown, OH.   It's a two hour drive from here, and he doesn't want to drive four hours a day forever.  So he wants to move closer to Youngstown.  Outside of Youngstown, or in Jamestown or Greenville, PA, where my parents are, are all places we could move to. And I'm devastated.  Absolutely heartbroken to the point of tears.   I love my community and the people we live life with now.  I hate change.  I love Pittsburgh.  I love my church.  I love my friends.  My friends' kids are awesome friends for my kids.  I love where we live.  There are hundreds of cool cultural attractions nearby.  I go to a great MOPS group and there are a bunch of other great mom's groups ar

Hello Darling! New MOPS Blog and A Group of Moms You Need to Find...

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Hey!  This one is for all the mommas out there! I just want to make you aware of a brand new blog that was launched on July 1, 2013 called Hello Darling .  It's a blog written by the mommas over at MOPS - Mothers of Preschoolers.  They have inspiration, recipes, tips, DIY, and more to help, support and encourage all the mommies with young ones at home!  And who doesn't need help, support and encouragement as a mom?!? MOPS is a regular meeting of moms throughout the school year to eat brunch, socialize, craft, study the bible and bond over motherhood.  MOPS groups are mainly sponsored and hosted by local churches, and each MOPS group sets their own regular meeting day and place.  I attend a MOPS group at South Hills Assembly of God that meets the first and third Tuesdays of the month from 9 am to 11 am.  You can find us on Facebook here .  The church that my husband and I regularly attend, South Hills Bible Chapel, also has a regular MOPS group that meets every other Mo

Dark Secrets and His Glorious Redemption

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A child smoking marijuana by age 8.  By age 12, she is a high school drop out doing hard drugs who becomes a prostitute by age 14, trained and ushered in by her own mother.  By age 24, she was convicted of killing two people - with a pickax.  A young woman sentenced to live on death row and die of lethal injection administered by the state of Texas. A young woman swallowed up by the pain of dysfunction and infidelity at home.  Lost in a world of disordered eating, obsessive exercise, and self harm.   A teenage girl who lost her virginity to her boyfriend at 14 years old.  Scarred by the heartache of broken intimate relationships and misplaced self worth, she is thrown into a world of eating disorders, heavy drinking and egregious sexual choices into her early 20s. These are real life stories.  A true story from a book I recently read.  A friend's story.  Stories of destruction and loss.  Stories of unhealthy relationships and dysfunctional families.  Stories tha

A Week of News and the World is Dark

Our world is going to hell in a handbasket.   (Warning graphic content!) Just this week, I ran across two articles that made me cry, sob even.  They made my heart hurt and stomach turn .    In the first article, a Chinese newborn baby, perhaps only a few days old, was extracted from a sewer line this past Saturday, where he had been heard wailing for two days.  The sewer pipe was only 4 inches in diameter, and the baby was stuck there after he had been flushed down the toilet in a residential building in the wealthy coastal province of Zhejiang.  Firefighters cut the pipe loose and took the pipe with terrified baby inside to the hospital, so that doctors could cut the baby loose.  He's being called "number 59" because of his incubator number at the hospital.  The whole c ommunity has reached out to care for this baby with donations and offers to adopt, while the Chinese public has been expressing a good bit o f outrage on the Chinese version of Twitter . 

Facebook creeping and a parenting question...

Now there are many people who rarely post on Facebook but read posts all day long.  They are the proverbial fly on the wall in the room that is Facebook.  Listening and watching for something juicy.  And if we are all honest, we can admit we have done it too.  We too have come across something juicy and called our husband or a friend to let them know the trainwreck that just happened.  And if you haven't ever done this, I suppose you either are really holy, or you don't have Facebook.   Just the other day, I had the privilege of running into a heated rant on leaving your kids in the car.  The rant was pretty emphatic about how people shouldn't leave their kids in the car, even to do a small task that would require the parent to walk away from the car for even five minutes, such as pick up another child at school.  And it got heated when another parent said that they did indeed leave their kids in the car to pick up another child from school, but that the doors are locked

Why some animals eat their young...

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I now know why some animals eat their young.  It's because they won't take a nap.   There are only two things on this earth (at the current moment) that make me angry, one is stupid drivers and the other is my son when he won't take a nap.   Being a mom is really hard and quite taxing.  I feed, change, clean up, correct, help, and love on my little ones all day from the second they wake up, and often times all night too.  Come two o'clock or three o'clock in the afternoon, I need a break.  I need to be alone for five minutes.  I need my house to be quiet.  I need everyone to stop crying.  I need to enjoy coffee or iced tea or ice cream in peace, alone.  I need to attend to my disaster of a house.  I need to not have to say, "Please be nice to your sister" or "Please put on your clothes" one more time.  I need to pee, ALONE.   My children both need naps, every single day.  My chance for aloneness.  My chance to recharge, read, watch TV or pa

Mother of the Year - A Mother's Day Tale

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I am mother of the year.   Yes, I'm not bashful.  I'm just letting you know.  And why am I mother of the year this time?  (Oh yes, I have deserved this award many times over, by the way.)  Let me just tell you a little Mother's Day story to help you see why I deserve this honor - yet again.   Just this week, Isaiah and I had a wonderful afternoon that included copious amounts of baby powder on the living room floor, spread around generously by my sneaky three year old while I was attempting to make dinner.   When I discovered that he had emptied 36 ounces of baby powder on the living room floor and was swimming in it, I did what any good parent of my generation would do...  I took a picture of it.  Then I followed some very small baby powder footprints up the stairs to see what my daughter had gotten into, as she was also way too quiet.  It turns out that she was emptying a package of diapers onto her floor to accompany all of the clothes from her dresser tha

Graveclothes

It’s almost Easter.   One of my favorite parts of the Easter narrative is the story about Lazarus.   He is one interesting character.   His claim to fame may just be that he died – twice.   Crazy, I know!   There is of course a back story here, and it can be found in the Bible, in John 11.   Go ahead and read it – it’s an amazing story with quite possibly one of the most amazing miracles that Jesus performed.   I always love this miracle for what it evokes in my own life and mind.   First, let me retell the story… Lazarus, a friend of Jesus, who lives with his sisters Mary and Martha, is sick.  His sisters send word to Jesus that Lazarus is sick and at death's door.  While the message is still in transit to reach Jesus who is staying a day’s travel away, (remember no email, cell phones, or carrier pigeons) Lazarus dies.  His family is in mourning.   They readied his body for burial by wrapping him in graveclothes, and they placed him in a tomb shortly after his death.   Jesus g